Considering Michael Clarke Duncan: Big Black Man within a Nonsociopoliticohistorical Context (Editorial with Poem)

[Author-Poet Aberjhani]

Michael Clarke Duncan (photo by Ethan Miller for WireImage)

Since his emergence during the 1980s and 1990s as a master of horror and suspense, author Stephen King has enjoyed popularity among a racially diverse reading audience. His popularity among African Africans likely ticked up a notch when his novel The Green Mile was made into a movie in 1999 and the late Michael Clarke Duncan brilliantly brought King’s character, John Coffey, to awe-inspiring life.

Duncan, who died September 3, 2012, at the age of 54 from complications following a heart attack suffered in July, received an Academy Award nomination for the role. Moreover, he actually won the Saturn Award, Black Reel Award, Broadcast Film Critics Association Critics’ Choice Award, and Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for his performance.

The accolades that rained upon Duncan and the fact that he earned himself a spot among Hollywood A-listers did not prevent some critics from accusing the Chicago-born actor of promoting a negative racial stereotype with the role.  Instead of the morally superior close-to-angelic being that King created and Duncan represented so impeccably, they saw a witless aberration with slave-like speech and mannerisms, someone too unaware of his sociopolitical status to hate the white people who so clearly hated him.

Big Black Man Within a Nonsociopolicohistorical Context

 In an interview with PopMatters film editor Cynthia Fuchs, Duncan, who in real life stood 6’5” and weighed in at 300-plus pounds, shared the following: "The film is about this: you can't judge a book by its cover, and that's the main thing that people do with John Coffey. And me too."

In many ways, whether considered negative or positive, the more dominant images of African-African men in mainstream media and parallel outlets are manufactured utilizing some form of guerrilla decontextualization. The millionaire entertainers, superstar athletes, demonized criminals, and hyper-sexualized players often have little other than color in common with the average striving student, husband, son, brother, incarcerated loved one, or friend who considers himself African American.

This, however, is not about “what black is or what black ain’t.” It is about the limitations that conceptions and misconceptions of race place on our potential as human spiritual beings. Michael Clarke Duncan chose to step outside constructed limitations in many of the roles he went on to play after The Green Mile. The following poem, “Big Black Man Within a Nonsociopoliticohistorical Context” was first published in the book I Made My Boy Out f Poetry. It is presented here in honor of Mr. Duncan:

Big Black Man Within a Nonsociopoliticohistorical Context
(for Michael Clarke Duncan, Dec 10, 1957-Sept 3, 2012)

 

    Snowflakes roll calmly over the edge
    of your amusement, drift down like shredded sky.
    They are temporary and not serious,
    placing their entire bodies upon the mouths
    of the chrysanthemums and violets that fill
    this field.  I am a blackness, and a melody,
    and a serving of the universe’s curiosity
    about  itself, watching the snow fall
    and melt upon the tongue of my bare chest,
    or fly into the curly black rhapsody
    of cosmic forest lush beneath my naval,
    leaving diamonds and blue to kindle my riddle.

    My knees are at home resting on the earth’s shoulder
    even as my spirit has been at home expanding
    and exploring the energy and pulse of Sirius.
    And a sunflower as tall as I wraps its leaves
    around my waist as if it were all compassion
    and nothing else.  We feed each other our personal
    mythologies, weeping about the power of  shadows
    and light over our past.  A seductive aroma
    strokes the melanin inside my skin and we shudder
    prophecies from one moon to the next.

    The soft gray hair of dusk spreads outward,
    joins with the whirling dervish snow
    to choreograph a jazz ballet of magnetic bliss.
    There is an oak tree fond of telling the tale
    of my origins and possible destinies.
    There is a river singing ballads of miracles
    I have yet to achieve.  This lion standing in
    majestic silence is an undiluted sexuality
    rooted in the gardens of infinity.

    Looking up from the lush tapestry of this
    nightfallen moment, every third star is a lover
    with whom I have found neverending
    enigma and uncontainable sweetness.  This snow
    falling upon this hill melts down my spine as if I am
    made of history and it is nothing less than revelation.
    We absorb just enough of each other to discover
    a thousand new ways to love and be loved.

    My arms are the mountains that hold time in its place.
    My tears are the atoms that give substance to space.
    My blackness is the music eternity makes when singing itself as me.

by Aberjhani

 

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