The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old, from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ... the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.
Murika. ‘Marvel Speak’, today’s ‘Lingua Universalis Murikana’ (eg, Black AquaMAYNE.) ‘Mollywhoppin.’ Murika is getting stranger by the day…but that could be good thing.
(An example is the August 5, 2023, ‘Montgomery (Alabama) Riverfront ‘Brawl’ ).
Was the ‘Montgomery RiverFront Brawl” a kind of post-post-modern American opera in the round, public invited, choose your role (strongly influenced by, or even perhaps scripted from Marvel Comics memes.)
By some miracle, the August 5, 2023, ‘Montgomery RiverFront Brawl’ was a potential tragedy that didn’t happen…as if the Fates were up there enjoying their game of cards, and said:
“Not today Montgomery, you fools just go ahead and do your foolishness…and don’t you dare bother us with real tragedy like bloodshed, broken limbs and stuff like that…just embarass yourself, you skiff owners, … and embarass the State of Alabama…Alabama is used to being embarassed by its throwback racism.”
The Montgomery RiverFront Brawl now one of the strongest answers to the critics of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and “Wokeness”…the moral lines are sharp, clear and undeniably reflect the remnants of White, racist self-entitlement in a racist American region (Alabama)…where on August 5, 2023, an elderly Black riverboat co-captain(!) was assaulted (and video’d) for doing his assigned task which was to move an abandoned private skiff from the city dock space reserved for a tour boat (delayed from dockng for more than 40 minutes)…but he was angrily attacked by the returning skiff owners…more to punish him for touching their boat than carrying out his officially instructed duty. And the assault occurred on the very docks where more than 200 years ago (1823, and earlier) Negro slaves were taken off riverboats and marched in ankle chains to ‘holding pens’ only 2 blocks away, there to be sold at the slave market in center-city just a few more blocks away. It was as if the slave ancestors of the 2023 riverboat co-captain (assaulted by White drunken boaters) endowed the co-captain and his defenders who rushed to his aid, with physical and emotional strength to say, “No More, This Will No Longer Stand.”
Of the several well-voiced perspectives about that incident, this writer takes a positive view that one of the incident’s broader significance is that it examples America’s unique ‘growing up’ process…what better way to unite across histric racial animosity than a performance by ‘Opera Buffa’ actors at center stage so that everyone can laugh at clearly understood stupidity. Specifically, even White people can laugh at the White (redneck) attack on an elderly Black (and uniformed) staffer doing his job to clear dock space for a tour Riverboat (“The Harriet Tubman II”). One of the best reactions begins at minute 1:50 in the Youtube video:
“YTE PEOPLE HAVE FINALLY SPOKEN ON THE MONTGOMERY BOAT B.RAWL‼️”.
But there is also a chapter 2 made by the same video-maker. Check out the ‘White’ lady who speaks her perspective at minute 9:20:
“YT MAN TRIES TO BRING IN “FLIP SCRIPT” ON THE MONTGOMERY ALABAMA B-RAWL‼️HE’S OWN R.O.A.S.T.ED HIM!
America has found a path to self-understanding through a new and uniquely American hybridized language that enables a common immediacy and understanding across (and erasing) America’s race-class boundaries. This new language is the set of memes from American mass media …,
and specifically in the context of the recent Montgomery incident, the memes of the Hollywood movie adaptations from Marvel Comics (e.g., “[Black] AquaMAYNE”, emphasis on Southern dialect spelling as heard at the Riverfront Brawl.)
The “Montgomery RFB” can also be framed as a Falstaffian opera-in-the-round with old and new elements, roles,, themes, memes, outcomes and even a ‘Greek Chorus’ (the Riverboat railing-line of teen Black girls in-unison sing-songing facing the dock (located at stage center):
“Hey [you], move your dam boat.”
Murika. ‘Marvel Speak’ (Black AquaMAYNE.) ‘Mollywhoppin.’
Yes, ‘Murika’ is getting stranger by the day…but maybe that could be good thing. (And, overall, we see that, true to their pacific African cultural roots, African- Americans are not inclined to lynch, mass murder, mass hate…but instead are ready to find humor in human frailties, and forgive…African Americans tend to see human bufoons as one chapter in God’s book ..and life is too short.)
— — — — — — — —
(‘What the f…k is going on, America, are we regressing to a final end, a stinky, immoral finale to ‘America’s Original Sin’ (Slavery) ?)
Or, have we progressed to a social media-meme-driven, post-modern neo-Capitalist-racist implosion? (Or, has America become to a ‘post, post-modern’ state yet to have a name?)
Facts about the August 5, 2023, Montgomery Brawl still roll in: … first, there had been a Trump rally that day, or day before, in Montgomery (the good ole boys were excited, and feeling extra-entitled); second, the riverboat docking was delayed at least 30 minutes by the private boat; third, the Black ‘dock worker’ is actually a “co-Captain (the media automatically assumed the assaulted co-captain was a ‘menial’ rather than a ‘second-in-command (First Mate)…a misassumption which in itself signifies racist re-labeling and re-framing of facts.
By some miracle, the Montgomery Brawl was a potential tragedy that didn’t escalate to deadly proportions. The only wounds that were incurred were wounded egos of the self-entitled egos of the redneck skiff owners.
The skiff owners set in motion their own fate (a general Mollywhoppin’.) The miracle was that no shot was fired, though I am 100% certain the there were deadly weapons (guns and knives) on that private skiff.
The whole thing revealed a ‘strangely wonderful’, or ‘wonderfully strange’ shift/seachange in American ‘kultur’…
America somehow ended up the confrontation with no deaths, no racial rioting…but instead wih plenty of laughs…at the skiff owners.
Was the ‘Montgomery RF Brawl’a sign of racial co-recognition of ‘reasonable boundaries’ — yes, rebellion to officials and offical rules, and response in kind from Black Americans, but the knives, razors and guns didn’t come out…though they were certainly around, somewhere ‘handy’ but kept in place.
Was the ‘Montgomery Brawl” a kind of post modern American opera in the round, public invited, choose your role (strongly influenced by memes linked to Marvel Comics templates.)
This just might be a new American South’s holiday every August where Black and White southerners can choose roles according to their mood and participate in a good ole “Mollywhoppin Time.” Already there is a Youtube video of a multi-racal pool party where Black and White partiers share roles and mime the whole incident while beering down and falling over laughing at the good ole boy boaters who showed their asses and got Mollywhopped.
Murika is getting stranger by the day…maybe that’s a good thing.
And after the Molywhoppin celebration…everybody, too tired to hate, might’ve gathered together to share beer, barbecue, baked beans and fried chicken. ‘Murika’ finally finds a way to solve one of its major problems…race relations.
Most internet reactions are jolly, finger-pointing at the foolish, Falstaffian absurdity of the private boaters who were drunk, clumsy, made fun of and obviously headed for a righteous, good ole ‘woodshed’ “Mollywhoppin”…well-deserved just because they commically showed their asses in front of a huge crowd of African Americans watching one of their uniformed, official “uncles” get clearly ‘jumped on’ in full public view…and watching “Black AquaMAYNE” swim across the river (dodging “gators”, cottonmouths, and sundry other river monsters in that murky water) to arrive “to your left (Marvel meme)” to assist ‘Unc.’
Falstaffian. Murika. Black AquaMAYNE. Mollywhoppin. Mongomery Alabama…America’s new clown show.
Murika is getting stranger by the day…that could be good thing.
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