A Horse of a Different Color

On The Office last night, the eternally pathetic character, Toby, indicated by phone to his daughter that she might be getting a Princess Unicorn doll for Christmas to audible shrieks of delight through the receiver. Princess Unicorn was presented as the must-have toy in Scranton and is Barbie-esque in every respect—packaging, plastic hair, pink ball gown, etc.—except that she has a unicorn horn protruding from her forehead. Hysterical. Thank you, NBC.

It so happens that the conniving dweeb, Dwight, had been stockpiling the dolls for months, buying out the inventory of the entire city and selling them at a big margin. When Toby got off the phone with his daughter, the brilliant stockroom worker, Darryl, was handing Dwight cash for a pink box, which turned out to be the very last of Dwight’s hoard. Toby was mortified, wanting desperately to please his daughter and even more to piss off his ex-wife with this coveted toy, and begged Darryl to sell it to him. When Darryl coolly acquiesced to re-sell the doll to Toby on a payment plan for twice what he had just paid Dwight, Toby hugged Darryl and thanked him profusely, visibly relieved. Well, relieved until he took the box and realized that it was the “African-American” version of the doll, complete with mocha skin, ebony “textured” hair, and chocolate-colored unicorn horn. Toby obviously was expecting the blonde, white-horned version of the doll, and when Darryl sardonically asked him, “What, is something wrong?” Toby swallowed hard and answered that he liked this version even better.

This is funny on so many levels. First, it's funny for the obviousness that Darryl likely would not be buying the white-person version for his child, that he had swindled Toby so skillfully, and that there was absolutely no way that Toby could get out of the scam with any grace or without a fight. Second, because the viewer to this point only had been shown the white-person version of the doll, I had the traditional Barbie in mind—not to mention that I don’t think the notion of a black unicorn ever had crossed my mind—and was as surprised as Toby to see the black-girl version. Finally, Toby’s response that he liked this version even better is so funny not only because he did not want to get a good thumping by Darryl, but also because it is great social commentary as a sign of the times, as though it is almost de rigeur to be pro-black right now.

This Office interaction hits on what appears to be a cultural extension of The Obama Effect that had pollsters so worried in the recent election. But instead of simply an outsized enthusiasm for the candidate, it appears that the President-Elect’s victory is generating a new enthusiasm for his race. Has anyone noticed that there seem to be more black people in television ads (no, I do not have DVR, folks, so I do still watch commercials)? I don’t know if my own enthusiasm lately has just highlighted how many black people are in ads, but the Princess Unicorn storyline’s dénouement makes me think that it’s not just me.

Looking back on the campaign and election, it really is sort of surprising that the Obamas’ race did not play a larger role. Whether it wasn’t addressed more directly because of senses of taboo likely never will be known for sure, but what did become evident is that the American majority is cool with a black president. So I am sure that there is a new page in the advertising playbook that says the black community no longer is a niche market exclusively, and that Americans in general identify black people as part of the whole, quotidian public.

I think that it will be interesting to see how this slight shift in the perceptions of those who cultivate perception might impact our culture. And thinking about just one sphere—consumer retail—would a shift of this nature begin to draw traditionally “black products” out of niche markets, as well? For instance, I am told there are some products, which are used commonly by African Americans but remain generally unknown to the broader marketplace, that work like magic for razor burn. Or might evolving notions of consumers change market shares dramatically; will Sean Jean gain in popularity while the FUBU brand becomes irrelevant?

In any case, I think that it is worth commenting that even though Toby’s surprise and disappointment in seeing the black Princess Unicorn were funny, in this day and age, his white daughter may not be as dismayed as one initially might expect to get a Princess Unicorn of a different shade.

In God We Trust

Religion has played an important role in my life, but not for the usual reasons. Instead of providing me with the consoling or motivating faith of a divine presence, it has helped me to understand society, to build my cultural values, and to engage history from a third-party perspective. I guess I should explain.

The community in which I grew up was not terribly diverse, and in my High School class of 200 or so, I was one of two Jews (mind you, my mother is Jewish, my father a non-practicing Methodist). It didn’t really bother me, as I had no formal Jewish upbringing, attending bar mitzvahs only two or three times by age 18 and only sporadically attending casual Seders with family friends in the area. The first time I remember religion having a great impact on my life was when I was about 16 years old, and one of my classmates—a daughter of an evangelical missionary—found out that I was Jewish, pulled me aside between classes, and earnestly told me that she was afraid for me because I was going to hell.

Well, since then, I have made peace with my damnation, and I know it might be cliché to say it, but there is no way we all are getting into Heaven, and if there is only room for Christian radicals or exploding Islamic extremists, I feel more comfortable taking my chances with eternal fire. I am a Jew and a homo, after all, and the people “down south” likely will be more interesting anyway.

In all seriousness, the gospel in my household was Science. My mother holds degrees in Chemistry, Biology, and Geology, and my father is a practicing soils scientist. Chat around my house centered on watersheds and sandy loams. My parents left for weeks at a time, not to convert the heathens in Africa, but to map the soils of the Grand Canyon. Family vacations were spent looking at alluvial fans from the Pleistocene and trying to find glacial polish on granite throughout the American West. Sundays were anticipated, not for weekly sermons, but for the escapades of wildebeests and lions on PBS’s series, Nature.

With this background, I took a more cool and calculating approach to religion than most people might, and I really began philosophizing my beliefs while in college, when my exposure to diversity and drive to contemplate were at the highest levels to date. I came up with a system of beliefs that is not spiritual, basing my understanding of religions on my scientific upbringing, believing that all things ultimately are explainable. Sociology is the underpinning for my religion, which boils down religion to the most basic parts that have guided society for many millennia. So it is little wonder that the oldest of Western religions is the one with which I identify most readily. I consider myself a Jew, but my faith is not so much in a higher power as it is in humanity.

I believe that some Biblical accounts are historical and that some are fable. I believe that the Ten Commandments are the underpinning of Western society, not because God gave them to Moses with a mandate, but because they are the tenets that allow people to function as a group: don’t kill one another; don’t take things that aren’t yours; respect others; don’t lie; remember you need your rest. Really, I believe that the last seven commandments are the ones that have helped Western society to function for the last 3,000 years and that the first three are the imposition of beliefs on non-believers (There is only one God, I am it, and I will get angry if you worship anything else).

What is really interesting to me is that in the text, both in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, the Bible uses the notion of freedom from slavery as the reason for which this single deity should be worshipped:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…; (Exodus 20:2)

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm…. (Deuteronomy 5:15)

I do not pretend to be a scholar in backing up these beliefs. I am no holy man, I do not have an advanced degree requiring years of study, and I have not read the Bible cover to cover (though I think I might try). So you can imagine my fascination last night in watching PBS, which presented three programs on Western faith. The first, on Nova, blew my mind. It took a critical look at the first five books of the Bible—the Old Testament or Torah for my tribesmen—and sought to discover what could be factually substantiated through archaeology in order to devise an hypothesis about the beginnings of Western religion. It was captivating, and for people who are not entirely blinded by their inherited faiths, extremely plausible.

Without going into it in detail at all, the theory presented is that:

1. the book of Exodus is the oldest book of the Bible;
2. most Israelites were actually Canaanite slave classes, who rose up and conquered the elite classes, then spreading throughout the hills of modern Israel (or per Exodus, wandered the desert for 40 years); and
3. the idea of a single God and freedom from Egypt came from a small band of slaves who actually did escape from Egypt, eventually joined the Israelites, had a religious experience along the way, and shared their experience with the newly free Israelites, who were thirsty to establish a new society.

This theory is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this new society, which spawned Western religion, was based on a tale of freedom.

Is it unthinkable, therefore, that in our current age when political systems hold at their center the idea of freedom, Democracy might be replacing religion as the tie that binds people together? After all, according to Exodus and Deuteronomy, freedom is the reason for which we should believe in God in the first place. Could it be that participating in Democracy is really being in the presence of God? Is this Heaven? If we could ask a Canaanite slave what his heaven would have been, could it have been Democracy?

And in the discussion regarding civil liberties—especially right now surrounding Proposition 8, in which hell-bound Americans are up against the Catholic and Mormon churches—what should we be valuing above all else, freedom or God? And what if those are the same thing?