Ambiguous Mr. Fox: Black Actors and Interest Convergence in the Superhero Film

How does conglomerate Hollywood construct superhero blockbusters for a domestic market structured by American racial ideologies? As commodities and as marketing tools for larger media brands, these films aspire to wide popularity, and the norms of this genre demand that the superhero pursue a universalist and prosocial mission, fighting on behalf of “the people”—the city, the nation, or the planet—broadly imagined as having convergent interests. These films must therefore appeal ambiguously to audience segments that hold contradictory understandings of how race inflects American life. This essay looks primarily at the character of Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films for Warner Brothers (2005–2012), and it argues that Fox demonstrates Warner Brothers’ skill in creating a character that appeals across American racialideological lines. Moreover, the essay argues that Fox offered a template that Marvel Studios then followed in its development of black sidekicks for the white superheroes in their interconnected “Marvel Cinematic Universe” of films. The latest entry, Captain America: Civil War (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2016), features three different black superheroes, including the Black Panther. As one of the few black superheroes to have his own comic book title, the Panther’s appearance in this film would seem to signify Hollywood’s willingness to give black superheroes their “due,” yet as I will argue, we can also read the film as a successful exercise in what Derrick Bell has called interest convergence, a careful navigation between the desires of black people and the dominant racial ideology of white people.