Hero once On Air

Something I noticed as I was doing the reading for Thursday, in which Macon gets his first tastes of celebrity life on the Joe Francis Show and Rise and Shine News and Pedantic Perspectives (lol @ that name) is that Macon seems to become decidedly less obstinate and asshole-y about expressing his views. I'm comparing the scene in the BSU meeting, where he is quite rude, period, regardless of the whole "does he have a right to be there and have an opinion?" debate, to his later behavior on the talk shows and such.

First, let's look at the BSU meeting. He announces his presence by disparaging their ideas for speakers, as told with the classic cynical aside of our narrator: "'Boring,' muttered Macon, too loud to be accidentally too loud" (123). Then, when he is given to opportunity to speak his peace -- hell, he's explicitly given to floor, is told the "say what [he's] got to say," and is totally put in the position to lay his whole ideology out there --  he opts to make the inflammatory and hyperbolic suggestion of "buying a gun and killing a cop" (124).

Even at his very first press conference a day later, he is much more comported and articulate with his what he says: "I guess I'm exposing white people to themselves. We've gotten so good at pretending we're not racist that we've started to believe it. We act like racism got dealt with back in the sixties (...) We teach our kids the doctrine of color blindness, tell them not to notice race. Which is impossible in a society as racially stratified as ours (...)" (141). Later, on the Joe Francis Show: "What I will address, though, is the sense of entitlement with which white people grow up, and which they hold on to for their entire live" (190). On Pedantic Perspectives: "'Forget channels of dialogue,' interrupted Macon. 'That lets them [Katie's note: them?] off the hook too easy. How can you even start talking without a basic acknowledgement of culpability?'" (203).

Clearly, when Macon actually talks about what he believes, it's the whites that he has a problem with, which begs the question of 'Why is he even giving the BSU crap in the first place?' because it doesn't really fit in with his ideology. But the seeming irrelevance of the BSU to Macon's goals is part of a larger shift in his character. Before his rise to fame/infamy, Macon is just sort of shooting out aggression, black militancy, and bravado without a very clear focus of what he is doing with it. He's robbing taxi-goers, he's stalking and cherry-picking his roomate, he's doing an open mic, and he's intruding on the BSU meeting. His haphazard behavior seems to us to be just as much of a cry for attention as a "down" whiteboy as it is an expression of any sort of governing principles, as murky as those seem to be.

But once he is given a voice, or more accurately, a listener, he becomes a lot more coherent. Coherent in the sense that his actions reflect his ideology. Before, he seems to be just as much trying to be a part of black culture as he is trying to show the problems with white privilege, but that aspect of him takes the back burner as he goes on media appearances. In fact, if we hadn't gotten the little manifesto in the Letter from a Birmingham Bus, his rise to fame is arguably the first time that we actually get a clear picture of what he believes. But we have to remember that the Letter from a Birmingham Bus was written after everything that transpires in the novel.

This shift implies that perhaps Macon hadn't 100% distilled his ideology until he gets the opportunity to articulate in an effective way. He does rhetorically ask for permission to speak at the BSU meeting, but that too is fraught with subtext, for he already bullied his way into the conversation: "The humble request for an invitation was always a respect-getter, a perfect way to carve out space for himself where none existed" (123). What are the club members supposed to do, not allow people to talk? Before his rise to fame, he has to make insane statements for their shock value, so people may listen to his actually intelligent ideas. The taxi cab robberies serve that purpose in perpetuity, so after he goes public, he doesn't have to make a name for himself, and he can focus on telling people his beliefs.

Here we have a possible exposition of Macon's heroism. Once he no longer requires his asshole version of himself, he sheds it to a certain extent and focuses on his admittedly admirable goals of a recognition of racial injustice. Of course, this doesn't negate the fact that his asshole self had to run its course in order for him to express his goals, that it was instrumental in its own fade-out. Nevertheless, Macon is somewhat redeemed in my eyes, because this shift lays aside my worries that Macon was simply using hip-hop culture and racial inequality as an outlet for his own lust for violence and feelings of inadequacy.