{"id":278,"date":"2014-02-12T14:23:04","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/?p=278"},"modified":"2014-03-26T10:09:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T14:09:31","slug":"marcus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/marcus\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Character: <\/span><\/strong>Marcus<\/span><\/p>\n

Source Text: <\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Nate Creekmore, Maintaining (2007-2009)<\/p>\n

Entry Author:<\/span>\u00a0 Andrew Doig
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Marcus is a high school student of indeterminate age. He is tall and lanky, with short\u00a0cropped hair. He describes his complexion as \u201ccaramel.\u201d He is a member of a middle\u00a0class family, which is formed by his African American father, Caucasian mother, and his\u00a0younger brother. Marcus is constantly questioning the implications of a mixed race\u00a0identity in American society, and also what his mixed race identity means to himself.\u00a0Although the comic strips are very funny, they regularly revolve around the exploration\u00a0of this topic. Marcus\u2019 mixed race identity is often an element in the other recurring theme throughout the comics, his teenage lust and desire for love. Sometimes his heritage\u00a0helps him, and sometimes it does not in his hunt for love.\u00a0His best friend Anton at times perceives him to be white, and at other times black. When\u00a0he demonstrates that \u201call white people will chase after a frisbee\u201d by throwing it, he\u00a0forces Marcus to chase after the Frisbee. By fulfilling the stereotype that all white people\u00a0will chase after a frisbee, Marcus appears to be fulfilling the white stereotype. But Anton\u00a0is not persuaded by such simple categorization tests. Anton still prefers to give marcus\u00a0the \u201cblack guy\u201d handshake instead of the \u201cwhite guy handshake\u201d while he denies the\u00a0same to an all white friend, demonstrating that Anton considers Marcus to still be black.\u00a0For Anton, Marcus measure of blackness, Marcus is neither white nor black, but a\u00a0mixture of the two.\u00a0Marcus is constantly feeling anxious about his place, in ways that can feel like a\u00a0portrayal of the \u201ctragic mulatto\u201d. In one strip he describes this feeling, saying\u00a0\u201cSometimes I just feel like I don\u2019t quite fit in with ANY group. Maybe thats just the funny\u00a0thing about being mixed… a part of two worlds and yet fully accepted by neither. or\u00a0maybe thats just the funny thing about being marcus…\u201d We can see here though how\u00a0the author is able to dissemble this trope by breaking it from the entirety of mixed\u00a0people and placing it as a pathology on a single person, and also by the retort made by\u00a0Anton who\u00a0says \u201cI gottwo\u00a0notebooks\u00a0full of funny\u00a0things about\u00a0you.\u201d (May\u00a009, 2007) By\u00a0placing it\u00a0among the\u00a0absurd,\u00a0Anton\u00a0effectively destroys any truth quality that the \u201cTragic Mulatto\u201d concept might have\u00a0carried. This is not to say that Marcus is comfortable in his mixed race skin. He isn\u2019t. He\u00a0even struggles to describe to his younger brothers what it means to be in his mixed race\u00a0position, in order that they can understand the world they are going to enter. He does\u00a0this by suggesting that an Oreo is the perfect cookie to describe his situation, unafraid\u00a0to assume the often disparaging mantle, but then retracting the statement as he does\u00a0not see the two colors blending as the white portions and black portions have blended\u00a0to form him into what he is. Marcus successfully inhabits a zone of both, even if it is\u00a0difficult for him. This constant presentation of the difficulty of mixed life, as well as the\u00a0analysis and subsequent humor from the absurdity of the positions and feelings that itcan create, no matter how real and devastating, is the basis for the humor in the strip.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Character: Marcus Source Text: \u00a0Nate Creekmore, Maintaining (2007-2009) Entry Author:\u00a0 Andrew Doig Marcus is a high school student of indeterminate age. He is tall and lanky, with short\u00a0cropped hair. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20653],"tags":[20619,20592],"class_list":{"0":"post-278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-maintaining","7":"tag-bi-racial","8":"tag-male","9":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}