Black Spaces with White Faces in Static Shock

Static Shock represents an appropriation of the traditionally black rhetoric of “brotherhood” in order to heal an injured whiteness whose represented dysfunction is associated with urban spaces, limited purchasing power, and family dissolution brought about by an absence of white paternal figures. Virgil Hawkins, the ordinary ego of superhero Static Shock is somewhat of a reluctant hero in that his powers are narrowly determined. His adventures never affect spaces beyond the neighborhood as with the …

…a battling that is not so much physical action as much as an extended commercial for what is offered for sale at the mall: videogames, superhero commodities. It is significantly from this position of the consumer that Static Shock is able to defeat his videogame foes. His knowledge of videogames saves the day rather than his superpowers. Instead of showing how such knowledge disciplines further consumption, the cartoon imagines that consumption yields victories over commodification.