Representation Matters: The Legacy of Antoine Triplett in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

This essay contains multiple spoilers for the midseason finale of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. If you have yet to watch episode 10 of season two, please proceed with caution.

Well, it appears that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I have come to a parting of the ways. After weeks of relentlessly taunting the audience with the death of a black supporting character (first with the potentially mortal wounding of Antoine Triplett in episode 8, and then with the uncertain fate of Alfonso Mackenzie in episode 9), the showrunners of AoS went whole hog with the death of the fan-favorite character Trip in its episode 10 midseason finale—sacrificing him to the cause of creating an even more tragic origin story for the already quite thoroughly tragic Skye.

I was not surprised. In fact, I’ve been waiting for Agent Trip to die almost from the moment he was introduced (1). When he first debuted, I expected him to be the stereotypical bad black guy who dies (2). When he was ultimately revealed to be on the side of righteousness, I expected him to be the stereotypical good black guy who dies. I predicted (on the basis of rumors that actor B.J. Britt might have been spotted on the set of Age of Ultron (3)) that Trip would be killed in that film. So in that respect I was actually overly optimistic about the length of time the producers of the show intended to keep his character alive. Perhaps I should have suspected that his death would come sooner rather than later when Lance Hunter was introduced and the show’s dramatic tension began to focus almost solely on him, but somehow I didn’t.

The death of Agent Triplett is part of a disturbing trend in primetime television that has been ongoing for quite some time and shows no signs of abating (4). Just two weeks prior to the death of Trip on AoS, the showrunners of Sleepy Hollow killed off a black supporting character of its own, the universally adored Captain Frank Irving—much to fans’ dismay. When these characters are killed the excuses are almost always the same: the producers wanted the show to have weight, wanted the characters’ actions to have consequences, and wanted the struggles to have stakes (5). Anyone familiar with the patterns of dramatic motion picture storytelling—whether for the small screen or the big screen—and with the justifications put forward by content creators when they make these types of decisions, will not be shocked by any of this. But for a show touted for its diversity, the death of a major and beloved black character feels like a particular betrayal.

The indifferent treatment of black characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is particularly ironic given that it is one of the most diverse shows currently airing on primetime (6), but if I've learned anything from my time watching this show it is that a basically diverse cast is not enough—you have to deploy that diverse cast in a thoughtful manner, and, let's be real here: AoS has never done that. As I have noted in previous recaps of the series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a major problem with its treatment of its minority characters, and especially its black characters. It has had this problem since the beginning of Season 1 when they introduced Mike Petersen—a black character whose story arc saw him disfigured, abducted, subjected to extreme body modification against his will, and forced to perform horrific acts on behalf of a clandestine military organization in order to preserve the life of his son (who was also abducted), and who has since disappeared from the narrative entirely while the showrunners pursue other storylines. For those of us who went into the show expecting to see the unfolding of a superhero narrative for Mike Petersen, this handling of his character was extremely disturbing.

Other prominent black characters, like Akela Amador and Alfonso “Mack” Mackenzie, have been handled indifferently as well. Akela, like Mike Petersen, was a victim of abduction, subjected to body modification, and forced to work as a criminal, and she too has since disappeared from the narrative—having served her purpose as a tool to explore Phil Coulson’s evolving personality in the aftermath of the Battle of New York. Mack was possessed by an alien intelligence, robbed of his bodily autonomy, and left for dead by his teammates. He escaped death via as deus-ex-machina, presumably because he is set to become a key element in the struggle for trust between two white characters on the show—Lance Hunter and Bobbi Morse (7).

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has received a lot of praise for its prominent inclusion of minority characters, particularly Asian characters Melinda May and Skye—and the fact that the show puts an emphasis on these two women of color is indeed a wonderful thing to see (8). But given that practically no other minorities are privileged in this way, their inclusion only serves to reinforce the notion that you cannot simply fill your roster with a bunch of token characters and call it a day. You have to use them in ways that do not demean them. Having a couple of “strong (Asian) female characters” is not enough—not when you wantonly torture and kill your black characters (not to mention a significant number of your other female characters and your queer characters); not when everything is still about a bunch of cis-straight white dudes. Phil Coulson went to the ends of the earth to save Skye when she was mortally wounded in season one, but when Mack fell to his presumed death a mere two episodes ago, Coulson seemed immediately ready to sacrifice him to a higher ideal. The difference in those two attitudes is striking, and while such a contrast may seem trivial: it is not. This callous treatment of black characters on television is a direct reflection of (and subtle justification for) the callous treatment of black people every day.

Now I’m not saying that you should be as mad about this as you are about the actual killing of black men and women in the US. What I’m saying, though, is that representation matters, and this is the flip side of Whoopi Goldberg seeing Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek and being able to image herself in the future for the first time (9). This is young black men and women seeing themselves depicted as cannon fodder—as disposable to their society. And they aren’t the only ones who see that, either. The young men and women who will grow up to be the police who brutalize those black men and women, who will grow up to be the prosecutors and judges who don't see the need to provide those victims with justice, who will grow up to be the you and me who ignore the suffering of our brethren in favor of the comfortable story we like to tell ourselves about how far beyond racism we’ve come in the last fifty years? They see it, too.

Representation matters. And I’m not going to support creators who don't understand that.

Notes:

1) If you go to my tumblr and do a search of posts tagged “don’t-you-fucking-dare,” you will find that every single one pertains to Agent Antoine Triplett, my love for him, and my fear that Marvel was ultimately going to kill him off to further the character development of someone else in their Cinematic Universe.

2) This expectation was not unfounded. According to a recent interview with BJ Britt, Trip was intended to die with Bill Paxton’s villainous John Garrett at the end of season one. See Terri Schwartz, “‘Agents of SHIELD’:B.J. Britt’s Agent Triplett Was Supposed to Die in Season 1, zap2it (December 10, 2014).

3) Kelly West, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Actor Spotted onAvengers 2 Set,” Cinema Blend (June14, 2014).

4) Monika Bartyzel, “TV Needs to Stop Treating BlackCharacters as Expendable,” The Week (December12, 2014).

5) Maurissa Tancharoen gave this as the reason for Trip’s death; Mark Goffman gave it as the reason for Frank Irving’s. See Eric Goldman,“Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD Creators on the Midseason Finale, Inhumans, andSkye’s Identity,” IGN (December 9,2014); and Maureen Ryan, “‘Sleepy Hollow’ Fall Finale Secrets Revealed: Head Honcho onthe Big Shocker and What’s Next,” HuffPost Entertainment (December 1, 2014).

6) Prior to the death of Agent Trip, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the fourth most diverse show on television, with POC characters comprising 39% of the main cast, and 40% of the recurring cast. For more information on AoS and how it stacks up to other shows, see this post on diversity in television.

7) The show’s handling of Raina, another black character, has also been decidedly mixed. Though she has sometimes been shown to be a highly intelligent and complex villain, she has also been subject to gross bodily harm and deprived of her bodily autonomy by both the heroes and the villains of the show. Our last glimpse of her indicated that, in contrast to Skye—who transformed into an Inhuman who still looks basically human—she will become a physically monstrous figure in the forthcoming half of the season.

8) I could get into the stereotypical handling of May as a distant, macho, and almost masculine character type who is so often mistaken for a “strong female character,” but that’s a whole other essay entirely.

9) Dave Nemetz, “Whoopi Goldberg Explains Why She Wanted to Be on ‘StarTrek,’ Yahoo TV (June 24, 2014).


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AoS, Season Two, Eps. 4-8, Pros and Cons

(This post contains spoilers.)

I'm almost up-to-date on AoS again, so it's time for some more pros and cons—this time for episodes 4-8. (Click here to see my pros and cons for episodes 1-3...) There are more pros than cons, and one of the cons is mainly nitpicking on my part, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is still rocking a lot of sexist tropes and idolizing the cis-white-dude. I had a lot to say this time, so let's jump in, shall we?

Pros
•  The writers have finally figured out how to make Ward an effective character.
     I've said before that a show like AoS (which is a live action comic book) needs a compelling and complicated villain against which to pit its heroes, and Ward is growing into that villain. With the twists and turns the writers have given his back story in the past couple episodes, Ward has come to far outstrip both Daniel Whitehall and Skye's father in terms of believable menace. Whitehall is the two-dimensional evil man that you love to hate, and Skye's father is beautifully over-the-top, but Ward's ambiguity makes him threatening in a way that neither of the others are or, I suspect, ever will be. At this point, there's really no way to tell whether his past was truly tortured or if the tragedy of his childhood is just a story he told himself to justify a life of terrible deeds. And honestly it doesn't matter at this point; in fact the uncertainty adds to the drama in a fantastic way.

• Through it all, none of the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., from Coulson straight on down the roster, have been willing to give Ward an ounce of sympathy.
     And that's exactly as it should be at this point. Skye's consistent refusal to give Ward the time of day is particularly gratifying. Whatever happens with his character in the future, he and Skye should never, ever be together. Ever.

• Contrary to my fears, the writers have continued to handle Fitz's storyline very well.
     The writers have avoided giving Fitz's aphasia a quick fix, they have steered clear of magical negro tropes in developing his friendship with Mack, and they have even included some in-narrative corrections of ableist treatment of Fitz by Simmons. I really love that AoS now has a disabled team member character who is valued, respected, and cared for by the other characters, and I love that the writers are taking a nuanced approach to a topic that needs a lot more exploration and media representation. I'd be delighted to see other disabled characters, like Akela Amador, make an appearance as well.

• The will-May-have-to-kill-Coulson-because-alien-DNA-is-making-him-erratic storyline got wrapped up quickly and without a lot of angsty fuss.
     I wasn't a fan of the way the writers rushed to explain the mystery of Coulson last season. It was somewhat understandable given the need to introduce Kree elements to the story for the purposes of developing an Inhumans narrative, but at the end of the day, I felt that the revelation fell flat. (To be fair, the implications are having more of an impact now that they can breathe than they could when the series really needed to get to a jumping off point for The Winter Soldier and then deal with fallout from the same.) Needless to say, I didn't particularly want to see the writers drag out a Coulson-centric subplot that, in many ways, was a rehash of a story that they had already told. However, the story of Coulson's increasing need to carve, and understand, a strange and inexplicable pattern, and what it meant for his long-term stability, was actually very well paced. The writers used it efficiently to advance interesting plot elements without dominating the main story lines and then retired it, and that was a smart move.

Cons
• It's great to see Bobbi Morse, but I really wish we were seeing her as something other than yet another female character whose function is to make Lance Hunter look good.
     Bobbi's debut was really promising. She entered the story with a bang; she was cool and capable, and she didn't appear to be fazed by the fact that Hunter was still holding a grudge against her. For a minute, it looked like Lance Hunter was going to be a Matt-Fraction-esque Hawkeye type—a loveable fuckup with a string of exes who still care about him but can't take him seriously. Since the MCU has gone a somewhat different direction with their actual Hawkeye, the characterization makes sense. But the writers almost immediately started undermining it. At first it was just the constant bickering. Then Bobbi was used to make Hunter look like a better operative during the hunt for Ward.
     (As a side note: Trip was also used this way during the same sequence, and this bothers me for a couple of reasons. First because it aggrandizes the cis-white-dude at the expense of his minority partners, and second because it's just shoddy writing. A few lines of dialogue could have easily made the sequence look more like the team effort that it probably would have been in a real-life covert operation of this nature. Ward knows Agent Triplett by sight; he presumably knows Agent Bobbi Morse [or knows of her] as well. He has no reason to know Hunter the freelance merc. If the writers had staged the manhunt scene as a coordinated effort to drive Ward to a specific pursuer and a specific destination, it would have felt more believable and less lazy. More on that sort of thing below.)
     There are other examples of Bobbi's role as the designated woman who makes Lance Hunter look good—during her meeting with the Japanese demolitions expert when she needed to be saved by him and after her failed interrogation of Bakshi led to an argument-followed-by-a-romantic-interlude between the two—and I can tell you: I am not here for Bobbi Morse playing a lovesick second fiddle to Lance Hunter. Not here for it at all.

• S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to stop being depicted as a happy family and start being shown to function like an espionage agency.
     This is a problem that has carried over from the first season. At times, I feel like the people who work for S.H.I.E.L.D. have no idea what that means. Skye's constant questioning of Coulson's orders and insistence on knowing every bit of intel is a relationship that looks more like a teenage daughter rebelling against her dad than a serious operative working with a superior, and his indulgence of her is even weirder. This is just one example of the way S.H.I.E.L.D. often doesn't seem to be written like a realistic organization. The manhunt for Ward sequence that I mentioned above is another example, as is the way several characters criticized Simmons for "abandoning" Fitz as if she had not in fact been directly ordered by her superior to run a dangerous and invaluable covert mission that payed huge dividends for the agency. The misfits on a bus vibe needs to be tabled; it occasionally makes the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. look incompetent. I'm not saying you can't have a show where a group of professional agents develop family-like ties (NCIS is a great example of a show that has done this trope beautifully), but the agents need to be professionals first and family second.

• The repeated, graphic torture and/or murder-death-kill of women (of color) needs to stop.
     I am not kidding around here, writers. I want you to stop. Just. Stop.
     In episodes 4 through 8 alone, we've had a girl-on-girl fight that ended in death by disfigurement for the loser, an unnamed character who was known only by the codename Agent 33 and who was written in for the sole purpose of being depicted in scenes of torture, being deployed as a double for Agent May, and then a being written out again with a violent and meaningless death (1). (And let me tell you, if there's one thing I love it's expendable female characters. Bonus points when they're women of color.) We've also had the torture, degradation, and defanging of Raina—previously one of the most powerful and compelling characters on the show. We've had the graphic torture, experimentation on, and dismemberment of Skye's mother, who also has not yet been given a name. And we've had the brutal murder of a woman in a classically sexist "Mr. Goodbar" scenario (2). (So remember not to have one-night stands, ladies, because you will totally get murdered and then the story will focus on a married-with-children, middle-aged white dude who is put in peril by the same murderer but totally survives, natch!)
     Please just stop, writers; I'm asking you seriously and properly. Stop.
     There are other ways to show us that Daniel Whitehall is an awful, irredeemable villain than by showing him to be a senseless torturer and killer of women. And, frankly, when you've got your heroes acting in a similar way (Melinda May has no qualms whatsoever about the fact that she just killed a brainwashed woman who worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. before being kidnapped? Coulson is fine with tagging Raina like a dog because she's a bad guy and anyway payback's a bitch?)—when you've got your heroes acting in a similar way as the villains do, it doesn't tell the story you think you're telling. If the point is that the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are still as ethically compromised as the forces they are battling, that's one thing—although in that case you need to have a come-to-Jesus moment soon—but if you want your heroes to be above the forces they're fighting, then they need to be above them. Or, at the very least, they need to be having hard conversations with themselves (and therefore with the viewers) about what price freedom and how to fight a battle of this nature without becoming what you behold.

Notes:
1) EDIT: It has come to my attention that Agent 33 was recently revealed to be alive after all. I will address this development in a future "pros and cons" post.
2) Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1977 erotic thriller that stars Diane Keaton and Tom Berenger. The film focuses on the sexual exploits of Keaton's Theresa, who at the end of the film is beaten, raped, and stabbed to death by a man she picked up in a bar for a one-night stand.