Jeremy Bearimy, the Punisher kite and Black Lives Matter – صحيفة الصوت

Our perception of the passing of time is odd isn’t it? There have been periods during this most strange of years when things seemed to be dragging on interminably – would April ever come to an end? But then again, I now notice that we’re already two thirds of the way through 2020 and before you know it they’ll be putting up Christmas decorations and John Lennon will be reminding us that another year’s over and asking what have you done? My answer: “Erm, not much” (at least some days it feels that way).

My memories of April and May are pretty dark – lock-down isolation was in full effect and I found myself constantly ‘doomscrolling‘ through news articles and social media posts which were an awful mix of shocking, worrying, depressing, infuriating and sometimes just plain sad. At times it seemed like the best way to preserve mental health was to consciously disconnect from the outside world.

I found solace in a variety of areas. After a hiatus of 6 months, I started running regularly again – not especially original, but at least it wasn’t sourdough right? (oops!). The lock-down cliches started to pile up as, in true ‘Quentin Quarantino’ fashion, I made a short series of cooking videos (#eatriocooking).

During this period, I also spent quite a lot of time snapping the beautiful views from my apartment and nearby streets of Santa Teresa.

I became mildly obsessed with catching the golden light in the hour before sunset, especially when looking north to catch the pipas (kites) fluttering over the Morro da Mineira favela. I would happily take dozens of photos in the evening, then transfer them to my laptop for a closer look the next morning to see if I’d got anything interesting.

The Punisher kite

One morning as I was reviewing the photos from the day before, I stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks. There was a single kite, complete with a long tail trailing behind, with the twin spires of Basilica da Penha cathedral in the background. I decided to zoom in to get a better look at the kite itself.

Here’s what I saw when I zoomed in:

“Woah” I thought to myself profoundly. The sight of this skull hanging, spectre-like, over the favela seemed eerily symbolic, not only of the hundreds of daily Covid-related deaths in Brazil at that time, but also of the reported increases in police violence within Rio’s favelas. These were dark times and this creepy skull seemed to represent this perfectly.

The Punisher skull

I was vaguely aware that I’d seen the skull design before, but had no idea where. Some googling enlightened me: this is the symbol of The Punisher, a murderous vigilante character from the Marvel Comics universe. As I read more about this character and his gruesome emblem, the story got more interesting and the coincidences and parallels started to pile up.

In 1974, Gerry Conway, a comic book author, created The Punisher character as a troubled anti-hero whose entire family is killed by the mafia. He becomes a murderous vigilante after he loses any chance for justice in the courts because of corruption in the NYPD, and he so goes on to use murder, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, and torture in an effort to eradicate crime.

In more recent times, the Punisher, and especially his skull logo, became popular with US armed forces, police units, and also various extreme right-wing organisations. At first I digested this without giving it much thought – it fits with the stereotype of macho armed forces personnel and law enforcement types. But as journalist David Masciotra points out in his article on the subject, something’s not right here: “A sinister skull, even if one has no familiarity with its origin, is not exactly subtle. It instantly projects death, violence and danger.” Is that really the image, message and association that police units want to project?

The answer, apparently, is yes. A Kentucky police department went as far as incorporating the skull into their official squad car insignia; only residents’ complaints forced them to remove it. “We’re getting so many calls, and they’re saying that the Punisher logo [means] we’re out to kill people,” said the Police chief responsible, apparently without a trace of irony.

Chauncey DeVega goes further: “[the adoption of the Punisher skull] is not a superficial coincidence where politics and popular culture just happen to intersect. It is symptomatic of a larger problem with America’s police (and police culture) where citizens – especially people of color, the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, as well as other marginalized and vulnerable people – are viewed as enemies rather than as individuals and communities that are to be served and protected.”

Chris Gavaler, an author who has written several books analysing of the superhero genre, put it like this: “While The Punisher is a disturbing character type in itself, a police Punisher is significantly worse. A regular citizen vigilante breaks the laws that he’s supposed to obey. A police Punisher breaks the laws that he’s supposed to enforce. It’s a much deeper corruption.”

Faca na Caveira

Readers familiar with Rio’s notorious BOPE ‘urban warfare unit’, depicted in the film Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad), should by now be thinking of Faca na Caveira, their official motto (translated: “Dagger in the skull”) and accompanying logo:

I remember being astounded when I discovered that this was their official motto and badge. And while the US police were forced to remove their ghoulish imagery, in Rio this badge is still going strong. In fact, with the recent influx of military personnel into the ministry of health (due to the last two ministers resigning in the space of a month), such a badge was recently worn on the lapel of a senior health official during a press conference (yes, seriously).

The official explanation for the dagger in the skull image is that it represents “victory over death”. Perhaps this would be a little more convincing if Rio’s police force weren’t so notoriously lethal. In 2019, Rio’s police killed almost twice the number of civilians as US police killed in the entire US.

Black Lives Matter and reclaiming the Punisher skull

Of course, the other seismic story of 2020 has been the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in May (just one month after my kite photo was taken). As you’ll all remember, the Black Lives Matter movement was the driving force behind these protests, highlighting police brutality, systemic racism, widespread racial injustice, and countless other instances of people of colour, such as Breonna Taylor, being killed by US police in highly dubious circumstances.

I think that for many people such as me (the beneficiary of a huge amount of privilege due to being white), the Black Lives Matter movement created a much needed wake-up call with regard to the reality that many millions of people of colour have been living with. When talking (or writing) about the matter, I proceed with caution as I’m only starting to become aware of how little I understand about the prejudices and injustices that POC deal with on a daily basis. It feels so easy to put a foot wrong and say something insensitive that I’m inclined to keep my mouth shut, but it seems that part of the problem has been people like me keeping their mouths shut for far too long. I don’t purport to have any solutions to offer, but it seems good that we’re starting to have long overdue conversations. And while I recognise that ‘talk is cheap’, I also believe that education (through conversations and reading) is a necessary starting point.

One day, during what felt like the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, the Punisher skull returned to my radar. The character’s creator, Gerry Conway, had decided he’d had enough of law enforcement and the far-right using the Punisher as their mascot. He called for artists to contribute t-shirt designs that used the Punisher skull image to support BLM in a fundraising campaign. “[The skull] should be a symbol for Black Lives Matter,” Conway said. “It should be a symbol for people on the outside of the justice system. I want the movement to claim this symbol for themselves.”

And so it seemed that the story of this skull had somehow come full circle. For me it has been fascinating and educational and I hope that one day I will be able to become a useful ally to movements pushing for racial justice and equality. And wouldn’t it be cool if the next kite I saw flying over the favela featured Nguyen’s updated design?

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