By Meredith A. Walker
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the plot of both the American Gods novel and the television show (for the two seasons that existed at the time of this article’s creation). There will also be frank discussion (and graphic visual depictions via episode clips from the American Gods television series as well as other sources, which also contain vulgar language) of the history of slavery, racism, and violence in America. Please consider if this content could be upsetting or overwhelming for you.
“Stories are vital, stories are important…stories are a part of us. And we convey truth with stories… We are taking people who do not exist and things that did not happen to those people, in places that aren’t, and we are using those things to communicate true things…to others.”
- Neil Gaiman “Truth in Fiction” Lesson 2[1]
Our story starts in a production lot somewhere in Toronto where a scene from the Starz television series American Gods is being filmed. Actor Orlando Jones, dressed in a sharp purple and green checked suit is prowling the set of a recreation of a Dutch slave ship’s hold, fully immersed in his portrayal of Mr. Nancy (the Americanized identity that Anansi, the West African trickster spider god has chosen in America), walking free among the men chained in the ship’s hold. This will be the first time viewers of the series will see his character and this West African god certainly leaves an impression.
You can see the desperation, the confusion, the fear on the faces of the chained men that Anansi stands among. One man had called out a prayer to Anansi for help. “Anansi...Anansi...Compe Anansi. Can you hear me? I do not have for you a gift. But...you are wise and though small...you know ways to crawl in and out of danger unharmed. These strange men have tied my hands. So, I cannot dance or clap or cut fruit to place before you. But you can hear my voice. Help me from this place and I will sing to you all my life.”[2]
In response, Anansi does what he does best.
“You want help? Fine. Let me tell you a story…”
Neil Gaiman says that, for him, the story of American Gods was about the “immigrant experience of America”[3] When immigrants left their homes and came to America, they brought with them their gods, which in this story is a literal statement, as Odin, Czernobog, and Thoth roam the screen as the plot takes shape, but in reality these gods are a perfect allegory for the culture and stories that immigrants brought with them and the fight for the old gods to survive is the fight for immigrants to maintain their cultural memories and identities in a new world, filled with new gods and new ways of life.
This is hard enough for immigrants who came to a new country voluntarily and who were able to rely on connections to their culture through their family and community with shared history and experiences. For those that came to America through forced migration, that fight for connection is even more difficult. Forcibly removed from home, cut off from family, culture, and even their own language, Africans in a new world had to rely on the stories and folklore from, as these intangible parts of their homeland were all that they could bring with them to maintain some tie to their own history and identity.
These myths and gods from their home became an intricate part of the culture that enslaved Africans built for themselves in the Caribbean and America and the use of these stories in American Gods opened the door for the show to address not only the history of slavery in America, but also to look at more modern issues of race in American society.
American Gods Background
Though many reading this article may already be familiar with the television series for American Gods, there is always the possibility that some of you are not. There is not enough space to fully explain or encapsulate the complex plot of American Gods in this article, so this will merely serve to give the uninitiated some context through which to view the rest of this article.
The novel American Gods was published in 2001 by author Neil Gaiman. The author’s preferred text, an updated and expanded version of the original book published in 2011 tags in at a massive 674 pages, making it longer than Moby Dick or The Grapes of Wrath. It is not an insubstantial investment of time and the book is complicated, weaving historical fiction and mythological stories with a complex modern day story full of magical realism.
The television series, which premiered in 2017 on Starz and Amazon Prime is no less ambitious. Composed of 16 hour long episodes, the series has only managed to cover about half the plot of the book, while it has also incorporated extra stories and fleshed out plot points and characters that were glossed over in the book. Bryan Fuller and Michael Green began developing the series in 2014 and Starz greenlit the series in 2015.[4] [5]
The television show’s plot revolves around main character, Shadow Moon. Beginning with his release from prison, only to find that his wife has died in a car accident. His trip home is interrupted by a mysterious man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday and offers Shadow a job. Shadow is quickly drawn into a confusing and terrifying world, full of magic and gods. Mr. Wednesday is Odin, the Norse All-father. Throughout the story, Shadow meets more gods. Czernobog, a Slavic god that lives in Chicago; Vulcan, the Roman god of fire who has made a name for himself in the guns and ammo industry in Virginia; Ostara, who has done her best to cope in a world where Easter is now a Christian celebration; Anansi, a West African god who came to the new world with the slaves; Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba who has adapted to the modern world and finds her worshippers through dating apps; and Anubis and Thoth who run a funeral parlor in Cairo, Illinois.
These gods are doing their best in a world that has mostly forgotten them. They came to the shores of America with the immigrants that worshipped them, explorers, refugees, and slaves alike. But in time they were forgotten by many, replaced by new gods of “credit-card and freeway, of internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and beeper and of neon.”[6] People have lost their reliance on the old gods as they become part of a new American culture.
In American Gods, the old gods came over to America with immigrants, and even with the slaves. These days these old gods have very little power. But gods are only as powerful as they are believed in. They’re as powerful as they get worshipped, they are as powerful as they get attention. These days, the things that we are giving our attention, and our love to, are changing. And for a lot of old gods, when people stop worshipping you, stop giving you time, stop giving you their attention, you might as well not exist. Now you have lots of shiny, bright new gods, things that Americans are giving their time to. Gods of internet, gods of telephone, gods of media. They are getting more power, and the old, forgotten gods from other cultures, figure that this means war.
- Creating A God: Behind the Scenes of American Gods[7]
Mr. Wednesday is hard at work gathering together the old gods, pushing them towards war with those new gods that have stolen attention and worship from the old ways and that is the world that Shadow Moon has unwittingly found himself dragged into.
Gaiman wrote a novel that encompassed the true diversity of America, by making the overall plot about the stories and memories that came to America with the immigrants. As a result, while the show is centered on Mr. Wednesday and Shadow Moon and the particularities of Odin’s plans, there is still plenty of screen time to go around for the cast of African gods represented in the show.
Symbolism, Intertextuality, and Racial Imagery in American Gods
The first season of American Gods pulled no punches with racial imagery, given that within
the first 60 minutes of the series, there is a graphic depiction of the main character
being lynched by blank faced minions dressed all in white. The scene is exceptionally violent, all the more so for the bland, almost antiseptic, way that the character who ordered the lynching is forced to apologize to Shadow for his actions later in the season.
Shadow’s description of the lynching in the second episode pulls in yet another historical reference, when he refers to his lynching as “strange fuckin’ fruit” a reference to the song that Billie Holiday made famous in 1939 and which is tied to
a history of systemic racism and Harry Anslinger’s career as the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.[8] In a single, seemingly inconsequential, line of dialogue, the writers of American Gods played out an entire chapter on the history of racism in America.
The Lynching of Froggy James
The violence of Shadow’s lynching in season one is mirrored in season two when Shadow literally comes face to face with the ghost of a lynching victim in his mirror, giving more historical context and weight to the attack Shadow suffered in season one.
Symbolism and Memory: Anansi
However, the majority of cultural memory and intertextuality in the series, at least as it pertains to African culture and folklore, surrounds the character of Mr. Nancy, the American pseudonym chosen by Anansi, the West African spider god of wisdom and stories.
In reality, Anansi traveled to the Americas and the Caribbean through the medium of oral traditions and stories passed down from one generation to another of enslaved peoples from Africa. Anansi’s name changed, in some locations becoming “Boy Nasty”, or “Anancio”, or the “Aunt Nancy” of the Uncle Remus tales in the American South.[9] This last name is the one from which Mr. Nancy’s name is derived.
The stories shifted and changed forms, with new names and new characters, but some form of Anansi remained part of African-American folktales well into the 20th century, a transmission of cultural memory that reminded those forcibly removed from their homes and families about their own traditions and pasts. Sidney Bechet, in his autobiography Treat It Gentle, put it that "those stories are all I know about some of the things bringing me to where I am."[10] These traditional stories, even as changed as they became over time, presented a cultural memory of a shared African past.
Anansi landed in the New World, in places like Jamaica, where he used his wits in conflicts with Tiger rather than the Ashanti Sky-God. In South Carolina Sea Island folklore, he turns up as Miss Nancy, and in Gullah as Aunt Nancy. In Haiti, he is called ’Ti Malice. In this new culture, Anansi was less invested in testing and preserving than in demolishing: “On the Jamaican plantations, Anansi had the potential to serve as the destroyer of an enforced and abhorrent social system rather than challenging the boundaries of a West African society” (E. Marshall 2010, 175). Or he might simply have modeled the art of surviving and winning small battles under the harshest of circumstances.[11]
Anansi tales, sometimes collectively referred to as “Anansem,” can be traced back to the Ashanti people of Ghana in Western Africa. Anansi, the Akan word for spider, is sometimes written as Ananse. Both spider and man, Anansi is able to communicate with the Sky God, Nyankopon or Nyame. He is husband, father, and everyman, at times selfish and greedy, at times cunning and admirable. The story of how Anansi acquires stories from the Sky God (the tales were once called Nyankonsem or “words of the Sky God”) is a foundational myth, revealing how greed, vanity, and stupidity fall victim to the sly Anansi as he acts out the stories and thereby makes them his own, becoming the patron saint of storytelling. It is no accident that the guardian of stories is embodied in animal form as a spider. Like storytellers, he weaves a fine web of language that captures both the beauty and the horror of human existence. Filmy and fragile, delicate and graceful, Spider’s web may be a thing of beauty, but it is also a deathtrap. Anansi himself is a figure of ambivalence—generous and greedy, amiable and treacherous, courageous and cowardly, magnanimous and selfish. Like language itself, he is an expert in double-dealing, using the self-reflexive nature of the words we speak to show how duplicity can be a creative, life-sustaining strategy and a weapon deadly and destructive.
- The Annotated African American Folktales[12]
From his very first moment on screen, Mr. Nancy’s character is welcomed by the television show to as a way to open a potential dialogue on the history of slavery and racism in America.
Bryan Fuller, Executive Producer for American Gods, spoke about this opening scene in a behind the scenes extra. “I remember watching the dailies and feeling like ‘oh we’re doing something that we should be doing here with this, we’re talking about things that need to be talked about.’ it felt important in a way that I don’t think we understood how powerful a message it could be.”[13]
Anansi’s arrival in America aboard a slave ship is a harsh reminder of the history of slavery in America. A history that needs to be explored and understood if Americans, and all other colonial powers with a hand in slavery, are to ever change. American Gods is able to use media to bring that history to light, much the same way that The 1619 Project by the New York Times does, but it does so using a medium that reaches even those who would never seek out the contents of the 1619 Project on their own, popular culture. However, this scene does not simply seek to illuminate the past. Anansi, as a god, seems to be unbothered by issues of time in this scene. He invites his listeners in to hear a story and illuminates what the future holds for them and it is not, as far as Anansi explains it, a story with a happy ending. Which is where the history part of the lesson ends and the place where American Gods shifts to discussing racism in modern day America.
Modern Issues of Race in America
The inclusion of these intertextual references to the history of racism in America, gives a historical context that lays the groundwork for American Gods to also become a commentary for the discussion of modern racial issues. This is especially true in the television series, as it was created nearly 20 years after the original book and therefore was
created in a world that has become a very different place for race relations in America. The author is open about that fact when discussing the new context of the television show and the show is almost hilariously self-referential in dealing with the issue of modern race
relations.
When I wrote the book, I thought, okay, this is an immigrant country. Some of the people came here, their ancestors came here 20,000 years ago from Siberia, crossing the Bering Straits and stuff. Some people came here 400 years ago, and some people wanted to come here, and some people were sent as prisoners, sent as slaves…This is an immigrant country, and furthermore, I don’t think it’s contentious or controversial to be pro Statue of Liberty, and the poem thereon. You’re going, “I think that is part of the American psyche, the American dream,” nor did it think it was, in any way, controversial or laudable to go, “I am writing a novel about immigration in America, therefore I am going to have a lot of people in my book of different races because there are a lot of different races in America.” - Neil Gaiman[14]
As the show was being made, it became very apparent that the world that Gaiman had written and published the American Gods novel in was not the same world that the television series would be debuting in…or at least the perception of the world is now different than what it was 20 years ago. Gaiman stated in an interview with Salon in 2019 that the television show is “nightmarishly timely…and I wish it wasn’t, really.”[15] The television show, because of the diversity of the cast and the history of the mythology that unwinds through the story, unwittingly became part of a much larger discussion of the history of racial tension in America in a time when racial tensions becoming ever more obvious in American society with the election of Donald Trump as President and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement bringing attention to the systemic racism still present in American society, especially that of police violence towards the black community.
The television series for American Gods was able to update the content for the modern age and while they added in slick CGI and a modern soundtrack, they also added in many scenes that brought modern issues of systemic racism into the plot. The most prominent moment for this was in the second season episode “The Greatest Story Ever Told” in which Anansi gives an impassioned and angry speech to two other African gods (the Egyptian god Thoth and Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba) on the reality of life in America for the people who were once their followers.
Though brief, this speech brings up a number of issues that could be pulled from the headlines of almost any American newspaper on any given day. Among other things, Anansi rails against human trafficking, the school to prison pipeline, the inequality of education in predominantly black schools, the NFL players that tried to peacefully bring attention to injustice only to be punished for kneeling, police shootings and brutality against the black community, and the tainted water in Flint, Michigan. Anansi calls these specters of what he refers to as “rebranded” slavery to the table in the show as a way to shame his fellow African gods for their failure to stand with Odin and the rest of the old gods, seeing their reluctance to take a stand as weakness or complacency. However, in a way it is also a message to society meant to shame those that are complacent or supportive of systems that support racism in American society.
"This country has done things to us" is a striking line in this scene, which calls back to the memory of every injustice visited upon African-Americans in this country since 1619, when the first ship carrying African slaves Many of these issues are brought up several more times in the second season through the stories of various other African-American characters, including the main character of Shadow Moon, who Neil Gaiman says was written with a multiracial background “A) for plot reasons and B) because he embodies America”[16].
Shadow Moon: A Tale of Immigration and Racism
In season two of the show we are introduced more fully to Shadow’s backstory in America as a teenager.
Shadow may have American citizenship, but he is as an immigrant to America in all the ways that count. He was raised outside of America, traveling the world with his mother, and enters the country with no relevant experience with how to deal with the new culture he has been brought into. He is ill-prepared to deal with the realities of race issues in America, even though he thinks he understands that “not every place is the same place”. He finds that he is not black enough for those he encounters in the black community in Brooklyn, but he is black enough to face police suspicion. The lessons his mother gives him throughout this episode are, in many ways, the same lessons that black parents are giving their children in America every day. Take this New York Times Documentary from 2015, for example and compare it to the things Shadow’s mother tells him.
As they arrive in America for the first time, they pass the Statue of Liberty which prompts a discussion with her son in which she explains that America is often a hostile place for people of color, “Liberty can’t help but judge us by the color of our skin. The history we remind them of.” When facing violence from his own community and police that assume the worst of him because of the color of his skin, “Their whole life they’ve been hearing a story about who you are. And you’re the enemy in that story. …Most things people believe about the world are lies, but you know the truth of who you are, Shadow.” The advice his mother gives him advice on how to live in America “be polite, be respectful” might be advice any mother would give to a child, but for an African-American, they are not rules of etiquette, but rules of survival.
Through Shadow’s story and memories, we are given the opportunity to see the world through different eyes and gain some context on the struggles that racial minorities face in America and the reality that they live in. We are also shown the modern reality of life for those in African-American communities in the season two episode “The Ways Of The Dead”, in which an African-American pastor, Reverend Hitchens, is presiding over the funeral of one of his parishioners, Lila Goodchild. One of her grandchildren, Ruby, looks on and the other, Jamaal Goodchild, is in the back of the funeral parlor being prepared for his own funeral after an altercation with the police.
When Reverend Hitchens gets down on his knees and asks Ruby to leave their city and let him know if she can find a place where their people aren’t “catching hell” so he can come running to join her, there is almost an element of mockery in his plea. As if the Reverend, like Bilquis, feels that things are timeless and no matter where Ruby goes, it will never be different. The Reverend looks back to the time of slavery in America and seems to say that despite his attempts to see a changed world, he now sees that nothing has really changed. The Reverend, Shadow Moon, and even Anansi are filled with a bitterness about the suffering of African-Americans, both historical and modern in the United States. American Gods has managed to use symbolism, folklore, and cultural memory to create a unique lesson on history and modern society for those that watch it.
Conclusion
So, after all of this, where does the discussion of race in American Gods go from here? That question is not easily answered. After two seasons, each of which came with a change in showrunners (Bryan Fuller and Michael Green in season one, Jesse Alexander in season two), and another waiting in the wings (Charles ‘Chic’ Eglee) for season three, it has really becomes anyone’s guess what season three will end up looking like.
What we do know is that the main focal point of racial discussion in the show will no longer be present to focus the issue. Orlando Jones, who played Mr. Nancy, will no longer be a part of the show in the coming season. He was a writer and producer in the second season, along with acting as a main character in the series, and Neil Gaiman stated that he was “vital in helping us get through season 2”, but instead of a contract renewal he was shown the door in September of 2019.
Why? Well there is no smoking gun or leaked memo that can answer that question for sure. A spokesman for the show stated that it was merely a change in the direction of the show, which meant that Mr. Nancy (and therefore Orlando Jones) would not be used in the plot of season three, but Jones saw the situation very differently.
Mr. Jones refers Denmark Vesey in his message to fans. This is a reference to a black carpenter in South Carolina who supposedly plotted a slave uprising in 1822, which ultimately failed. This says to me that Jones clearly saw the racially charged message that he and other writers were representing through his character in American Gods, he saw the importance, and he feels that his exclusion from the show is because his character’s brand of anger towards racism and the history of slavery in America might make people uncomfortable.
My mother used to tell me that “you catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar”, but all I could think was…why would I want to catch flies at all? Dr. Karen Dill-Shackleford, researcher in media psychology, had this to say about anger in an article she wrote in 2018.
Most of us are socialized to be nice; to be kind; not to make waves. It comes from a good place. Our parents want us to spread love, not hate. But, here’s the problem with that. When we are afraid of anger, we tend to swallow the violence unleashed on the oppressed. We don’t want to make a fuss, so we hold back.
Holding back, trying to catch flies with honey, when it appears that nothing is changing can be infuriating. That’s why Orlando Jones and Mr. Nancy are angry, they are tired of nothing changing, just as tired as the Reverend Hitchens and Ruby Goodchild’s of the world. As tired as the African-American parents who have to warn their child that the police may not represent the same protection for them as they do for a child with white skin. As tired as I am of seeing stories about the deaths of innocent women, men, and children like Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, and George Floyd in the newspaper all too frequently. As tired as the young women in the video below, who gave a speech only days ago (30/05/2020) almost eerily reminiscent to something Mr. Nancy might have spoken in American Gods, at protests related to the death of George Floyd.
For the first two seasons American Gods used the unique mix of folklore, intertextual symbolism, and cultural memory to bring the harsh side of race issues in American history and society to light, at a time when those reminders are sorely needed. The show acted as a timely reminder of the centuries of oppression that are still leaving their mark on America today, but it is unclear if it will continue to do so. After all, if the African god Anansi, the mythic folkloric hero of those who came to America as slaves, is not allowed to be angry at the state of racism in America today, then who is?
Citations
[1] Neil Gaiman Teaches the Art of Storytelling. “Truth in Fiction.” Lesson 2. Directed by Masterclass. Written by Neil Gaiman. Masterclass. [2]American Gods. “The Secret of Spoons.” 02. Directed by David Slade. Written by Michael Green & Bryan Fuller. Starz, May 7, 2017.
[3]American Gods. “Bonus: Creating A God.” Directed by David Slade. Written by Michael Green & Bryan Fuller. Starz, January 1, 2017.
[4] Goldberg, Lesley. “Starz, Bryan Fuller Board Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods'.” The Hollywood Reporter, July 1, 2014. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/starz-bryan-fuller-board-neil-716142.
[5] Ge, Linda. “Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' Adaptation Gets Greenlight From Starz.” TheWrap, June 16, 2015. https://www.thewrap.com/neil-gaimans-american-gods-adaptation-gets-greenlight-from-starz/.
[6]Gaiman, Neil. American Gods: a Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017, p. 176.
[7]American Gods. “Bonus: Creating A God.” Directed by David Slade. Written by Michael Green & Bryan Fuller. Starz, January 1, 2017.
[8]Pak, Eudie. “The Tragic Story Behind Billie Holiday's ‘Strange Fruit.’” Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, February 26, 2020. https://www.biography.com/news/billie-holiday-strange-fruit.
[9] Walker, Sheila S. African Roots, American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, p. 54.
[10] Bechet, Sidney. Treat It Gentle. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975, p. 4.
[11] Gates, Henry Louis, and Maria Tatar. The Annotated African American Folktales (The Annotated Books). Liveright, 2017, chapter one.
[12] Gates, Henry Louis, and Maria Tatar. The Annotated African American Folktales (The Annotated Books). Liveright, 2017, chapter one.
[13]American Gods. “The Secret of Spoons - Inside The World.” 02. Directed by David Slade. Written by Michael Green & Bryan Fuller. Starz, May 7, 2017.
[14] Staff, Recode. “Full Transcript: 'American Gods' Author Neil Gaiman on Recode Media.” Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Vox, May 7, 2017. https://www.vox.com/2017/5/7/15562968/transcript-american-gods-writer-neil-gaiman-sandman-tv-starz-comics-recode-media.
[15] McFarland, Melanie. “Neil Gaiman Wishes His ‘American Gods’ Series Wasn't so ‘Nightmarishly Timely.’” Salon. Salon.com, March 10, 2019. https://www.salon.com/2019/03/10/neil-gaiman-wishes-his-american-gods-series-wasnt-so-nightmarishly-timely/.
[16] Staff, Recode. “Full Transcript: 'American Gods' Author Neil Gaiman on Recode Media.” Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Vox, May 7, 2017. https://www.vox.com/2017/5/7/15562968/transcript-american-gods-writer-neil-gaiman-sandman-tv-starz-comics-recode-media.
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