Debut: With a Rubber White Man Mask, “Blackmael” Critiques Assimilation
How far would we be willing to go in order to give ourselves the upper hand to fit in with our surroundings? Blackmael is a piece you watch, go away – slightly baffled –, realise something, come back and watch again, to then eventually notice something else.
From writer and director Bradley Benton comes Blackmael, an adventurous and darkly comedic take on assimilation and code-switching. The narrative short immerses viewers in an unnerving reality when an older white postman comes face-to-face with what appears to be his clone. After tackling his clone to the ground, the postman discovers that below a hyper-realistic mask of himself is a young Black man. One with whom he can communicate telepathically.
Dripping with delicious satire – the man beneath the mask, while holding his rubber white man gloves, says simply, “I’m sorry, officer. I didn’t know I couldn’t do that” – Blackmael literalizes the idea of conformity and code-switching. As the pair bonds over tea (“How do you take it?” “Black,”) they become friendly.
Far from exclusive to the Black experience, yet a recognizable presence within it, assimilation can be seen as an extension of self-preservation – the act of minimizing traits that allow us to be defined through our difference.
Themes of class mobility and privilege can be found in the story and set design, which places the white mailman and his clone in an almost comically ornate mansion. Viewers watch as the young Black man’s practiced imitation of the white mailman extends even after the mask is removed, watching as he adopts different mannerisms when his face is revealed.
Blackmael interrogates an experience about which much ink has been spilled, but with fresh ideas. It builds and enmeshes the viewer in a world of absurdity, but viewers come to understand that, aside from a hyper-realistic white mailman cosplay, the protagonists’ world is not that different from our own. Benton answers the questions surrounding assimilation in the most literal sense.
Highlighting the absurdity of a construct so prevalent in society, yet nonsensical in so many ways, the film explores what would happen if we could change more than just our vocabulary, our posture, or the way we speak.
The film shows what it looks like to manifest the behaviors, perceptions, and pursuits of conformity in a concrete sense, through which it exposes both the necessity and absurdity of the lengths to which people of color must go to manage the world’s perception of their character. Benton’s own stance on assimilation is clear: he writes, “Society continues a perceived need to integrate to the point of invisibility.” Still, Blackmael is not a moralistic film, and it deftly avoids forcing its audience to any one conclusion. Rather, the film’s treatment of its subject matter invites the audience to deconstruct their own performance, and consider what may lie behind their perception of others, whether based on race, class, or internalized preconceptions. The film expertly handles a heavy subject with humor, grace, and a biting cynicism that makes viewers feel seen and understood, maybe even while having a chuckle.