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Five Thoughts on Titans‘s “Blackfire”

By | August 20th, 2021
Posted in Television | % Comments

In the fallout of Hank’s death Titans appears to take another difficult step forward with “Blackfire,” which by its very title indicates a disconnect from the show’s Gotham based Red Hood drama and firmly in the personal realm of Starfire. Unlike Dawn’s work in the previous episode “Blackfire” marks the rare episode where the ‘A’ and ‘B’ plots are not connected. It also marks a rare shift where Dick Grayson is not in the ‘A’ plot of an episode as Titans takes a baby step forward into being the functional ensemble show it wants to be.

1.Sprezzatura

As Dick Grayson drives the kidnapped Jonathan Crane to his cabin in the woods, the good doctor waxes poetic about the concept of sprezzatura. Sprezzatura as episode scribe Stephanie Goggins describes it via Jonathan Crane is the art of making the complicated look uncomplicated, effortless. The concept was theorized in Baldassare Castiglione’s 1528 book The Book of the Courtier as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. It was more recently theorized by Harry Berger Jr. in The Absence of Grace Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books as a form of “defensive irony” or the art of masking one’s intentions behind disinterest and reticence. The discussion of sprezzatura can be read as an indirect meta comment on the show itself, comparing it with the Italian concept of how to behave at court. It is a comparison that does not appear in the show’s favor.

On a base level, the Jonathan Crane idea of making the complicated look easy was about the way Dick Grayson took out all the guards as he kidnapped Crane from the Gotham Bureau of Prisons. As an action sequence it was slick as Dick took out the guards one by one until the remaining survivor got wise long enough to at least draw his sidearm. As a larger comment on the show itself, it calls forth Titans history of making the complicated look complicated, and worse, messy. On macro levels they’ve had two seasons that either come to unfulfilling conclusions (season 1) or sprinted to the finish in ways that undercut the core emotional arc of the series to set up something unrelated (season 2). “Blackfire” is another example of that lack of grace as characters interact in ways that both make sense and feel hollow, resulting in plots that make sense in the moment but are unemotionally unsatisfying, or making statements that appear to be profound but reflect the same twisted logic they appear to deny.

2. Dick’s Idea of Growth

The conception of sprezzatura as defensive irony can be seen in the Dick Grayson plot of the episode. At first it appears he is falling back on old habits of lashing out after a rough episode by kidnapping Jonathan Crane. He did that several times with Deathstroke. The surface level apperance of those actions are quickly shown to be false as he takes Crane to Bruce’s Cabin in the woods. The whole kidnapping was a performance as he reveals the knowledge that Crane, and Jason had been working together. While this connection makes “sense” and in hindsight there are a few tells the lack of build up makes the moment read as someone out of nowhere.

Dick at first thinks Crane is the one who broke Jason and turned him to villainy. Crane counters that it was Dick through his impatience, and Bruce with his manipulative distance, did all the breaking after their run in with Deathstroke. He just put him back together again. The idea of Jason being reconstructed comes through in the character red hood which now features several obvious patches and joins from where it broke in episode 2. On a plot level maybe “Blackfire” achieves a sense of sprezzatura with Dick Grayson’s plot.

The cabin becomes a place of double meaning in the episode. It is isolated, but a familiar space for both Dick and Jason; Bruce would take them there to train. You’re not supposed to see people coming and as Dick reveals it’s filled with surveillance equipment. With that equipment Bruce would track his protégés after he released them into the wilderness and expected to survive. Dick tells Crane about these training methods as audiences’ flashback and see glimpses of them. These flashbacks represent the larger discussion on a cycle of destruction and abuse from Gotham to Bruce, Bruce to Dick and Jason, to the present. That surrounds the Batfamily and Titans.

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Dick talks about fearing a wolf that was chasing him and how it helped him internalize one of Bruce’s teachings that fear is your friend. The sequence parallels the prologue to 300 as a young Leonidas is dropped in the wilderness and battles a hungry wolf. Both characters return victorious, Dick presenting the head by dropping it on the table covered in blood. In that moment he claims to have proven himself and removed himself from that cycle of abuse and fear. He shouldn’t have been afraid of the wolf; the wolf should have been afraid of him. Vincent Kartheiser flashes in that moment a surprisingly empathetic look as he sees how truly broken Dick is by this life. Dick didn’t break free of that cycle and from Bruce in that moment, he simply did the same thing Bruce did by claiming to conquer his fear and become the tormentor-abuser. As with 300 you could read a level of visual irony in director Millicent Shelton framing of Dick at a low angle emphasizing his size and power. He thinks himself strong, but there are cracks in that foundation.

3. Remembering that Conner Exists

Despite being conceived as an ensemble Titans has done a poor job juggling the cast. Either due to episode count and larger production changes or something. The inability to manage the load leads to moments that suddenly push a character to the forefront in ways that feel jarring and unearned. Take the start of the episode with Conner. Conner is effectively the team’s newest member, joining midway through the second season with episode six “Conner.” Without as much screen time as the rest of the cast it would seem to be important to exploring and onboarding the character in order to make them as dimensionalized as the rest of the cast. That hasn’t been the case with the character largely treated as an aloof teenage-like figure who makes their presence known in action sequences and little else..

Conner is understandably distressed at all the pieces of Hank that may still be on him as he furiously washes himself. It is also his first real taste of heroic failure. That forms an understandable emotional anchor for watchers of the show. When he states his feelings of inadequacy due to his mixed status and the imagined judgment and disapproval from the Titans is where the show begins to lose the dramatic moment.

All together that is a strong foundation for character development. It is an arc that makes extra-textual sense for the IP, Superboy from Young Justice went through similar feelings. The friction comes when all that extra textual knowledge is required to decode the moment on Titans as they have been, at best, obliquely referenced within the show itself. The closest the series seems to have come to that acknowledgment was in the first episode of this season as a police officer off handedly comments on how you can’t beat a “Super” when requesting Conner’s autograph. The direction and cinematography, however, do not play it as a moment for Joshua Orpin’s Conner. Ryan Potter is the one who reacts in the moment at being snubbed. Throughout the show thus far, and in previous seasons, there hasn’t been any visual indication previously that Conner had these feelings of inadequacy. No longing shots or reactions to minor criticisms, perceived or otherwise.

As a moment it was jarring, but hopefully this means the show will have something for Joshua Orpin going forward. This was the only real scene he was in this episode, evidently, he just didn’t hear or care that Kori was kidnapping Gar and bursting out of the Batcave.

4. Sister, Sister

Anna Diop as Koriand’r has been on the show since the pilot and feels similarly underdeveloped in this episode. The character has had more to do, with a fusion of both her and Raven’s backgrounds providing a solid twist that made sense for the show. With Raven currently out of the picture the character is left wanting a direction. With the appearance of her sister Blackfire last season, all indications were that she would serve as the seasonal big bad and the show would move away from its Gotham-centric narratives. That obviously hasn’t been the case, but Blackfire played by Damaris Lewis is here now.

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In an understandable, if still perplexing decision, Blackfire was captured by the U.S. Government off screen and put in a black site. There are some rich metaphors to pull from this treatment of a stateless combatant and the utterance of a line that she is government “property.” Audiences just never see how any of this came to be, it merely is. How long was she being held there? We are to assume this occurred sometime between seasons, but the timeline is murky. It’s another example of the show not showing audiences something that could have enriched the dramatic showdown between sisters.

Anna Diop and Damaris Lewis’ chemistry together in the latter’s prison cell was excellent. Lewis plays Blackfire with a regal, aristocratic, sharpness that is reminiscent of Diop’s earlier performance. This meeting between sisters is another experiment in the show’s decision to emphasize the sense of history to everyone. While Star and Blackfire speak to each other as old siblings arguing over how they were raised and who was or wasn’t there to support the other. Without the chemistry between the two the scene would not work nearly as well because all it does is emphasize how little the audience has seen the two interact.

That lack of interaction places the Blackfire at a dramatic disadvantage, audiences are simply unfamiliar with her character outside her brief appearance in the second season. That appearance wasn’t heroic from a certain point of view. However, everything about this scene demands the audience to empathize with her plight. Demaris Lewis’ anger at Diop as she talks about being thrown in the pit for being too rebellious as a child and the feeling of isolation is affecting. I have enough extra textual knowledge about all of this to make certain pieces line up with others, however, if you were only watching the show, you only have the power of Lewis’ performance and the associated iconography of a Black woman in bondage and owned by the Government to draw conclusions from. It forces up a question of how much you trust someone’s version of events in interesting ways.

On an affective level Demaris Lewis does a lot with the little she is given. Like Conner’s treatment, it feels like it could’ve been set up and explored better. There are obvious production considerations to doing a flashback, but the way Gar talks about Blackfire makes it seem like there was a long conversation the Titans had off screen. Kind of like the same off-screen conversation where they told Gar and Conner about Jason being the Red Hood.

5. Makem Laugh

The question of humor and superheroes has been ever present since they began their modern era of adaptation in film with Batman(1989). Due to the popularity of the MCU and their constant quip centric attitude that laughs in the face of danger, a school of thought has developed about it being the best way to handle humor in these properties. Never mind that much of that comedy relies on a self-referential lampooning that results in bathos and faux sentimentality that undermines the character dramas they’re supposedly telling. Titans would never be mistaken for a comedy, that doesn’t mean they don’t have moments of humor. Their brand of humor is less obvious and driven more as recognition of the absurd world they inhabit. It is a world that can be filled with shit most of the time and constantly fail you. That same world allows for moments of Jonathan Crane running through the woods until he triggers a booby trap and is captured with Damaris Lewis shooting Brenton Thwaites a look of “can you blame me for trying?” Or the absurdity of discovering poor, put upon, Gar, locked in a trunk for no good reason. Ryan Potter’s exasperation is perhaps a little overly broad in the moment, but it also works in the context of him being the emotional glue and sounding board for everyone’s problems, and that’s before Starfire began attacking him. The humor in Titans often has a dark tinge that can border on the absurd. It doesn’t work for me a lot of the time, but the thinking is clearly there. There aren’t many laugh out loud moments, but enough solid chuckles. The use of humor is more akin to when it is found in Zack Snyder’s trilogy of films, often a little dry and understated but still clever and with a point.


//TAGS | Titans

Michael Mazzacane

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