William Pope.L - The Great White Way: 22 miles, 5 years, 1 street (2002-2007) | 06/10/2020

 Visual artist William Pope.L Performance art piece 'The Great White Way' was a statement for the streets of New York City. In the beginning of the 2000's he began crawling on his hands, knees, stomach, and elbows wearing a variety of different outfits and costumes. However, the performance that I am going to be discussing is when we dressed in a Superman costume and had a skateboard strapped to his back.

Pope's intentions for this performance based artistry was in my opinion, a statement about the treatment of particular races and/or people from different walks of life. Superman as a character is a white man who flies above cities full of people who love and worship him. However Pope (who is a black man) had dressed in the same costume but, was instead, crawling and beneath everyone else around him in the city. This could represent the overall treatment of black people in america (and/or the world) and how if the original character were to have been black he would have been seen and treated in a completely different way. Pope's overall aim could have been to shock and represent how different people are treated and how the media and popular shows we watch (such as superman) could have been perceived so differently if things were altered. Would Superman, a character who was admired and still is by children and adults all over the world, be as popular or as highly recognized if he had a different skin colour. As simple as changing a skin colour of a fictional character could cause such a mass audience views to change so drastically, from looking up and idolizing someone to looking down upon and degrading someone else. Also interesting how both Pope and the character of Superman would be flying and be crawling in the same place (New York) so nothing else would be changed between them only the overall treatment of Pope due to the colour of his skin. Reactions from the public were varied, some would simply ignore Pope, others took notice but did not do or saying anything, some spoke or shouted at him, and a few tried to help him up. The ones that did were mostly white citizens which brings to light the idea of the 'White Saviour' and how instead of 'Superman' saving people, this 'version of superman' needs to be saved by the white members of the New York City public. A very contrasting concept in comparison to the original superman characters story line.

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