Undercover Brother: Dissecting "The Man"

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on November 10, 2005.

When I was in college, a friend of mine railed against conspiracy theorists. He was particularly infuriated at their belief that any absence of evidence that a conspiracy was afoot served...well, as evidence that a conspiracy was afoot. For example, if I claim that the Freemasons control the levers of the U.S. government, and you demand that I produce evidence, then I easily can retort: "If evidence were available, then it wouldn't be a successful conspiracy, would it?" The best conspirators are so adept that nobody is able to pin anything on them; everything about them remains at the level of hypothesis, rumor, and innuendo.

We are fascinated by conspiracies for two reasons. First of all, some of them actually do exist, even if the general public only discovers them after the fact. Watergate and Iran-Contra are two famous examples, but anytime anyone gets together with anyone else to plan anything, the possibility of conspiracy presents itself. It is a practice learned early in life; I still remember kids in my middle school conspiring to gang up on new players during games of four square. Of course, in that scenario, the conspiracy was exposed rather quickly, but the fact nevertheless remained that the top three players had coordinated their efforts, albeit informally, against the fourth.

The second reason why we're fascinated by conspiracies is because they help to explain our world. Despite our continual striving for knowledge, we know deep down that some facets of existence stubbornly remain outside our purview. We cannot know everything, and when we witness a tragedy or injustice that defies explanation, one of our coping mechanisms is the conspiracy theory. Some person or organization with vast amounts of power is pulling somebody's string, inflicting misery on us so as to achieve ill-gotten gain.

It is important to remember that just because an idea serves as a coping mechanism doesn't mean that it's not true. While the absence of evidence should not be construed as evidence proper, we also should be quick to ask doubters: Where is the evidence that a conspiracy does not exist? This may seem like a cheap rhetorical tactic since the conspiracy theorist always can demand more evidence of non-conspiracy while simultaneously pooh-poohing that evidence (such "evidence" of non-conspiracy, after all, most likely has been planted by the conspirators). Nevertheless, doubters should be cautioned against downplaying (or completely rejecting) the possibility of conspiracy just because the proof isn't obvious and immediate.

This very topic permeates Malcolm D. Lee's Undercover Brother (2002), an examination of the figure known as The Man and his control over us all. According to Lee, The Man (Robert Trumbull) is in a relentless pursuit to eradicate Black culture from the planet. When General Warren Boutwell (Billy Dee Williams) retires from the military in order to run for president (an obvious reference to Colin Powell), The Man conspires to brainwash the general, steering him away from politics and into the racially stereotypical role of proprietor of a fried chicken chain. We also learn that said chicken contains a substance intended to alter the minds of the general's (presumably) Black clientele. Thus, The Man not only strives to prevent Blacks from gaining political office, but he seeks to dominate the very minds of Black America. The Man is the essence of totalitarianism.

Enter the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., a super-secret organization of Black spies and scientists, whose mission is to fight The Man. (Unfortunately, the acronym remains a mystery; a quick Google search combining the terms <"brotherhood" "undercover brother" "acronym"> merely revealed other reviewers who were just as confused as I.) The head of the BROTHERHOOD recruits Undercover Brother (Eddie Griffin), a freelance, vigilante enforcer of Black Pride, whose most noticeable feature is his intense loyalty to 1970s aesthetic. Undercover Brother must infiltrate a multinational corporation controlled by The Man in order to find out exactly how he is scheming to eradicate Black culture. This, of course, is dangerous work; to succeed, Undercover Brother will have to "act" white and will have to learn the factors that make white people tick, including extensive knowledge of the now-defunct Friends television series and a love of mayonnaise. (The latter caught me by surprise: Undercover Brother implies that Blacks generally hate the condiment, a claim that I have yet to confirm or deny.)

What I found most fascinating about Undercover Brother is the intense cultural essentialism at its core. Right at the beginning, the narrator (J.D. Hall) argues that the apex of Black culture in the United States was found in the 1970s, as exemplified by such icons as funk music, afros, and Shaft. The narrator then states that the 1980s and 90s saw a decline in Black culture with such figures as Mr. T and Dennis Rodman. Thus, Undercover Brother's aesthetic is not merely a personal preference but a statement of cultural pride and resistance; while I ultimately do not agree with the movie's essentialism, I do respect its bold cultural stand.

So does The Man exist? According to Wikipedia's entry (accessed 10 November 2005), "'The Man' is a slang phrase associated with the counterculture and used to describe higher authority. This 'Man' does not usually refer to a specific individual as such, but instead to the government, leaders of large corporations and other authority figures; its meaning is pejorative. The Man is colloquially defined as the figurative person who controls our world. The Man is also often used as a symbol of racial oppression." The anonymous contributors at Wikipedia seem to have bought into the idea that The Man is merely a figurative notion, a convenient symbol of authority. Yet, I find myself in a bit of an epistemological quandary. Is the common belief in The Man's lack of corporeal reality merely a ruse? After all, if we only refer to The Man with a sense of irony—as when we say "the Man is keeping me down" and "stick it to the Man" (see Wikipedia)—then we no longer pose a threat to the "real" Man. In fact (just to rile my friend further), the lack of physical evidence of The Man's existence may prove only that he's an adept conspirator!

Perhaps the real value in conspiracy theories lies in their keeping us on our toes. Whether The Man really exists is a secondary issue; in our post-Genesis 3 world, we must be reminded constantly of our sinful nature and the possibility that any of us can do wrong at any time. While presuming the worst in people generally is perceived as unpleasant and impolite, it sometimes proves necessary. Thus, a little conspiracy theory is a good thing — one of these days, the theory may prove correct.