Unstoppable Fragility

I've been trying to process Maria Sharapova's "Unstoppable" and put it in context, juxtapose it, as it were, with some other things. It's the only way to make sense of it.....if there's any 'sense' to be made.

My response to Maria's title

My conclusion: Maria's choice of title, and her deft (LOL, it's hardly 'deft' to those of us familiar with this play) wielding of White woman victim hood are 100% unsurprising.

One might be forgiven for expecting Maria's work to be different from what it is. One might be forgiven for thinking that those writing their memoirs are typically given to honest reflection on their lives, their successes, their failures.  One might be forgiven for thinking that since that's usually what 'memoirs' are about. But Ms. Maria decided to go a different route. 

In the course of labeling herself Unstoppable, the frequently-stopped-by-Serena Sharapova manages to blame such stoppage (please pronounce Frenchly) on Serena's hatred of her, not on the fact that she failed to win. This is how the presumptuousness of White supremacy works: heads I win, tails, you lose. Whatever the actual outcome, POC always lose, Whiteness always wins. 

A few other cases in point...

In the course of defending themselves, former Ofc Timothy Loehmann (who murdered Tamir Rice); Ofc. Betty Shelby, who murdered Terrence Crutcher; former Ofc. Michael Slager, who murdered Walter Scott, Ofc Yanez, who murdered Philando Castile and many other Unstoppables managed to blame someone other than themselves for the acts committed by their own hands. Heads, they won; tails, their victims lost. 

The question must be asked: what is it about these people that prevents them accepting any responsibility for the work of their very hands? The failures of their very hands? The bad acts of their very hands? What is that and where can I buy some of it? 

Sharapova loses (repeatedly, 18 times at last count) to Serena and that's somehow Serena's fault. "Serena hates me." No, Serena's better than you but God forbid you say those words.

Loehmann murders Rice and that's somehow Tamir's fault. "He looked like an adult." "He had a gun." "He didn't comply." No, he was twelve, he had a toy, you gave him 2 seconds in which to comply.

Shelby murders Crutcher and that's somehow Terrence's fault. "He didn't comply." "He looked like a bad dude." "He was high on PCP." No, no, no and no again. Unless you have some special super powers, you could no more know that he had PCP than you could know what he'd had for breakfast two weeks earlier. "Bad dude"? Is that the same as a "bad hombre", because once again, I'm not exactly sure how an officer in a helicopter could possibly assess 'badness' from  seeing the top of a man's head.

Yanez murders Castile and that's somehow Philando's fault. "He didn't comply." "He had a gun." "He should have....." Sigh. Do we really need to go through this again?

And now we have Ms. Unstoppable Sharapova, prognosticating that Serena - who has beat her ass eighteen times in a row - hates her because she (Maria) beat Serena once in the early Cretaceous period. Serena beat me because she hates me. This is the logic. It's Serena's *fault* that Sharapova lost......well, I guess I can't disagree with Po' Pova there. 

We have to be grateful to Sharapova for a couple of things. First, she's reminding us that White women are as complicit in White supremacy as White men. This is an important public service she's performing here, and I think we mustn't miss the moment. It's a very important reminder. Too easily do we forget, generally to our detriment. 

Second, Sharapova is publicly joining a pantheon of White women performatively claiming victim status. In her case, she's gone one step further than the norm and is doing it for both notoriety and profit. Usually, White women like Susan Smith and Emmett Till's accuser (Carolyn Donham) or Ofc. Sherry Hall in Georgia, who accused non-existent Black men of shooting at her, do so entirely out of self-preservatory instinct or malicious intent. Typically, there's no profit motive aforethought. Malice aforethought? Yeah, but profit typically no. Enter Maria the Unstoppably Fragile, taking the game to entirely new heights! Performative victim hood, with a payday!  Cha ching! Cha ching! Unstoppable indeed. 

Murica!