Is America Ready for a Black Hero? No? Well, How About a Black Antihero?

Jesus, have you seen those ads for this movie "Hancock"? Is it us, or is there something insaaaaaanely racist about them? Let's break it down: Will Smith plays an African-American superhero -- the first big-screen African-American superhero since, um, Robert Townsend in 1993's Meteor Man? Oh, that's right, there was that black sidekick in "The Incredibles." And Halle Berry as Storm. And Wesley Snipes as Blade ... so, okay, there've been four black superheroes in the last 15 years. But Will Smith's the first black leading-man flying superhero, which is a very cool and progressive thing to happen ... except that he's apparently a homeless dude who's borderline retarded and keeps getting in the white folks' way.

Or maybe the movie isn't racist at all -- maybe it's just the trailer. It introduces us to Will Smith by showing him in tattered clothes, seemingly drunk, sleeping on a park bench. Then he sexually assaults a white woman. And then there's a montage of him attempting to use his superpowers to foil crimes; except he keeps screwing things up because he's lazy, brutish, horny, and incapable of abstract reasoning; and even though he's been given allllllll those superpowers, even the most amazing black man in the world is just a plain old nuisance. What the hell is this movie really about?

Now, we're no experts on racial semiotics. The staff of SFist is pretty fair-skinned. Are we the only ones bothered by this, or is it offensive to Negroes, too? We don't know any black people whom we can ask; but if you do, we'd love to read your comments.