It’s The Will Stancil Show!

Fan art of Will Stancil as Alex from A Clockwork Orange.

1,755 words

Renowned racist vocalist and animator Emily Youcis has begun a new series lampooning fanatical housing policy lawyer Will Stancil. The Will Stancil Show, the first two episodes of which are now available on the platform formerly known as Twitter, follows the adventures of the former Democratic candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives, including his great need to be accepted by black people.

The show begins with possibly the most obnoxious music I have ever heard, which is presumably a deliberate choice on Miss Youcis’s part to reflect the protagonist’s level of sophistication. The lyrics give a good impression of the emotional depth of the music:

It’s The Will Stancil Show
It’s The Will Stancil Show
It’s The Will Stancil Show
The Will Stancil Show
The Will Stancil Show

It is immediately obvious that the show is rendered using artificial intelligence, specifically Sora, which is apparently a first for an animated series. In the intro sequence the viewer is immediately introduced to Mr. Stancil’s love of cake, black people, and door-to-door campaigning, as well as his fear of artificial lifeforms based on previous experience. There are several instances of what are presumably rendering errors left in for comic effect, in a similar manner to the influential 2014 computer game Goat Simulator.

The first episode begins with Mr. Stancil sitting at a restaurant booth with a black man and declaring, “Oh God, I love black people! I’ll always fight for you, Jamal.” His companion responds with “That’s what’s up,” which is how black people traditionally express approval. Unfortunately, the hero’s subsequent discussion of housing policy is interrupted by commotion in the street outside, where a black couple are having a violent dispute.

Will Stancil as depicted in the show.

This is clearly an issue of housing policy law, so while a crowd of other white people stand and watch helplessly, our hero poses boldly and declares “This looks like a job for Will Stancil.” To comfort the agitated spectators, he turns to one of them at random and explains, “It’s okay, ma’am. I have a black studies degree.” Unfortunately, displaying his credentials does nothing to reassure the crowd.

Presumably using knowledge gained during his master’s program, he next transforms into a tornado, summoning up various bottles of alcohol including Hennessy, the traditional cognac of African-Americans. This is only the pupa phase of his metamorphosis, as he is next rendered into Wigger Will, a swaggering white rapper. To emphasize the great social benefits of advanced studies in black people, we now see that the blacks in attendance are very impressed by his subsequent hip-hop performance. Reflecting his characteristic modesty, he refers to himself as a “hero” and a “savior” while smoking a blunt and drinking malt liquor.

Both his voice and his clothes have by now transformed to suit someone of the pimping persuasion, and he pleads with the crowd to abandon “black-on-black violence” and direct their “anger where it belongs—on the white man.” The blacks are convinced of his wisdom, and the couple who had been fighting earlier earnestly swear to reform.

Blacks of all ages and hair styles stand in awe of Wigger Will.

Soon, however, the Africans return to their old ways. Mr. Stancil has distributed housing vouchers, and as the recipients disagree over who is entitled to them, arguments quickly lead to arson. Standing on a hill overlooking the burning city, the hero and his black friend celebrate a job well done and begin a lengthy cackling session, as if their motives are less than pure. As they walk away, a strangely dressed robot appears to deliver even less wholesome laughter, foreshadowing the next episode.

The next episode begins with Will Stancil debating “fascists” on Twitter (it is implied that this is what he does for a living) while his black friend Jamal looks on. His face is contorted with rage, which he soon directs at Jamal when the latter attempts to use his video game controller without permission. After a late night at work, he returns home drunk and falls asleep. Unfortunately, his AI nemesis Grok has other plans.

The smartphone in his pocket rings, and we learn that Grok has found a way to possess human bodies through their devices. Will Stancil is soon equipped with a modified SS uniform, the same makeup around one eye seen on Alex in A Clockwork Orange, and a menacing grin. He puts on his hat and steps outside, obviously looking for trouble.

Soon he comes upon a mixed-race group of undocumented muralists decorating a brick wall with colors largely matching their hair dye. He confronts them, explaining that he disapproves of color “where it doesn’t belong…or when it’s on someone’s skin.” At this point the appalled graffiti enthusiasts examine his uniform and realize that he is a Nazi.

Fan art of Will Stancil as Alex from A Clockwork Orange.

In the ensuing battle, Stancil easily defeats his opponents, then stabs them sadistically with the end of a skull-headed cane. Once he has had enough, he pulls out his phone and calls Grok, who has taken the physical form of a trio of maniacal shark-toothed robots in suggestive uniforms, for a ride home.

Waking up the next morning, he has no memory of the night before, but learns of his exploits from a television news report. Like Batman, Stancil has apparently avoided killing any of his targets, wisely limiting himself to “property destruction and aggravated assault.” Not realizing the identity of the so-called “Lowry Hill monster,” he vows to hunt down the perpetrator and “end him… permanently.”

Throughout the first two episodes, Stancil’s relationship with his negro companion recalls South Park narcissist Eric Cartman’s description of the ideal friend: the latter has no will of his own. Jamal is repeatedly shown in the office with Stancil but is never seen presenting any ideas or doing any work, as if his only purpose is to respond to his white friend’s comments with “It do be like that, Mr. Stancil.”

The protagonist’s sympathy for Jamal is repeatedly shown to be only superficial. Stancil dramatically embraces him at one point, saying “Feels like forever since I saw you, man,” which is clearly not true, as Jamal was already in the room with him. Instead it seems as if he is repeating a comforting phrase from an unrelated context in order to appear compassionate while disregarding the reality of the situation. A familiar pattern.

At the end of the second episode, he even delivers electric shocks to his African associate when he dares to get up from his seat, a reference to alleged electricity enthusiast Hasan Piker.

The use of artificial intelligence for animation opens up interesting possibilities in storytelling, in that it is often up to the viewer to interpret whether something is a deliberate decision by the artist or merely a technical error. The AI’s mistakes may even be helpful to the creator in providing something beyond their own imagination, which they might choose not to correct. In the opening sequence, Will Stancil is shown knocking on a door, presumably campaigning, even after it closes. Is this meant to show his persistence, or was the AI just confused about the sequence of events? At times it seems that Mr. Stancil’s voice is coming out of Jamal’s mouth, or vice versa, as if to emphasize his hubristic attempts to break down barriers between the two of them, and between blacks and whites in general.

A fan demonstrates the use of AI face-morphing technology to represent Stancil’s racial fantasy.

One problem with the series so far is that the episodes are disappointingly short, with the second one being about one third as long as an episode of a typical animated show, and the first even shorter. Many things are unexplained. Who is Jamal, and how did he become friends with Stancil? Inquiring minds will be left unsatisfied, at least for now.

This is also likely the first animated series focused on mocking a single character from real life, which may be considered a new frontier in trolling rather than in storytelling. There is even one scene which replicates an actual tweet exchange verbatim. This runs the risk of limiting its appeal to a particular time and virtual place; even today, Will Stancil is hardly a household name, and posterity may forget that he was our countryman. However, he is far from unique in certain respects.

Youcis emphasizes the contrast between his awkward, unimposing appearance and his firebreathing rhetoric towards “Nazis,” of which many examples can still be found on X. This beclowns him personally, but it also reflects a broader trend. Social media enjoyers may have noticed that many of those who are quick to glorify violence against “fascists” seem hardly capable of overpowering a flight of stairs. This is probably not a coincidence, nor it is specific to our time. The frustrations of those who see themselves as weak and inadequate are a chronic source of political fanaticism.

That a vocal opponent of some social evil would be guilty of it themselves is also a familiar trend, not limited to Will Stancil. There is an acronym for similar behavior in psychology, DARVO, which stands for deny, accuse, reverse victim and offender. This is a recent term, but references to accusing others of what you are guilty of yourself are found as far back as ancient times, including in the Bible. In the show, the protagonist’s sudden interest in ultraviolence is attributed to Grok possessing him with “the AI-regenerated mind of Dr. Mengele,” but this can be seen as simply projection in his own paranoid retelling of the story, given his established fear of Grok.

Finally, in my opinion white people’s awkward attempts to emulate or fit in with blacks will never cease to be funny until they cease entirely. The two races are so different that it seems inevitable that people will find such things absurd, even if they are uncomfortable thinking much about the implications. Wigger Will is not the first instance of this phenomenon, and he will not be the last.

Youcis’s work is an important contribution to the field of racial satire, which thanks to the prevailing norms is not as broad a field as one might expect. It demonstrates the ability to engage with dark subjects with maniacal laughter rather than despair, which is important in the current racial situation. I recommend it to all white people with a similar sense of humor.