If you're comfortable with it, would you mind sharing your take on Vox and his level of racism? (I understand this is a loaded topic and I come at this from the POV of someone who is extremely ignorant.)
HAHAHA, no, I LOVE this question.
Okay, so my take on Vox is that he is racially insecure. He recognises the beauty of and deeply admires diverse cultures, but not respectfully (and largely through the lens of stereotypes): he covets their traits for himself.
Vox is a fetishist and a culture vulture.
I haven't talked about it on here in a while but Vox having a race fetish is one of my strongest headcanons, which was birthed by that scene where he publicly throws up at the idea of having sex with his hand-picked news anchor, Katie Killjoy. Vox's two canonical love interests, and possibly three if you rock with one-sided StaticDoll theory, are are all POC. But he is shown to make racist comments towards Valentino and be generally insensitive...
I read this as him loving the 'exotic' and lashing out in jealousy. That comment to Val is a projection of his jealousy: he can't understand Spanish/a second language, and it actually frustrates him. It's not that he actually doesn't like Valentino speaking Spanish.
(Yet to be seen, if ever, but I would think he likely had a similar envy of Alastor and his French, and possibly Velvette and her accent/London-isms.)
This perspective is also very much in line with American media's historical treatment of diverse cultures. Vox comes from the 50s where people like Elvis and shit got big by singing black people's music. And in the 50s, rich suburban white people had black women literally raising their children, which is literally the prime time for enculturation.
This appropriation, born of seeing the cultural value in black people, has never stopped. Movies like Get Out (2017) and Sinners (2025) revolve around this phenomenon specifically. Episode 9 of FX Atlanta, 'Juneteenth', is also about this topic.
There is also big financial incentive for diversity, because people of colour are the global majority, and excluding us from the economy means losing out on money. This is why stuff like performative corporate diversity exists. Appealing to a diverse population = more consumers. This is why Vox pushes for some diversity at the Vox Populi rally*.
I need to brush up on my pop culture history, but it seems like in the 1980s, the suits behind American pop culture media realised this in a big way, and this is when black faces start being super prominent and start dominating the mainstream pop culture, especially that America was exporting to the rest of the world. E.g. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Eddie Murphy, The Cosby Show, the NBA, B.E.T. Network, etc.
The 50s and 80s are the decades that Vox's character design are most strongly based on. It all lines up to me.
But Vox is just an embodiment of these things and is an individual character. He does not think of himself as racist. He genuinely loves diversity, he finds other cultures novel and exciting. His backstory is about a weatherman, who was unfulfilled by his lack of cultural impact, and clawed his way to the top through serial murder in an attempt to become a pop culture titan.
And as I read it, a sense of cultural insecurity was at play here! This is why I think Alastor captivated him, because Alastor is someone whose natural cultural sensibilities were so inspiring that he could basically culture his way out of Jim Crow restrictions because people wanted to hear what he had to say that badly.
Vox had all the freedom to be heard as a WASP-y white guy with mainstream appeal, but he had absolutely fuck all to say. That's why, throughout 'Brighter', we see all his has to offer the world is unsustainable shock value. When he had a position of real power in pop culture, he just points the camera at morbid shit. Very Tiger King. And it is entertaining, but it's not the kind of long-lasting impact of a cultural pioneer. His 'content' comes and goes, the same as the weather forecast.
He has to be the "voice/vox" for others, because, again – he has a voice but fuck all to say. Completely the opposite of Alastor, who gained a voice by having something THAT culturally valuable to say.
Then fast forward some decades, he surrounds himself with a virtuosic artist and a trend-predicting fashion designer; a Latino and black woman, both of whom are descended of immigrants, and part of culturally pioneering generations of their ethnicities.
Vox both sees financial value in racial diversity, as well as being VERY personally captivated. But that doesn't mean he actually respects people of colour. In fact, his perversion without reflection is the reason he is so prone to microaggressing. He would have VERY strong white fragility: he would take strong offence to being called 'racist', particularly because of just how extreme and everyday the racist violence was during his lifetime.
But he is capable of self-reflection, even if it's brief. Valentino's complaints are implied to have fallen on deaf ears, but Vox does feel ashamed when Carmilla calls him out on his rumba (?) get up. And that was never going to work on her; I think Vox did that cultural appropriation, not because he thought it was business-savvy, but just because he found the culture exciting and wanted to participate. I actually think that 'Bad With Us' in general is a distillation of how Vox is willing to appropriate for his business benefit and pleasure.
I think his domestic dynamic/intimate conformability with the Vees would also, ironically, make it harder for him to self-reflect, because he would view their attempts to talk him down as them just nagging him because they think he's uncool, or something along those lines. So, it's not until someone else pulls him up on it that he has that brief moment of "yikes, this really is kind of racist, isn't it?"... But that doesn't change his feelings, because he is arrogant, he has white fragility and believes that admitting he did a racist THING would be taking on the identity of being 'a racist', so he just goes right back to shaking maracas.
*More on the Vox Populi rally:
I would also argue that the bulk of Vox's part of Vox Populi is a gospel song, or heavily inspired by the genre, given the style of music, call-and-response elements, Vox's ad-libbing (I'm acc not sure any other song on the soundtrack has that kind of ad-libbing, correct me if I'm wrong), and the religious preaching in the lyrics. And gospel today is a genre heavily influenced by and most associated with the Black American church. I don't know if this was intentional from the team, since the contribution of Black Americans to music culture often go without acknowledgement (because of stuff like the appropriation!)... but it would be very in-line with this conceptualisation of his character.
If it was unintentional, I think it goes to show how real and pervasive this issue is in media that the creators themselves stumbled into making our fave anti-God, white boy sing a gospel song at his rally.
For some examples of other gospel-style songs used for thematic reasons in fiction (i.e. not religious, I wouldn't put myself or anyone else through that hahahaha): 'A Star Is Born' from Hercules, 'Raise Him Up' from The Boys (which is almost identical in content to Vox Populi, actually).
Both songs are about embracing a new 'God' figure; in Hercules, gospel is used as kind of a tongue and cheek, modern framing of the Greek mythology, whereas in The Boys, it's used as social commentary on religion as a tool for propaganda. And the characters these songs are given to were specifically designed based on the Black Church, and their entire creation and roles in the stories are specifically to add those themes.
I'm actually under the impression that Vox's character is also designed with Hades from Hercules in mind. So... I mean, it might not be intentional, but I really have a lot of reason to believe it is.
Regardless, I believe in death of the author, and this remains my interpretation until I have reason to think otherwise!
