# Switching the Race of Characters **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 13, 2019, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460 "2019-06-13T02:53:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 28
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/541 "2019-07-08T19:11:20Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > He’s optimized for large cities, yes, but nothing about Spider-Man requires that city to be New York… Another thing, and I hesitate to opine on this because I don’t really know, but I get the impression that the arcs of Spiderman’s swings in both comics and movies don’t always make perfect geometric or physics sense. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/542 "2019-07-08T19:15:38Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > Queens, the area that the original comic book Peter lived in until he married MJ and moved out of Aunt May’s house, is hardly sky-scrapery. It’s true. I once played a Spider-Man video game and once Peter got to Queens it became jumping from rooftop to rooftop time. ---
**Author:** ![CAH66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7bcc69/32.png) [@CAH66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CAH66)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/543 "2019-07-08T20:56:28Z")
> [@naita](#): > > I was under the impression that you consider the various white Peter Parkers the same Peter Parker, but you really see the retellings of the origin story as happening within the narrative? > > Why is “Peter Parker isn’t white” quantitatively different to you, while “Aunt May is young now” isn’t? And was there some explanation for why inside the continuity? > > I’m fine with the answers “It’s just how I feel”, “That’s not what I mean” and “…”, by the way. I just still think you’re creating elaborate justifications for an emotional response to a particular type of change in a world where making big changes isn’t usual. (An emotional response you share with many, but that doesn’t make the arguments less post hoc rationalization.) Oh, I really do think this Aunt (Marissa To-)May is a variant 🙂 Also, in the current films his classmates are so far afield from their comic book counterparts as to be _completely_ different characters that only share a name (MJ, Ned Leeds, Betty Brant). Flash Thompson is a wee bit closer in that he’s still a Spider-man obsessed bully to Parker, but he’s not a hugely popular BMOC-type alpha male jock with pretty girls dripping off of him that regularly scores victories over Peter. The endless re-tellings of the origin stories are of course technically all variants in and of themselves, but they all at least seem to be making the attempt of taking PP from the page as near as can be and putting him up on the screen. It all comes down to “How different is \*too \*different?” I don’t know if I’m being weirdly atypical, but I think race, gender, sexual orientation are all kind of major building blocks of our essential selves and swapping any of those out with something else is a major change. Again, there are a lot of other things they could do that would be nearly or just as jarring as changing his race would be. If they made him way tall, sort, or muscle-bound, or gave him long and shaggy hair, I’d still internally feel like it was just weirdly wrong and a _different_ Peter Parker even if nothing else changed. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2019, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/544 "2019-07-09T16:50:40Z")
> [@CAH66](#): > > our essential selves I’m going to leave this discussion be at this point except for this little quibble. **We** are not comic book characters. If we start invoking what is an essential part of **us** as individual, then changing the year of birth is right out, even if other parts of us might be more malleable than we’d like to think: [Are you really the real you?](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/jul/06/are-you-really-the-real-you-and-how-can-we-best-become-our-true-selves) (Article in the Guardian.) ---
**Author:** ![CAH66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7bcc69/32.png) [@CAH66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CAH66)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2019, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/545 "2019-07-09T18:16:44Z")
> [@naita](#): > > I’m going to leave this discussion be at this point except for this little quibble. **We** are not comic book characters. If we start invoking what is an essential part of **us** as individual, then changing the year of birth is right out, even if other parts of us might be more malleable than we’d like to think: [Are you really the real you?](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/jul/06/are-you-really-the-real-you-and-how-can-we-best-become-our-true-selves) (Article in the Guardian.) And maybe that’s the crux of it right there. There’s a small handful of characters that I’ve become so invested in that I want them to be treated as though they are real people. That was an interesting article by the way. I’ve never heard of that show before, but it sounds fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/546 "2019-07-09T19:26:45Z")
One could argue that, because our birthdates don’t change, real people go through more changes to “our essential selves” than comic book characters do. I’m certainly not the same person that I was 30 years ago, but Clark Kent mostly is the same person he was 30 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460/547 "2019-07-26T03:37:42Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > One could argue that, because our birthdates don’t change, real people go through more changes to “our essential selves” than comic book characters do. I’m certainly not the same person that I was 30 years ago, but Clark Kent mostly is the same person he was 30 years ago. Hell, I’m not sure I’m the same person I was before I started this thread. Which makes me wonder about my own personal investment in characters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/switching-the-race-of-characters/835460.md?page=27)