I was confused, too. But I think garygnu’s critique was very specific to a scenario where we keeep the established backstory: lands in Kansas (?), gets named “Clark Kent” (though see my comment just now). That stuff. But maybe I re-read it wrong, too.
I’m still not seeing it. Kansas is about 6% African American, and while I’m guessing relatively few farm families are black, there definitely are some.
As for the name being especially white, I’m not seeing that either. There are definitely African American naming traditions and, say, Irish-American naming traditions (if I tell you about two students, Jaiquan and Maeve, and ask you to guess which one was black and which one was white, I bet most of y’all could guess), as you said, there are also plenty of African American folks who give their kids names indistinguishable from the names of their white peers.
There are black people in Kansas.
There are black people named “Clark”. “Kent” is a common enough surname that I would expect some black people to have it.
There is nothing particularly “white” about his back story. American, yes. But not white American.
At any rate, why would a movie Clark Kent have to have the same backstory as comic book Clark Kent? It is not a movie about Clark Kent. It is a movie about Superman.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
I’ve said it before in other contexts, but you can’t tell good stories about Superman. All of the good Superman movies (and TV shows, and comics, and whatever) are about Clark Kent.
Most African American names are recent inventions. Prior to the 1970s, black Americans names tended to be European. But as you say, not all black Americans have distinctive names. I don’t know anyone named Clark (black or white), but it isn’t like I would be blown away if I met a black person with that name.
Also, black people are given to shortening their names just like anyone else. “Clark” should be short for “Clarktavious”.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
Ok, fine. I can think of some good stories about a brown-skinned guy named Clark Kent who is a super hero in his spare time. What about his brown skin would prevent him from having good stories?
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
I’m not saying I’d get all bent out of shape about it. The minority status and background is invariably integral to minority Superhero characters. Clark Kent’s seems pretty typically WASPy to me. Doing nothing more than changing the skin color would be pretty lazy and perhaps disrespectful.
Plus it’s been done to fucking death. Superman can still be a reporter in Metropolis secretly saving the world on the side, but give me something original for the mild mannered alter ego.
I would be bothered if black Superman wasn’t given a mild mannered alter ego and was instead turned into some aggressively macho working class dude (or whatever alter ego would be noticeably different from Clark Kent). To me, that would be more disrespectful than just playing him straight.
It would be quite easy to make a black Clark Kent be believable while still keeping his essence intact.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
Isn’t Clark adopted? Ma and Pa Kent can be of any race, and give him any name.
There is actually a lot of rich territory that could be explored with a black Clark Kent. If I were independently wealthy and had time to indulge my dreams, I’d take a stab at the screenplay.
Clark Kent presents as a weak, awkward klutz. From the get go, the audience has to accept the unlikely premise that a strapping hunk like Kal-El successfully poses as this sadsack weakling, just by donning glasses and dressing like a dork. The audience accepts this, but the wry irony is not (or at least it shouldn’t be) lost on us. Every time we see Clark Kent, the incongruity between his physical form and his affected manner is blatant. And humorous.
Guess whom people have a very hard time imagining as awkward weaklings? That’s right: Black men. So wouldn’t a black actor be an opportunity to put a fresh new take on the ole Superman-Clark Kent incongruity? No need for us to turn this into a dramatic character study, but a creative mind will see a open door for all kinds an ironic (and maybe even satirical) scenes and encounters.
First off, thanks for the compliment.
Secondly, I disagree with almost everything you’ve said. Especially the last. No, the backlash against “Gods of Egypt” is not just a “SJW thing”. It’s an “anyone who cares about representation in mass media” thing. Why shouldn’t a movie set in Egypt star people with some goddamn melanin in their skin? Practically every phenotype is represented in that part of the world, so how does it make sense to cast only the whitest white folks for the leading roles?
And you’re comparing apples to oranges here. Of course the outrage over black-washing is rooted in a different angst than the outrage over white-washing! The latter comes from fatigue and anger over the fact that non-whites already are hugely disadvantaged when it comes to getting good roles. Additionally, non-whites have had a long history of watching white people be portrayed as heroes and icons. White folks don’t have a similar history. If they don’t want to watch a black Superman movie, they can just watch the million other superhero movies featuring white actors and have their self-esteem affirmed. Non-whites don’t have that luxury. So of course when there’s a movie part that could easily be done a non-white person but it goes to a white one for no good reason, there’s understandable fatigue there.
I’ve long dreamed for someone to put Octavia Butler’s “Lilith’s Brood” trilogy on the big screen. I would LOVE if someone were to do this. I would be extremely upset if someone decided to choose a white actress to play Lilith. Sure, while Lilith is a black woman in the books, her blackness is not hugely integral to the plot. Indeed, on the cover of my paperback copy of “Dawn”, Lilith is portrayed as a white woman (I guess the publisher felt that seeing a black woman on the cover would turn away readers). But I still want Lilith to be a black woman on the big screen. Not because I’m a SJW or whatever disparaging thing you may think, but because there are very few science fiction movies out with a black female protagonist. And of course I’d love to see that, because I’m black female who loves science fiction, who has spent a lifetime watching white (guys mostly) get to do wild and crazy shit in outer space with weird-looking aliens. I’d love to see someone who looks kinda-sorta like me having those kind of adventures for a change.
I do not see that as equivalent to a white guy that wants Superman to always be white, sorry.
Great point.
Christopher Reeve’s performance was incredible at this incongruity. I would pay money to see Terry Crews (for example) do something similar because I think he’d do it very well without resorting to silly parody.
I guess my point is either don’t bother with the origin backstory at all or come up with something more interesting.
Urkel begs to differ. So does Maurice Moss. And Carlton Banks.
Also, Jeffrey Wright has made a *career *out of playing a Black nerd.
I’m holding out for the rumoured Broken Earth series, personally…
Holy shit, I had not heard of that. I don’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified.
I’m sensing some dissonance here. Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t see any “white men” getting bent out of shape here in the way you are implying. Pretty much everyone arguing against this is saying the exact same thing you said in the second sentence. The problem isn’t a white identity problem, it’s that changing well established canon for certain iconic characters or for characters where them being a different race would just be weird or anachronistic is a bad idea.
I know I’m pissing into the wind at this point, but over and over again the other side of the argument keeps characterizing that opinion as white nationalist bullshit. In some dark corners of the internet that’s certainly a fact, but it’s not part of this discussion on the Dope. The frustration is the dishonest way the argument is being framed.
Sentence, or paragraph?
This is kind of a long way of saying, “I’m not racist, but…” I don’t think anyone is especially interested in whether you (or I?) consider yourself (myself!) racist. The interesting discussion is whether opposition to this sort of change is rooted in bias, and/or perpetuates structural racism.
FWIW I don’t think you’re a white supremacist. But I do think you’re ignoring the way that white supremacy has shaped our culture, including comics culture, and you’re discounting the ways in which diversifying character backgrounds can work to mitigate the effects of white supremacy.
No one has made a convincing case for this proposition. And no one has concisely defines exactly what “bad idea” might actually mean.
Is it bad because it somehow violates some level of artistic quality? I think it’s apparent that this isn’t true. A piece might be of high quality or low quality with or without such a change. You don’t know until you see the finished work.
Is it bad because it guarantees commercial failure? I think we can all see that That is unlikely, and that such claims are suspect from the start anyway. Just like with artistic success or failure, things fail commercially for a lot of reasons. It seems absurd in this day and age to maintain that the race of an actor is guaranteed to have any particular effect.
There’s a part of me that thinks the solution is to just keep on creating new superhero characters, and make sure that the new ones are demographically balanced (or maybe a bit biased towards previously-underrepresented groups), and let the problem solve itself as the older (biased) heroes become a smaller and less significant proportion of the total. But on the other hand, it’d take a really long time for Superman to lose his place as the most prominent superhero-- Probably not until the genre goes through another one of its shifts and we’re not calling them “superheroes” any more.
I haven’t characterized anyone’s argument as “white nationalist bullshit”, and I don’t recall anyone else in this thread doing that. What I have seen are people making appeals to “realism” and “logic” and “market forces” to defend why certain characters should be played by white people, even though other departures from “canon” or realism are accepted and embraced all the time. White nationalism bullshit could explain this blindspot, or it could just be that people have been programmed to place more weight on skin color than is warranted.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk