Bulletproof flying alien with laser eyes looks like a black guy = fine.
Guy who looks like a black guy blends in seamlessly with and is respected by 1930s America = You’ve got some explaining to do.
And yeah, maybe you can explain it. Maybe your version of 1930s Metropolis has some other group being marginalized instead of blacks. Maybe it’s a utopian vision of what Metropolis should have looked like, where everyone is accepted. Maybe in your story, Clark Kent wasn’t respected, because of his race, and you can use that to explore how his character developed differently. Maybe Kal-El’s ship didn’t crash in Smallville until about 1990, and the Kents were sufficiently enlightened that they didn’t care about the baby’s color. But if you want your character to be Superman, there’s more than just the superpowers you need to deal with.
From a storyline perspective the only problem that needs to be dealt with is the prejudice, bigotry and racism of the white people in the environment Superman inhabits. Apparently that prejudice is such an immutable truth that people like you can’t even imagine it to be something different.
How you can suspend your disbelief to accept a god like alien then turn around and throw up a million and one hurdles as to why that alien shouldn’t look like a black guy is confusing as hell to me. It’s almost like you think this is something other than make believe.
When is the last time you saw an adaptation of Superman that was set in the 1930s?
With a handful of exceptions, like Wonder Woman or the first Captain America film, that are deliberate period pieces, superhero stories take place in the present day. Superman debuting in 1930s America hasn’t been a thing in literally decades. Whatever year it is now, Superman arrived on earth roughly thirty years ago. Whatever attitudes 1930s people might have had toward a black superhero are immaterial to a story being told today.
How many people remember that Peter Parker’s high school nemesis, Flash Thompson, enlisted in the army and fought in Vietnam after graduation? That was comic book canon for quite awhile. Now it isn’t anymore. Likewise, the injury that prompted Tony Stark to become Iron Man no longer happened in Vietnam, and Reed Richards and Ben Grimm are no longer World War II veterans. Comics take place in a sort of nebulous “Now and the recent past,” and any references to specific dates eventually have to be abandoned.
A black Superman would certainly face racial prejudice, even today. But talking about what it would be like for him during the 1930s doesn’t seem relevant unless the hypothetical story we’re talking about is set on Earth-2.
And come to think of it, I don’t think Earth-2 is actually a thing anymore, either.
Laserbeam eyes and superhuman strength are more believable than black people being treated fairly by 1930s whites. As the young people say nowadays, I can’t even.
As far as a story goes, yes. We don’t read stories in order to understand how physics works. We read stories to understand how people work. A Superman story isn’t by any remote stretch an accurate depiction of physics, but it is (or at least, should be) an accurate depiction of how people interact.
The people I know would be totally freaked out by a guy flying around in his underwear. And they would be doubly freaked out if laserbeams shot out of his eyes. In the world I inhabit, Superman would be portrayed as a demonic atheist homosexual attention whore by at least half the populace. So if Superman is all about how “people work”, it fails spectacularly.
I don’t indulge in super hero movies to find out how “people work”. I indulge in this genre to escape reality all together. The drama genre provides much better examples of how “people work” than Superman movies. There are no laserbeam eyes in movies like “Terms of Endearment”, as far as I know.
That’s not what you said, though. There are plenty of times I’m hanging out in a mixed-gender group where I’m not attracted to any of the other people in the group. Does that fit in your “men only” category, or in your mixed gender category? If that’s the key, it doesn’t fit the lock well.
Then I’m very confused by what you meant when you said the difference was “inherent.” I though you were saying the difference was in ALL groups.
Wow. Nope, not at all what I was saying. Again: there are actual historical gender-segregated groups. If I make a movie about a nunnery, but I hire men to play half of the nuns, and they present as men in the film, it’s going to confuse people–not because there’s some inherent difference in the dynamic of a mixed gender group, but because what are all those dudes doing in a nunnery?
Yes you imagined it, complete with racism and bigotry. Can you imagine it without those things is the point I have been trying to make. Can you just pretend it doesn’t exist and has never existed in any way, shape or form? Yes, even back in the 30s.
And just so I’m clear, I’m not talking about a black guy with superman like powers. I’m talking about Superman and all of his iconic-ness…who happens to look like a black guy from earth.
Absoulutely your choice…but how people work is certainly there. My nine-year old didn’t cry at the end of Endgame because “It means no more shiny-flying dude”
I remember this happened the last time a similar thread came up - there are some people here who think that pointing out that a black superhero would get a radically different reception in the US (especially in the US decades back in the 20th century) and that an author would need to take that into account in the story means that you’re a racist who’s insisting that it’s impossible to have a black-skinned superhero. There’s a big difference between “Marvel was terribad for having a black person take over as Captain America after Steve Rogers died, they can’t do that” and “If Marvel cast the original Steve Rogers as a black guy during WW2, the story of Captain America would need to be different as his reception would be different”, but some people don’t seem to be able to tell the difference.
He literally listed two scenarios in the post you’re angry about, one in which Metropolis doesn’t have bigotry, and the other in which Metropolis has something other that white-black bigotry. You really seem to be arguing with something that isn’t actually in the thread.
I think one of the reasons that The Wild, Wild West movie fell flat with a resounding clank was the scene where Jim West cajoles the lynch mob out of hanging him. Not because Jim West has to be white, dammit, and not because Will Smith isn’t a good actor, but because the notion of being the charming rogue and jollying an 1870s lynch mob out of a hanging stretches plausibility way beyond the breaking point whereas steam-powered metal robots does not. That may be due to the fact that Loveless did make racist comments about West - so racism was really a thing in that universe.
Would it work with Superman? Maybe, but it would take a lot of fan-wanking. I’m thinking of Smallville, where race prejudice isn’t a thing and nobody thinks twice when Ma and Pa Kent adopt a black baby. But there would have also to be a substantial black community in Smallville as well. Lana Lang wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but if Superboy shows up and is black, and Clark Kent is the only black kid in town, even she is going to catch on to his secret identity eventually.
It would be even worse than the whole “I don’t recognize him - he’s wearing glasses” thing.
SDMB is very left-leaning…and even if someone did believe a lot of the stuff some people are looking to argue about…they arn’t going to express it in Cafe Society.
We’re all different. I think a female Bond can work, but its dicey and absolutely depends on the casting. Or scenario. What if the last Craig film had him team up with another agent and the actress knocks it out of the park? Craig dies and the female agent (lets just say its played by Charlize Theron) is offered his spot in the 00 ranks:
M: We happen to have an opening. Would you be interested?
Theron: I would.
M: You’ll need a codename.
Theron: (Looking out the window into the middle-distance) How about…Bond?
M: (Raises an eyebrow) And the first name?
Theron: mmm…no. Bond. Just Bond.
Ok maybe thats a little corny, but I like it.
Not to mention…this a lot of hoop-jumping just to…what?? Make a black Superman work? A good Superman story should be the priority over ‘making a black Superman work.’.
And “Its time for a Black Superman” (random Slate/Buzzfeed/Huff Po hack article title) should NOT be the priority in making said movie.
Really…this works better as either an Elseworlds comic or some kind of high-minded TV project…say a Doom Patrol ep that just dives in feet first presenting the episode without the DP even being in it. Confusing the hell out of the audience and then in the second part we find it s a comic come to life. Maybe get Grant Morrison to write this TV ep. I think he’s the only one who can mine the comedy and drama needed.
And 20-something me cried during Toy Story when Buzz Lightyear got to fall with style.
But I didn’t watch that movie to see how actual people work. I watched it to see how toy people work. Toy people are not constrained by the same weaknesses that people are. If they were, Buzz would have never believed he could fly in the first place.
It is 100% understandable why a nine-year old wouldn’t focus on the implausibility of superhero movies and instead just go along for the emotional roller coaster ride. I would argue that is how most people experience this genre. They aren’t watching this kind of flick because they care about all the little details that don’t have much relevance to the storyline, but rather the big stuff. Only a small subset of movie-goers care about “world building” and and trueness to the source material. Most people just care about how a movie makes them feel.
So your argument is that the “general public” is open to change because of examples of 2 changes that occurred in the pre-production process before a single member of the public saw it? Oooookay.