Spiderman : Homecoming - Finally someone addresses THE issue

I'm not going to address the Miles Morales issue in this post. That's for another thread. Instead I want to give special mention to Jason Johnson of The Root who delivered this delicious observation in a column he wrote last week:


Arguably the biggest fail in Spider-Man: Homecoming are the two female leads: Laura Harrier as love interest Liz, and Zendaya playing red-headed Daria-esque “Michelle”—who comic fans think might be you-know-who from the Spider-Man canon. While some people praise the casting of two women of color in Peter’s life, it’s actually still faux diversity and re-enforcing the status quo.

In Hollywood, comic book films’ diversity still means giving white guys their choice of mixed-race or light-skinned, Hollywood-approved women of color as love interests. We see it in The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok with Tessa Thompson, etc. Change a white-girl comic character to a hot black woman? Barely a peep from fans. Consider casting a man or woman of color as the action or romantic lead? Utter chaos.

This isn’t a critique of WOC getting jobs; that’s a good thing. However, it just highlights the fact that hipster progressive-Hollywood racism allows for every sidekick, schoolteacher and love interest to be turned from white to minority in the name of “diversity,” so long as it’s always a straight white guy as the romantic lead driving the story—even the villains.


http://www.theroot.com/spider-man-homecoming-diversity-push-makes-no-spidey-s-1796704406


About fucking time that someone in the media not only noticed this hypocrisy but actually wrote of it. Johnson didn't become just one more black male who sits back and accepts the double standard of black women being cast as white guys' love interests without such casting never occurring between black men and white woman. Even better he didn't act like most black men in the media, in show business or on social media who go around applauding "black actresses getting work" even if they do so by means that simply support the same plantation mentality that exists within Hollywood. No, Johnson made the type of observation that some of us on this site, perhaps through conditioning, are likely to make. And it was clear he was fed up with it. Unfortunately it is the type of thing that most people don't notice or don't care about because as long as a white guy is involved there is no uproar. And to give Mr. Johnson credit he touched upon this whole issue to a lesser extent last year too.

http://www.theroot.com/no-zendaya-in-spider-man-homecoming-is-not-the-progre-1790856481

So this is a guy who gets it. And while he may be in the minority, while he may be the only one, at least he is out there voicing his thoughts. It makes me feel good that other people out there are seeing what I've been seeing. Of course more people (more black men) have to voice their opinions on this whole matter before changes can be made. But we gotta start somewhere.

 

Took guts but as you can see in the comments section WE invite A LOT of opposition and uncomfort when talking about this. One of the reasons is because of what we addressed with American black men and the plantation mentality. I pointed out on here before of these black women's misinterpretation of the movie GET OUT (probably on purpose) as a way to disagree with black men dating white women, but black men if you peep social media get in on it as a way of bashing black men dating outside their race. But luckily and hopefully he has shined a spotlight on those fans who already have spoken out and gave them(us) more courage.

Looking at that list of black females involved in IR on these comic book shows and movies, I notice how they are going out there way to add IR between bw and wm, but are not that enthusiastic with IR relationships with black men.. that EXIST!

Jessica Jones & Luke Cage

Cloak & Dagger

Captain Marvel & Rhodey

The Patriot & Hawkeye

Power Girl & Val-Zod

Power Girl & Mr. Terrific

Synergy & Battalion

Hawkgirl and Green Lantern

and I know missing some others. But out of that list the only one we have are Cloak and Dagger(still got to see the show will go.), while Jessica & Luke are on a hiatus for who knows how long.

 

Black men and white women together is so threatening because it challenges white masculinity and doesn't push forth black female beauty. It's really that simple, it's pure jealousy.

 

Not too mention they have already thrown away a number of IR relationships that were in books for screen adaptation and turned them into platonic friendships(and possibly more to come.) So that was really important for him to do no matter what backlash he will face and is facing. Filmmakers like Amma Asante and Annie J. Howell for movies like A United Kingdom and Little Boxes.

Because right now all black men and white women IR relationships are being reduced porn and Get Out and Kardashian Jokes.

 

I watched that today Brother makes a lot of good points.

 

I see this too but a big hearty LOL @ you if get upset over how white created characters and franchises choose to portray themselves. It's a loserish mentality. Stop complaining and create your own shit instead of begging white daddy to do you justice.

 

It's not begging to point shit out. If I say police shootings are an issue it's not a plea to white supremacy to stop doing what they were designed to do its to bring awareness to my people and would be allies.

 

Yep. And this is one reason I haven't even seen the movie. I stayed away at first because I just knew the girlfriend was going to be evil too. I didn't want to support another film in which the IR between a black man and a white woman was portrayed negatively in one way or another (the Jungle Fever approach). And then when the responses started rolling in on social media and black fools thought Jordan Peele was putting out a message that black men dating white women is wrong (not interracial dating is bad, just black men dating white women) I just had to shake my head. Then many of those same fools got irate when finding out Peele was married to a white woman. These are some low IQ individuals, not much different than Trump voters who keep overlooking his countless flaws. Those who attacked Peele were angry he wasn't some racist asshole who wanted to denigrate white women and any black man who hook up with them. They wanted him to be Spike Lee.

If I could "like" this part a million times I would.

In the comics;
Spiderman never dated black women.
Thor never dated black women.
Flash never dated black women.

But Luke Cage did date and marry Jessica Jones. Period. Supergirl has/had a black boyfriend. Superwoman had a black boyfriend. Batgirl has/had a black boyfriend. Captain Marvel had a black boyfriend.

Despite that you had black women throwing tantrums about Luke being with Jessica. There is one prominent black woman on twitter named FilmFatale or Black Femme Fatale or something along those lines. Anyway she started this nonsense about how the WHITE WOMAN (because black ladies can't go on twitter without hating on white women) who ran Jessica Jones' show was guilty of erasing black women (an increasingly common complaint). She took the show to task for not having a large black female presence, complaining that all we got was Luke's dead wife and some black married woman who was cheating on her husband with Luke. I guess she forgot about Rosario Dawson but, hey, why let facts get in your way. She went on to complain that the show should have made Jessica's best friend black (even though that character is white and has been around longer than Jessica Jones). Her twitter rant pretty much summed up black women in general on social media when discussing Hollywood shows/movies : More black women please, no IR between BM and WW but IR between WM & BW are acceptable, if the lead is a white female give her black friends even though the black women clamoring for this would never befriend a white woman in the real world because they hate them too much.

Anyway I politely challenged this woman's viewpoint and instead of responding with a counter or just brushing it off as some nobody disagreeing with her take, she immediately blocked me.

I'm keeping my eye on the casting of the male co-stars/love interests of Captain Marvel and Batgirl (which is supposed to be based on the updated DC 52 Batgirl who had a relationship with the son of Lucious Fox). If the films go with white guys then they are officially practicing a double standard. Hell, they may go with a Hispanic guy or some Asian dude to look as if they care about diversity but that means they are still avoiding pairing a white woman with a black guy.

By the way even Wonder Woman had a black boyfriend for a short time in the comic books. Even though this was before social media the extreme negative reaction to that development could be felt from a million miles away. White fanboys couldn't handle it.

I joked about this not too long ago. I wonder when black women will call out their relationship being toxic and an insult to black women. And I wonder when folks will charge that the two leads have no chemistry and causing TPTB to pair Dagger with some white guy who never even existed in the comic books.

 

Go fuck off. You think that as easy as making a mixtape, moron? First of all those of us here aren't even writers or filmmakers so how could we go about creating art in the first place? We are the LAST people who should be creating art if we have no artistic abilities. Even if we were artists there is the little fact that we would need studio money to finance such projects, someone to market it and then some large company to distribute whatever we came up with. If we are starting from ground zero and not in the business already it may be close to impossible to crash the gates and get in. And even if we managed that it would take close to half a decade before we would finally see the fruition of our work on the screen. So what do you want us to do in the meantime?

There are black filmmakers who are capable of providing some of that balance we are looking for but there is no certainty that those filmmakers even care about any of this. There may be white filmmakers who could be sympathetic to our cause but they too probably aren't thinking about the subject and won't until someone brings it to their attention. Meanwhile black women have been using social media and in terms of actresses the stage (like viola Davis when she won her Emmy) to constantly clamor for more opportunities for black actresses and black female characters, to advocate for black female characters to be portrayed as beautiful women whom leading men (white guys mostly) could fall in love with. The push for diversity in Hollywood HAS worked but no one has benefited from it more than black women. And until black guys or other people of color start standing up and saying "hey, that's nice and all but what about us?" Hollywood will continue to think they are doing the right thing by limiting their color blind casting to black females. We need to make our voices heard anyway we can.

By your reasoning black people should have never complained about the lack of black quarterbacks or black head coaches. We should have formed our own NFL and taken care of the issue on our own. We should never complain about poisonous water coming from the sinks in our communities, we should instead go out and replace the faulty pipe system throughout an entire city all on our own. We shouldn't have ever complained about racial profiling by police, we should instead stop whining and be the most perfect citizens that ever existed. If we are being discriminated at work we shouldn't make an issue of it, we should instead leave the company and become self-employed. Right?

It is such a tired response when it comes to Hollywood representation that the solution is to do everything on our own. Yes, we need more of us behind the scenes creating work that better represents us. Yet that doesn't mean we still can't take Hollywood to task for its biases. My dollar counts, I vote with my wallet. The same goes for millions of black men in America alone who want Hollywood to do a better job. Its way past due. But if you don't care about that and want to enjoy your Spidey film without taking these factors into consideration then go for it.

 

I learned a few hours ago that even the main bad guy, Vulture, in Spiderman Homecoming was involved in a relationship with a black female. So in a mainstream blockbuster we have three IR in various stages between white men and black women. This includes a love triangle involving one white guy and two black women. Any chance that a white female lead in any mainstream film will ever be involved in a love triangle with two black men? No? I didn't think so either.

 

Great keen insights from Jamal here. Always suspected he works in the industry in some capacity IRL. Called me a moron once, but I forgive him.

 

Dude, no. I may know some people in the industry but I do not work in the industry.

Annie Howell is a white lady who I believe is married to a black man and has a black child so therefore writes from experience. She wrote a movie years ago before Little Boxes that was about a pregnant white woman who was anxious about the idea of giving birth. The father of the baby was a black man played by Andre Holland.

Amma Asante on the other hand is a black woman whose true passion at this point seems to be doing movies about black women in relationships with white men during particular turbulent times in world history in which the evils of racism were rearing its head (her first film "Belle" was about a black woman in England during the time before slavery was outlawed; her third film will be about a black girl growing up in Nazi Germany who falls in love with a young German soldier). No knock against her but she only did A United Kingdom because David Oyelowo, who likes working with female directors, brought the script to her with him serving a role as producer.

 

Agreed.

If we ignore it, downplay it, sweep it under the rug so will they. White people OWN the ceiling here in America. That's why the racism starts and ends with them. You have to be completely independent to do something truly yourself. They own the distributions, the networks, the WGA, PGA, SAG, ect. You can have a black owned production company, but you will still need distributors for a show or movie to see the light of day. People have pointed out before that BET is OWNED by Viacom aka A White man. We have to build our way up to that ceiling in order to get a shot at taking it down. In order to do that, we can't ignore the fact that there is a ceiling that we have to fucking break.

 

I loved the film GET OUT because unlike them I understood and paid attention to what Jordan Peele said it was about, which was racism in liberal america. It's a shame and really exposed just how dumb people are for them not to understand a psychological horror movie. It proved to be too smart for them. It's also scary because it shows they don't recognize racism unless it's in blunt form.

Thanks for showing the other white women in comics that have dated black men, I was struggling, because it's been so long since I read a comic book or a novel I mainly have gotten into the shows and movies the better part of my 30s and 40s.

But as we can see, there are IR relationships with black men and white women in the comics, and quite a few! So it will only become a matter of time before people realize that they are OBVIOUSLY ignoring them OR they will throw it in as a either a hook ups or their favorite platonic IR friendships. I have said this before with them going down the line of Luke Cage's women I wonder if we'll see She-Hulk in the MCU since marvel hinted at a TV series for her last year, but saw that they are already talking about if that happens to make her black.

 

Good find @JamalSpunky I never knew about these two:

WonderWoman and Trevor Barnes

 

Whoa...hold on there, buddy. You got to put up a warning before posting these WW-Trevor Barnes samples. We may have white guys visiting these boards from time to time and apparently the sight of Diana with this black guy has been known to make white men lose their shit and gouge out their eyes.

 

DC,you are a real comics fan. It would be hard to find those couples or a very few of them in the major ComicCons in a big city. One had to search long and hard on social media to find them.

 

Great points DC.

 

I saw Get Out more than once. It is funny but,also make you think a litte more deeper. I thought the White family is conservative instead of liberal because they pretend to love Blacks. The scene when the brother saw the photos of his girl with other brothers boy,he was played big time.

 

Yeah, when you already have knowledge of things it makes it A LOT easier to search for it online(in terms of what keywords to type into search boxes.). But there are still things that I didn't know like about Wonderwoman and Trevor Barnes.