
So, why should Marvel stop there? Instead of picking actors who best portray their characters racially, why not pick those who would portray them best overall? We are often talking about 50 year old characters, and until the 1970s it was less of an option to have non-white heroes. Nowadays many of these heroes' back stories would almost demand a non-white character, particularly as the urban centers they come from have either been vacated by less affluent whites for the suburbs, or have been overrun by very affluent whites who do not fit the back story well.
There was, last year, a campaign to give Community star Donald Glover a shot at playing Spider-Man. There was a lot of devisive talk on this, and a lot of "how could Spider-Man be black?" being tossed around. Well, since comics are basically tropes and personified stereotypes anyway, lets look at Peter Parker. A poor kid whose parents are dead, lives with his Aunt and Uncle. Wants to go to college with a scientific degree program. Works his way through college. House is robbed and Uncle is murdered. There is no real racial profile for this in real life, but in the realm of tropes and stereotypes you almost have to make a Peter Parker character black, don't you? I am not saying that the use of stereotypes is the best way to go, but neither is making Peter Parker white just because he has always been white. From a Spider-man angle, Glover is a great fit. He has the acting range to pull off the dual identity necessary for a super hero. He can certainly crack wise; an essential element for Spider-Man. I don't know anything about the actor in the forthcoming The Amazing Spider-Man film, but I have a feeling Glover could take him.

Just as Nichelle Nichols' work as Lt. Uhura in Star Trek was groundbreaking on many levels, (an overlooked one is that there was no imperative for the character to be black) I think it would be groundbreaking for DC to shake things up a bit. While I have only offered up African American actors thus far, there is little reason that most any particular character would be of a particular race. Certain cases, sure, such as Colossus being Russian, or Black Panther being a tribal African prince, but if the character is from the United States, he or she could easily be non-white. Let's mix it up and see if comics can't be important for something again.
2 comments:
Good post. I'm not that familiar with comics, but I do know that most of these characters have had several changes in appearance since they first showed up, so I don't know why a change in race would be a big deal. The exception would be if a character's ethnicity is important, as with Colossus. Then again, it's not like all Russians are uniform in skin tone. Yul Brynner was Russian, and they had him play pretty much every nationality in existence.
True about Brynner. I guess you couldn't have a German Apache Chief either. Theresa and I were talking a bit about "Homicide: Life on the Streets" in regard to this post. I did not watch that often, but they certainly seemed to go with "best actor for the part" -- the awesome Yaphet Koto played "Al Giardello" and Melissa Leo's "Kay Howard" who had a very androgynous portrayal. Det. Howard could have been another male character and the show wouldn't even need rewrites, from what I remember.
Glad you enjoyed the post.
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