GERARD WAY HAS PROFITED FROM RACISM: a thread

this is a thread to show and explain instances of racism within gerard way's work. this list is non-exhaustive and made from memory, so there may be examples i have not mentioned. this is NOT a thread to cancel gerard.

this thread will contain discussions of racism, racial caricatures, spoilers for TUA: apocalypse suite & dallas and spoilers for killjoys: california.

this thread will also be LONG.

i am making this as i have noticed that many people view gerard as someone who is wholly unproblematic and are oblivious to the issues with his work. obviously i am a fan of gerard's - i have 2 twt stan accounts alone - but i am not an uncritical fan of gerard's.

i have been a fan of mcr since 2010, and have been a stan since 2014. many of these issues are things i have been talking about in fandom (on tumblr, as that was my platform back them) since 2014. so these are issues in their work that /a child/ was aware of and hurt by

these are also issues that the majority of people i have discussed them with were unaware of. i don't begrudge anyone's ignorance - as i'll discuss at the end, i think they were mainly the product of ignorance - but i do think that they are important to be aware of. anyway:

PART 1: TUA: APOCALYPSE

the umbrella academy was gerard's first foray into publishing comics under his own name. he collaborated on it with artist gabriel ba. it was six issues, running from 2007-2008. it is a satire of ensemble team hero comics, such as x-men.

the main premise of the comics is on a single day, 43 children all over the world were suddenly born to women who were not pregnant. 7 of them were collected by sir reginald hargreeves, in order to form a superhero team.

right off the bat, all the children collected by reginald are white in the comics. i won't dwell on this, but this starts a theme of gerard nearly exclusively writing white protagonists. i do think it's odd that these children were born all over the world, however +

the team is all white. to my recollection, this is not textually explored at all.

abhijat is reginald's servant and bodyguard. he follows reginald all over the world. within the first 6 issue run, abhijat doesn't speak at all: he is literally a voiceless servant with no agency at all. gerard notes in the volume notes that he wanted to give abhijat lines, but +

ran out of space to do so. abhijat is the stock "brown servant" stereotype of the british aristocracy, a holdover from colonial times. this /could/ be shorthand to show how exploitative reginald is, however as abhijat has not opportunity to contrast this stereotype, i believe +

it reinforces the stereotype more than opposes it. this is in contrast to, say: hazel & chacha wearing nazi uniforms in dallas. they are depicted in that way because it is (lazy) visual shorthand to show that these characters are bad people.

a generous reading of tua may place abhijat in a similar function, there to express that reginald is not a loveable mentor like professor x. however, that equates abhijat, a person, with the literal objects that uniforms comprise of.

PART 2: TUA: DALLAS

dallas is the followup to apocalypse suite, published from 2008-2009. the art team returned, with illustrations by ba and colours by stewart. it is six issues, and follows a time hopping story of the boy trying to kill jfk.

in dallas, we meet a group called the vampire viet cong. they are exactly what you think.

(tw illustrated blood)
they are drawn like this:

what's the issue with that? well, they are drawn with the obvious features of anti-asian racial caricatures: slanted eyes, buck teeth, grossly foreign compared to the "normal" american characters. it follows a tradition of anti-asian caricature, which came from the yellow peril:

the emphasis of these features on the nameless body fodder of the vampire viet cong serves to further dehumanise them and justify the brutal slaying they meet at the hands of our heroes, the umbrella academy. compare how the vcv are depicted at a distance compared to americans:

while these were drawn by gabriel ba, not gerard, however as they have emphasised the collaborative nature of their work on tua, i cannot imagine gerard did not sign off on the art from these pages.

also just kind of wild that he'd write god saying a slur but go off i guess

INTERLUDE: WHAT IS ORIENTALISM?
referring to the influential book by edward said, orientalism is the portrayal of the orient (asia) as an exaggerated Other, emphasising difference and western superiority. it is a exoticising and fetishising gaze upon the east.

From Wikipedia: "These cultural representations usually depict the ‘Orient’ as primitive, irrational, violent, despotic, fanatic, and essentially inferior to the westerner or native informant, +

and hence, ‘enlightenment’ can only occur when “traditional” and “reactionary” values are replaced by “contemporary” and “progressive” ideas that are either western or western-influenced."

PART THREE: DANGER DAYS

danger days was the fourth studio album by mcr, released in 2010. it follows a story of four rebels, the killjoys, fighting against BLI, an evil megacorporation, that is out to homogenise the world (by destroying art, colour, & individuality).

i could write essays on danger days (and i'm sure have in 2015) so this is just a brief overview on the orientalism inherent in the concept, and is not intended to be an extensive discussion of the themes of the album.

twitter is making me send these tweets so this thread TBA

one prominent feature of danger days is its adoption of japanese aesthetics. this trope is common in the sci-fi genre (lots to say here but no space), so it's not unusual for gerard to utilise it in the development of their own sci-fi world.

however, the adoption of japanese aesthetic and language is primarily used for the characterisation of BETTER LIVING INDUSTRIES, the enemy of the killjoys in dd. BLI's ethos is to destroy individuality and homogenise the population to the image of its techno-futurist capitalism

this echoes 1960s american worries of japan, originating in the race for technology. it specifically draws upon the ideas of the homogenous and anti-individualist orient, whose foreign ideal is to overtake the west and force a conformist dystopia upon the occident.

the fear of the apocalyptic surveillance state is increasingly orientalised in western society, following anxieties of chinese influence in the west. gerard's choice to use japan instead of china for the aesthetics of BLI show that his choice to orientalise BLI is not commentary+

on current events, but rather drawing upon anxieties the oriental stereotype of the homogenising Other, while also appropriating an ethnicised aesthetic he enjoyed. it is a very shallow adoption of the Other in order to exotify his depiction of the future +

one that has no concern for the racialised language embedded within the use of the Orient in sci-fi dystopia in general, and specifically the way its racialised subtext is used to support the themes of the album. it is lazy and shallow and most importantly: kinda racist

PART 4: KILLJOYS: CALIFORNIA

published from 2013-2014, this was a 6 issue miniseries following the story of the girl, a character from the dd album. it was written by gerard with shaun simon, and drawn by becky cloonan.

continuing the issue of orientalism from the album, kjs gave us more information on the director, the japanese woman in charge of BLI. she is played by a japanese actress in the sing video, and is shown in a kimono in the comics

she is also revealed to be an android (probably a pornodroid), and depicted in a highly sexualised and fetishised manner. this falls into the stereotype of east asian women being sex/fetish objects, by turning her into a literal fetish object as an android

the pornodroids, who are all asian-coded, are more of the same: robots built to be sexual objects. these are the only signficant asian women in the series.

despite being the only droid to gain agency, blue still never really manages to shed her sexualised depiction, wearing thigh high boots, cleavage-baring shirts, and hot pants to her death; other charas in the zones all wear long pants and jackets.

addendum but becky cloonan did the girl dirty

PART 5: CONCLUSIONS

this is just a selection of examples from the top of my head, with a brief explanation of why i find them worrying. as i said, it is not intended to be thorough and exhaustive. this is also not intended to be a callout/cancel thread

rather, i think these issues really can be attributed to white ignorance: simply, by virtue of being white, it never really occurred to gerard that these things are problematic. many fans i know have also simply never considered these as issues because of lack of awareness

however, ignorance doesn't excuse the fact that he has financially profited from work that contains racist themes, racist stereotypes, and racist depictions of characters of colour.

and furthermore i do think it is an issue when fans of gerard continue to think of him as this perfect, wholly unproblematic figure who has done no wrong. rather, as fans, i do think it is important to be critical in our consumption of their work.

gerard isn't some flawless godlike being, he is a person with flaws, who is growing and evolving. i do think that his work is improving: kjs: national anthem, for example, has a much more diverse main cast than TUA, which i do see as an improvement

but i do think, especially when we look at gerard's activism and "wokeness", we need to look beyond just their words and question where they walk the walk. gerard has been much more silent on politics than ray and frank, and i do think that is pretty fucking bad

especially, again, as gerard is a white millionaire who has financially profited from work containing racism and homophobia (another thread for another day).

as critical fans who are supportive of them, i also think we have an obligation to ask them to do better, and to decry the instances where they do harm. that doesn't mean we still can't celebrate the many things we love about them/their work

finally: please don't harass gerard about this or write stupid "jokes" in his instagram comments as you do with his wife. it's bad fucking activism, it's in extremely poor taste, and it shows you don't actually care about supporting people who are victims of racism

eh, fuck it. if gerard (or anyone else) finds this thread helpful, they can kick me a few bucks or buy a commission from me here https://ko-fi.com/kobrakid