Read on Twitter
This post contains spoilers for WandaVision.
I agree with and understand the position that "race-bending" fictional characters previous established as white presents a number of problems.
One is that creators who do this usually change the one character in question, but their friends, families, loves, interests, worlds, stories, interactions, and the whole narrative aesthetic remain white.
That is to say that if Lois Lane is white in a Black Superman movie and not a dark-skinned Black woman, a Black Superman is an empty, pessimistic (con)(de)ceit.
Another is that these character never truly escape their "alternate version" vibe and almost come across as the knock-off/secondary/tertiary version of the white character...
...further implanting in the public consciousness the idea that "white" equates to "first," "real," "central," "human," or "default."
Moreover, these superhero films (and the comics they're based on) however appealing, fun, or interesting, rarely get race right.
Moreover, these superhero films (and the comics they're based on) however appealing, fun, or interesting, rarely get race right.
Even in an allegedly pro-Black film like BLACK PANTHER, the villain is the Black man who is trying to liberate every Black person in the world (however problematically)...
...and the hero is the Black man who, instead of liberating Black people (and who actively turned his back on other Black people), would rather share his advanced civilization's Black-ass technology with white people.
I could break down how every single superhero film with a Black character in it failed that Black character or made that character some sort of stereotype or cipher for the white gaze.
For example: Last night, I just got done watching WANDAVISION. It was funny, thrilling, enjoyable, exciting, and sad (the surprise twists and battle scenes toward the end were really well done), but it was also racist to me.
It's a story about how a white woman's trauma destroys a bunch of lives and her only "accountability" is that the fake family she created disappears.
Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel/Photon/Pulsar/Spectrum), one of the greatest superheroes ever in my opinion, basically serves as Wanda's "You Is Kind/You Is Smart/You Is Important" cipher, letting her know that no matter how many lives she destroyed, it wasn't her fault...
...that she would've done the same thing if she was in Wanda's position, and all those people Wanda harmed will just have to get over it.
Monica's one "moment" in the show was putting her body on the line to protect Wanda's two fake children, literally standing in the way of a militarized unit shooting at them. The bullets pass through Monica and fall to the ground...
...(though Monica doesn't know she has this power until after they were done shooting at her).
And while I love Monica to pieces, I was left wondering why writers have this obsession with scenes where Black superheroes are being shot at but the bullets do no harm.
It almost seems to support the real-world idea that the reason why cops always shoot at Black people, and shoot so many rounds at that, is because white people think we're superhuman and bulletproof.
(so many of these killer cops' testimony always describes the Black victim of their violence as possessing some kind of superhuman qualities.)
There was also this running motif in the series where Wanda kept telling Monica she "didn't belong here" in the idyllic world that Wanda created. I replaced the word "Wanda" with "whiteness" and it all became clear to me.
I'm kind of bored with how predictable these films have become in regard to race and other political positions.
I'm going to watch FALCON AND WINTER SOLDIER, but I know, given how Falcon was previously written as Captain America's "I's with Cap'm!"-type lawn jockey, I'm going to have a problem with that series, too.
The white imagination (or imaginations that covet whiteness) is truly a strange place.
But back to a Black Superman: It's not that I don't have full faith in Ta-Nahesi Coates. It's that Ta-Nahesi doesn't get to make final calls, and that is where I'm certain the same entrenched anti-human ideologies will make their way into the theaters.
P.S. Brandon Ford on Facebook said this "Black Superman" stuff is just a Warner PR move to offset/cover up all the horrific shit they've done to Ray Fisher and given Hollywood's history and pathology, that tracks.
For more about the superhero genre and industry and its problematics with race, gender, etc., please read: https://themiddlespaces.com/2015/03/31/humanity-not-included/
Also, if you are interested in comic books that largely escape these troublesome bigoted pathologies, please read:
FAR SECTOR by NK Jemisin and Jamal Campbell: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54197207-far-sector
FAR SECTOR by NK Jemisin and Jamal Campbell: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54197207-far-sector
NOBLE by Brandon Thomas and Roger Robinson: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36193012-noble-vol-1
B*TCH PLANET by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25074849-bitch-planet-vol-1
