On Black Characters and the Cost of Diversity

As you likely already know, Michael B. Jordan will play the Human Torch in the new Fantastic Four film, slated for release on June 19, 2015. This casting decision was met with its fair share of outcry, because Johnny Storm is understood to be a White character, and Michael B. Jordan is clearly African-American. I think it would be easy to write it off as just another instance of fans of a very White and very male industry being a very White and male kind of racist. But there are deeper questions about misunderstanding of the role of diversity in artistic representation. During my tenure at this blog, I’ve written a fair amount about race and representation in the geek world, not just in comics, but also in video games, and theatre. I’ll be honest, I’ve found a dearth of good arguments against increasing the level of racial diversity in geek culture. Once more, with feeling: brown kids deserve more brown superheroes. Most counter-arguments to that notion are vapid, disingenuous, or just plain racist, like “most people won’t be able to relate to that character if his race is changed/is nonwhite”. There’s a comic over at Critical Miss that sums it up perfectly:

People can identify with Fox McCloud and he’s a bipedal fox. But a dude with darker skin is somehow too alien? What is that if not [racism]?

Arguments like this one are easily, and hilariously, dismissed (seriously, go read that comic). But every once in a while, a more seductive argument against diversity of representation pops up. It usually goes something like: “Why is it okay to change the race of [x], who is White, but not okay to change [y], who is a POC, to a White character?” The argument relies on a rather misguided sense of absolute equality, among myriad other problems. It’s probably easier to get traction on such an issue if we phrase it in terms of concrete examples.

Penny Arcade Expo and “Zoo” Diversity

Geek culture is a beautiful thing, and terrible. In that way it is kind of like Galadriel. It is also very, very white. In that way it is also like Galadriel. Unlike Galadriel, it is not very female. In all seriousness, one of the things that geek culture struggles with most is being inclusive and diverse, on pretty much every axis. We have serious problems with the most 101-level diversity stuff. Don’t buy that? Donald Glover couldn’t even suggest a film with a black Spider-Man without people freaking out and calling him ‘nigger’ for trying to “take Peter Parker from [them],” even though black Spider Man is already a thing. A woman can’t even suggest that GTA V might be sexist (who would have guessed that?) without receiving awful transphobic comments and threats. We, as a community, stumble on the most basic race/gender stuff. Class/ableism seems to elude us entirely. I don’t want to ignore or diminish all the great parts of our community that are actively doing something about that and representing in fantastic ways, but when I step back and look at all of our failures in that arena, I get pretty sad.

Adventure Time: Fionna is Crushed

I was excited to finally get a new episode Adventure Time with my favorite genderbent fanfiction females, Ice King’s Fionna and Cake. I was ecstatic when I heard Marshall Lee the Vampire King would finally speak (voiced by Donald Glover). As the episode went on I became less and less happy until I was just agitated, especially with Slime Princess’s suggestion of “What if there was a little more romance in the story?”Damn it Adventure Time, didn’t we already go over this?