Is Being Ambiguously Black A Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

For the millionth time, representation matters! But unfortunately, we don’t always get to see ourselves quite so directly in human characters for various negative reasons. Maybe diverse characters were taboo at the time, maybe the author didn’t think a varied cast was necessary, or maybe the characters don’t necessarily have a racial or gender identity. But in this case, many tropes are still used to create characters that people of color can identify with.

This is sort of a personal issue for me: growing up, there weren’t a lot of Black characters outside of family sitcoms and token Black teammates. So to have a Black character who was uniquely their own person would have been a monumental thing. However, even though there weren’t very many Black characters I could identify with, there were still several racially ambiguous characters that I often thought of as Black.

I Guess Whitewashing is Okay Again

There have been many issues around race and comic book movies over the years. Marvel I feel has been the most notable with casting black actors in typically white roles. Alicia in Fantastic Four was black instead of the usual blonde-haired, blue-eyed character she is in the comics. Nick Fury, now played by Samuel L. Jackson is black, and perhaps the most controversial, Idris Elba played the Norse god Heimdall in Thor.

The Walking Dead: Seasons 1 and 2 Review

Spoiler alert!

Well, I’d say waiting two seasons to watch Shane die was certainly worth it, but that might imply wanting him dead to be my only reason to follow this show. The Walking Dead certainly differs from other mainstream zombie shows and movies, probably due to its focus. Most zombie things tend to concentrate on showing, you know, zombies. The Walking Dead, on the other hand, will go almost entire episodes without bloodthirsty carcasses stumbling across the screen to eat the random extras.

The lack of zombies—or walkers, in this case—has caused a bit of an outrage among some of the fans. This is probably in part due to the comics the show is based off, where the writers stated that they wanted the story to follow the character Rick around and chronicle his life during this tragedy. I cannot quote that exactly, as most of my comics are being borrowed at the moment, but you get the picture.

If there’s one thing I have to give The Walking Dead credit for it would be that, first and foremost, it’s one of the few things I’ve seen that’s portrayed people with real human reactions. I always find myself comparing it to something like the Resident Evil films, where Alice will meet an unimportant extra and watch that person get eaten with little to no emotional reaction to it. Like, it’s just a person, who cares, right? On top of that, not everyone in The Walking Dead is some badass with super fighting skills. They’re real relatable people having real relatable reactions.