This week’s Casting Couch is a bit different than my others, for a couple reasons. First, as you’ll read in just a bit, there’s a certain subject relating to comics and movies, specifically their casting that I feel needed to be discussed. It’s complicated and while I’ll give it my best, the subject will continue on for a long time. And second, I couldn’t think of a property in time to cast it. So also, if you have anything you would like me to cast; please, by all means suggest it! If I can do it, I will do it.
If you’d like, you can consider this a combination Casting Couch/Short Report. That’s fun, right?
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a movement brewing on the internet. If you frequent this site you’ve heard about. Hell, if you frequent the internet in general you’ve probably heard about it. Donald Glover, from the hilarious show Community, has thrown his hat in the ring as a possible heir to the mantle of your friendly neighborhood web-slinger. It’s caused a ton of controversy, with people either being enthusiastic about it or people railing against it because of one very visible difference to the character in the books. Yeah, Donald is black.
And even though the election of Barack Obama implied that we lived in a world where race simply does not matter, for a lot of people it still does. No matter your thoughts on the matter, there have been quite a few comments about his race in a negative sense, and there are still jokes about Obama and his blackness. It’s unfortunate, but true.
It’s a very sticky subject. Race is an attribute that ultimately means nothing. So what if he’s black? That’s the problem. Spider-Man is an iconic awkward Jewish or WASP-y kind of guy growing up in Queens. People have always seen this and in a way, have connected to it. Race has never been an issue in the Spider-Man universe.
But race becomes an issue when the character is explicitly a minority. For instance: when Ryan Choi was killed in Titans: Villains for Hire, people cried foul, accusing the DC Editors of racism. Why not, right? Choi was of Chinese descent, so his death must be racially motivated. Well, it wasn’t, and as Mocle put it, it’s about replacing new characters with the old characters. As soon as Ray came back and Ryan was around without a successful book, he was expendable. So he was killed, simple as that.
But what does this have to do with Donald Glover’s bid to be Peter Parker? Well, as soon as Peter becomes Black, he’s Black. Hollywood in their infinite wisdom would not play him as a colorblind character. He would instead be a caricature much like Blade became. If he weren’t a Vampire Slayer, Wesley Snipes would have been Shaft. There were no elements of Shaft in Blade before then, but he BECAME Shaft mostly due to Hollywood’s meddling.
And while it breaks my heart, because I would like nothing less than to see a young actor like Donald Glover be the man under the mask, macking on Mary Jane upside-down in alleys and washing my memory clean of that Tobey McGuire nonsense (especially the third one), I just don’t think Hollywood is “there” yet. Even a gifted young director like Marc Webb wouldn’t be able to handle the endless notes and suggestions, further tweaking the script to fit what they see as a young black person would do, say, or experience. Spider-Man would no longer be the relatable character he is today, but he would devolve into a stereotype. And quite frankly, we all deserve more than that, Mr. Glover especially.
How do we move past this kind of problem? Well, it’s simultaneously easy and difficult. What we need first is instead of publishers or creators simply making an existing character a different race; either by Legacy or an unfortunate storyline that is suspiciously similar to Kirk Lazarus’ character arc in Tropic Thunder (I’m looking at you Punisher); is to launch NEW characters that people can embrace. From then on it’s a symbiotic relationship between the writer and the reader. First, the writer has to write a character as he would any other character regardless of the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes or the gender they happen to be, and it has to be GOOD (of course). But then it falls to us.
Continued belowWhat are we to do? It’s simple! We need to buy these comics. As I said earlier, Ryan Choi was not a strong enough character to live. He was a redundant character without his own series to support him, he was a useless character. Quite frankly no one cared about him until he was dead, which is something that needs to not happen. If you don’t want these characters to die, then you should care when they’re alive, plain and simple.
It’s not even like we haven’t moved forward. Just a few years ago, Michael Clarke Duncan was cast as The Kingpin in Marvel’s Daredevil film, to tepid critical and fan reaction. The chief problem they had with the character? Kingpin was a white character who was made Black in the movie. Duncan wasn’t even cast for any other reason than he was the closest physical match to a hulking behemoth like Wilson Fisk. There was also Halle Berry as Catwoman (but the less said about that the better.), Catwoman is even a pretty color blind character, as Earth Kitt was a Black woman in a traditionally white role decades ago. But, and this is a huge but, the movement is localized to the internet. How many people have heard about the movement? How would this translate to the non-tweeting, non-facebooking, non-tumblring crowd? It’s a crap shoot.
We can say all we want about Spider-Man, Donald Glover, and the outrage that Spider-Man can’t be Black. We can scream all we want about women in refrigerators or Chinese men in Matchbooks, but until we make sure they actually matter to us, it’ll keep on happening. Let’s just hope we’ve grown up enough.
