Category Archives: race

A Non-Female Writer’s Opinion About That Wonder Woman Promo Picture

As the title attests, and as you probably know by now, I’m a guy. A cisgendered male, to be more specific, which for those not in the know means that I was born male and identify as one. And as a guy I’ve been writing about feminism on this blog since day one. While it’s always been my goal for the site to be a platform for female voices speaking out on those same issues [made reality in having Kat hop on board as well as the majority of our guest writers] the truth is that there are an essentially infinite number of topics and only so many bloggers.

That’s all to say that ideally this probably should’ve been tackled by a woman. While a given female perspective may not necessarily be the correct one, the fact of the matter is that they would be able to write from a level of understanding that I cannot. Yet here I am, covering Wonder Woman, arguably one of the biggest feminist icons.

ewWW

Yesterday Entertainment Weekly shared an exclusive promo image from Warner Bros.’ upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Diana Prince AKA Wonder Woman, the titular character, played by Gal Gadot, is second from the left. The other women, from left to right, are her mother Hippolyta [Connie Nielsen],
Menalippe [Lisa Loven Kongsli], and General Antiope [Robin Wright].

As it’s made its way across the internet it has generally been regarded with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, which should be no surprise given the fact that Wonder Woman is literally the biggest draw for people lining up to see Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. When it comes out in theatres next year it will have been Hollywood’s first return to female-led superhero movies since 2005’s Elektra, and arguably stands for so much more than the Jennifer-Garner-played red-clad assassin ever could.

wwMake no mistake, I am very excited for it. Seeing the Amazonian on the silver screen for the first time is also the primary reason I’m seeing BvS in the next few days, and a Wonder Woman t-shirt that I shamefully purchased at Hot Topic [shameful for the store, not the product] is the only merchandise I have bought and plan on buying [the poster on the right was free]. In spite of that, or maybe directly because of it, I ended up with a number of thoughts about the promo picture released. While the first point is the shortest and has nothing to do with my gender, the ones that follow may be defended by readers who can better relate. Which is to be expected, and that I hope people feel comfortable doing if they want to. Continue reading

For Your Consideration: Asian Doctor Strange, Courtesy of Kurt Busiek

Some weeks will prove busier than others, and on those occasions I’m choosing to present all of you with something worth thinking about.

As you may know just last week I covered both sides of the debate over Daniel Rand, AKA Iron Fist, being played by a person of Asian descent. Of particular concern to the writer in the “for” camp was that the narrative within the comics pushes the idea of a White man entering a foreign land, mastering their arts, and ultimately rising up to be one of the greatest among them. It’s a trope that belongs to Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange just as much as it does to The Living Weapon himself.

Kurt Busiek is a writer who has been in the industry for decades, with a four year stint on Avengers being his greatest claim to fame. With an extensive biography that spans the Marvel universe he’s widely regarded in comic book circles as a professional who knows what he’s talking about. Roughly a week ago he began sharing over Twitter about how Doctor Strange was very likely intended to be Asian from the very beginning, or at least depicted in such a fashion. I’ve compiled all relevant tweets below, for your consideration [all tweets not by Busiek were retweeted by him]:

https://twitter.com/karloff_fan/status/703650412381868032

https://twitter.com/devincf/status/703650991409750016

Continue reading

Asian Iron Fist: Point, Counterpoint, and My Two Cents

hi-yahhYesterday Entertainment Weekly revealed that Marvel had finally found their next star in Game of Thrones actor Finn Jones. The character he’ll be playing is Daniel Rand, AKA Iron Fist, the face of their fourth Netflix-exclusive series [following DaredevilJessica Jones, and the upcoming Luke Cage]. I could sum up who he is, but EW did a pretty good job with that in their coverage already:

“…Iron Fist is Daniel Rand, who at age of 9 travels with his family from New York to a lost mystical city called K’un-L’un. After some tragic twists of fate, Rand is adopted by the city’s ruler and taught advanced martial arts and the mystical power of the Iron Fist. As an adult, Rand returns to his native New York and begins a career as a superhero.”

In the comic books Danny is, much like his silver screen compatriots Captain America and Thor, White, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. Ever since it was announced that he would be headlining his own show there has been a discussion over what race he should be, with Keith Chow over at Nerds of Color making his stance clear with his article “Marvel, Please Cast An Asian American Iron Fist“. As soon as the news hit my tumblr feed was flooded with like-minded individuals, with one post in particular that caught my eye, presenting the following two tweets-

https://twitter.com/Wheeler/status/702941414942855170

-labeled “Point” and “Counterpoint”, respectively.

Now I have no intention of dedicating a large portion of this post to Liefeld, known in many comic book circles as being a man incapable of drawing feet [though now probably vastly more famous for co-creating Deadpool]. He also had just the two words to share, as opposed to a full article that Wheeler penned on the subject, so instead I’ve chosen to have Albert Ching of Comic Book Resources take his stead. Continue reading

Running the Race on The Bachelor

It’s been a quite a few years since the summer I spent watching Jillian Harris do her level best to find the perfect man on Season 5 of The Bachelorette. Fast forward to the beginning of 2016 and I find myself in the same position, this time with 27-year-old Hoosier heartthrob Ben Higgins. A number of things have changed in those seven years, like the price of bitcoin and the existence of this blog, while others haven’t, like my relationship status [single], ABC’s continued broadcasting of the search for love, and The Bachelor and The Bachelorette‘s respective track records with race.

Is Race on The Bachelor/Bachelorette Really an Issue?

Luckily for me, I’m not nearly the first person to cover this topic. Of particular note is Karen X. Cheng’s “Minorities on The Bachelor: When do they get eliminated?”, which lists the contestants who were racial minorities on both shows and, as the title suggests, exactly what week they did not receive a rose. Worth keeping in mind is that as of 2014 The Bachelor was in its 18th season, and The Bachelorette in its 10th.

Minorities On The Bachelor and The Bachelorette

Check out more specific, well-designed graphs by heading over to the article itself.

Cheng noted that there appeared to be a drastic spike after 2012, during which there was a class action lawsuit leveled against the series regarding “the deliberate exclusion of people of color from the roles of the Bachelor and Bachelorette underscores the significant barriers that people of color continue to face in media and the broader marketplace.” While the lawsuit was later dismissed she posits that the sheer amount of negative press the show garnered is what resulted in the network scrambling to make a change so quickly. Continue reading

Angoulême, #OscarsSoWhite, and the Possibility of Change

I had initially planned on permanently shelving this blog post, for the most part due to the fact that I felt the two incidents I was comparing had come and gone, and I try to stay topical. Then recently Facebook notified me that Kate Winslet not boycotting the Oscars was trending, and just today that acclaimed director Steven Spielberg had some thoughts about the awards ceremony. It appears that a discussion that began with the continuing hashtag #OscarsSoWhite is far from over.

rock

I wanted to call Chris Rock the one bright spot in this upcoming Academy Awards, but the irony was too much.

This may surprise you, but the focus of this particular blog post isn’t race. It is about social justice in general, though [just because this pony has more than one trick doesn’t mean that he has a lot of them]. Social justice is ultimately concerned with change, a positive transformation of our society, and is more often than not battling against the presumption that this is impossible. I’m going to be covering two somewhat recent events, both surrounding awards shows, that prove it’s not. Continue reading

“Hymn for the Weekend”: Appreciation, Appropriation, and the Exotic Black Woman

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop listening to “Hymn for the Weekend” on repeat.

However, before I had even listened to Chris Martin and Queen Bey meld their voices in a divine mesh of harmonies, I was reading about it on Tumblr.

Cultural Appreciation vs. Appropriation

The first thing I heard about the video was that it had some pretty rampant cultural appropriation. Since there have been a number of music videos and performances accused of cultural appropriation over the last few years, I wasn’t too surprised to hear about “Hymn for the Weekend” being added to the list.

The video quickly split viewers into two groups, those who considered it cultural appropriation, and those who appreciated the video’s focus on Indian culture. The clip below highlights a few of the key elements that have been discussed and criticized.

This discussion is tricky for a variety of reasons. For example, there is a time and place when a white person can wear Indian clothing and accessories without coming off as disrespectful. In some cases, it’s actually much more respectful to embrace local dress customs than to ignore them.

There are even music videos where diverse customs and styles have been featured without any backlash about appropriation.

This debate can also seem confusing when Indian fans, or fans with Indian heritage, don’t seem to be bothered by the video’s representation of their culture.

anigif_optimized-20745-1454418987-1 Continue reading