Saw the trailer for "Iron Man 3" - and sighed.
The bad guy is called The Mandarin.
Okay, Marvel? Pretend, just for a minute, that not everybody going to see your current films has actually read the original early-60s comics with their early-60s racial attitudes. Pretend even harder, for another minute, that not everybody going to the movies this summer is going to be a white guy in his 50s. ‘Cause believe it or not, some of us are not nostalgic for the tales of White heroes bravely taking on the Yellow Peril. (Not even its Cold-War-updated version, the Yellow Red Menace.)
Film tried an end-run by casting a white guy as the baddie - but retained the name Mandarin. So why not simply have a brand-new villain to go with all the brand-new special effects and the updated timeline? Oh, right, those hordes of 50something white male comic-book geeks coming to the cinema this summer.
Which of course wouldn’t be so bad if all the titular superheroes in all these films weren’t so dang white.
I’m currently trying to explain White Privilege 101-D (Films) to a couple of the more upset geeks on the blog that aired the trailer. I’m lucky in that they’re being civil in their butthurtitude (the blogger often posts controversial stuff and allows debate and discussion, but will cut people off if they make personal attacks).
One of them snottily asked me how much research I’d done on the villain, fake-geek-girl style - so I asked HIM how much research he was going to demand Chinese-American filmgoers do before he’d decide if they could be offended or not. No response from that one yet.
No matter how this talk turns out, I will remain grateful to all the geek bloggers out there that have been teaching me the vocabulary of racial discussion (privilege, white-washing, intersectionality) and through their eloquent essays and rants opening this middle-aged white woman’s eyes a little more than they were.
…And on the plus side, that’s $10 I won’t spend in a movie house this summer. Yay, banana split!
Okay, Marvel? Pretend, just for a minute, that not everybody going to see your current films has actually read the original early-60s comics with their early-60s racial attitudes. Pretend even harder, for another minute, that not everybody going to the movies this summer is going to be a white guy in his 50s. ‘Cause believe it or not, some of us are not nostalgic for the tales of White heroes bravely taking on the Yellow Peril. (Not even its Cold-War-updated version, the Yellow Red Menace.)
Film tried an end-run by casting a white guy as the baddie - but retained the name Mandarin. So why not simply have a brand-new villain to go with all the brand-new special effects and the updated timeline? Oh, right, those hordes of 50something white male comic-book geeks coming to the cinema this summer.
Which of course wouldn’t be so bad if all the titular superheroes in all these films weren’t so dang white.
I’m currently trying to explain White Privilege 101-D (Films) to a couple of the more upset geeks on the blog that aired the trailer. I’m lucky in that they’re being civil in their butthurtitude (the blogger often posts controversial stuff and allows debate and discussion, but will cut people off if they make personal attacks).
One of them snottily asked me how much research I’d done on the villain, fake-geek-girl style - so I asked HIM how much research he was going to demand Chinese-American filmgoers do before he’d decide if they could be offended or not. No response from that one yet.
No matter how this talk turns out, I will remain grateful to all the geek bloggers out there that have been teaching me the vocabulary of racial discussion (privilege, white-washing, intersectionality) and through their eloquent essays and rants opening this middle-aged white woman’s eyes a little more than they were.
…And on the plus side, that’s $10 I won’t spend in a movie house this summer. Yay, banana split!