I'm
in a terse mood. Wanna know why? Well, there are very few things that
really huffle my puffs and this is a list of them: 1) stupid shit; 2) law
school shit; 3) racist shit; and 4) “even though God made my body in his image,
men in nightgowns tell me that it’s a gross and evil thing therefor I find my
natural human body related urges icky” shit (or puritanical views on sexy time
for short). That’s it. You steer clear of those categories and you find a very
happy and agrreable man of every hour, drew everyday. But then I go and hear
about the “controversy” over the casting of Michael Balthasar Jordan (I assume
that’s what the “B” stands for), one of the finest young actors not named Jonah
in all of Hollywood, as the human torch in fox’s Fantastic 4 reboot.
| seriously, the fat kid from "superbad" just turned 30 and has 2 oscar nods already. he's basically on route to be this generation's robert de niro. |
Seriously.
People are pissed. Why? Glad you asked, and the reason for the misplaced nerd
rage took a hard left right into one of my puff huffler zones, then swerved in
time to side swipe anothers bloated gas guzzling minitank of a car. You see,
this is a fundamentally different issue then the rage over batfleck or superman
murder. Those two internet poo-ricanes (tm) were due to questions over ben
affleck’s ability to pull off being batman (he can, but much like Clooney was,
is too… too… who he is for the cowl) and for the sheer… just
un-supermanlikeness of neck snapping a fellow kryptonian. I mean superman will
kill a… giant bug monster from the center of the earth, or rip the head clean
off an unkillable cyborg (hell, he banished doomsday to the end of time, so he’s
no saint) but straight up bare hands murder of a humanoid form his home planet? No. just no.
 |
| no. |
 |
| NO. |
Before
I go completely on this sidetrack like another, faster locomotive is heading
toward me- hold on a sec…
 |
| stop it. |
Ok,
so before I go off on this sidetrack any further like my engine gave out on lap
63, what makes the Michael Bosworth Jordan human torch outcry different? Well,
as this article puts it, and I’m paraphrasing, “because white nerds are racist
little pricks”. That’s right. The outrage has nothing to do with Michael
Benvolio Jordan’s capability of pulling off the complexities of Johnny Storm (b/c,
c’mon, being a hotheaded manchild requires Shakespearean depth and character
dev skills) as a character. It’s just
because J-Torch is a fire elemental and
we all know fire elementals are white people. Or at least that’s how they drew
him in the comic. But there’s a reason that stormfire johnny is white in the comic… it was first printed inthe sixties. The first black superhero wasn’t invented until a later
issue of the Fantastic 4 series.
 |
| you know he's black because it says so in his name. BP's a BA BTW... |
So that first piece of
rage inducing back lash is the easy one. Hell, it's the type of low
hanging fruit that has also seen outrage over Heimdall’s movie casting (a
decidedly black Idris Elba) or Nick Fury’s (an even blacker Samuel L. Jackson),
both traditionally white characters. And you know what? They crushed it in those roles. Hell, Samuel L.
“and the L is Motherfuckin” Jackson was so great as the leader of shield,
marvel retconned the character to look like him!
 |
| who you callin a ret-con, muthafucka? |
The second rage inducing
backlash (the one they swerved into earlier, remember?) is the other stupid
reasons people shit on these fine actor’s being cast in these roles: the purist
reasons. These are stupid. Why? Because they’re excuses for people to be racist
without feeling like dickholes. The purist reasons range from “but the
character was always white before, so casting a nonwhite person in the role
ruins it for me” to the equally annoying (and this is fantastic four specific) “but
how can he and sue still be sibs if he’s black and she’s white?”. Those arguments
seem reasonable until you hear the third, which pulls the sheet off the alleged
unracism and reveals the pointier hooded sheet underneath. The third purist
argument is, “but I can’t get invested in the character now, because they were
white in my head”
 |
| this basically |
All of those sentiments
are coded. They all imply a level of discomfort with black people akin to that
of finding your dog has been replaced with another dog of the same breed, but
in a different colorway. It’s like yeah, it’s a chow, but you don’t like it now
because it looks different than the chow you knew. Bad analogy aside, this has
even been used when the character in question was always black. If a character
is being adapted from print to film and is belived, white people will often
assume the character is white, even if the source material explicitly describes
them a different way.
 |
| **ahem** |
And to all you contrarians
who are loading up your, “but just because SOME people said racist shit doesn’t
mean EVERY person who doesn’t like these casting choices is racist” cannons to
counterstrike, SHUT UP! There are people who dislike Obama for policy reasons,
but that doesn’t excuse the inherent bigotry of the birther crowd and the
secret muslim coalition. Not to mention the “I’m uncomfortable with the idea of
a black president” contingent.
Now, the worst part
about these racists and puri-racists is that they’re hypocrits for shitting on
the ‘racelifting’ in Hollywood. Oh, you wonder how? Well then, you, you..
drewninite jerk, for the first time in drewniversal history, join me on page 2
and I’ll prove it…
