Barnes and Noble "Diverse Editions"

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

Mary Shelley described him as having yellow skin.

Either way, not black or white. So the new "diverse" cover would just be so wrong. Thanks for the correction.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'd have to agree the Romans were equal opportunity slavers. Whether that was good or bad? That's a whole other question.

As for Disney? They wouldn't make the movie without slaves, they'd just have a totally unrealistic image of slavery and likely have 99% of the slaves being black since their audience would be more comfortable with that image.

As far as I can tell, most people who are/were involved in slavery were equal opportunity slavers. The vast majority of slaves were white in Rome, mostly because Rome rarely went sub-Sahara. Slaves tended to be either captives or people sold into slavery, but in either case, they were people from either the Mediterranean area or Europe. Blacks were around, but there was a reason that Romans tended to call most black Nubians.

Much later, there was a huge slave trade in the Arab world for slaves from Northern Europe. Most of the early slaves in the Caribbean were either white or Indians because that's what was available.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Frankenstein's monster was already of color (green).

The movie version.
Other versions have him the color of old faded parchment.

In the book he isn't a reanimated corpse but more of a clone or an organic android. The book doesn't talk of body parts but of "ingredients".

Taking a cartoony version of the movie look for anything this side of a spoof is lazy to start with and bad judgment in most scenarios.
Now, if you're spoofing a recognizable real world person...
(Say, Mike Trout, who is at times almost superhumanly good at his business.)
But this definitely was not the case.

Bad, bad judgment all the way down the line.

[leebase]

Note....they built an Artificial Intelligence routine to read 100 books looking for characters that weren’t specifically described as white. This wasn’t just something PR people did.

BUT - how is this different than changing the color or gender of Super Heroes? Captain Marvel anyone? Or how about re appropriating the Iron Fist with an Asian actor (as some clamored for)?

But the real travesty is that Black History month is supposed to be about bringing to light the REALITY that blacks have already played important and prominent roles in history....and to tell THOSE stories that have been neglected compared to white historical persons.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by leebase

But the real travesty is that Black History month is supposed to be about bringing to light the REALITY that blacks have already played important and prominent roles in history....and to tell THOSE stories that have been neglected compared to white historical persons.

Which is exactly why the B&N stunt was so badly received.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by leebase

BUT - how is this different than changing the color or gender of Super Heroes? Captain Marvel anyone? Or how about re appropriating the Iron Fist with an Asian actor (as some clamored for)?

People whining about changing colors/genders of superheroes is so tiresome. These are corporate controlled properties. The ones doing the changing are the proper owners and they are entitled to do as they please with them.

Besides, it is ALWAYS a stunt. Inevitably, the 'new' character becomes a spin-off character and the original returns. This has been happening since the eighties (or earlier if you want to talk about the new Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman and so forth).

And honestly, I don't get your pointing to Captain Marvel?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Can you make a movie about ancient Rome without the slaves? Perhaps only Disney could.

Zack Snyder seemed to have no problem doing it in a movie about ancient Greece. I do think it's funny that it turned out to be a movie well liked by people who get upset about historical inaccuracies if it means non-white actors cast as royalty.

[SleepyBob]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

And honestly, I don't get your pointing to Captain Marvel?

???

Captain Marvel is a very current example of a franchise switching the sex of a character, which is exactly what he was talking about.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-appropriation

I actually found that article in the Guardian to be rather humourous. Hmmm... the top two groups were 76% of the respondents self-identified as white and 7% of the respondents self-identified as Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. Not to mention the "encouraging numbers in the intern section" where 49% of interns self-identified as "black, indigenous or people of colour".

Looking at the U. S. Census Bureau for 2019, it lists 76.5% of Americans as white (I'm not going to dig into the weirdness of white vs. white Hispanic, black vs. black Hispanic, etc.), and 5.9% and 0.2% for Asian and native Hawaiian/Pacific islander for a total of 6.1%. This constitutes racial imbalance? Admittedly, the differences in how the various groupings are defined makes it a bit hard to compare.

I got my fingers burned a couple of years back when I made the mistake of suggesting that since the majority of university students in Canada are women with over 60% of the student population, it was time to start encouraging male high school students to consider attending university. Honestly, I did not suggest that baby girls should be abandoned on the nearest hillside preferably in the middle of winter, simply that some of the programs to encourage non-male high school students to continue on to university were no longer needed and that some of that effort should be moved to encouraging male high school students to attend university.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Zack Snyder seemed to have no problem doing it in a movie about ancient Greece. I do think it's funny that it turned out to be a movie well liked by people who get upset about historical inaccuracies if it means non-white actors cast as royalty.

If you mean the 300 movies, those were pretty awful imho. And I think the same of Gladiator, which seems to be well liked as well. It was a corny tear-jerker which had little to do with history. Imho, naturally.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SleepyBob

???

Captain Marvel is a very current example of a franchise switching the sex of a character, which is exactly what he was talking about.

Carol Danvers has been Captain Marvel since 2012. Before that, Captain Marvel was an alien man (Mar-Vell), a black woman (Monica Rambeau), an alien clone (Genis-Vell), the alien clone's sister (Phyla-Vell) yet another alien (Khn'nr), still yet another alien (Noh-Varr) and finally Carol Danvers. If anything, Carol's been around longer than all but Mar-Vell, created in 1968 and became the superhero Ms. Marvel in 1977.

The original Marvel Captain Marvel is dead and has been since 1982.



Which of these characters is the 'real' Captain Marvel?

Look, you can whine about girl Thor, Korean Hulk, black girl Iron Man, etc. But complaining about who the current Captain Marvel is in Marvel comics world is weak sauce.

And hopefully it is already known that Marvel comics Captain Marvel is completely unrelated to Fawcett/DC's Billy Batson Captain Marvel (aka: The Big Red Cheese). And he had his own movie.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

If you mean the 300 movies, those were pretty awful imho.

We agree there. 300 is a technical achievement, but it's not a great movie. My biggest gripe is that it derailed Michael Mann's plans to film The Gates of Fire. Now that is a movie I would have loved to see.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by leebase

BUT - how is this different than changing the color or gender of Super Heroes? Captain Marvel anyone? Or how about re appropriating the Iron Fist with an Asian actor (as some clamored for)?

The superhero stories are a different kettle of fish because both DC and Marvel run multiverses and DC in particular has a 60+ year tradition of Legacy heroes for everybody this side of the Trinity. Multiple Flashes, Green Lanterns, Wildcats, Doctor Fate, Doctor Midnight, Spectre, etc, etc. And they recently canonized all the different versions of their live action shows as existing in different simultaneous Universes, including the movie versions, during the adaptation of 1985's CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. They even had three different Supermen, portrayed by the original actors, in the same episode. Three flashes, too. There's been talk of Michael B. Jordan playing one of tbe parallel universe Superman version. Hopefully the good one, ValZod, son of General Zod and not the one from a universe where everyone was racebent, both whites and blacks.
(They've done worse, believe me. Some are amusing, others... best forgotten, those.)

Over at Marvel, they've had at least versions of Captain America, over 4 versions of Iron Man, even multiple Iron Fists. And they have dozens of SpiderMan versions.

Captain Marvel has had 6 versions of both sexes at Timely/Mavel dating to the 60's. (Plus another dreadful one that was neither the original nor the squatters.)
Most were mediocre, which particularly hurts because they (legally) appropriated the Marvel name from the one true Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, and his twin the ever delightful Mary Marvel, forcing their names to be switched to SHAZAM!.(Long sordid story with no clean hands.) (And yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name, which is an acronym.)

As for the current version of Captain Meh, she came by the name reasonably honestly in the comics, after 40-some years as a female spinoff under the Ms. Marvel name. After repeated failures to develop a marketable character to fit the trademark, Marvel finally tried renaming her to squat on the trademark in the comics.

Adaptations can be afforded some leeway in switching from serialized comics to TV or movies and often tbe change works. Not always, though. (Race bending Jimmy Olsen in tbe Supergirl tv show was hard to excuse when everything else about tbe character in tbe show matched two preexisting comics character. More so when they wrote him off the show last year.)

Just today the Harley Quinn/Birds of Prey movie dropped with new versions of the cast characters. Classic Birds of Prey is Huntress/Black Canary/and Barbara Gordon (either as Batgirl or the much better Oracle version). This version didn't have access to Gordon because there's a BATGIRL movie in development, so tbey substituted another
The biggest change were making the Canary actually black, not just a blonde in black leather. The actress in question did great work, though. So did the Actress playing Huntress. A BIRDS OF PREY sequel minus Harley Quinn wil find an expectant audience. (The movie is pretty good. Not WW great but much better than Captain Meh.)

Character variants in comics are more of a tradition than a new development.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I actually found that article in the Guardian to be rather humourous. Hmmm... the top two groups were 76% of the respondents self-identified as white and 7% of the respondents self-identified as Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. Not to mention the "encouraging numbers in the intern section" where 49% of interns self-identified as "black, indigenous or people of colour".

Humorous is that a lot of those internships are unpaid or summer jobs and tbe rest are ridiculously underpaid. Interships in corporate publishing are about building connections and establishing name recognition for future careers as agents or securing 6-7 figure author advances.

Even more humorous is that the spread doesn't really have anything to do with race but class. If instead of race the survey asked about educational background the result would be close to 100% IVY LEAGUE. They really do want to change their racial makeup, hence all the handwringing, but they have zero interest in bringing in people from outside their own background. Too much risk of getting exposed to people from other sensibilities.It might change corporate culture.

It's a very parochial culture with no interest in changing.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by SleepyBob

???

Captain Marvel is a very current example of a franchise switching the sex of a character, which is exactly what he was talking about.

No. They are entirely different characters that actually coexisted way back when, as friends. They just had USAF Colonel Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel adopt the name of Kree Captain Mar-Vell to honor her dead friend.

There *was* sexbending in the movie but it wasn't Captain Meh herself: it was in replacing Kree Spy Walter Lawson with Kree Spy Wendy Lawson.

And it wasn't the sex-bending that made it a poor movie but the bad script, poor direction, and bad editing. (The CGI wasn't particularly good, either. It was closer to CW grade than other Marvel or DC movies. They cheaped out.)

The other gripe was in casting a 20-something trendy actress for the role of a 40-ish comic book character when there were established age-approoriate actresses of substance available and interested.