i’ve been waiting to watch tasm2 but i just saw your post about it being racist and now im just ehhhh probably not worth it. but can you explain why it’s racist bc i haven’t seen anyone else talk about it. thanks!
queerhawkeye-deactivated2017012:
hey baby! so, this is gonna be a huge huge spoiler, and this comes from a white girl living in south america, so what i’m telling you is repeating what other people have taught me:
there is only one named, visible character of color in the entire movie. if you squint, you might see a few brown faces in the background, but the only named, visible character of color is max dillon, a.k.a. electro.
max is, in the comics, and in every animated adaptation up to this moment, a white, mentally able man who really, really enjoys being bad. some gangster who got superpowers and couldn’t have been happier about it. a complete asshole, but not a problematic character. max, in the movie, is a mentally ill black man. not any mentally ill black man, but specifically a schizophrenic black man.
and, i didn’t know this until a while ago because, of course, racial politics change from country to country, but this is a movie written and produced in the united states, with a story happening in the united states; so we need to specially look into what is the relation between schizophrenia and black men in the states’ history. and what do we find when we look into this? that schizophrenia was specifically re-defined during the 60s to invalidate and institutionalize rebellious black men. [for a more extensive read: x] schizophrenia was re-defined to mean obsession (with their cause, with this idea of a rebellion, with the idea that they deserved more than they had), violence (so that black men who joined any militancy for their rights would be seen as ill and out of control) and paranoia (because these black men blamed the white man of their troubles and thought they had somehow been wronged, and that was obviously a delusion, right?).
max dillon starts the movie obsessed with being recognized for his work and obsessed with peter. then, when he gets in an accident and becomes electro, he becomes violent and tries to seek revenge in the (white) men who stole his work, and on spiderman for not recognizing him. he is institutionalized, and during the whole movie we can hear the ‘voices in his head’ telling him how he was wronged, and robbed, and needs to get his vendetta. he dies at the end of the movie, while the white villain continues to live.
this movie also lacks in female representation, and is terribly ableist not only towards mentally ill people, but towards physically ill people with chronic illnesses. it’s a giant pile of shit, and i really, really suggest you rewatch spider-man 3 and laugh at how terrible that one was instead of growing as bitter and angry as i did after tasm2.
I just wanted to add that there’s also that scene where Peter subdues Electro using a fire-hose, which should recall state violence committed against Black protestors during the Civil Rights era – and it’s played for laughs.
Spider-Man 3 isn’t fantastic for representation or anything, but it’s a hell of a lot better than ASM2. Damn.
[I did a lot of railing against that movie for its ableism when it first came out, but the intersection of racism-ableism re Electro never occured to me. My apologies, folks. :( ]