I see a lot of people reblogging a post that links to this Gawker article, which has the headline “Spider-Man Can’t Be Gay or Black”, and includes a snippet from a Marvel/Sony licensing agreement that appeared via the Sony e-mail hack leaks.
Funny, though – Gawker only provided a teeny snippet of that agreement, and didn’t provide a link to the full document. Also, their own conclusions are false even based on the snippet they provided. Here are the parts they included in the article:
Read that again. Nothing in there says that Spider-Man can’t be homosexual, it says that Sony cannot portray whichever Spider-Man character they choose to utilize as homosexual unless Marvel wrote him that way. Basically, it’s Marvel reserving the right to choose the sexuality of any particular Spider-Man alter ego for themselves, instead of leaving it up to Sony.
Note that this section is specific to the character Peter Parker. Peter has his own backstory, his own traits, that Marvel wants to keep consistent. There is nothing in this section that says Spider-Man can’t be a POC – only that if Sony is using the Peter Parker alter-ego, he is Caucasian. The earlier section above specifically references Sony using “Peter Parker or an alternative Spider-Man character” – they’re not in any way limited to using white-boy Peter.
So what did Gawker choose not to include? The next section of the contract is called “Alternative Versions of Spider-Man Character”, and specifies that any non-Peter versions basically should stay with the same general time period, location, costume, origin story, and powers. That’s it.
Moreover, the lists Gawker pictured are taken from the summaries included in the body of the agreement – the “Schedules” attached to the contract go into far more detail. (This is typical with contracts.) For instance:
“He is not homosexual unless the Spider-Man Character portrayed in the Production is an Alternative Spider-Man Character that is portrayed as homosexual in New Authorized Works.”
“The name of the Alternative Version’s civilian alter ego (e.g., Miguel O’Hara), if any, must be used.”
It goes on to list more than twenty alternative Spider-Man characters Sony may use, including Miles Morales, Miguel O’Hara, and Peter Prabhakar.
Italics mine, but it’s clear from these portions that Marvel was open to Sony using non-white versions of Spider-Man. Marvel also left themselves the option of creating new Spider-Man alter egos after this contract was in effect in 2011 who, if portrayed by Marvel as homosexual, could then be portrayed by Sony the same way.
Furthermore – this agreement is from 2011. Well before the new deal was negotiated that allows Spidey to appear in the MCU and reboots Sony’s entire Spider-Man franchise. We have no idea what that new contract includes. For Gawker to post these snippets out of context in 2015 as though they might apply to the current casting situation – and then, to mischaracterize the wording in their headline – is just irresponsible.
