“In the 1950s the portrayal of a Black man in a position of authority and a discussion of racism in a comic was at the centre of a battle between Entertaining Comics editor William Gaines and the Comics Code Authority, which had been set up in 1954 to self regulate the content of US comics amid fears they were a corrupting influence on youth. Gaines fought frequently with the CCA in an attempt to keep his magazines free from censorship.
The particular example noted by comics historian Digby Diehl, Gaines threatened Judge Charles Murphy, the Comics Code Administrator, with a lawsuit when Murphy ordered EC to alter the science-fiction story “Judgment Day”, in Incredible Science Fiction #33 (Feb. 1956).
The story depicted a human astronaut, a representative of the Galactic Republic, visiting the planet Cybrinia inhabited by robots. He finds the robots divided into functionally identical orange and blue races, one of which has fewer rights and privileges than the other. The astronaut decides that due to the robots’ bigotry, the Galactic Republic should not admit the planet. In the final panel, he removes his helmet, revealing himself to be a black man.
Murphy demanded, without any authority in the Code, that the black astronaut had to be removed.
Feldstein, interviewed for the book Tales of Terror: The EC Companion, reiterated his recollection of Murphy making the request:
So he said it can’t be a Black [person]. So I said, ‘For God’s sakes, Judge Murphy, that’s the whole point of the Goddamn story!’ So he said, ‘No, it can’t be a Black’. Bill [Gaines] just called him up [later] and raised the roof, and finally they said, ‘Well, you gotta take the perspiration off’. I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, ‘F**k you’, and he hung up
good article which includes how the above character (Bazine Netal) is played by a white person (Anna Brewster), which i had seen nothing about on tumblr (and couldn’t find when i searched either) or otherwise up to this point so i felt like this needed to be posted particularly in light of that. ((**i am white do not want to step out of line by making a post about this, i just want this person/their words to be heard.))
look, just. if anything. i really think shaggy rogers could stand to be portrayed as lebanese, because casey casem was lebanese, and he’d even said how disappointed he was that he was only very rarely asked to voice characters of his own ethnicity, and when he did get asked, it was for, you know. evil stereotypes.
i just want you all to know that this is what he looked like, ok? the guy behind shaggy’s voice. and it just would be. really nice if shaggy’s ethnicity could reflect the guy that first played the character.
reasons representation in star wars is important: i was at a convention this weekend where we did an in character meet and greet/playdate event with kids as disney characters where i got to be rey. children, of course, have SO MANY QUESTIONS about you (as the character) and your life, and the biggest one i got was, unsurprisingly, “where is bb-8?”
so naturally, i said that bb-8 was off with my friends finn, who used to be a stormtrooper, and poe, the pilot. normally, kids tend to question why, or push or go off about things, but this one, 6 year old girl, simply replied to me, “oh! it’s because they’re in love, right?”
so i told her yes, yes they are.
this little girl is unaffected by the outside influences of the internet, social media, ship wars, or other people making her think things that don’t just come to her mind naturally. she simply saw that movie, and without seeing the sex of these two characters as an obstacle, accepted the idea that they were in love.
Honestly I don’t even care if Finn and Poe end up together or if Finn’s even gay or bi because if just Poe, JUST Poe is not heterosexual and they admit it, that changes EVERYTHING.
How many kids out there will see a badass, resourceful, handsome motherfucker who gets to be on the spectrum without being the comic relief, or a stereotype-laden shell of what the lgbt community actually is?
How many bigoted parents will see this and writhe in their seats because they have to accept the fact that the most successful franchise ever contains a queer poc who kicks ass and takes names, and their children are inevitably going to look up to him?
How many people will see these movies and see someone up there like them, someone who gets to be one of the stars without hiding or downplaying their sexuality?
How many people will talk about the lgbt community as a result of this decision?
How many people will have to face their homophobia when they trie to argue that a gay space pilot from a different galaxy is implausible because it doesn’t mesh well with their beliefs?
A ton of people.
Disney has a huge opportunity to do something good with these movies, and with Poe Dameron in particular. Representation is incredibly important, and the groundwork is already there. Sure, they’ll piss off some people if they follow through, but is Star Wars made for the homophobic assholes, or is it made for the children who would get to grow up seeing people who share their race, gender, and sexuality represented in a series that takes place across an entire galaxy?
You know, I’ve been thinking about the fact that Captain Phasma only ended up being a character because the fans demanded it, and that more Rey toys started turning up because the fans demanded it, and then I look at the amount of Stormpilot on my dash and the articles on mainstream news websites singing the praises of that ship and of the idea that there might be even one explicitly gay Star Wars character…
……well, I think, basically, everything in this post suddenly seems so much more plausible than it did even a couple of years ago, and I’m pretty pleased about that.
The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male.
You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster.
I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?
Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg commenting on how weird gendered defaults in entertainment are, and why we should think twice about them. Excerpted from this longer original post. (via 360degreesasthecrowflies)
sorry i couldn’t reply to you as soon as you sent this, but my internet connection’s been temperamental. thanks for not going on anon, i take it that means you do actually want an answer from me, and i’m happy to give it to you.
gotta say, i don’t appreciate you calling me ‘a whiny tumblr user’, all right? i made these revamped designs primarily for myself. still, i don’t know what’s going on on your side of the world. maybe you had a rough day and felt the need to take it out on someone. if that’s the case, i hope you’re feeling better now. anyway. there’s a few reasons why i tried to diversify the mystery inc gang in my fanart. one: it’s not the 1960s anymore. i expect the gang were all white ‘cause it was still that sort of ‘white only’ mindset for people that TV was trying to appeal to 50 or so years ago.
but it’s also quite personal to me. in 2009 they made this cheesy direct-to-DVD live action movie called ‘scooby doo: the mystery begins’. the girl that played velma is hayley kiyoko, who’s half-white-half-japanese.
i was 13 at the time (like, just slightly too old to unironically enjoy this sort of thing, but enjoy it i did), and i was astounded to see velma played by a girl that looked a bit like me. i had always identified with her character and i thought it was kickass that she was played by a girl with a similar kind of mixed ethnicity as me. the sense of personal representation was super important to me. and this was an official piece of scooby doo media, cheesy though it was. kind of in the vein of casting samuel l jackson as nick fury, a character who had previously been portrayed as white.
anyway. a year ago i saw this SD fancast where the SD gang had all been cast as young white folks, bar daphne, who’d been fancast as the girl who plays missandei in GoT. and i remembered while watching an SD movie with a friend that she’d said ‘daphne is so hilary banks’. so i considered a biracial daphne, looking like karyn parsons, and also it reminded me of how hayley kiyoko had played velma, so i thought…i’d like to draw a modern version of mystery inc reflecting a bit more of regular teens in the 2010s.
so i had ideas for how i wanted the girls to look. i wasn’t sure what to do with the boys, ‘til i happened to look up the late great casey casem and discovered that he was actually lebanese! he’s more famous for his ‘shaggy’ voice than he is for his face, but this is what he looked like.
dark haired, dark eyed, brown skinned, and he only ever really voiced white characters. his wiki page says he was kind of disappointed when he was asked to play an arab character, but the character was an evil stereotype, and he asked ‘are there no good arab characters in this thing?’ so i thought it’d be fitting to draw shaggy looking a little more like the man who first brought the character to life! ‘cause shaggy is the best character.
when it came to freddy though, for better or worse i knew i’d leave him pretty much the way he was. i wasn’t keen on robbie amell’s dark haired fred (the blond is too iconic!) in ‘the mystery begins’ – fred as a slice of white bread with blonde hair, that classic ‘all-american’ boy next door suits him.
i hope maybe this clears stuff up, or makes some kind of sense. at the end of the day, what i’ve done is just fanart. by a fan, for other fans, if they like what they see. it’s just for fun, for a bit of personal wish fulfillment. i’m not actually creating the next scooby doo incarnation (though i wish i was, sometimes) and i’m not saying that how i drew them is like the brand new be all and end all way to look at them. but take a look at this beyond-lovely message:
i think that shows that maybe i’m not doing as wrong as all that. and if none of this makes sense to you, or if i’m still coming off like a whiny tumblr user, then all i can say is i’m sorry i couldn’t make something you’d enjoy, and you can always enjoy the official SD incarnations where the gang are portrayed as all white.
