It was recently announced that Tom Holland will be the next Peter Parker/Spider-Man and in typical internet fashion, people couldn't wait to unleash the barrage of "oh wow another white Peter Parker" comments; this may come to you as a shock but this is how Peter Parker looks:
He is a white guy, always has been, so being upset over the fact that a white person is playing a white hero makes no sense to me. Now, I know what the next argument is going to be, "What about Miles Morales?" and to that I say "What about Miles Morales?" Sure I like him as a character but as a superhero what has he done in the 5 years he's been around? Virtually nothing. Yeah he's been in the most recent events but in terms of his own story there is not much to go off; hell even his origin story connects to that of Peter Parker and that is the problem with Miles so far...he's too attached to the Peter Parker story to have his own. His supporting cast includes Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane, Aunt May,an actual clone of Peter Parker and Ganke (who is a non Peter Parker related character). Miles gets assistance from Shield because of Peter Parker, gets the webshooters that Peter made, deals with his villains....you get the picture. Miles, at least to me, hasn't been used enough in the comics and established in his own right but that is looking to change with the release of his solo this Fall as
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| You will be this Fall |
"Spider-Man"; no subtitles or asterisks, he's going to be the Spider-Man of the new Marvel Universe and I hope with that change they will give him his own rogues and story-lines that are separate from Peter Parker.
One of my biggest gripes with not just the current Spider-Man backlash but with all of the happenings in the comic book movie world is this faux representation that has people getting into a frenzy. The new Fantastic Four has Micheal B Jordan playing Johnny Storm aka Human Torch, who is traditionally a white character, and people are praising Fox for being diverse and all that. Look I don't hate seeing black people as superheroes, if you know me at all you know it's quite the opposite, but what I don't like is black people having to play white characters in order to be heroes. When I see people frothing at the mouth at the fact that Peter Parker isn't being played with a nonwhite character it upsets me because it is such a pandering move to me. You can't just slap on a new paint job and think the character will be the same because a white person gets treated very differently from a black person and that treatment is reflected in the way a character is written; look at the current Captain America, did Steve Rogers have to deal with the social issues that Sam Wilson does? I want to see black superheroes get their shine, I want to have more black heroes in films that are based off of black heroes in comics because that will expose them to a bigger fanbase. Going back to the Johnny Storm thing, let's say a kid sees the new FF and loves Johnny and wants to read comics, it will not be the same Johnny that he fell in love with or connected with and at the end of the day it will increase the awareness of Johnny Storm but not the black one that he thought he was going to see.
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| I hope this ushers in a new age |
With Black Panther coming out in 2018 I think it's time for those who claim to want diversity stop getting upset at white people being cast to play white heroes and start demanding more nonwhite heroes get put onto the big screen. Trust me, there are a plethora of nonwhite comic book heroes who are more than ready to make a big screen debut but clinging onto this faux representation is a joke; it has us being more focused on what kind of table scraps we get instead of questioning why the hell we can't sit at the table. I don't want to give anymore shine to white heroes and believe me I understand that it is so frustrating to not see a minority hero as a lead that you rather just do a racebend but that isn't good enough anymore, it is time that our heroes get the same treatment that the white ones get.
