Blog Number 4: Quotes

Hey guys! I’m back with more information regarding my topic. I read an article (Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/31/theres-been-10-year-diversity-drought-in-comic-book-movies-thats-changing/) from the Washington Post this week about a brief history in gender and racial diversity in comic book movies over the course of history. It also mentioned a brief statement about comic books in the past. The article, written by Matthew J. Smith, describes how society is becoming engaged with comic book culture from all races and genders despite the minimal amount of diversity in it. He mentions that when comic books were predominant, they were mostly focused on national affairs and such. Most of the characters in comics in the past were predominantly white characters and are still to this day. Efforts to include a diverse cast wasn’t successful until the late 1990s. Because of the vast amount of viewers and such, many movies that we are seeing and plan on seeing in the future will start to have a much more diverse cast set to play the major roles and such. The author hopes to see more diversity in both comics and in the future.

This article has many interesting statements and such talking about the diversity and such. Mr. Smith is surely right about how “[there] is a struggle to portray the full diversity of America”. Comic books and comic book movie characters have, throughout history, been predominantly white. Trying to fit in a diverse cast of members into traditional white characters role is difficult to accomplish especially with an audience who has grown up with a traditional white cast set. In addition, I agree with what Mr. Smith had to say about comic book popularity in the past. Throughout U.S. history, “superheroes have enjoyed their greatest popularity at times when national confidence is under strain” depicting how, under times of stress, their popularity rises. During WW2, comics enjoyed great success at depicting the superheroes defeating the Axis Powers. While I agree that most of the comics were racist, especially toward the Japanese, I also agree that there were special exceptions to this. Many Americans were upset and angry. A lot of propaganda were aimed to inspire the American people to join in the war effort and support national pride and such. Lastly, the change to having more diverse cast for traditional white characters will be difficult to attain. Many of the big corporations are “shot callers” when having to deal with movies based on comics. Although I agree with Mr. Smith up to a point about how Marvel and DC are slowly inching toward cast diversity, I cannot completely agree that it will happen any time soon. As stated prior, many comic book characters were and are still predominantly white. It will be a difficult transition to a diverse set because of the lack of movies like that. If there aren’t movies that follow that diverse path, then there won’t be many movies. It’ll also be hard to make it go smooth with traditional fans.

Overall, it isn’t racist that many comic book characters that are in comic books and comic based movies are predominately white. It just hasn’t been very successful and doesn’t really suit well to the traditional comic book fans of the past. It is a good thing that the big companies are starting to include more diversity in their movies based on traditional comics. However, it will be a while before it happens.