this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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I always thought race swap gender swapping roles was a cash grab and a way to just make people fight. And it seems to work every time. I personally think it's a slap in the face to the genders and races that were swapped in. If new movies can't make new characters and stories with different races and sexes without seemingly purposefully causing controversy by replacing one race or sex with the other I'd take that as a low blow.
It’s hard to do well, but I disagree that it’s a slap in the face or a low blow. The gender swap of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactic was seen as sacrilege by fans, but she became one of the highlights of the show. Miles Morales was a creative way to do a race swap for Spider Man, and the narrative is richer for it. Jason Mamoa turned Aquaman from white to Polynesian, and the depiction was better than ever. Would Nick Fury be better as a white guy, as he was originally for decades, instead of Samuel L Jackson?
And then there are all the “swaps” that happen before the first day of filming, like Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien, who was originally (edit) going to be cast as a man. This was “controversial” at the time, with people decrying “political correctness”. I would not take “causing controversy” as a reliable indicator for whether something sucks.
Edit: point taken about gender neutral script. See discussion below.
Miles Morales isn’t a race swap. That’s why it works and everyone likes it (well, except actual racists).
It’s an entirely new character that exists in the spiderman multiverse and has a different personality and backstory from Peter Parker. That’s what inclusivity actually should look like.
Is that why it works, or is that just how they did it?
Imo, it’s why it works. It’s different and original, and even fits in the same story as the old ones.
Obviously I have no objective proof of that, but you can’t even hypothetically think about what would’ve happened if it was just a race swap, because the whole premise of the movie is that Miles isn’t Peter Parker.
It worked so well that the thought of it as a race swap never crossed my mind, it's just an alternate universe Spiderman story. Spiderverse is genuinely one of my top Spiderman films, because it felt like a comic book rather than a superhero movie. It's just got such a unique feel.
You can if you squint your eyes. I don't think about how Peter Parker has shaken hands with his successor nearly as much as I think about Spiderman's new name being Miles Morales.
And also because I am perfectly comfortable with a black Spiderman. This resistance to thinking of them as the same person is just not felt in my brain.
This is a learned skill, by the way. Or unlearned, maybe. I.e., you should think about it.
I used to think I had a problem with Nintendo just deciding for some game that Link would be a girl now. Not a different canon, not a different timeline, not Zelda in disguise: just "Linkle." In the years I've had to think about this, I've realized I do not give two shits about it. I might even welcome the sensational 5-gum freshness of it.
Everyone likes him because the storytelling is good, which proves my point: Race/gender swaps are fine when done right. But when Miles Morales was first introduced, it was considered a race swap, and the usual crowd definitely moaned about it.
The multiverse explanation reminds me of people saying “But the elves liked being slaves!” in Harry Potter. Yeah, they were written that way, and they could have been written another way. The multiverse is being used to narratively justify a black Puerto Rican Spider-Man.
“The usual crowd” probably has different meanings between us. You’re linking to a site that (besides misusing the term raceswap) is absolutely positive about it, cites an editor that’s positive about it, and even the article it links to when talking about “reactions” is pretty accepting of it.
Who, exactly, is this “usual crowd”? Some racist on /b/? People who listen to Fox 24/7? That’s not nearly the full extent of the current complaints about raceswaps. Plenty of “normal” people complain about whatever Disney decides to put in their remakes, it’s not just that “usual crowd” that moaned about Miles in 2011 (and honestly, complaining about diversity inclusion when it wasn’t “trendy” yet is kind of a joke).
…how are those things even related? Elves in HP are a concept since very early on. And they were probably introduced with the very intention of sending that… pretty disturbing message. The Multiverse in Spiderman is effectively a late addition, but one that fits the narrative and is a way to add diversity to the franchise without messing too much with the original lore.
Where’s the issue with the multiverse? How is it nearly as malicious as HP’s portrayal of elves?
You’ve misunderstood so many of my points, this is exhausting.
You insist on gatekeeping the term “raceswap”. Fine. Call it “reimagining an existing character as another race”, if you want. You would have to be delusional to deny that Miles Morales is a Black-Latino version of Spider-Man.
The article I linked to mentions the backlash and controversy about political correctness and Morales. I’m a little surprised you missed the point there.
I’m not sure what specifically you’re on about with the “usual crowd” paragraph. I know that lots of non-racists are also against “reimagining an existing character as another race”. I agree that race swaps can go wrong a lot.
Please read this carefully: The specific claim I am contesting is OP’s strong thesis that raceswapping is always bad. I gave examples of it sometimes being good. Miles Morales is certainly an example, down to the criticisms of too much political correctness, racists complaining, fan “controversy”, claims that it’s a cash grab, etc.
My point was not that the multiverse is bad like elf slavery is bad. I am saying that your explanation gets things backwards: the multiverse doesn’t show how it’s not a race swap. On the contrary, the race swap is the reason why they needed to use the multiverse as a narrative tool. Forget the analogy to elf slavery if you don’t get it. The point is that some writer wrote a multiverse storyline in order to justify the existence of a Spider-Man of a different race.
Except it’s not even “reimagining an existing character as another race”. It’s a completely different character, with a different personality and a different backstory. The “existing character” is even in the same movie. The only thing they have in common is that they have spider powers, and they aren’t even the same powers. Goku and Superman have more similarities than those two. And that’s why
This isn’t a good way to contest it. What OP said is “If new movies can’t make new characters and stories with different races and sexes without seemingly purposefully causing controversy by replacing one race or sex with the other I’d take that as a low blow”, and Miles Morales is exactly that: a new character with a new story.
My point is: where is that backlash and controversy? The article talks about it but only shows people painting it as a good thing. This feels like the one time where “People want to cancel Snow White because of the non-consensual kiss!” made the headlines, and then the headlines were more than the actual people complaining.
First, not really. The multiverse exists to have Miles interact with Peter. It’s not needed for him to exist, since a Peter Parker already existed in his own universe. That’s also why I’m saying they’re different characters. If anything, the narrative tool is the original spiderman of that universe dying.
And even then, if it was a narrative tool for that purpose, so what? Every author uses narrative tools to tell the story they want to tell. This isn’t anything new, and no one is bothered by their existence. They’re annoying when they’re blatantly shoehorned (i.e. Star Wars 9), but everything people want is a reasonable explanation for stuff and it’s usually good. Obviously, unless the message they’re trying to convey is disturbing to them (like “slavery can be good” to normal people, or “black people can be superheroes” to racists).
Really, I don’t get the point of that last argument. What did I say that you’re trying to confute? I agree I probably misunderstood that.
Alien didn't swap anyone. The characters were initially written as gender neutral without first names.
Kind of. Excerpt from this article by Ridley Scott:
This was the late 70s. “Man” was still so powerfully default that Ridley Scott had not even thought of the possibility of casting a leading woman action hero before a meeting with an exec. That, to me, is clearly a gender swap moment, because until that moment, it was a given that Ripley would be a man. The gender-neutral script just allowed for the possibility.
Nick Fury used to be white guy
There are a lot of instances in which is can put a new spin on an old trope. Spiderman is a great example. The various swapped Spider-folks all have a unique setting and character arcs. The idea of "Spiderman" as a set of powers they all happen to share give a loose cover for a bunch of really compelling super-hero stories that could only come from a particular perspective.
Its not uncommon for a writer/director to have an idea for a piece of media that's original and compelling, but get told "We have a zillion dollars for Generic IP and pocket change for Original Cinema". So the original gets adapted to IP. The lead in your spy thrill gets hot-swapped for James Bond. A gothic horror gets turned into a Dracula or Frankenstein film. The sci-fi epic becomes another entry in Star Wars cannon. The coming-of-age film gets Barbie as the lead character.
The IP is what guarantees a minimum viable audience, because its immediately recognizable. Then the screenplay itself is wrapped around the central cast. IP is just an efficient form of marketing.
Fiona and Cake worked, but only because the show is not really about Fiona and Cake. Also, it meta-acknowledges the whole thing right away, that they've been shoehorned into a universe where they don't belong.
Fiona and Cake already existed in the original adventure time show anyways.
Not really. They were intentionally framed as a gender swap fanfic written by Ice King, and only existed as throwaway episodes. They were a meta-joke on the whole thing.
When I heard of the new show I rolled my eyes and thought "of all the Adventure Time stories to tell they picked a dumb gender swap gag?"
But as mentioned it wasn't that at all and was actually well written.
Yeah, that’s a whole self-aware/self-referencing thing that doesn’t really work as a comparison in this context
Just curious: how'd you feel if they literally and publicly role the dice for any character where race or gender isn't required for the plot?
Ridley Scott in the original Alien movie literally did that. The names of the characters sound gender neutral, and the production hired actors who would just seem good fit for the role. Now that I think about it, the race and gender of the crew did not matter in the plot, because the main character and attraction is the Alien!
I don't know if that's true for The Thing, but the names certainly seem race-neutral (although an all-male cast).
If there's no actual reason for them being a particular race, skin tone, gender, orientation, etc then go for it. I can't really see a reason to be upset at this hypothetical.
I'm fairly sure cyanide and happiness do that for their comics.
Part of this is that idiots will predictably react and cause a distraction. Rey and Rose Tito are not what made new Star Wars bad, but the discourse was ruled by WOM BAD for months. Or Ghostbusters or whatever. Going out of your way to attract bad faith criticism so that you can conflate the legitimate with the ridiculous.