Ceci n'est pas une blog

brevoortformspring:

Look, really look at yourself, and ask what it is about this that you find so troubling, and why.

I’m not the guy who posed the previous question, nor do I feel as emphatic about it as some of the visitors to your page do, but I’d like to chime in in the sincere hope I can provide a perspective that (hopefully) doesn’t have bigotry at it’s root.

I’d like to see a caucasian Johnny Storm just to see the comic I’ve read for years come to life — resembling the source material as much as possible. For me, that goes beyond race and even extends to something like Johnny’s age — notably younger than the rest of the team. A Reed that is an older father-figure. A Ben with blue eyes. It extends to technology that has those unmistakable Kirby design complexities.

I’d probably have a similar pout if a blond Peter Parker were cast. That may certainly make me a traditionalist, or a purist. Hell, I’ll even cop to being superficial. But some kind of insidious bigotry deep within my soul? C'mon. I have no doubt that bigotry is the foundation for some people’s attitudes with Jordan’s casting, but is it so preposterous to imagine that the greater truth is more complex and not uniformly hateful?

I think you’re an insanely smart, thoughtful, talented individual who demonstrates a saintly amount of patience with the jokers who bombard you on this forum you generously provide. So when you allude that someone who disagrees with a particular casting philosophy must have subconsciously nefarious motivations (at least that’s how I interpreted your response), that seems a bit uncharitable and beneath the standard you generally comport yourself with. Just my $0.02.

Thank you again for your patience and insight,
Brad

Roger Ebert once wrote: “We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds, not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it. François Truffaut said that for a director it was an inspiring sight to walk to the front of a movie theatre, turn around, and look back at the faces of the audience turned up to the light from the screen. If the film is any good, those faces reflect an out-of-the-body experience: the audience for a brief time is somewhere else, sometime else, concerned with lives that are not its own. Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.”

As important as it is for people of color to see their lives reflected in the movies they watch, it’s just as important for white people to see those lives and–for an hour or two, at least–have a chance to live them vicariously. How many people are dead because a cop who had only a split second to make a decision saw a black person and thought “potential threat” instead of “potential hero”? That’s what racism looks like these days. The Dylann Roofs of the world are few and far between (thankfully). The real racism comes from the subconscious, from people who only know people of color from TV and movies, and are more used to seeing black people on TV as criminals than heroes.

I don’t doubt that you’re sincere when you say that your preference for a white Johnny Storm isn’t motivated by bigotry, but “I like my things just so” is not a very compelling reason to indefinitely perpetuate the racial attitudes that prevailed in the early 1960s. And it doesn’t hold a candle to the conflicting goal of telling stories about black lives.