Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules
still apply.
- This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
- While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread
. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
- Spoilers for new releases should not be discussed without spoiler tagging for at least two weeks. Rather, each title should have a dedicated thread where that sort of conversation is held. We can mention new releases in a general sense, but please be courteous to people who don't want to be spoiled.
If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
When most people see an Irish character they see a white guy not an Irish guy. It's like calling Greek people a minority or something.
@Luke Cage and Panther: Yes, we now have two black guys. How many Asian stars? Hispanic? Middle Eastern? None yet we can have 5 white guys. This is an ongoing problem and that's just focusing on the races of characters. There are other kinds of minorities that haven't even been acknowledged.
Whoever says that Irish are not a minority in America, should read up on topics like "Irish Slavery", "Religious Issues" (keep in mind that American immigrants tended to be protestants until the Irish and the Scotts turned up, who were catholic) and general Anti-Irish sentiments. They have become less an issue with time, but it has certainly been a thing in the past and to a certain degree the attitude hasn't died out yet.
One doesn't need to have a different skin colour to be a minority...hell, woman are minorities, even though they make up more than half of the population.
Blah blah complex issue yada yada yada decades of history I'm not writing that thing out again.
Basically, what everyone in this thread is mad at when they complain about the lack of diversity is the year 1963. Personally, I think there are more productive ways to bring about change than complaining that most of the characters created when segregation was a thing are white.
We DO see an Irish guy if he's shitfaced. Come to think of it, the only time Irish people are even represented as their own distinctive race separate from The White Folk is when they're living down to stereotypes.
That's not really progress at all, is it? We forgave Irish people for being a race rather than accepted them.
edited 5th Dec '14 9:23:46 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yeah, but prejudice against us is mostly gone except for a few isolated pockets of super conservative protestants here and there. My dad who grew up in The Deep South in the 60's has felt anti-Irish Catholic sentiment in his life, but my siblings and I have not. JFK provoked a similar reaction in Conservatives in this country that Obama does, but like most assassinated public figures, he's since become a martyr and people tend to gloss over that nowadays. People seem to have redirected their hatred toward Mexicans, and now we're usually just considered white. Like Tobias Drake said, the jokes about Gingers and drunkenness are probably the only real remnants of anti-Irish sentiment in the US. So it's not totally gone, but people aren't full of Irish hatred anymore.
Daredevil may have been considered a part of an oppressed minority when he was created, but those days are long past.
edited 5th Dec '14 9:23:25 AM by LizardBite
![]()
![]()
![]()
To be fair, it is kind of an equal opportunity stereotyping...Germans for example are always Nazi-type villains, or jolly guys in leather pants, French (and boy, is the anti-French sentiment still obvious in the American Media) are usually womanizers and untrustworthy charmers, English people keep drinking tea and are kind of posh, unless they cockney, naturally, and love to talk about the ancestors, Scots are stingy, Italians belong to the mafia, Russians too, aso.
edited 5th Dec '14 9:26:07 AM by swanpride
It is only in very rare circumstances that a white character's race is actually pivotal to the character.
Like, would Tony Stark be that different if he was Japanese? Or Hispanic? Or Cherokee? How much would his story have to change to reflect this difference in nationality?
Bruce Banner shifted overnight from being The Whitest Guy to a Canadian/Italian hybrid with absolutely nothing about his character being altered in the process. He woke up one day with a different skin color and a noticeable but not entirely identifiable accent, and he just shrugged and rolled with it.
edited 5th Dec '14 9:28:57 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I don't know.
I think the movies influence the public opinion more than the comics do. Movies, cartoons, stuff like that will always be more salient in the public's mind when it comes to these heroes than the comics. So if you cast POC as the heroes in the movies, that's how people will think of them.
See also: Public perception of Aquaman, stemming mostly from the Superfriends cartoon.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI'm not even saying that they can't be played by people of colour. But it shouldn't be considered the natural and obvious solution to a diversity problem, and it isn't something to get angry over when it doesn't happen. Get angry that there aren't more diverse heroes to begin with. Get angry that the comics don't push the ones they have as hard as they could. Get angry that there aren't more people in Hollywood willing to cast minority actors to become names big enough to make casting colourblind. That's what's going to affect change.
I think the better established a character is, the more difficult it is to change his look. Let's be honest: A blond Superman would cause an uproar, too. Because Superman has to look kind of like Christopher Reeve.
Exactly...and get angry that the people behind the scenes in Hollywood and the Comic world still tend to be white.
edited 5th Dec '14 9:30:45 AM by swanpride
To be fair, the outcry against Benny is a bit uncalled for.
I can totally get being disappointed, maybe even exasperated, but, like... why be mad? That seems like a waste of energy to me.
And while I may be upset with the casting company, I can't be anything but happy for Benedict himself. He went from basically nobody to a guy that's so popular people hate him in the course of, what, a year?
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."A key element of uplifting minority roles in storytelling is removing the "White Guy unless necessarily otherwise" assumption attached to all characters.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

"Stopped" shouldn't really be in past-tense there.
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."