“Fear of a Minority Superhero: Marvel’s Obsession with White Guys Saving the World”

“At last year’s Comic-Con, the annual gathering of the geeks in San Diego, Hounsou offered up a poignant anecdote concerning the extreme lack of minority superheroes.

I have a 4-year-old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He’s got all the costumes,” said Hounsou. “One day he looks at me and says, ‘Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.’ That was sort of a shock.”

It’s frustrating how much capitalism drives social change, even drives art and culture. It often seems as though the arguments in favor of change get tangled into arguments about whether or not the change will make money, and especially whether or not it will make money from the white men who implicitly command our concept of the American Consumer. I want my ability to see myself represented in popular culture to be driven by an understanding of reality and the importance of art that creates useful and resonant narratives, instead of whether or not my identity cohort has a large amount of money and materialistic impulses.

I am going through a phase of being heartily sick of movies, TV shows, and books about the tortured problems of economically privileged white men. I feel that I understand the 20-something American white man more than I understand myself, some days. And an alien trying to understand American culture through our art probably wouldn’t know that someone like me might exist.

And a further thing — this need for non-White, non-male actors and movies to be exceptional and spectacular in order to legitimize them; I am so, so tired of the exceptional-or-nothing thing. There is a great bit by Chris Rock on this, but I am going to exercise my humanity-even-in-mediocrity and make no attempt to link to it.