The new Fantastic Four movie is coming up quick. I’m a nerd girl and ordinarily I would be excited for this. We aren’t going to get into t he fact that I don’t believe the movie needed to be rebooted; this is about the casting of Michael B. Jordan. Let me say this, I am thrilled that Michael is working and I am over the moon for him. He is a great actor and I see him going far in Hollywood. So this is not about me dumping on him or calling him a horrible actor. I think he is a great actor and I wish him nothing but the best, but I have a problem with the coloring of Johnny Storm.
I believe that Hollywood is just being lazy. Instead of creating movies featuring black superheroes or movies with a majority black cast, they are giving us token blacks.
My bone of contention is that we didn’t need the Human torch to be black! We didn’t need for Michael to be cast in a role for a white actor. He could have been Static Shock, Black Panther, Firestorm, Panther, or even Patriot. There are hundreds of black superheroes Jordan could have been. Hundreds of other movies Marvel could have made with black superheroes.
There are thousands of out of work and looking for work writers in Hollywood that could have written a superhero movie about black or minority superheroes. I’m a looking for work writer that could have given them that movie.
We as POC have become so used to the table scraps from Massa’s table that we aren’t questioning why we can’t get a seat at the table. We aren’t wondering why in 2015 this is still a conversation. We aren’t scratching our heads as to why the first black president has to have his Twitter account flooding with “nigger” and “monkey” tweets. We are so used to not seeing ourselves reflected in popular culture that we will take any bone that is throw our way without question. We are so used to seeing TV shows with all white casts that we immediately attack the shows with all black casts as not being uplifting or doing nothing more than portraying stereotypes. We are conditioned to be crabs in a barrel. So that way when anything is dangled over the barrel we are grateful.
Well I’m sorry that is not good enough and I’m not buying it. I am not going to rejoice over this “victory” I am not just going to sit back and take it and be glad for this bit of toast. This casting is hush money. This casting is to make us forget that Hollywood since its inception has kept black actors and actresses at the back of the bus. This is make us forget that in the 87 year history of the Academy Awards only 12 black men or women have won and only 32 have been nominated. This is to make us forget that a light skinned black woman on one of the highest rated black shows, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, replaced a dark skinned woman. Blackface Human Torch is to make us forget the only Oscar nominations that black actors and actress get is when they are portraying offensive stereotypes about black people. The maid, the whore, the crooked police detective, or the magical negro. This is to make us forget that the first Disney prince spent three quarters of the movie as a frog. This is to make us forget that the promos for the animated movie Home featured a purple alien on the posters in mixed and majority white neighbourhoods, but the black kid was slapped on the posters in the majority black neighbourhoods.
Having a problem with this blackface Human Torch doesn’t make me any less black than any other black person on the planet. I am allowed to be black and have a problem with token black characters.
