miguelnuva wrote: ↑Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:46 pm
Terasawa weren't you one of the people who were pissed off MV Godzilla praised nuclear power when the character has been anti nuke sense his inception.
Godzilla was created as an allegory for Japan's devastation by American nukes. Later Godzilla films either downplayed this so as to ignore it or only pay lip service to it; in my opinion, the only one which has outright betrayed that original intent is KotM. IMO, only in that film did we finally get a Godzilla film in which nuclear weapons (help) save the day. That is the very antithesis of what the character was originally intended to represent, namely, the horror of nuclear weaponry.
Meanwhile, Superman/Clark Kent was originally inked with white skin. Why? Because in 1938's popular entertainment, black people were only allowed to be janitors, busboys, shoeshines, etc. In other words, Superman is only white because his creation was influenced by racial biases and cultural attitudes of the time. So prevalent then were these attitudes that I'd bet Siegel and Shuster (both Jewish, incidentally) probably never even considered their character could have been anything
but a white-skinned man.
Unless you're saying that Clark Kent's white skin has metaphorical importance on the level of "Godzilla represents the three* atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan," which I don't think you are, there's no core thematic reason for Superman/Clark Kent to be white other than because it was the norm in 1938.
There's not even a narrative reason for him to be white, either. Clark Kent's story is basically that of an alien baby sent to Earth and adopted by a local couple who raise him as their own, instilling in him the principles of what it means to be a good person. He then grows up and uses his natural super abilities to protect those values. That's not a story unique to the Caucasian race. Had the character been created in a more enlightened time or place, his adoptive parents could have been black, Latin American, East Asian, Mediterranean, Aboriginal Australian, whatever! His skin color could have been black, brown, yellow, red, etc. The only necessity is that he doesn't appear too outwardly alien, i.e. he must be able to pass for human. (No green or blue skin.)
This is the crux of my point: If Clark Kent's Superman is supposed to represent the American Way, then he absolutely should be black, or brown, or whatever. America is not just a white nation (you know this) and the values of what it takes to be an American are not reserved solely for white people. (At least in principle.
)
That's why Clark Kent's skin color should be whatever the hell a storyteller wants it to be.
*Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the ill-fated Castle Bravo test, which lent its name to the heroes' undersea base in 2019's
Godzilla King of the Monsters. Now *that* is an example of Hollywood tone deafness.
To me as a black man I don't need a character that has been white race swapped to tell a story when there is already a Black character that has just as good of a story.
I get that you're disappointed that Calvin Ellis isn't going to be the screen's first black Superman, and I think that's fair. But I don't think "there's already a black Superman" is a valid answer to the question "why does Clark Kent have to be white?" So there's already a black Superman... why can't there be another one?
I hope I've illustrated above why I think even the original Clark Kent/Superman story is worth telling with PoC in the leading roles, but bear in mind that neither you nor I know what story DC intends to tell, except that its version of Clark Kent will be a black man. Again, "If the story is good, who the hell cares what color is the skin of the actor playing the part?"