Tuesday 22 April 2014

Online Storm

The cast for the rebooted Fantastic Four is out, and it confirms rumors that Michael B. Jordan is to play Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch. The inevitable racist reaction has erupted, with various threads on IMDb making calls to boycott the movie coming up on IMDb.  One person commented that Johnny Storm will be black because:

"... he flammed on too long and he burnt to a crisp?
I personally would be okay with that."


On the other hand, there was a better attempt at humour on this subject with the topic Disrespectful to the source material.

"They made the creative decision to set the origin story in 1961, and depicting the setting as anything else would be treating the source material like garbage"

The 'boycott' reaction for Fantastic Four, and the appalling reaction from many to Janelle Asselin's critical assessment of a comic book cover, is another reminder (not that we need it) of the massive bigotry and insecurity that simmers under the surface of parts of our supposedly enlightened 21st Century 'western' world.

I was going to post a comment here about how a genuinely progressive move by Fox and Marvel would be to also cast (say) Lupita Nyong'o as Johnny Storm's sister Sue Storm.

But Zeba Blay at Shadow and Act has already done so, and far better than I could have done. So just read that instead.

Excelsior.

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