ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-05-15 12:41 am
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-05-15 12:41 am
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Reading about Miles Morales
My partner Doug found this wonderful interview with the creator of the Miles Morales Spiderman. It talks about why he made a mixed-race Spiderman and what superheroes mean to the audience. Some thoughts ...
"It's a story with a very strong theme: "With great power comes great responsibility." And that theme is so perfect in its simplicity that you could build a religion around it. As a fan, I carried it around with me, but when you start writing it, you realize, Oh, this is the most important lesson in the world. It's not a superpower lesson. It's a lesson about power, itself. If you have the power to sing, or to grab people's attention, or anything, then with that comes responsibility that you need to identify and raise yourself up to."
Agreed. This is part of my personal code of honor. Your responsibility always matches your power. If you don't have any power, you're not responsible for anything in that area. Wherever you do have power, you are responsible for using it well.
"The most cosmetic change we made, obviously, is a couple of years ago when we made the determination that, if Spider-Man were created today, there's a very large percentage chance that, based on where he's living and who he is, that he would be a person of color. So we made the choice to send Peter Parker off with a heroic death and have a new young man take the mantle in the form of Miles Morales, who’s half Hispanic and half African-American."
I think this is incredibly important. It makes me want to buy the comics, not just because I love the character concept, but because I want to encourage and support that kind of writing -- where someone actually looks at the world, asks what it needs, and also takes into consideration real facts such as demographics. I do this in my writing. It's not just about creating diversity. It's about matching the local color of a specific area if that's what you're writing about. Frex, my Walking the Beat is set in Jamaica Plain, and there are some characters from the Dominican Republic because that's a local trend there.
"Now, you can't make these decisions [to be more inclusive] consciously, because then you're just writing in reaction to things, and that doesn't work out, dramatically. But subconsciously, if you look at the world around you and see your readers, you go, I wanna write something that I know is true. So you start writing women better and you write people outside of your experience better, because you look at pages of other people's comics and you don't recognize it as the world around you."
Actually, you CAN make a conscious decision to write more inclusive characters, or to change any other aspect of your writing. You can do whatever you want with it. If you're only writing to tick a representation box, it'll probably suck. But if you decide that you want to fill a gap, and make an honest effort to find out what's missing and fix that, then it'll probably be at least decent. Some people write intuitively, some logically. Some write things down, others make things up. It all works for somebody. Do what works for you -- and what is meaningful to you.
"Just yesterday, a woman wrote an article analyzing what she thought was a poor comic book cover, and she was met with just a bunch of shitty anonymous people being awful to her online. I think that a huge problem is people who read comics and don't understand the point of superheroes, which is to be the best version of yourself. You love Captain America? Well, you know what Captain America would never do? Go online anonymously and shit on a girl for having an opinion."
This is the whole point of cultural material in any medium: giving us a chance to imagine ourselves in other circumstances and how we would face the challenges that a character does. Stories can show us the best behavior or the worst behavior, and how that works out for a given character. I feel that we need superheroes in general, and the archetype of the Unsullied Hero in particular, to ring the gold bell at the top. And we also need terrifying villains to remind us of how awful people can be. A good story should make us think about the characters' choices, what they did and why, because that helps us make the right choices in our own lives.
Believe me, when you have very little time to make a very important decision, that mental practice matters. If you've done it before in your imagination, you're much better prepared to respond quickly and effectively when real life throws you a curve ball.
I feel that we need heroes for inspiration. They show us what the best behavior looks like. Maybe you can't lift a car like Captain America ... but you can open a door for someone with their hands full, and little things like that help make the world a better place too. Actions matter. Inspiration matters. Stories matter.
"It's a story with a very strong theme: "With great power comes great responsibility." And that theme is so perfect in its simplicity that you could build a religion around it. As a fan, I carried it around with me, but when you start writing it, you realize, Oh, this is the most important lesson in the world. It's not a superpower lesson. It's a lesson about power, itself. If you have the power to sing, or to grab people's attention, or anything, then with that comes responsibility that you need to identify and raise yourself up to."
Agreed. This is part of my personal code of honor. Your responsibility always matches your power. If you don't have any power, you're not responsible for anything in that area. Wherever you do have power, you are responsible for using it well.
"The most cosmetic change we made, obviously, is a couple of years ago when we made the determination that, if Spider-Man were created today, there's a very large percentage chance that, based on where he's living and who he is, that he would be a person of color. So we made the choice to send Peter Parker off with a heroic death and have a new young man take the mantle in the form of Miles Morales, who’s half Hispanic and half African-American."
I think this is incredibly important. It makes me want to buy the comics, not just because I love the character concept, but because I want to encourage and support that kind of writing -- where someone actually looks at the world, asks what it needs, and also takes into consideration real facts such as demographics. I do this in my writing. It's not just about creating diversity. It's about matching the local color of a specific area if that's what you're writing about. Frex, my Walking the Beat is set in Jamaica Plain, and there are some characters from the Dominican Republic because that's a local trend there.
"Now, you can't make these decisions [to be more inclusive] consciously, because then you're just writing in reaction to things, and that doesn't work out, dramatically. But subconsciously, if you look at the world around you and see your readers, you go, I wanna write something that I know is true. So you start writing women better and you write people outside of your experience better, because you look at pages of other people's comics and you don't recognize it as the world around you."
Actually, you CAN make a conscious decision to write more inclusive characters, or to change any other aspect of your writing. You can do whatever you want with it. If you're only writing to tick a representation box, it'll probably suck. But if you decide that you want to fill a gap, and make an honest effort to find out what's missing and fix that, then it'll probably be at least decent. Some people write intuitively, some logically. Some write things down, others make things up. It all works for somebody. Do what works for you -- and what is meaningful to you.
"Just yesterday, a woman wrote an article analyzing what she thought was a poor comic book cover, and she was met with just a bunch of shitty anonymous people being awful to her online. I think that a huge problem is people who read comics and don't understand the point of superheroes, which is to be the best version of yourself. You love Captain America? Well, you know what Captain America would never do? Go online anonymously and shit on a girl for having an opinion."
This is the whole point of cultural material in any medium: giving us a chance to imagine ourselves in other circumstances and how we would face the challenges that a character does. Stories can show us the best behavior or the worst behavior, and how that works out for a given character. I feel that we need superheroes in general, and the archetype of the Unsullied Hero in particular, to ring the gold bell at the top. And we also need terrifying villains to remind us of how awful people can be. A good story should make us think about the characters' choices, what they did and why, because that helps us make the right choices in our own lives.
Believe me, when you have very little time to make a very important decision, that mental practice matters. If you've done it before in your imagination, you're much better prepared to respond quickly and effectively when real life throws you a curve ball.
I feel that we need heroes for inspiration. They show us what the best behavior looks like. Maybe you can't lift a car like Captain America ... but you can open a door for someone with their hands full, and little things like that help make the world a better place too. Actions matter. Inspiration matters. Stories matter.
Archetypes
We've had the discussion about Nick Fury (white) being different than Nick Fury (black), and I think we're circling back to a key idea: do we need /separate/ archetypes for different races, the way the industry has been Ms.-ing superheroes for the last twenty years? (Only recently have they made any significant changes in storytelling, though.)
Are we talking about gaining ground against cultural inertia, at long last, or are we finally looking at our own /culture/ differently? Neither of us are more than armchair sociologists, but it's a good topic for a more formalized study. My hope is that we're finally seeing our own culture differently, and thus making the media mirror more accurate.
A good friend and I regularly argue whether dictionaries should be prescriptive of language, or descriptive. This is the same notion: should our entertainment tell us more about the world /as/ we see it, or as we /want/ it to be?
Re: Archetypes
Individual characters are not archetypes, but may be an example of an archetype. For example...
Unsullied Hero
- Captain America
- Superman
- Faramir
They're all completely different people, but they share a common idealism and an ability to resist temptations that drag other people into disreputable actions.
One challenge in writing is to take an archetype and build a distinctive character around that framework, making them individual without losing the core concept. Frex, I have Stalwart Stan, who is a very classic Unsullied Hero, a boy scout ... and he's bisexual but hasn't really realized that yet, and his nemesis Antimatter has a crush on him. Ancient archetype with a very contemporary challenge in front of him, dealing with sexual identity in a society that is currently questioning how to handle that.
Another issue is just apt handling: knowing the archetypes, choosing the right ones for the story you want to tell, and portraying them effectively. If you try to use the wrong one or you botch the delivery, it tends to be a disaster. Look at how DC has tried to change Superman, the ultimate good guy, into a shady gray killer. It makes people uncomfortable; it makes them say, "That's not Superman." Because that character was already established with a particular archetype that folks are really attached to, you can't just change him around like that and have it work. If you want to deal with shades of gray, terrific, tell those stories; but pick an archetype that specializes in that, such as an Anti-Hero. Do not use a screwdriver to pound nails!
>> We've had the discussion about Nick Fury (white) being different than Nick Fury (black), and I think we're circling back to a key idea: do we need /separate/ archetypes for different races, the way the industry has been Ms.-ing superheroes for the last twenty years? (Only recently have they made any significant changes in storytelling, though.) <<
Race and gender are not archetypes per se, but some archetypes -- or stereotypes -- are particular to a certain race/gender. Uncle Tom is one example of a racial type, which may be considered favorably by a white audience and negatively by a black audience. Mary Sue is a gendered example, although later that developed a masculine version in Marty Stu. And notice that a particularly famous character may lend their name to an archetype or stereotype.
>> Are we talking about gaining ground against cultural inertia, at long last, or are we finally looking at our own /culture/ differently? Neither of us are more than armchair sociologists, but it's a good topic for a more formalized study. My hope is that we're finally seeing our own culture differently, and thus making the media mirror more accurate. <<
I've never had a tendency to privilege the culture I'm standing in, but that's a rare trait. I compare cultures all the time. So I have a much wider base of knowledge than usual when it comes to critiquing what people are doing, or choosing source material as inspiration to write from.
Part of my training is in Women's Studies, which is interdisciplinary but is pretty much a social science/art branch of study. I took classes in sociology, anthropology, and other people studies ... well, okay, I hit almost all the sciences that interested me, cramming in the best I could of a personalized course of study in a school that refused to support that officially.
>> A good friend and I regularly argue whether dictionaries should be prescriptive of language, or descriptive. This is the same notion: should our entertainment tell us more about the world /as/ we see it, or as we /want/ it to be? <<
It's always cyclic, reflexive. Language influences thought; thought influences language. Language is a living, growing thing. We write it down. Other people use that to look it up. But we make up new stuff out of thin air. Whatever of that becomes popular will eventually get written down too.
So too, art influences life; life influences art. If we don't like either of those things, we can use the other as a lever to change it. Sometimes life is stupid. Sometimes art is boring. But they don't have to stay that way. I use art both as a mirror and as a road sign. This is what's happening now, or what did happen; here are some things that could happen, good and bad. I write both inspirational and cautionary tales.
Re: Archetypes
(Anonymous) 2014-05-15 04:29 pm (UTC)(link)I really, really need a cautionary light on my laptop. Gah, that was a badly, badly worded comment and I apologize.
A total aside: I think you got a very, very different Women's Studies approach than I did when I tried to take the class. Two weeks of being the only person to call the instructor on her vast overgeneralizations, two weeks of hearing the /entire/ class male-bashing. When the instructor started a class to "prove" --and I quote: "all men are r*pists", I not only walked out of class for the only time ever, I dropped the class and complained to the admin that she was a misandrist.
Re: Archetypes
Re: Archetypes
Re: Archetypes
You're welcome.
>> I really, really need a cautionary light on my laptop. Gah, that was a badly, badly worded comment and I apologize. <<
It's okay. Both genteel phrasing and clarity take practice, and I've been at this for decades. Plus I have the advantage of some college classes that explored archetypes.
>> I think you got a very, very different Women's Studies approach than I did when I tried to take the class. <<
Some of my WS classes were brilliant. Some were misanthropic and made the testicles not attached to my body very unhappy. It helped that we often had one or two guys in the class, which meant that they and I could anchor discussions to prevent them from going off the deep end.
>> Two weeks of being the only person to call the instructor on her vast overgeneralizations, two weeks of hearing the /entire/ class male-bashing. When the instructor started a class to "prove" --and I quote: "all men are r*pists", I not only walked out of class for the only time ever, I dropped the class and complained to the admin that she was a misandrist. <<
Fortunately I never had a WS class that bad. I'm sorry to hear about yours.
Really, I made my minor Gender Studies before that was even a thing. I think I helped enlighten a lot of people to gender as a social construct as well as a personal identity, and the extreme diversity that's possible. If all you're doing is backlash, that's not really an improvement.
Re: Archetypes
I'm pretty sure you meant to say "misandristic". See dialecticdreamer's usage.
Dr. Whom
Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody
Unsullied Hero
Re: Unsullied Hero
The first movie was brilliant. The second was flawed. The third was a clusterfuck.
The Hobbit is frankly canonized fanfic.
Re: Unsullied Hero
You mean the Hobbit movie, right?
Re: Unsullied Hero
Re: Unsullied Hero
(Facepalm)
Re: Unsullied Hero
Russ, OTOH, says that this is something Tolkien got wrong, and that the scene in the book was a wall-hurler for him. He says that Faramir, as a military leader in the field, would never have agreed to let the Ring go -- although he still didn't try to take it for himself -- until it was proven to him that he could not prevent Sauron from taking it. I don't agree with him, but wotthehell, it's only a movie.
Re: Unsullied Hero
Yes, it did.
>> He says that Faramir, as a military leader in the field, would never have agreed to let the Ring go -- although he still didn't try to take it for himself -- until it was proven to him that he could not prevent Sauron from taking it. <<
Ah, but Faramir wasn't really a military leader. He only did that because it was expected of him. He's the bookish one of the pair, and that's why he's the family scapegoat while Boromir is the golden boy. They simply do not think alike. Faramir recognized that the Ring was a hazard and that the best way to protect the land was to get the Ring as far away as possible. The Fellowship had a good plan in terms of destroying it with a stealth attack. Faramir was far too thoughtful to have fallen for the same fool idea that Boromir did.
Re: Unsullied Hero
It's time for a re-read.
Re: Unsullied Hero
Well, there are plot concerns. Tolkien was a master of hurt/comfort. If you look at the structure of the original novels, you can see a very meticulous pattern of stress and release. This makes it possible to crank the tension much higher without burning out either the characters or the audience. The methods of comfort, like the nature of the hurt, tell us more about the characters and the world; some of that is load-bearing material. Cut most of the comfort out, however, and the structure destabilizes in addition to risking overload. It no longer functions as effectively as the original.
>> it's the complete character rape that they committed, which was in no way necessary, and ruined the story. <<
And not just this, but also a fundamental change in message. Tolkien's work is very much about the blind stupidity of war. While the earlier animated versions echoed that beautifully, the later live-action movies have replaced it with glorification of violence like every other action flick on the screens. You can't do a complete reversal of message without butchering the material.
>> Faramir represented the best of Gondor, he was the epitome of what they should be. Denethor was the pride of Gondor corrupted by itself, and Boromir was the pride of Gondor corrupted by an outside influence. <<
Beautifully put, thank you.