Reading about Miles Morales
May. 15th, 2014 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithMy 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.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-15 02:29 pm (UTC)I know for myself I did this once I shook out after finding slash. That is to say, once I checked the shock I asked "is this the way this character would handle things?" and that took me to research and find the wide variety of historical and cultural constellations. I've changed how I think about things, and what I know about things, because of reading and writing.
I think of Star Trek and Man from U.N.C.L.E. here. I saw them first in syndication, things my mom had watched prime time and wanted to see again. Remember, this was a time when the world didn't look like what tv showed. TV was very white and very male. They also were hopeful, and the heroes won, not easily, sometimes they questioned. But they did it time after time.
And yes, practice is what makes it much faster to do the right thing when the time comes. There is a character in a Turtledove series, who becomes the first xenolinguistic expert, because he'd been reading the science-fiction magazines as he played minor league ball. (Like Steve, he was 4F. Lost all his teeth during the 1919 flu.) First step? Treat the lizards as people. Second and third are speak your language and listen to what they say.
It's not that race requires separate archetypes. But validating only X, that's going to alienate people. "I do what he does, slower." Sam didn't come out of a bottle. (Neither did Steve, not the part that is the hero.) Steve's MCU background, and the background he's accreted in the comics is radical. Think about it. He doesn't come from space, son of Important Scientist. He's not the heir to vast wealth. He's just a kid from Brooklyn, that wants to stop bullies even more than he wants to live through winter.
Characters aren't archetypes, but they are avatars, striding about showing how things work if Y is done. Well-done diversity gives more breadth of what is done and removes that 'doesn't look like me' bar.
Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-15 06:53 pm (UTC)You are made of so much win! That's the kind of enlightenment I want to see happening.
I honestly think that decades of slash, thank you Gene Roddenberry for giving us Kirk/Spock, have contributed to us having a country that is now beginning to recognize marriage equality. Because it's not unthinkable anymore, it's something a lot of people think is adorable in fanfic and that spills over into everyday life.
>> They also were hopeful, and the heroes won, not easily, sometimes they questioned. But they did it time after time. <<
That's what fed into Schrodinger's Heroes, and to an even greater extent, The Blueshift Troupers. I yearn for positive visions of the future.
>> There is a character in a Turtledove series, who becomes the first xenolinguistic expert, because he'd been reading the science-fiction magazines as he played minor league ball. <<
I remember that! It's one of my favorite scenes in that whole series. It shows exactly how mental practice delivers practical benefits, because you know HOW to solve a certain type of problem. I swear, if we ever get first contact, pray it's with fans instead of diplomats.
>> It's not that race requires separate archetypes. But validating only X, that's going to alienate people. <<
I agree.
>> "I do what he does, slower." Sam didn't come out of a bottle. <<
That was one of my favorite lines in the movie. I love Sam. He is not dissuaded just because Steve can run laps around him. He teases back.
>> He's just a kid from Brooklyn, that wants to stop bullies even more than he wants to live through winter. <<
That's why I made a point of including supernary characters in Polychrome Heroics, along with ordinary people who are friends and supporters of soups and NOT just there to get kidnapped. (Well, I have one kidnap target too, but that's just because Antimatter is too messed up to ask Stalwart Stan on a real date.) I want to show how anyone can do heroic things. It's not about having super powers. It's about having super care.
>> Characters aren't archetypes, but they are avatars, striding about showing how things work if Y is done. Well-done diversity gives more breadth of what is done and removes that 'doesn't look like me' bar. <<
Agreed! Minds me of the part about how anyone could play Spiderman because the suit covers every inch of skin. I've made a note to create a superhero with a full-body costume.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-16 04:35 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-16 04:39 am (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar_series
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-16 05:00 am (UTC)I can't figure out if the series would be too triggering for Steve or if he'd like it.
"I give thanks that the Chitauri didn't come while I was on the European front."
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-16 05:04 am (UTC)Chitauri arriving to find Steve alone: "Hey, Howard, how's that Manhattan thing going? Can I have it?"
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-16 05:29 am (UTC)Yes, Steve would have figured something out. But, he knows how to be thankful for trials he was not asked to surmount.
Though, he'd probably have contacted Rommel and told him it was time to really piss off Hitler.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-17 04:05 am (UTC)some spoilers included Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-05-17 11:37 am (UTC)