[ SECRET POST #3760 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3760 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 10 secrets from Secret Submission Post #536.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. http://i.imgur.com/SPysNHv.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

It weirds me out that people don't want a white actress to play Batgirl. Barbara Gordon has always been white and she's the version the movie will be about. It makes me wonder if these people even know there ARE different Batgirls, because it would make a lot more sense for them to push for a different version of her rather than insist an established character be changed for no reason.

Re: Transcript by OP

[(Anonymous)]

You could apply this to the demands to change the race/gender/whatever of any established character. There are almost always demands to do this, no matter how badly it fits into the story canon.

BTW, Stan Lee agrees with you, OP.

Re: Transcript by OP

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, haven't they heard of the Lego Batman version of Batgirl? She's POC, and so is her dad, Commissioner Gordon.

I swear, some people must have horse blinders surgically attached to them at birth.

[(Anonymous)]

They probably don't know much about Batgirl or Barbara and just consider the costumed superhero part to be all that's important. Thus, they see Batgirl as an icon who should represent anything they think they should represent, rather than a character who has an identity outside of the cowl. Barbara was Oracle/non-Batgirl for so long that people familiar with the character/comics think of Barbara as Barbara (who sometimes happens to be Batgirl) and not as an interchangeable woman who puts on a costume and Girl Power!

[(Anonymous)]

SJWs hate the idea of white characters staying white. See Spider-Man, Iron Fist.

[(Anonymous)]

Why do you think they hate this idea?

[(Anonymous)]

But those arguments are both tied pretty specifically to the particularities of the characters in questions (Spider-Man has to do with a preference for a specific version of the comic book character and Iron Fist is in the strange and distinctive position of being essentially a character from a kung fu movie). It seems weird to me to take that and make it into a general claim about what SJWs want.

[(Anonymous)]

Spider-Man is an invalid argument when they picked and chose elements from the Miles Morales version to give to the latest version of Peter Parker.

[thewakokid]

Hey, say what you want about SJW in comics, and there's a fucking lot to say, but Miles was pretty damn good. I just wish ultimate Spider man hadn't killed Peter. I was far too depressed after that to really have much passion to keep up with the series, meaning I missed out on a lot of Miles.

[(Anonymous)]

I can understand someone who would want to see Batgirl played as POC, or even only being interested in it under those circumstances. I don't feel that way myself but that seems like a valid preference. I think the way that basic personal preference gets connected into both comic book continuity interpretation and current social justice politics is tenuous and complex and can take on a lot of different forms.

I don't want to get drawn into an argument about parsing what someone here saw someone else say on Tumblr or whatever, but I think it can be valid to have a preference for one certain approach. And I'm just a little skeptical of arguments that there's something sacrosanct to established characters in adaptations that can't be changed for no reason, especially when that criteria seems to be limited to social categories as distinct from other kinds of plot details and backgrounds.

[(Anonymous)]

Of all the conversations concerning the upcoming movie, race was about the only thing I've seen not touched.

Unless you count the comments about Whedon's preferences for tiny white waifs.

[(Anonymous)]

Now you mention it, that preference worries me.

I don't think Barbara is supposed to be tiny in the way that Sarah Gellar and Eliza Dushku are tiny. But some artists do play up the size difference between her and Bruce.

Cass Cain, on the other hand, is pretty much the original type for River Tam anyway.

[sarillia]

I don't really see how being white is integral to Barbara's character. Seems like it wouldn't be any weirder than making Jimmy Olsen black in Supergirl, and personally what was weirder to me there was that he wanted to be called James.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, I knew a whole bunch of Jimmies in elementary school, and nearly all of them demanded that people stop calling them Jimmy by the time they were 11.

[(Anonymous)]

I think Barbara could easily be a WOC but at the same time I'm not going to be shocked or offended if she ends up white in the new movie.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's be real, though, when the people who complain the loudest demand "POC" or "WOC" to be cast, what they really mean is "black" - they are very quick to throw non-black POC under the bus for that.

[ninety6tears]

This.

[wonderbink]

I get the impression (and I could be entirely wrong here) that the movement to demand recasting of white characters as POC is to counter standard operating procedure in the movie industry, which is to cast POC characters with white actors. "If they can do that, why not the other way around?" This strikes me as solving the wrong problem.

It's possible to cast POC in the role of a canonically white character but I don't think it's going to happen because a bunch of Tumblroids stomped their feet and whined it into happening.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd rather see Babs as Oracle training Cassandra. It could be a really interesting time in both of their lives.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like that, too. Or Babs training a new-and-invented-for-the-movie Batgirl.

Barbara was already Oracle before I started reading comics, so I'm not even that attached to her being Batgirl, anyway, but that's probably why I also have a hard time with the idea of changing Babs in order to change Batgirl, when you could just have a different Batgirl? Batgirl is like Robin, not Superman - there's already been more than one.

[(Anonymous)]

I would adore an Oracle-and-Batgirl movie. Cass is great, but Steph would be fine too. Or both!

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't LEGO Batman Barbara ambiguously brown or something?

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting more diversity.

[(Anonymous)]

Especially in iconic roles. Maybe it shouldn't be demanded that this role must be filled with a WOC, but I don't see anything wrong with people suggesting that she could be. I also think that colorblind casting calls for some roles would be a good idea. It's Gotham, a stand-in for NYC, why couldn't she be Black or Latina or Asian or any other race or ethnicity?

[digitalghosts]

Did her being a kid of a high-ranking cop ever made it into some arc?

Can see it going both ways - her being a white kid of a white cop and the opposite but that would require some revisions (besides multiple Robins and Bat Girls - I do not know much about them nor even the first editions).

Then again ... Batman series is pretty much based on irony as Bruce could have made his area better so no criminals spawn but instead done the opposite and just brewed more divisions (of course, I could be wrong but it never was addressed in the cartoons or Burton films).

Not that series writers do not know that - so it is execution that matters.