Laurence Fishburne IS Perry White in The Man of Steel

The Superman comic was created during a time of massive racism. Name me a major character in Superman that is a minority? I love this casting because it reflects the more modern era we live in. Back in Superman's creation black men weren't Editor-in-chief of major newspapers. Now they are.

Love.It.

Well, Franklin Stern comes to mind, but I am not sure he is major. However, if you just wanted to avoid "be more accurate to the comics" calls, what you would do is make Franklin Stern a hands-on publisher who is actually present in the news room. Although you would probably just cut out Perry White entirely.

On the other hand, Perry is essentially one of the big 4 in Superman. It is Clark, Lois, Jimmy and Perry. There is no reason to keep all 4 white, and arguably in L&C they accepted this, and cast a not-fully-white actors as Clark.
 
A great moment on Lois and Clark show is when the guest star James Earl Jones appeared for the season 1 rebuilding of the DP episode. His character had a vibe similar to what I imagined a modern Perry to be like, and he happened to be black. If there is a role that I can see it working in changing the race, or not affecting the character badly it is this one.

I really wish they had brought Jones back as Stern in the next season. I guess he was just too big name to get for more than one episode.
 
Just wondering without opening a can of worms here.

Why couldn't the Kents be black?

I believe their are tons of mid western blacks living on farms or in rural mid west communities with humble christian values that could love and raise a white baby just orphaned. Raising him to be an upstanding citizen.

Think about if Clair and Cliff Huxstable found Kal El. I think he'd be raised all right.

Actually, there was a whole wave of African-Americans who moved to Kansas after the civil war. If you want to find the rural, small-farm owning, black farmer, you go to Kansas. Oklahoma they are more likely to be sharecropper background and not actually own, and Nebraska most of the African-Americans are in Omaha. Kansas is the one farm-belt state where black farm owners works. So the Kents can be black.
 
As he should! This is the newspaper we're talking about.

No more bringing on reporters with degrees in Middle English from Ratcliffe (OK, so it was cut from the script of STM, but the line from Perry "Lois, what did you major in at Ratcliffe, Middle English" was the best line in the script).
 
Well it's already bad enough that a certain wannabe controversial African-American film critic also happens to share that name! :p

Anyway love the casting of Fishburne!! I dig!! :)

As for the idea of Donald Glover as Jimmy? As ideal as he may be, I would find an African-American with the name "Olsen" to be a little, odd!

Hey I have a friend whose father Norwegian and mother is African-American, so I would believe it. I also have a friend whose mother was born in Sweden and her father is African-American, but that does not help with getting clearly Scandinavian last names for African-Americans.
 
Superman is a different case than Perry. Superman's face has been all over merchandise for years, he's wayyyyy more iconic than Perry, so changing his race is a bigger deal.

But they have changed Superman's race in the past. They cast Asian-American Dean Cain as Superman. True, he is only partially Asian, but you can tell that he is partially Asian.
 
I think the problem isn't that you don't like him for the role... It's that you don't like him for it because he's black.

Perry White is one character who is completely unaffected by race, in terms of it perhaps changing the expectations/stereotypes.

For example, If they cast a black Jimmy, it might be hard not to see him as the 'token black guy' joker role.

Or if Lois was cast as a black actress, it would change a lot of her character. She'd no longer just be a woman fighting to be an equal in a man's world, she'd be a black woman fighting to be an equal in a white man's world.

But IMO this changes nothing about Perry, so I'm fine with it.

Would I have prefered a white actor in the role? Yes, as my sig says, I would have prefered JDM. Also would have prefered Robert De Niro.

But Fishburne is better than many of the white guys in their 50s suggestions that kept coming up.

Realistically though, maybe you do have to recast Lois as an African-American women if you want to keep her as "an x fighting for a role in a world where she is out of place." There are lots and lots of women in journalism these days. Maybe males are still more common, but it is no longer a male-dominated profession like it was 35 years ago. So maybe to keep Lois as a slightly marginalized character fighting to make it, we need to make her an African-American.
 
they shouldn't cast a black guy playing a white guy's character. period. heck, even his name perry white suggests that he's white!!

I have friends with the last name of White who are African-American. I also have friends who have Brown and Black as last names who are white.
 
I didn't even notice the earring...

I noticed it on my second viewing, but I think I had rad some comment about it online.

I thought Fishbourne did great as Perry, but I wish he had had more time on screen.
 

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