Yes, we all know this, but that doesn't change the fact that Faraci is ****wit.
Patty Jenkins was hired to direct Wonder Woman on April 15. Two months later, on June 23rd, Jon Watts is hired to direct Spider-Man. Here's Devin's article:
http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/06/23/tom-holland-is-spider-man-jon-watt-to-direct
The second reboot of Spider-Man in five years' time, with
yet another white male director, and he's excited. No mention at all of Marvel dropping the ball in light of WB hiring a female director for a major superhero tentpole.
But now, WB hires an untested white male director for The Flash, shortly after reports come out that Marvel may be hiring its first non-white director in eight years, and it's a subject of "intense scrutiny."
It bears repeating. Marvel Studios has been making films since 2008. We are in year seven. They have made twelve films. All directed by white men. Of the ten remaining Phase Three films, six of them have director officially attached. All of them white men.
WB makes Man of Steel with Snyder. They bring him back for Batman v Superman. Then they bring in David Ayer for Suicide Squad, who goes on to assemble one of the most racially diverse casts ever seen in a superhero movie. Then, two years and three films into their plan, they hire Michelle MacLaren for Wonder Woman. And when things didn't work out, they selected another woman to replace her. Then James Wan, a filmmaker with Chinese heritage, is hired to direct Aquaman.
But WB is the one on blast here?
Seriously?
That's my issue with Devin's article.
I agree. Hollywood is in dire need of diversity amongst its filmmakers. Devin could have made this point just fine in the article (and many other articles beside it). But he just can't help himself by working in a little pat on the back for Marvel in there, as if them hiring a non-white director after so many years and so many films completely trumps everything WB has done for the sake of diversity in less than half the time and half the films.
And therein lies the confusion, I didn't know about Faraci's article until now. As someone who is regularly called out for being a "Marvel shill": he's an embarrassment. We don't claim him.
I'm not rushing to anyone's defense. I just think that all studios should be called out for the practice. Some of the articles calling out the practice are perfectly fine and don't have silly fanboy tinges and others like Birthmoviesdeath are only calling out WB for the practice because of some made up blood feud.
From what I can tell, all studios have been called out in recent years for this (save for Faraci with Marvel, but as I said, I ignore him). Hell I remember reading multiple people on various websites getting angry about Benedict Cumberbatch being cast as Dr. Strange because he was a white guy, even though the character
is a white guy.
Here's what I say every time something like this happens, because I rarely see these points brought up, and I don't know why:
1) These characters and the universes they inhabit were, for the most part, created back in a time when women voting was relatively new and blacks and whites still used separate water fountains. Needless to say, the books as a whole were pretty white-washed. I'm not excusing that or saying it's fine, but it was the state of the country, and white males were largely the only superheroes that would sell books. So naturally, there will be a lot of white male superheroes still around today.
2) These characters and the universes they inhabit were, for the most part, created back in a time when there were only men working in the comic book industry, predominately white men at that.
3) These characters and the universes they inhabit were, for the most part, created back in a time when the audience for superheroes was, for the most part, prepubescent boys.
4) I would argue it's a problem with Hollywood as whole, which is a whole other discussion. I don't know exact numbers, but I'm sure if you took every director in hollywood working today, an overwhelming majority of them would be male, a lot of them white males at that.
Given all of this, it doesn't shock me that so many of the film makers involved with this stuff are white guys. It's an unfortunate residual effect of where our country was when these stories and characters were birthed.
Again, before anyone starts writing out a long rebuttal telling me I'm being insensitive or reductive, I'm not excusing this or saying that it's just fine the way it is. Things in the industry obviously need to change.
The arguments I just listed above probably worked better when I was discussing Marvel's over-reliance on white males as their lead characters, but I feel that it's worth bringing up here in some capacity as well. All I'm positing is, let's understand where we have been to understand where we are, so we can course correct and go somewhere better.
To bring it all home... this is why I'm not ready to condemn WB for going with a white guy on their Flash movie, especially in light of their other recent creative choices regarding diversity in their DC slate.
