Also, heroes like Ghost Rider, Spawn, Daredevil, The Punisher, and even Iron Man weren’t well known in the mainstream press.
I don't recall saying the characters were well known in the mainstream. I recall pointing out the obvious: Ghost Rider is better known than most black characters. The Punisher is better known than most black characters. Daredevil is better known than most black characters. And so on, and so forth.
But you're right, it's not that they are classic, better known characters than Black Lightning, the third or fourth string Green Lantern, and Luke Cage...it's that they're not black.
But perhaps Marvel and DC are concerned about the marketability of black characters and are reluctant to spend a lot of money on a ‘risky’ proposition.
Marvel is developing a lot of projects. Some of them are going to come first because there's more demand for them, and more passion behind them. THE AVENGERS and CAPTAIN AMERICA are going to come before BLACK PANTHER and LUKE CAGE unless someone REALLY gets behind those projects. It's as simple as that. No one with any clout is clamoring to make BLACK PANTHER, LUKE CAGE, THE FALCON, BLACK LIGHTING, or any number of other black hero films right now. Or we'd have heard about it in this age of "every comic book rumor is reported", don't you think?
As for the comics industry itself, almost every black guy I know knows something about comic book heroes, plays superhero video games, and at least has seen some movies. Black people also go to comic book stores and there is a black comic fan online community. The majors have largely ignored this community and failed to build significant inroads into the black community and others by actually developing interesting black and other non-white characters.
Because obviously they're not "comic fans", they're "black comic fans". Well, that's pretty telling. So do you think that studios should bend over backward to satisfy a subset of a subset of the population? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?
People like reading about people who look like them, people perhaps they feel they can identify with the most, and there is the idea that comics might serve as a power fantasy. Terry McMillan once talked about a perception among the publishing industry that black people don’t read, so that 'justified' them not trying to cultivate this audience. Until her book Waiting to Exhale showed them that black people do read, and now you have all types of books written by black authors. Perhaps if comic companies had done more to cultivate black readership or do more now to, they might actually get more black readers.
Perhaps if comic companies garnered more readership PERIOD, the comic book films wouldn't have to be aimed at the mainstream public, and we'd get more, better and more varied comic book films, period, regardless of race. But that's not the reality of things.
If BLACK PANTHER, a fairly obscure character to the general public, is ever made, and it fails miserably, will you condemn studios for failing to continue to build inroads into the black comic book community if no other studio makes a big budget movie based on a black superhero for a while?
Studios make movies to make money by selling to tickets to the general public, not to satisfy a particular race of people or to check off a list of characters that deserve movies. And movies get made because someone wants to make them and does the work to get them made.
Most comic companies are run by white men and largely staffed by white men and I think there is that problem with identification again. Or a feeling that blacks are too much the other, too inscrutable to really get a grasp on. Also, they largely write for their white male audience. Why aren’t many of these black characters, such as Cyborg and John Stewart all that interesting? Because they mostly haven’t been developed well.
They're relatively interesting, and they have been developed to a point. Cyborg is a cyborg, which, at heart, is not nearly as interesting or epic as say, Batman or Superman. But compared to the flagship character, at least in Stewart's case, they've gotten less time to be developed because a lot of them are not hugely important characters and they haven't been around as long.
[Perhaps many were created with the best of intentions, but after the diversity point was scored, they were left idle to twist in the wind, largely without development to make them interesting. Hal Jordan wasn’t all that interesting either until Geoff Johns came along.
I don't know if that's why they lack visibility. I suspect it has to do with the fact that they're mostly gimmicks, and even recent developments have felt gimmicky and forced. Again, individual situations. Maybe to you Hal Jordan wasn't interesting until Johns. To most GL fans? That's just not the case at all.
I wish Johns would give a little more attention to Stewart. Then again, Johns doesn’t have a good record in that regard. He was one of the writers for Blade the series where Blade took a backseat to Krista and Marcus, two white characters. Many fans of that show, and I still liked the show even though I disliked what they did to Blade, would agree that Blade was the least interesting thing about the series.
Johns doesn't have a good track record for developing anyone but his main characters. He never has. He develops a few main characters, and the supporting cast is just that, a supporting cast.
Denzel has expressed interest in doing a hero movie, but no one has seemed that interested in following up with him.
Not true. He has been talked to about a number of black superheroes over the years, and has chosen not to commit himself to it.
From what I’ve read, Wesley Snipes was actually more interested in doing Black Panther, but he couldn’t get the project off the ground. He switched to Blade instead. But even a couple years ago, I heard about Snipes still trying to get that BP project off the ground.
A comic book movie in development hell during a period when comic book movies weren't the hot new thing? Why, that's never happened before.
No, BLACK PANTHER hasn't gotten made. I have a massive list of comic book films that haven't been made, or that have taken forever to get made. Marvel is still working on a Black Panther concept, as well as almost every other remotely marketable hero they have. Black Panther is not a priority for Marvel right now, not because he's black, but because Marvel has their more recognizeable and likely more deserving icons to make movies of first, and they have relatively limited means to do so.
Remember that black minstrels chose to be minstrels as well.
And a baseball player chooses to be a baseball player. Your point?
You just seem to want to ignore the major differences between minstrel culture and gangster rap culture, which I find interesting. Yes or no, are there major differences between them?
But they are not a threat in terms of racial hierarchy. They don’t challenge the notion of white superiority, they reinforce it.
That depends. Some of it does, some of it doesn't. Again, you're generalizing.
Just like the minstrels did, perhaps in different ways but a similar result. Both make white people, on a psychic level, IMO, perhaps feel better about themselves and less empathetic to issues of concern in the black community because that’s the way those people are.
...
The ones who don’t fit that mold are seen as exceptions, or given the ‘compliment’ that they have ‘transcended’ race .
What is this, 1950?
The idea of diversity of opinion, behavior, lifestyle within the African-American community, not even to mention the various Caribbean and African communities is something are too overlooked.
"Too overlooked" is an opinion. I don't study spores molds and fungi, but somewhere, someone does, and probably values these things, and feels THAT is overlooked. From what I can see, what you speak of is simply overlooked by mainstream culture, which tends to overlook the diversity of opinion and lifestyle, period.
It’s easy to say it’s up to individuals to decide how they will be perceived, but has never been that way for black people in this country.
A person cannot control, with any realistic extent, how all people will perceive them. You can control how you perceive yourself to a point, and you can often control what you present to the world, but perception is just not as simple as "I want you to see me this way, so you will".
Even for some black people didn’t want to be associated with the group throughout US history, they were.
You can say this about any group in history.
Except for the ones that were light-skinned enough to ‘pass’ into white society and relinquished all or almost all ties to their former lives.
You can say this about any individual who is willing to conform to escape prejudice.
As for the impact on society, black thinkers like Thomas Sowell see the root of the anti-intellectualism they say is rampant in black youth culture to perhaps come from antebellum Southern culture. I’m not sure if I buy that, but I do think that many of the problems defined as black problems are tied to larger problems in society. To some extent, there are widespread problems, national problems that afflict all Americans. But there is a famous saying that when white people catch a cold, black people catch pneumonia. What does that mean? Black people are still in a less secure position, with less access to financial resources to weather bad turns in the economy, less access to health care (which affects the life expectancies of blacks, who pay their fare share into the Social Security system, but usually don’t reap the benefits because of shortened lifespan). Wealth a key determinant of position in American society, and whites have a wide advantage in terms of assets and equity in comparison to blacks. I don’t have the homeownership figures off hand, but there is a disparity. Even President Bush tried to do something about this. There is also a disparity in pay, though the income gap has shortened. Blacks still are unemployed at double the rates of whites. There is still residential segregation and perhaps because of that school segregation. In the South, de jure (by law) segregation was outlawed by Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but its’ been harder to crack into de facto segregation (by custom). The achievement gap in education is often talked about as well. Not all of the problems affecting blacks in the US are racial, some have myriad causes, but I’m not going to put my head in the sand and declare race off the map for every issue due to the history of our country, nor shy away when racism is or might be a cause or condition of these disparities. Unlike you, I don’t have the luxury to just not ‘see’ race when I don’t want to or blithely declare what is or isn’t a racial issue.
I haven't declared race is off the map. I'm pointing out that it is not the primary determinant of blacks position in society. Unless of course, you happen to be...racist.
So your point is that we have a long way to go to reach equality, and that the events of the past still affect what's happening today, and that blacks face adversity. I know that. I went to elementary school, high school, and college, and I've seen TV and read books, and I happen to live in this world as well, believe it or not.
I see skin color, race and ethnicity, and cultural differences. I see gender, and sex. I see disability. I see homosexuality, and I see different levels of intelligence, talent, and physical ability. I see religion, and different moral standards. And as such, I recognize that each of these is probably going to be mocked, oppressed, or generally disrespected in some fashion by someone, or will face some kind of adversity. What I don't do is put everyone with any element of these "differences" into a little box and separate them from the rest of the human race. I don't define people by these elements.
I have not declared anything isn't a racial issue. I'm pointing out that a LOT of people face the same kinds of issues, period.
Bay:
Back to Bay again. I’ve told you more than once that this is not about Bay. Perhaps you’re just not reading my posts, or just reading them selectively. This is bigger than Michael Bay, but you insist on trying to make me out to be so irrational perhaps to lessen what I’m trying to say.
Obvious it is about Bay, because to directly reference his lack of sensitivity.
I'm tired of generalizations. They don't prove or expound on anything except that you're upset that not all black people have the same opportunities as some nonblacks.
You know what, you're right though, it isn't fair. Life doesn't tend to be fair. You don't always get to be what you want to be or do what you want to do simply because you have the talent or drive. And sometimes you do.
But all the problems you mention, whether blacks experience them or not, they are issues faced by MANY, MANY people in this world, and it goes wayyy beyond just race.
