DIVERSITY LOL
So Batwoman is a lipstick lesbian now. And CNN is making a big deal out of it.
I can see the motivation they allegedly have in creating this character for the sake of diversity. Sure, let’s have some gay Super Heroes™. There are gay people out there; it makes sense that there would be gay heroes. It would also make sense that there would be some overweight, ugly, and otherwise unsavory looking heroes (besides the monsters, because the even though the monsters are hideous in the story they look perfectly badass to us readers). But let’s maintain the idea of diversity within good-looking and physically well-endowed people here for a moment.
With the advent of the new Batwoman being a Gotham City high class socialite, and making her a “lipstick lesbian,” they’re not really promoting and displaying diversity. It wouldn’t be upon them to make a hero who just, I dunno, happens to be gay. They’re making a character for the character to be gay. Putting the purpose forward. If you think about it, it ain’t all that different from when characters like Black Vulcan and Luke Cage the Power Man were conceived. They wanted to make black characters, so they made characters whose purpose in existence, really, was being black. Kinda like this Batwoman scenario.
Picture this: What if they kept it a secret until the book came out. We see Batwoman out and about fighting crime and kicking ass and stuff. Then she comes home after a hard night’s work to go on a date with her girlfriend.
Y’know… revealing the detail as an aspect of her character at a good story moment, rather than reveal the fact waaaaay before the fact to stir up a benign shitstorm to get everyone to talk about it. Because it would probably have gotten the same amount of press, and they’d look less like assholes. Also, aren’t surprises just… better?
And along with Batwoman in their push for diversity, we’ve got a new Atom who’s Asian, and a new Blue Beetle who’s black. Because, as Maddox said, “True diversity comes from people who look different.”
June 5th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Yeah, my feelings are along the same lines. Throwing it out as the defining aspect of the character seems to defeat both the character and the use of it for diversity.
An example, in my opinion, of this sort of thing done well, would be Colossus from the Ultimate X-Men - his orientation comes up here and there, but is never the main focus of things. It raises interesting questions, and different team-mates react differently, but it isn’t thrown in anyone’s face, and is hardly presented as the sole thing that defines him.
This just seems over-the-top from the start, and that is hardly the best way to begin things.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
I think that’s a smashing example (no pun intended). Colossus’ homosexuality in the comic was revealed waaaaaaaay late into the series. And he was just like, “Yeah. I’m gay.” And everyone was pretty much cool with it (Northstar in particular).
With the exception of Nightcrawler, of course. And that’s what makes Colossus’ homosexuality a good story point rather than a book-selling gimmick: The focus is not put on the fact that he is gay, but on how Nightcrawler feels betrayed by Colossus. Being a religious fellow, he’s really not to keen on the whole gay thing. So the friendship they once had was severed because of Kurt’s faith. Which is the real way to not only “diversify” the cast, but put that diversity in a context that the reader can relate to and invest in.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Well, Marvel already had black superheroes (Black Panther and The Falcon, most notably). Luke Cage’s raison d’etre was to be a blaxploitation character a la Shaft.
June 21st, 2006 at 1:24 am
I thought the new blue beetle was hispanic…