Tuesday, May 24, 2016

#GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend Thoughts

I'm aware that people will hate me for this rant, but this is just plain ridiculous. First "fans" of Frozen want the sequel for Elsa to have a girlfriend.

Now, those who enjoy the MCU want Cap to hook up with a guy.


Andrew Garfiled once wanted to make Peter Parker gay. That didn't turn out well for the actor, did it?


I get it. The LGBT community wants a mainstream character to be gay to serve as their champion and to push for the general public to accept the LGBT community in fiction as much as is in real life. There are, however, major hurdles to that, especially with regards to characters like Peter Parker and Steve Rogers -

1. Their Legacy
Peter Parker, Steve Rogers, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne - these are characters that have been around since the invention of comic books and thus have a history known by generations of fans. Sure, they're white, muscle-bound, straight dudes, but it's been that way for so long nobody has any problem with them anymore. To change even one dynamic of those characters in the name of progressiveness has a very high potential (again, I say 'potential' to a very high degree), to cause a shitstorm where everybody loses!

And speaking of which.....

2. It Won't Work from a Business Perspective
If the idea of making a major Marvel or DC character gay would help increase sales of the comics and merchandise of the said character, then by all means, go for it. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a major comic book character whose sexuality has been changed that resulted in very very high sales. DC and Marvel, who had been publishing comic books and characters that cater to feminists who call to make characters that suit their tastes, such as Batgirl and Jane Foster-Thor, see their comic book sales figures actually went DOWN despite making these characters and even heavily marketing them. So unless anyone makes a very convincing argument that making Steve Rogers a gay man would increase sales of the Captain America comics and merchandise, while not alienating those who know the character's history for ages,  there's just no way.

In short, if it means more money for Marvel, they'll do it. But if they don't think it'll give them more money, they won't! Anyone who says this isn't about money, but about proper representation is naive. Everything is about the all-mighty US Dollar as far as Marvel is concerned. Marvel or any other business, will not do anything that results in the loss of profit. It's common  practice for businesses to make the maximum amount of profit possible, NOT the other way around.

Rather than call for Steve Rogers to be gay, why not call for characters who are already gay to begin with to have more stories and push to get noticed more? Marvel already has them - Shatterstar & Rictor, Iceman, Karma, Pod, Superia, Union Jack, Jackpot, Lucy in The Sky, Hulkling, Wiccan, and of course the most well-known of them all - Deadpool! The Guardians of the Galaxy were Z-list characters until Marvel made a movie out of them and everyone now loves Rocket Racoon and Groot.

So just say to Marvel "Hey, can you please make these gay characters in the spotlight more? Just have some really great people to work on them and boom! You got yourself your Marvel character that fights alongside the Avengers, is now popular, and he/she happens to be gay!" I can't speak for DC since I haven't payed that much attention to them as of late, but I assume they want the same thing - it's just that they're not very good at it.

Sure, DC is pushing for other characters to take the spotlight from Batman and Superman, like Green Arrow, The Flash, Suicide Squad, Legends of Tomorrow, etc. But it's at a snail's pace. At least White Canary, is a bisexual in the Arrow-verse. So that accounts for something right?

As for calls for Elsa to be a lesbian for the Frozen sequel, I did enjoy Frozen as a movie, but I hated its over-saturation of it. That said, Disney did just that to milk as much money off the movie as possible. Considering Frozen isn't even anything like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale 'The Snow Queen', and that other mediums aside from the movie have this suggestion that Elsa and Anna are not just sisters who love each other - they are sisters who "LOVE" each other, I'd say, go ahead.

No comments:

Post a Comment