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Politics in Comics - the good, the bad and the ugly
hauberk
Posts: 1,511
I'm moving this over here since it seems more appropriate to not jam up the all-new Marvel thread with our tangent. Sorry for the delayed response - I spent yesterday rebuilding stairs on my deck and had a busy evening dealing with work stuff in advance of the week.
Again, I'll qualify that I'm reading absolutely no Marvel books at this point, but from the pages that you've posted, some things are heavy handed, but it seems that you're drawing a pretty serious generalization. You're also glossing over all of the times that this has occurred in the past.
You've dismissed the Nixon Secret Empire element, but consider the fall out from that story line with Steve Rogers becoming Nomad (the Man Without a Country). There's also the whole Johnny Walker Cap / Steve Rogers Captain thing. Pretty clearly, again, an editorial on the politics of the time. Heck, the whole concept behind the X-Men was allegorical to the Civil Rights movement. It may be more heavy handed now than it was, but it's always been there.
On to bigger and better things:
There have been lots of non-Mainstream politically rooted comics of late. My favorite has been Lazarus, which draws a pretty stark picture of the future given the increased rights of corporations. I somehow come away from every issue both excited and depressed. I also rather enjoyed We Stand On Guard quite a bit.
You're entitled to sound off on anything that you please. I just think that it's a little ridiculous to sound off with such fervor after mocking others who sound off in a similar fashion but going the other direction.bralinator said:
I've grown weary of of Marvel hyper-politicizing its books while engaging in obscene double-standards, so I stop buying any title that fills its pages with divisive partisanship. Yet for some reason, you clearly have a problem with me sounding off on Nick Spencer's "political evangelism" because you feel I'm not qualified to do so since I've ridiculed the "entitlement generation" on several occasions.hauberk said:I reject political evangelism from either wing. I just don't like hypocrisy.
Again, I'll qualify that I'm reading absolutely no Marvel books at this point, but from the pages that you've posted, some things are heavy handed, but it seems that you're drawing a pretty serious generalization. You're also glossing over all of the times that this has occurred in the past.
You've dismissed the Nixon Secret Empire element, but consider the fall out from that story line with Steve Rogers becoming Nomad (the Man Without a Country). There's also the whole Johnny Walker Cap / Steve Rogers Captain thing. Pretty clearly, again, an editorial on the politics of the time. Heck, the whole concept behind the X-Men was allegorical to the Civil Rights movement. It may be more heavy handed now than it was, but it's always been there.
Under Breevort's editorial hand, if a Marvel writer wants to pen cartoonish versions of irrational and angry white men, then he or she can do that. And if that writer wants to take the actions of a few to incite anger against the whole, then doing so against cops and law-abiding gun owners or conservative thinkers is completely permissible. Nick Spencer is only one of several Marvel writers that take straw man arguments they see online and put them into the mouths of obviously villainous characters.Again, I'm not sure that that's entirely and objectively true. Certainly, you've posted examples and generalized them to represent all cops and all law-abiding gun owners, but I'm not sure that that was the point. Your previous example, with the private police force, also included what appeared to be a Marvel analog of the Donald, so any correlation there would seem to more specifically focus on his more tenacious followers. Perhaps that includes you, and so it strikes a little too close to home, perhaps not. It also seems to relate nicely to privatization of certain things that shouldn't be private, for-profit enterprises - like the military, and the recent policy change by DOJ.
They can write or draw whatever inflammatory idea they have towards white people, but they don’t dare cover inner city violence or Islamic terrorism — even if you planned on handling the latter issues in a measured manner. Nick Spencer says to do that would "dehumanize" those segments of the population. But white cops are racist? Conservatives are evil? No problem.No? I seem to recall having read stories about both subjects in the past, though I don't recall if they were from Marvel or not. Certainly, there was a story in Steel about gang violence and Seduction of the Gun was a great story, but both were from DC. Islamic terrorism has also been a strong element in the past. If it's not now, perhaps the reason is that it's not seen as the major threat at this point and that something else is of a greater priority, like a presidential candidate demanding that potential immigrants prove a negative in order to gain admittance, all the while home-grown fanatics of a wide variety of demographics are allowed to thrive?
Marvel Comics has been filling its ranks with partisan trolls whose best ideas for keeping the company afloat is to cultivate loyalty with the lowest common denominator. There are many readers who are fed up with immature antics of writers like Nick Spencer, David Walker, and Jason Latour. We may not have an affinity for Donald Trump, but we also don’t want to see him turned into a de facto Red Skull or alternate-universe M.O.D.O.K. (Mental/Mobile/Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing). Where's the discussion regarding a Nobel Peace Prize honored President who has bombed and killed civilians? Or the a corrupt left-wing candidate who engages in pay-for-play corruption deals? Nada. No room for those discussions. And who really wants that either?Certainly, there's an argument that both sides can, and should be represented, but as is often the case, we all make value statements and judgement calls on what we consider to be the more important or easiest argument to make. Alas, we also tend to attempt to deflect from the commentary presented by creating false equivalences. Having a sitting President nominated for an award from an outside entity after declaring a commitment to end a war and occupation and at the same time being forced to make hard choices is hardly the same time as standing on a stage and offering to pay the legal fees if someone assaults a protestor. More importantly, that President probably isn't making the up to the minute decisions, and I would argue shouldn't be. YMMV may vary, but there's some really odd outrage to be angry about one and not the other. Much like declaring one a serial liar, when the other is also apparently a serial liar and comes up with some really outrageous ones to boot. The high ground doesn't matter if it's standing in a cesspool.
Superhero comic books once used to unite readers of all ages and from all walks of life, but these days Marvel employees seem determined to divide — and that is one reason why so many life-long customers no longer care and are walking away in droves. Since I know that only a handful of people are actually reading most of these titles, I sound off on them when I see what they're up to in order to put the spotlight on it. If you don't like my occasional forays into activism, then you're welcome to continue to defend their position or insultingly explain why I haven't any right to comment on it.That was around the same time that they featured non-white characters that were only "in it for the money, honey" or used to be pimps before becoming heroes and female characters that changed costumes every episode or were only assigned roles like Team Secretary, right?
On to bigger and better things:
There have been lots of non-Mainstream politically rooted comics of late. My favorite has been Lazarus, which draws a pretty stark picture of the future given the increased rights of corporations. I somehow come away from every issue both excited and depressed. I also rather enjoyed We Stand On Guard quite a bit.
Comments
Or he can run himself :p
The GL/GA Hard Travelling Heroes is a great example of socio-politics in the funny books.
I somehow managed to neglect one of the recent iterations of Captain America where there was much sturm and drang over the page of Tea Party protestors.
I'd submit that the new Valiant books are all pretty deeply rooted in socio-politics.
I was not at all a fan of the most recent iteration of Quantum & Woody, but did read the entire line. It regularly got into political commentary, including a particularly poorly rendered arc dealing with a separatist militia movement.
Archer and Armstrong goes there quite often as well, though with more thought and restraint typically. In the past, this has worked pretty effectively due to the fact that the title characters come at things from opposite perspectives. I'm not far enough into the new volume of the book to make the call there.
Project Rising Spirit an Harada (see Bloodshot, Harbinger, Imperium) are so thoroughly intertwined into government(s) and the manipulation of the process that it becomes a significant element in many of the Valiant books.
Certainly, it's hard to ignore the politics of Dark Knight Returns, V for Vendetta and Watchmen, though I suppose that, as self contained entities, they may exclude themselves from the larger conversation.
I wasn't reading it at the time, but I have a hard time believing that The 'Nam didn't hit the politics of the Vietnam War in some capacity.
Having said that, here we go. So sounding off is fine, I just shouldn't do it with fervor or you're going to think I'm being ridiculous and/or hypocritical. Got it. For the record, my comments on others who complain is usually exclusive to faceless segments of the population outside of this forum. No. I actually responded to the Nixon Cap Secret Empire thing. It was Englehart's intention to imply it was Nixon (who had just resigned in disgrace), but not only did Marvel editorial distance itself from that notion in the subsequent letters pages, but prior to Nixon's resignation he was portrayed quite favorably in the comics, which I listed examples of. I'm familiar with Nick Spencer's partisan politics, as is anyone who's following him on Twitter is. He actually ran as a candidate in Cincinnati years ago amid a night club scandal he was involved in and he's made no secrets about how he feels about Obama, Hillary, police, republicans, white privilege, and several other hot button political issues. He comments on what he puts in the comics from time to time as well, so the correlations are meant to be implied. Since you don't seem to be familiar with it, I am glad I was able to point it out to you. I'm not a Trumpster, but I prefer to take a chance with his leadership over Hillary Clinton. There were several other presidential candidates I preferred over these two. Since I am singling out Marvel, that would be a crucial element to my argument.
Why would anyone feel threatened by a candidate promising to vet immigrants and slow down illegal immigration? That's not only hard to understand, but not really relevant to a vast majority of all US comic book readers? I'm not even convinced super hero books should be tackling topics of radical Islam, or illegal immigration, but I certainly don't think it should ignore the bad elements of it if they're going to villify the likes of TEA party (which my grandmother supported).
I think of the mainstream talent in the field, only Frank Miller has ever tried to portray violent jihadists as ugly or evil. And DC actually goes the opposite way to prop up Islamists by making Simon Baz, one of the Green Lanterns, a former Guantanamo Bay resident. Marvel does so more subtly with Ms. Marvel. Not that there's anything wrong with those portrayals, but they both seem to pretend there's no such thing as radical elements of Islam. My point was that it should be very easy to portray a progressive liberal president such as Obama in a negative way. After all, it was historical, and only the third time in history a sitting president of the United States had been awarded the Nobel Peace Price, but unlike presidents Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, Obama was given a Peace Prize after only being in office for 12 days. Many people consider that 'unearned,' since then he has been responsible for killing hundreds of civilians with drone strikes, including doctors, patients, children. Yet after 8 years of those kinds of 'war crimes', it's still not fodder for leftist Marvel writers, but Trump's immigration policy is? Wow. Serial liar like Obama or Hillary? Not sure who you're referring to. Not important really, but I suppose it should be equally pointed out. I'm all for diversity, and Marvel says they are too, yet when it comes to politics they are woefully out of balance and has been for a long time. Whether it's the recent anti-cop, pro-OWS, anti-Trump stuff, or 5-6 years ago when Captain America #602 showed us how Captain America didn't like the TEA party activists (“Tea Bag the Liberals Before They Tea Bag You”) Which goes back to my comment to being with "who really wants that (politics in their comics)?" You must have missed my commentary on The Falcon, so I will repost it since you left that part out of your quote-fest. Important to point out it was clumsy Steve "Nixon is Evil" Englehart who retconned Sam Wilson's origin, by turning him into a former pimp "Snap" Wilson, which has since been re-retconned away. It all continues to demonstrate that Marvel writers definitely pick on the extreme right more than they do the extreme left, probably because the extreme right is currently more politically focused than the extreme left. Conservative thought is often the butt of jokes because of the political leanings of the writers themselves and due to the general lack of subtlety in superhero comics
Naturally the one that has swung furthest to the right makes the bigger target. And if you swing that far right, there's the chance you lose perspective and end up viewing people who'd be considered centre-right anywhere else as a mythical "extreme left".
Now, if you want to pick on the right AND the left in the UK at the moment, both sides are giving you plenty of ammunition.
One side can't decide if they want to be genuinely left-wing or right-lite. The other is having to pretend it knows how to carry out the will of a referendum it never wanted in the first place in order to placate the furthest right elements in the party who have a weird Victorian fantasy of Britain's place in the world.
Luckily we have Private Eye to make sure that all gets covered in text, cartoon and strip-based satire. Oh and Judge Dredd, of course. And thankfully better parody laws of late which meant we finally got the full Cursed Earth in print.
Early 2000AD comics aren't critical of those conservative worries so much as their authoritarian response that Dredd represented. Wagner’s presentation was sufficiently subtle in early issues so it came off as both libertarian as well as liberal: a distrust of authority in general and state power in specific.
Today's American conservatives and libertarians support less centralized government, smaller government, and less statist intrusion in their lives.
Surely you understand that it can become annoying when one political bent is constant represented negatively in Marvel's line. If a writer wanted to eliminate politics from his/her stories or to treat politics in a non-partisan fashion by having an unaffiliated politician be corrupt and in cahoots with a villain, he/she could do so fairly easily without singling out any political party. These clumsy examples of M.O.D.O.K.-Trump, Red Skull's anti-immigration policy, and Sons of the Serpent border runs, etc aren't subtle at all and embody leftist/liberal straw man arguments.
The question is, if comics should even have a political objective at all instead of just being about “good, compelling stories.” Choosing to use political groups that can be identified as either progressive or conservative, but portraying only ONE of those types negatively (as Nick Spencer and the like often do), is unlikely to be coincidental. And if it were truly more "even-handed" there wouldn't be any point in calling it out. Using examples from the early 70's to defend today's myopic bent is weak. If they were all as deftly subtle as Mr. Wagner's Dredd, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
That's my take.
I'm seriously trying to get my head around this. Again, it feels like a false equivalency to decry it and embrace it at the same time, but that seems to be the overwhelming consensus that I currently get out of the Republican Party and is one of the reason I gave up affiliation with the Republicans. Just because someone else has done wrong, lied or distorted the truth, or engaged in a certain behavior, doesn't justify the same. I suppose that's true if you want to keep it to strictly Marvel, but I suspect that you'd have the same complaints about other publishers. I tend to look at things from a broader spectrum and, apparently wrongly extended the argument to comics in general. Certainly Image is pounding out books that are awash with liberal sensibilities (I offered a couple of examples above). As has been much of the history of Vertigo.
You recently mentioned your love for the Byrne Namor book. I enjoyed it quite a bit as well. I trust that you have similar issues with the fact that the big bad through much of it was an evil, resource devouring, polluting corporation?
On to the next post...
That's it.
Then I was repeatedly obliged to defend my position by you, Brack, David, etc. I've demonstrated that I don't have any problem doing that. You just don't agree with me. But the incessant, long-winded posts are enough to bore anyone. Why not just PM me? Or not respond? No issues from me for a great comic book enlisting bloated, mega-corporations or Eco-terrorists as villains. It's not all that political and it's a well-worn trope. And Namor uses his own mega-corporation to deal with corrupt Wall Street types, fight pollution, and battle crazy eco-terrorists. John Byrne is a master at taking pre-existing characters and giving comic book readers a definitive interpretation. He did it with She-Hulk, and he did it with Namor. Byrne is so talented he is able to bring in some environmental ideology without being too obnoxious about it. I suspect if Nick Spencer were writing it, the Eco-terrorists would be the good guys teaming up with Occupy Wall Street to murder Trump and Namor would be conflicted on whether or not to save Donald or let him die so Hillary Clinton could be President before the earth burns up from global warming. Nick wears his politics on the pages and it's often unseemly. I wish I had never even seen his Twitter feed.
No one is admitting how terribly one-sided this stuff is - you won't even say so. Even the Nixon bit only serves to confirms the "Marvel anti-conservative" accusation since Nixon was a republican. But in the years before that, Nixon was portrayed favorably and other republicans and conservative though (until this century), were also portrayed rather favorably. Probably even more-so at DC. It's the art of subtlety that's missing today. Nick Spencer can write political commentary that's about as subtle as a brick-to-the-face as much he wants, but to act as if his Marvel CA books are not highly antagonistic towards conservatives is either ignorance or dishonesty.
"Stand up for what you believe in even if it means standing alone"
ETA:
Why use examples from the 70's? Well, largely because you've demonstrated an affinity for Bronze Age material before, so my intent was to point out that it's always been there.
It's sort of telling. He copped to it. You're welcome.
The ironic thing is that, of course, almost all the top Marvel writers and editors are straight white males. But they're a weird variety of this type in that they seem to depise their own demographic to an almost pathological extent, taking every opportunity to make the culture they grew up in seem almost uniformly evil and bad. This self-hate phenomenon has been known to accompany the fall of civilizations, and certainly Marvel Comics' recent behavior should be seen in the context of the overall decline of Big Two comics in general. When Rome overextended its empire it began to make anyone it could find an official Roman citizen, if only to bolster the tax revenue. As Marvel Comics falls, it frantically tries to find elusive "new readers" in other demographics, insulting its core readership in the process.
I think the traditionalist Marvel reader at this point really, really has to make a hell of a lot of mental compromises to be able to endure this kind of abuse. Of course, it's been this way for awhile, and we can all eagerly point to the marketing stunts and replacement heroes of the '90s. But now every stunt is accompanied with hamfisted political overtures and emotional blackmail as an attempt to coerce consent from the readership. "You balked when Bucky became Cap? Well you damn well better be on board for Falcap, or else yer a racist!" "You had a problem when we didn't know what to do with Thor for years in the mid-2000s and canceled his title? Well now you're gonna damn well support a female 'Thor' book, or else yer a sexist!"
To be honest I've actually enjoyed a heck of a lot of what Marvel's done over the last half-decade, stunts included, but it is the political barbs that turn me off. I've bought and mostly liked (sometimes LOVED) Jason Aaron's Thor, G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, Nick Spencer's Cap, Bendis's Iron Man, to name a few. But when Kitty Pryde becomes "Star-Lord" and we have to have a whole subplot about why it's okay for her to use that name? When an otherwise solid origin story for RiRi Williams is interrupted by the news that (for a time at least) she will be "Iron MAN"? When Jason Aaron devotes an entire issue to characterizing any critics as simply sexist neanderthals? I'm sorry, but there is no earthly (or Asgardian) reason why Jane Foster would want to take on her ex-boyfriend's birthname as her first name, as if that had anything to do with his powers or status as the deity of thunder. It is all simply trolling and white knighting on the part of these writers who need to try and expiate their white male guilt.
And G. Willow Wilson will have Kamala Khan punch Donald Trump in the face, but when will Ms. Marvel ever fight (or even reference) the actual extremist faction of her own religious community who kill Muslims (and others) across the world? Never. A Republican politician who "says mean things sometimes" is apparently infinitely more troubling than thousands of ISIS murderers committing acts of genocide all over the planet. Possibly Ms. Wilson is legitimately fearful for her life in her own community if she did a story about ISIS. Well, she can call herself careful and she can call herself liberal and she can call herself a good writer, but she can't call herself particularly brave. Yeah, probably she would run into trouble in her own community if she took a stand against Muslim extremism. I've known other American Muslims who say that they want to speak out but are afraid to because their own relatives would disown them.
That is the real world that we live in, but we can read Marvel Comics and pretend that really the greatest threat in urban environments are white male purse-snatchers. Because that, honestly, is a typical crime-fighting scene that I've seen more times than any other in recent years. The hero is shown stopping some typical crime in the neighborhood, and it tends to be goofy looking white guys snatching a lady's purse. Because it's still 1955, right? The explanation for this is obvious. The creators involved are too scared to show many criminals that aren't white. In other words they are too afraid to confront reality, and in fact do not care to portray the real threats to African-American communities in particular. Hint: not white guys stealing purses. It's just too uncomfortable for them.
I am not a Republican, not a conservative, not a Trump supporter, and honestly not even THAT troubled by any of this. But it is an obviously biased feature of what's going on. I can read it the same way I can read old FF comics from the '60s where Reed downtalks Sue. It's unfortunate that prejudices exact, but they do, and oftentimes you can glimpse the art in spite of them. If you haven't been noticing all this bigotry against approximately half the country, maybe you should ask yourself why. If even the tiniest micro-aggression was made against any other type of person, you'd notice it.
If you look at many of these writers' Twitter feeds, you'll see that they're uniformly obsessed with hating Republicans. Tom Breevort, Mark Waid, Dan Slott -- these are extremely hateful, arrogant, bigoted, egotistical people. They feel the need to take every opportunity to boost their own self-esteem up by knocking other people down and competing to see who's the most trendy. It's the sort of people they are. We rarely hear about how insulting they are, because most of the press and most of the podcasters share the same biases. Why don't people notice it more? I face-palmed when, during a discussion of Preacher, "political correctness" was discussed as just "something that was big in the '90s." Well, if ya don't notice it anymore, maybe you've gone along with the program.
I was a registered Republican for my entire adult life, right up until 2004. I went independent at that point in response to what I was seeing, and continue to see as rampant anti-intellectualism from the Republican party. Thank you. That actually brought this out of Off Topic and back to Comic Talk.
As to your politics, given that you've previously indicated that you identify with Vox Day's Rabid Puppy movement, that's a really safe bet. Regardless, I'd assume that you like puppies and cookies, so you can't be all bad. So, it was just pure venting? Spencer is the first creator to crap on Cap's legacy? Not the way the way that he crapped on it? Again, I'd ask what the point is, aside from the fact that you want it to be what it was and not change into something else, even for a short time.
I've got to say, I think that I'd take heavy handed political commentary over Cap-Wolf just about any day. He is, after all, about as political a character as Marvel has to offer. Because it's not personal. It's about perspective. If multiple people were in disagreement, clearly, that's part of what a discussion forum is about. It's not the first time that you've taken a position that was contrary to others on the forum.
Long winded? I'm OK with that. Incessant? Maybe. You've sparked a conversation. I find it interesting and, occasionally, enlightening. If you respond with something interesting, I'm going to respond back. Good observations. Sort of fighting fire with fire. I'm not a huge Byrne fan, but really did enjoy Namor. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that Namor's face was different enough that I didn't get bored with the art - which is untrue of most of my other experiences with Byrne.
Byrne may be more nuanced, and Spencer more heavy handed, but I'm skeptical that anyone could successfully make Eco-terrorists heroes, but what do I know? Somehow Moore made an anarchist heroic. I'd submit that there are reasons that no Conservatives in this century are presented favorably. Some of it is socio-political and some of it has to do with generalizations about creative types.
If it helps, yeah I agree, the pages that you've posted about Marvel books are pretty clearly attacks on what currently passes for Conservatives in the US. However, I would disagree that what currently passes is a fair representation of Conservatives.
I'd go so far as to argue that Nixon, on his worst day was superior to almost the entire slate of nominees this time around and that pandering to the worst is something worthy of skewering. But I'd also argue that there isn't enough being targeted at the cynicism of an electorate that perpetuates the status quo, though, again, I think that's one of the things that Lazarus is trying to address.
This is something that I doubt any conservative would strongly agree with.
The left as represented over the past say 20 years with B. Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Biden, H. Clinton, Pelosi, and Reid as its leaders and major figures would seem fairly left of center to most conservatives. Tim Kaine would seem to be right ish but he is hardly beloved by democratic supporters.
I am not disagreeing but asking for clarification. What makes the left more right of center and is there an example of someone who really is to the left besides Bernie Sanders? Or is he what modern liberalism is?
As far as recognizable names, go, yeah, I'd place Bernie out there, but even he isn't as far out there as he could be. Off the top of my head, I couldn't come up with a genuine far left personality, but I'd submit that it's best typified by the anarchist protestors at G8 or WTO meetings.
I'll add this with a little NSFW caveat. It's pretty solid up into the last 30 seconds or so and there there's one f-bomb that gets dropped. bigthink.com/videos/penn-jillette-on-libertarianism-for-beginners"He does a nice job of distilling things down and summarizing much of my perspective nicely.
However, I wouldn't mind hearing your perspective on this, @bralinator .
Though if you've already stated your ideas regarding this point, you can link me to it instead! I
(For the record... I used to be a Young Republican. I did it as a Favor to my pal. That got me into events such as Parties for Rudy Giuliani. Good times.)
His views just reeked off the page.
From a comic book perspective, the creative arts (movies, tv, music, down to comic books) are generally populated with liberals. I am not surprised that books get political or push boundaries. I think the audience for comic books at least is more liberal than not - though I do think the publishers and groups pushing for more diversity in books often overestimate how liberal the reading audience actually is. The publishers, after the USA today articles and such can at times back away from some of their more liberal ideas as well - "cough...DC...cough..."
The audience being more liberal is by its own nature going to support these liberal creators and their beliefs.
Orson Scott Card got booted off Superman before he wrote a page because of his views. A Nick Spencer can tweet his views and insert them into his books and get a second Capt America book published. If it became public that Alex Ross painted a Hillary vampire biting the Statue of Liberty painting, does anyone really believe the big two would give him anymore work? Outside of artists being accused of over sexualizing women in their work, I am unsure if someone with a liberal bent could at this time get kicked off a book for their views because a majority of the audience and marketplace are liberal.
Re: I'm not sure I agree with the way those two things are being put together, if I am following your train of thought correctly (which I might not be).
With the exception of certain instances, where a character being who they are can overlap with social issues- say, LGBTQ characters-- I would actually say that the representation of a diversity of people as characters in books is not inherently a liberal or a conservative thing. It is just representation. It is just more kinds of people as characters.
To put it another way, the All New Ghost Rider book (the Robbie Reyes one) had a Mexican-American lead, and a supporting character with a wheelchair. The representation that comes from those characters could be seen as adding diversity to the MU. But I don't think there is actually anything liberal or conservative, on the face of it, about doing that. Just as there is nothing liberal or conservative about needing a wheelchair. Or being Mexican-American.
So I don't see how whether or not those characters were embraced by readers had anything to do with how liberal the audience needed to be. You know what I mean? Again, I might be misunderstanding what you were suggesting, about the connection between diversifying the characters in the books, and how liberal the readership is.
I could see, potentially, more of a disconnect between trying to have more representation of different people in the books, in the hopes to grow and diversify the readership... and then the publishers overestimating how diverse the audience (they can reach) actually is. But I don't think how liberal or how conservative enters into it.
Someone of a more conservative nature may say that the publishers are just being politically correct and stay away from the book because of it. Others will say it is being more representative and check the book out.
I also think there is a vocal group that shouts "give us diversity!" and at times when publishers actually give it to them they say "wait, now we actually have to buy this?" and there is just not enough support or desire from the marketplace to make the book financially viable. (Acknowledging of course that sometimes increased representation is wrapped into a book that is just bad)
To some extent, I think you may be somewhat naive in how you do not see anything liberal or conservative about representation/diversity in the books. (Or maybe I am seeing things that are not there)
Almost anytime you talk about diversity/representation there is going to be at some point or level a split based on the political filter a person has.
Yes, there are certainly identity politics that can align with diversifying who can be represented, especially as you said you were mostly thinking about LGBTQ characters.
But I do think also think that some see a political or ideological decision where there is actually a demographic decision. And I think the current state of hyper-partisanship can make business decisions seems like political ones.
Because the idea of including non-white, or even non-male, leads has been politicized. But I think that more often that is not politics. That is business.
Sure, there has been a push to see a book with a woman as a lead, or a Muslim-American lead, as picking a side. But I would question what those pushing that divisiveness have to sell, too.
I think it is more likely, in the corporate world, to have a decision that is about trying to make a sale, and grow an audience at a time of changing demographics. Profit motives are more likely, the more rational market, than political ones.
So I agree that partisan hay gets made of these decisions. But I don't agree that, on the face of it, that adding, say, a female Thor to your line, is actually a political act. Even if some, positive and negative, take it that way. Because I think the actual motive is more to do with brand extension and chasing demographic appeal than ideology.
Sorry. I meant no offense with the naive statement. I was not trying to say you were being naive as in "dumb" but as in "innocent". As in you are seeing this in a pure hearted way and maybe I seeing this from a more jaded perspective.
I do agree, at the end of all this, increased profit/market share is the primary motivation.