On making Spider-Man another race in the movie canon…

So lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of topics pop up about who should play Peter Parker in the next movie, and the biggest debate seems to be “why does Peter Parker even have to be a white guy at all? Why can’t we just change his color?” I have a different question. Since we already know the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is based off of the Ultimates comic lines, why does Spider-Man have to be Peter Parker? Why can’t we have Miles Morales be in the movies instead? Wouldn’t that be a great explanation for why old Peter wasn’t in the last Avengers movie? Because he was already dead? YEAH. And then we could do a story introducing Miles in a post Peter Parker production. Perfect! Then everyone can be happy. The people who want more diversity get a new Spider-Man they can identify with, the “respect canon” fanboys get a character who is well established in comics canon by now, and Marvel gets to smell like a rose for being creatively diverse.

But you know what doesn’t sound so good? Race swapping an established character. Allow me to put it in a way that most of us have seen most frequently. Did you like it when the Avatar movie whitewashed most of the cast? Does it annoy you when a character who is clearly described as dark-skinned in your favorite book shows up as a white person in the movie? Hell yeah, you do, and that reaction is completely understandable. But it’s also the same reaction some of you are ridiculing when it happens to an established white character. Like, “oh relax, it’s just fiction. These people can be whatever race they want.”

No, they really can’t, and I’m not just talking about some fanboy hysteria, either. Peter Parker’s whole story would have to be rewritten to take another race into account. This is not entirely impossible given how often the comics companies pull a “cosmic event” that reshuffles all their alternate Earths and decided on a new reboot for everyone. There could very possibly be an alternate universe reboot where Peter Parker can be any other race. Except, if he were say, Middle Eastern, doesn’t the name Peter Parker itself feel a bit…odd? The same goes if he was Native American, or Chinese, or Latino. As a real world example, the Japanese Spider-Man is named Takuya Yamashiro. He has a completely different origin and history, and yet his character is now accepted Marvel canon these days. He’s still Spider-Man, just a different alternate universe version.

The name Peter Parker carries with it a crap-ton of historical baggage, and to change his race requires time to rebuild him from scratch with a whole new origin and history. Simply flipping his skin color and saying it’s the same guy ignores how race affects real world people. A lot of the opportunities offered to white Peter would not be extended to black Peter, even if they come from the same humble origins. You can’t just do the same story without examining what a change in race means to the established history. You need to go back to the start and rewrite all that history to reflect the change. To do less is to be ignorant of how important race is in social interactions. It’s a “color-blind” reboot, and that in itself can end up becoming slightly racist by pretending that culture and skin color are universal and interchangeable.

A proper reboot could still possibly do the same origin with Uncle Ben getting killed and creating Peter’s iconic philosophy that “with great power comes great responsibility.” But beyond that point, the writers have to start thinking about how people perceive race and change Peter’s background accordingly. Can you really see the Marvel movies taking on that kind of thorny issue in a compressed format? No, probably they would rather go for the “safe” choice by sticking to a white Peter. That’s a shame because if the MCU is based around the Ultimates comics, we already have a better option for a diverse Spider-Man. Samuel Jackson is Nick Fury because Marvel wrote the Ultimate Nick Fury with him firmly in mind from the beginning of that universe’s start. And that’s exactly why Miles would be perfect to come into the Avengers instead of Peter. We already know it’s canon that Peter died, so it’s okay to do a bit of compression and explain Peter’s death and bring in Miles without causing much of a fuss.

But simply flipping a race switch in the movies without an established character change from a reboot in the comics is just going to cause problems. Look at how people are reacting to a black Johnny Storm, for instance. And while some of them are racist in their resistance to the idea, some folks are also probably upset because that’s not the established character history. People would be just as upset if Luke Cage was suddenly a white guy.

While I’m on this topic, there’s something Marvel’s been doing to swap out canon characters with new people that I really like, and that’s a passing of the mantle to a new character. Ms. Marvel is now Kamala Khan. Captain America is Sam Wilson. There’s two Hawkeyes, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. There’s a new Thor, a woman who was deemed worthy to pick up the hammer Mjolnir. To me, this is the perfect response to calls for more diversity. Instead of simply swapping the old character and saddling them with all that old history, Marvel is giving the costume to a new person. This allows them to create a new canon and at the same time explores issues unique to those new heroes’ perspectives.

In the same way, Miles Morales is a perfect way to make a new Spider-Man. We get to do away with all of Peter’s baggage and give this new guy room to be himself. We don’t carry forward any expectations of what he should act like because this isn’t Peter Parker, and he doesn’t have to act the same. We also get to understand something of what it means to be carrying on a legacy by taking on the same costumed identity.

That’s not even a new concept. Look at the times the Flash was changed over to a new character. Or look at Blue Beetle, or Dr. Fate, or any number of characters who handed down their title to someone else going from one comics age to the next. It’s an established precedent, and while in the past, most white dudes passed their costume down to another white dude, it doesn’t mean we have to respect that old tradition. So the new Captain America is black. The new Spider-Man is mixed race. The new Ms. Marvel is a Muslim. Let’s keep that idea going and have other people inherit older titles instead of simply swapping the race of an established white dude. Let that show the changing times, where the mostly white, mostly male lineups give way to a new more diverse team of new age heroes. And while we’re doing that, let’s also introduce some new heroes to join the team who are equally diverse and don’t have to deal with a legacy at all. Let’s make a few more heroes like DC’s Static, a character who I’ve talked about before that was successful enough to get his own cartoon series going.

I’m all for broadening the racial and gender diversity of our comic book heroes, and I think it is possible to bring the same idea over to the movies. But I don’t like the idea of simply flipping a switch and saying “now X is this new race.” It ignores how important race is to the identity of a character and misses the point of what it would mean to be another race. And again, it would be taken in an entirely different light if an established character of color was suddenly race-swapped to be white. Then it would be okay to be upset, because it’s not just about skin color, but the identity of the character. You couldn’t make Storm a white woman without making a lot of people upset for valid reasons. So why is changing an established white character no big deal while changing a character of color a HUGE deal?

It’s because white is the default for so many heroes, and the few characters of color are a precious commodity. You take away Storm’s identity and you disenfranchise a huge section of your readers who grew up idolizing her and relating to her race.

I agree it’s a bad move to do so. But I wonder why it’s quite all right to snub the other half of the market by simply race erasing a white guy when there are already better methods of introducing diversity into the titles. Let’s look at that woman Thor again. She’s now outselling the old male Thor by a wide margin. Why? Because she’s picking up a lot of girls and women interested in the idea, and she’s bringing in some open-minded male readers who are curious about where this new Thor will go. Thor wasn’t just gender-swapped or rebooted, and oddly enough, Thor would be one of the few characters who could pull that off mid-series without a reboot, being a god. (Loki did it, so why not Thor, you know?) And this new Thor is helping to create interest in readers. Not just the usual fan-base, but also in new readers who might not have otherwise looked into the comic. It’s a great way to inject diversity into the story AND into the readership. Maybe it is a gimmick to grow the fan-base, but hot damn, it’s a gimmick that’s working. So let’s run with that and keep going by swapping other old heroes for new people with new names and diverse identities.

So, getting back to the movies for my closing point, why can’t we just race swap Peter? Well I think we shouldn’t because it’s a sloppy way of creating diversity that disenfranchises a big number of established fans. We don’t need to do it because there’s a great Spider-Man in the comics canon who could easily replace Peter Parker altogether. So if we’re going to cast a Spider-Man who isn’t white, let’s forget the name Peter Parker and move on to Miles Morales. Spider-Man is dead. Long live Spider-Man.