Good piece on chromatic stunt casting

Let the characters be who they are. [Link]

This race thing isn’t as simple as a skin tone and nappy hair. That’s kiddie pool anthropology. That just reinforces the idea of white as the default, in that it ignores the rich culture that white people hold dear. It reinforces the idea that non-white characters don’t matter, because why would anyone cast Jubilee in a movie? Why would anyone go see a movie about Misty Knight or Luke Cage? Let’s flip Jean Grey and Cyclops to being Indian and Chinese and roll with that! Progress!
But hey, here’s a counterpoint: Spider-Man and X-Men didn’t start this burst of superhero movies in Hollywood. No, Wesley Snipes as Blade did that. Black hero with a black love interest and everything. And before the movies? Blade was lame. All he had going for him before the movie was awesome Gene Colan art and we gottwo great movies out of him and one awful one. As far as quality of Hollywood superhero flicks go, he’s matchedBatman (both 1989 and Begins franchises), Spider-Man, X-Men, and Superman. Blade beats Hulk, considering that those movies were mediocre at best.
Imagine what we could get for Aya. Or Jubilee. Or Dizzy. Or Loop. Or Misty. Or Luke. (Or Hypno Hustler.)
You mean to tell me that nobody would go see an action movie about a black chick with an afro, a robot arm, a sneer and a half-Japanese sword-wielding BFF in 2010? That they’d rather see The Dark Dark Phoenix Sagainstead? Get outta here. If we can buy Matt Damon as action star, we can buy a black character as a black character, rather than a palette swap.
Chromatic Comics is tokenism, or maybe lip service. Either way, it’s not powerful. It’s not respectful. It’s not even anti-racist. It ignores what we already have in favor of continuing to worship exclusively white characters as if they were the end-all, be-all of comics. Hey- Marvel and DC already do that. We should do better than flipping a switch or using the paint bucket in Photoshop and calling it a day. We’ve got some diamonds in all this rough. Let’s act like it.

And heck yeah, I'd go see a Misty Knight / Colleen Wing action buddy film. Have Tarantino direct and it'll rock.