Originally Posted by
Nelliebly
I have a lot of complex thoughts on this.
I’m not at all against a Black man as Clark Kent but, as I’m not Black myself, I also recognize that whether or not the privilege, passing element and power dynamics inherent to his narrative actually ::work:: with a Black actor is not for me to decide. There are a lot of extremely brilliant Black fans who have made the case well for why they don’t actually think Clark Kent works as a dark skinned man specifically because of the assimilation and “hiding in plain sight” element to his story that is not afforded to Black men in this world because of the institutionalized racism that they still endure day in and day out. So while I personally would welcome any Actor....this isn’t my lane. This is not something where a non Black person’s opinion holds weight.
Speaking of “Lane” though I do think that if they are serious about revamping Clark Kent’s narrative with a Black actor it is IMPERATIVE that Lois Lane also be cast as a Black woman and, frankly, she should be darker skinned than the actor who is cast as Clark.
Casting Clark as a Black man but keeping Lois Lane white would be an insult on every level. There is a horrible history of denying Black women the role as “the one” and there are very few roles where dark skinned women truly get to be the “I love you until the end of time” partner. And there is a terrible history of Black women, in particular, being replaced with light skinned women both in fiction and in real life. So if this is truly something they are determined to do I truly hope they’ve thought it through regarding how it will impact Lois Lane as well. Because I saw a LOT of chatter on Twitter from people literally saying “ok I don’t really care what Superman looks like but is SHE also going to be Black because now you have my attention.” This could go phenomenally wrong if they don’t understand this.
Mainly, I just have a lot of concerns about a studio with WB’s history and leadership tackling this kind of project when they still have not even publicly or privately apologized to Ray Fisher. When they fired both a Black director from The Flash movie and won’t move forward with Ava on New Gods. I just don’t trust these people. They aren’t doing this for any other reason than they are greedy and think this will make money. They are using Black people as tokens for their own egos and pocket books and that’s immoral and disgusting. I don’t trust WB in the state it’s in to handle the extremely complex issues that would come into play with this scenario unless they clean house first and issue some genuine apologies for the harm they’ve caused. Ray Fisher was fired from The Flash film. They sabotaged his career. They can’t be trusted with something this important and that’s the real issue.