Sidebar: I love that some folks keep insisting that there's no such thing as politics in comics, yet here we are once again reminded that there is very much a political facet to characterization in comics. It's a beautiful thing. Please carry on.
Sidebar: I love that some folks keep insisting that there's no such thing as politics in comics, yet here we are once again reminded that there is very much a political facet to characterization in comics. It's a beautiful thing. Please carry on.
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of what you don’t see.”
~James Baldwin
Yeah, comics don't portray governments as good guys. And with Krakoa, it's not even East-West. UK has rejected Mutants (and Krakoa) in Excalibur.
I'm sure there is media in Russia that portrays the US in unnuanced ways that Americans wouldn't like. Such is the way of the world.
Because Russians and Eastern Europeans in general are foreign enough to be seen as other, while still being considered "white". Which means they are the most likely people to be dehumanized in the modern west.
Tolstoy will live forever. Some people do. But that's not enough. It's not the length of a life that matters, just the depth of it. The chances we take. The paths we choose. How we go on when our hearts break. Hearts always break and so we bend with our hearts. And we sway. But in the end what matters is that we loved... and lived.
BL and comics fan. 🌈 ----- For those saying BL is "pandering to fujos! Too girly! It's fetishization!!!" --> https://www.fujoshi.info/ (a website with academic resources on Queer Media Studies in Asia and LGBTQIA+ history)
The queer body has been used as a battleground, has been criminalized, ostracized, and many times erased from their own histories. -- Alesha Byrne (University of San Francisco)
There's also things like the Pale of the Settlement or the Partition of Poland (and other more recent stuff). Many Americans are descended from immigrants such as Poles and Jews who fled Eastern Europe and Russia. If Americans have a poor view of these places, it's because their ancestors immigrated to escape persecution/death in these places. The argument that these depictions are somehow propaganda obscures the generational trauma that afflicted these groups under for example the Russian Empire (and later Soviet Union). In some of these communities, the "Czar" and "Cossacks" are still remembered as bywords for persecution. Instead of accusing Americans of being insensitive perhaps posters should look at the past and present crimes committed by these nations that are the fuel for for some of the anger towards these places.
Last edited by Bruce Wayne; 10-14-2021 at 03:23 PM.
Russians are guilty of their ancestors sins but Germans are to be forgiven?
How convenient.
Also your argument would hold more weight if other Eastern European nations were treated better, but it's the same endless parade of gangsters, whores, leather clad fem fatales etc, assuming other countries get represented at all instead of Latveria, or Kasnia or Vampire land(Transylvania but not really.)
It is what it is.
The reason why CCP-China is barely portrayed in Marvel comics nowadays is because of the marketing. Disney-Marvel has been marketing their movies all over the world and one of them is China. Since China is nowadays an economical giant (with shades of totalitarian background), they fear that not only they might lose their money when the film gets banned by China, they also fear that they get branded as racists when the majority of the heroes are Whites fighting against Mainland Chinese villains. And it doesn't help that there's the anti-Chinese sentiment during the pandemic period.
The 2012 remake of Red Dawn movie is the example which went through the production and marketing troubles since the villains were supposed to be communist Chinese villains but they were changed to North Koreans.
So far, Radioactive Man is the only supervillain from communist China and we barely see him in comics nowadays.
Note: I am a Eurasian (I am half-Chinese) Singaporean and I condemn the real-life actions from CCP China, not from the Chinese people.
Last edited by MitchFox; 10-14-2021 at 06:32 PM.
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MITCH'S FAVOURITES - Speedball, Justice (Vance Astrovik), Gambit, Jubilee, Rogue, Wiccan, Speed, Quasar (Wendell Vaughn), Quicksilver, She-Hulk, Cosmo
I wrote about this on another thread. Its easy for the west to stereotype Russia. No one is offened for whatever reason. On the other hand, lets be honest here, the Germans get stereotyped to. So do the British, French ect. And in many ways even America is stereotyped within its own country. And everyone all over the world stereotypes Americans as well in their media.
The United States and Russia can be friends only in one case - if their sons of bitches come to power in Russia, who with all their might will rob, destroy and flood their country with blood. What happened more than once, and not even twice, with other countries, including Russia after the destruction of the USSR. Nothing personal just business. I think Putin would also not be at all opposed to the same fate for the United States.
In theory, in the information age in which we live, it is not so easy to convince us with any propaganda to demonize entire countries and peoples, but this is only in theory
On that note, its kind of obnoxious how the Slavic gods are exclusively associated with Russia; and Perun and Chernobog are somehow implicated in any war crime associated with any incarnation of Russia; yet Thor and the Asgardians…