Passionate fandoms are a great thing, until you piss them off. Within “geek” culture – the Marvels, DC comics and what have you – pissed off fans have usually come in the form of people – usually straight white dudes – having a whinge over something that’s too progressive or pandering to the “woke SJW” crowd.
It’s honestly quite irritating dealing with the puffy-chested bros who claim to big fans of some subset of geek culture, only to irrationally hate something because it didn’t align with what they believe, The thing is though, geek culture like Marvel and DC Comics is more progressive than what those bros think and has been for a very long time.
Speaking of big issues, the GOAT team talk about the whole JK Rowling/anti-trans debacle on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
Sticking with the likes of Marvel, DC Comics, and Star Trek because those are among the loudest and most toxic subsets of geek culture, self-proclaimed fans who decry these things they supposedly love for their progressive “woke” agenda seem to forget that most of their favourite heroes and characters have always been this way. Let’s just quickly list some of the big ones:
- Star Trek is all about equality regardless of gender, sexuality, or race and being open to difference cultures.
- Superman is about pro-immigration and acceptance of others since he’s literally an alien immigrant on Earth fighting for humanity.
- Captain America literally fought Nazis.
- Black Panther and X-Men are all about civil rights, racial equality, and combating discrimination.
- Deadpool is pansexual and his stories dive deep into issues like mental health and sexuality.
Hell, Stan Lee himself once said “racism and bigotry are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today … Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits” and he used his platform to express those views for many decades, which sort of debunks the claim that comics are just pandering to the “woke SJW” crowd these days.
That’s not to say that Marvel and DC Comics aren’t at flawless in trying to be inclusive and progressive. The MCU films are still predominantly white and has tokenistic shows of diversity, Marvel really copped it by naming its first non-binary black heroes Snowflake and Safespace, while DC Comics and HBO made headlines when some folks got pissy over the racial themes of the Watchmen limited series and how “woke” it is (all while unironically not realising how political the OG Watchmen comics by DC was).
But to those puffy-chested bros who decry how geek culture is no longer the same because it’s pandering to the “woke SJW” crowd, well it seems like you don’t understand any of the things you claim to love because they were never on your side in the first place.
Geek culture such as Marvel, DC Comics, and Star Trek didn’t suddenly become “woke” with its focus on things like equality or inclusivity like what some folks like to complain about. It’s been like that for ages, it’s just that those same whiny folk don’t realise this, conveniently forget it, or skip straight to the exciting action scenes and miss all the subtext.
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