What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Only 33 Words in a Trailer
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| Title: | What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Only 33 Words in a Trailer |
| Creator: | Stitch |
| Date(s): | 19 September 2018 |
| Medium: | Blog post |
| Fandom: | Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain Marvel (film) |
| Topic: | Fandom racism, white feminism, Captain Marvel and Nick Fury |
| External Links: | https://stitchmediamix.com/2018/09/19/what-fandom-racism-looks-like-only-33-words-in-a-trailer/ |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Only 33 Words in a Trailer is a meta essay published to the website Stitch's Media Mix, and the third post in the series entitled What Fandom Racism Looks Like.
It deals with a tweet by Melissa McEwan in response to the trailer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Captain Marvel, which pointed out that Nick Fury (a male character of colour) had more spoken words of dialogue than Captain Marvel (a white female character).
Stitch's essay draws attention to out how white feminists all-too-frequently "step over" characters of colour in their quest for female empowerment, using examples from Star Wars fandom and the Agent Carter Netflix series, as well as the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Some Excerpts From the Essay
Yesterday, the Captain Marvel teaser trailer broke the internet.
Today, I saw a tweet about said trailer from Shakesville.com’s Melissa McEwan from the night before that reminded me that when it comes to feminism and fandom, people of color are always stepped over on the path to (white) female empowerment.
[Maggie] Stiefvater couldn’t see that fans of color were excited about Finn and Poe, two men of color, for being “firsts” in the genre – Finn as the first Black male lead in a Star Wars film and Poe as a Latino character treated as a major supporting character. She framed it as fans focusing on “the mens” and not-so-subtly implied that women were failing their gender/being anti-feminist with their interest in Finn and Poe.
As for the “Dude Free” edit of The Last Jedi? In clapping back against an MRA cut of the film that excised all of the women from the film, the anonymous creator also cut out every single character of color with significance to the plot.
Not only did she lump Poe and Finn in with all of the white male characters, but in cutting them out of the film, she cut Rose and Paige Tico from the film because their scenes were linked with Finn and Poe’s respective plot points. Leaving The Last Jedi “Dude Free” cut as a film revolving around white women alone.
White Feminism ™in fandom looks like zeroing in on Nick Fury’s 67 words in the Captain Marvel trailer as a red flag for the film’s feminism. It looks like not saying a thing about how neither actress of color in the trailer has a single line It’s acting as if Nick Fury getting 67 words of dialogue in a teaser trailer after basically being ignored for several of the MCU’s past films – he wasn’t even in Black Panther, y’all – takes something away from Captain Marvel as a character or film.