Representation Done Right…?

I am a HUGE comic book geek as well as, well, everything you read here so far; including an ally to the struggles suffered by the LGBTIQ community in order to be included. However, I find that inclusion as a whole has been something mainstream media has a strange, strange relationship with that has been placed front and center with the sort of media I engage with.

For comparison’s sake, let’s take the media pieces stated above.

First of all, the correct sort of representation is not one that highlights the identifier as the sole trait of the character; a stereotype.

Look at the “gay Spider-Man.”

Can you see anything MORE than a gay Spider-Man?

The design certainly does not suggest so. I am not saying pride should not be on display. Granted that it is still too early to state realistically so but the design certainly would benefit from making it less about the sexuality of the person beneath the mask and more about their personality as a whole; I am pretty sure people are more complex than where their urges point them to. Furthermore, the allure of Spider-Man had always been that anybody could be beneath the mask, no matter their background; and that’s what makes them relatable. You can call me hypocritical because I like the Miles Morales costume, but I do not feel that Miles’ ethnicity factored in that at all – otherwise we would have a Black/Yellow Ranger sort of situation. In fact, I think this is exactly what the problem is here; the design focus is less on making a Spider-Man who is gay and much more on making them appear so for tokenistic reasons.

On the other hand, we have the Umbrella Academy; not only it is miles better than its comic book counterpart as a whole, but not only the showrunners and the entire cast and crew had been incredibly supportive of Elliot Page’s coming out, but they have done so without making it the sole focus of their journey or the story they wanted to tell. The Umbrella Academy had always been a story of broken people trying to find themselves with each other in a context that had broken them, to begin with, while saving the world doing so and the show never lost sight of that. They fit the issue within their own context without breaking the story at all.

That is not what happened on the Flash, sadly. But I have since gained a little perspective.

I loved who they cast as Captain Cold from day 1. I could not read Captain Cold in the comics as anyone else but Wentworth Miller.

And then they killed him off and brought him back again as a parallel dimension version of him who happens to be gay.

My immediate reaction, as stated elsewhere, was “What a waste of good mythology”, as the Flash already had great sources for characters from that community that was not developed enough from the word go. And I held to my guns for the longest while.

And then I discovered that Wentworth Miller decided to stop playing straight characters altogether, which was the main reason for the change; he wanted to move away from characters he could not relate to – which makes sense – but was contractually forced into one last hurrah.

Which was deeply saddening, and yet, made me gain more respect for him and why the whole change happened. It was a mix of attempts at support, and bad execution with some contractual shenanigans thrown in.

Goes to show that, once again, the people running the show are usually the ones who do not have people’s interests truly at heart now, do they?