Superheroes Have Many Faces

 

Leslie Grace, Yayha Abdul- Mateen II, Michael B. Jordan, and Sasha Calle. What do all of these actors have in common? They are all actors that are non-Caucasians who have either played or are currently playing a DC or Marvel character of a different race than their own. Michael B. Jordan who is African American faced backlash for taking on the role of Johnny Storm/Human Torch in 2015's Fantastic Four reboot for Marvel directed by Josh Trank. Why was that such a big deal? Well, if you look at Marvel comics, Johnny Storm has always been Caucasian, and that has not changed. Yahya Abdul Mateen II faced similar backlash after he played Dr. Manhattan in HBO's Watchmen miniseries. However, his newly anticipated backlash is the fact that he will be playing Simon Williams/Wonder Man for Marvel and Disney+. For those unfamiliar with the character, like Johnny Storm, Simon Williams is Caucasian. Yahya like Michael is an African American actor. The problem that they face and that Sasha Calle faces playing Supergirl and that Leslie Grace would have faced if Batgirl was not canceled is the idea of race-swapping superheroes is considered too woke.

I have no problem with the actors themselves wanting to play superheroes that Black actors do not get to play, my problem is the fact that there are no more mainstream Marvel or DC characters that these actors can play. For reference, if you do the math, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is 61% White. Why is that? That is because the bigger superheroes like Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America are White. The other 20% and more are actors that are Black including the late Chadwick Boseman as well as names like Don Cheadle. What stands out is that the Caucasian actors in the MCU that are major characters make that 61% jump to 69% meaning that 56 out of the 81 major actors fall under the Caucasian category. Compare that to the actors that fall under the Black/African American category. 117 total actors fall under the Caucasian category from Robert Downey Jr to the three Chrises (Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, and Chris Hemsworth). Only 39 actors make up the African American category. That is exactly half of the Caucasian category meaning that twice as many white actors work in Marvel than black actors. Look at major characters, that 20% drops to 19% with that 19% only making up 15 actors. 41% of those 15 people make up the cast of Black Panther. Remove those people from the conversation and the total African American representation in Marvel ends up being 11%.

There is still another 8% unaccounted for. That 8% makes up actors like Zendaya and Vin Diesel, actors that fall under the Multiracial category. Only eight actors in this group make up major characters with Zendaya and Vin Diesel being two of them. That means that the 8% becomes 11% and Multiracial actors are very limited in terms of their representation in the MCU just like African American actors. East Asian actors and Hispanic actors are even lower on the representation list making up 5%(East Asian) and 4%(Hispanic) of the actor pool. Benedict Wong who plays Wong is the only major actor that makes up this list. Benicio Del Toro who plays the Collector makes up part of the 4% but the sad fact is that he is not a major character in the MCU. I will not bring up actors who make up the Arab category or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander category because they are very limited in their representation and unfortunately for the actors like Oscar Isaac who plays Moon Knight, they are not getting proper representation. Moon Knight is the star of his own Disney+ series so Oscar Isaac should be on the same level as both Sebastian Stan and Antony Mackie whose show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is also on Disney+. Instead, Oscar is considered being below their level even though he and Anthony are both minorities.

At the end of the day, Marvel is spot on with representation in terms of Caucasians and African Americans. If you look at the representation of Caucasians and African Americans in the real world, Caucasians make up 60.7% of the population while Blacks make up 13%. That means that Marvel actually over-represents how well-regarded Blacks are in the overall population. One thing Marvel gets wrong is how well Multi-racials are represented. Compared to the 11% in Marvel, that number is really 2.7%. Hispanics are also badly represented because, in the real world, Hispanics make up 18.1% of the population compared to the 4% that make up the MCU. What does all this mean? Marvel has some work to do to better represent minorities in their films and tv series. However, they are moving in the right direction just not as fast as they should. Marvel has fans all over the world and for actors like Michael B. Jordan and Yahya Abdul Mateen II to not play characters of a different race, there need to be more roles out there for Black Superheroes. Blade and Miles Morales and Black Panther are not the only Black superheroes in Marvel comics. The solution could always be to create a new character specifically for the film that takes up the mantle of a certain superhero sort of like how at the end of Avengers Endgame and the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson, played by Anthony Mackie gives up his "Falcon" moniker in favor of becoming Captain America. Creating a new character who doesn't exist in Marvel comics is not a bad thing, it is an alternate way of fixing a problem that is decades old and should not get worse before it gets better. The actors of a non-White race as well as the fans will thank you at the end of the day.