Narrator’s voice to be heard as in the style of an old timey radio narrator…
LYRICAL CHORUS: O-l-d T-i-m-e-y R-a-d-i-o!!!
NARRATOR: We bring you back to the amazing adventures of The Amazing Whitey Spidey Man! The scene opens when another Dick Driver, a black teen wearing a Dr. Who t-shirt and sporting his beloved camera about his neck is about to be bitten by a radioactive spider…
WHITEYSPIDEY: Noooo! There cannot be a black Spideyman! I am the only person allowed to be named Dick Driver and have the same things happen to him! I’m the only true Spideyman! No one else must ever steal the screen from MEEE!
THE OTHER DICK DRIVER: Whoah! Whitey Spidey! …Why are you carrying an elephant gun!!??
STAGE SOUND: enormous explosion
STAGE SOUND: sickening wet sound of instantly shredding flesh
STAGE SOUND: sickening wet sound of a hunk of shredded flesh hitting the floor like a sack of shredded flesh
WHITEYSPIDEY: That was a close one. The white race is thus preserved. We can’t let negroes get mutated into spideymen. Then they’d be our equals! Whitey Spidey must stay white. It’s even in the name!
SOME WOMAN IN THE DISTANCE: What about a Spidey Woman?
STAGE SOUND: enormous explosion
STAGE SOUND: sickening wet sound of instantly shredding flesh
STAGE SOUND: sickening wet sound of a hunk of shredded flesh hitting the floor like a sack of shredded flesh
WHITEYSPIDEY: Man. It’s Whitey Spidey Man. Jesus. Why do you women and negroes want to ruin literally everything!?
NARRATOR: …the Amazing Whitey Spidey Man shouted to an empty room, the sound echoing futilely off steaming heaps of corpseflesh. Whitey Spidey promptly picks up his Bible and shoulders his gun and continues on his amazing adventures, assured that he will never fall into any alternative universe in which he is born and raised black. But not too long after murdering a lady and a negro, Whitey Spidey is accidentally sucked into an alternative universe in which all men are badgers and all bachelors are married.
STAGE SOUND: door slam
MISSES WHITEYSPIDEY: Did you do the dishes?
WHITEYSPIDEY: Oh, come on! Come on! I’m the Amazing Whitey Spidey! I fight crime and stuff.
MISSES WHITEYSPIDEY: And I work all day and pay for your stupid spidey costume to get cleaned and mended constantly. The least you could do is some chores around the house!
WHITEYSPIDEY: I hate you. All you women are so demanding and mean.
MISSES WHITEYSPIDEY: That’s it. I want a divorce.
WHITEYSPIDEY: Ha! You can’t divorce me! In this universe everyone can only always be married! A divorce would just remarry us!
MISSES WHITEYSPIDEY: Damnit. I hate this universe.
NARRATOR: Misses Whitey Spidey suddenly acquires a look of having ingeniously solved a vexatious problem.
MISSES WHITEYSPIDEY: You knowww… I’m just gonna have to create my own universe and go live there.
NARRATOR: Whitey Spidey began to sweat great drops of fearful blood at hearing her words. For he knew she was an astrophysicist. So she might actually be able to create a new universe and go live there. Then who would do the dishes? And alas, such it was. Miss Whitey Spidey promptly created a new universe from her well-funded Manhattan laboratory, a new universe in which all men were nice. And she left Whitey Spidey to settle in the fruit of her labors. The laws of Whitey Spidey’s universe promptly spontaneously generated a new wife for him by quantum mechanical principles upon Miss Whitey Spidey’s existential exit, thus preserving the laws of that strange world. But alas, Whitey Spidey was still a badger. Subsequently, Miss Whitey Spidey, whose name was Mona Masters, then entered the halls of Whitey Spidey’s greatest villains, indeed she became his worst nemesis yet…an intelligent woman of means. Can he thwart her devices? Tune in next time to follow the amazing story of The Amazing Whitey Spidey Man!
LYRICAL CHORUS: O-l-d T-i-m-e-y R-a-d-i-o!!!
-:-
N.B. Though Stan Lee says Spiderman (or at least Peter Parker’s Spiderman) in cinema must remain white (for some reason, insert handwaving here), he must have forgotten, there actually already is a black spiderman. You knowww…perhaps we could have a blockbuster movie about him?
Well, he didn’t say Spiderman had to be white – he said Peter Parker had to be white
(A) That doesn’t matter. Because: Nick Fury. (And alternate universe Spidermen: hence my many jokes about that.)
(B) So why can’t we can have a Sony picture about Miles Morales again?
(C) It’s a little less clear than you think. Rebecca Watson:
“The misunderstanding starts with Stan Lee. You assume he’s only referring to Peter Parker and not “Spider-man,” but he compares the issue to Black Panther, not “T’Challa” or any of the many men who have been Black Panther. So it certainly sounds like he’s arguing for both Peter Parker and Spider-man to be white. That said, I spent the bulk of [my] video arguing that not even Peter Parker needs to be white, since it’s fairly obvious why Spider-man doesn’t need to be.”
What’s the problem with Spiderman being play by a white guy ? Peter Parker is white, how do you want a black person play Peter Parker ? Also, as you mention there is a black person being Spiderman but that is after the death of Peter Parker, so we can be sure that when Peter die, we may see a black play spiderman or not because the universe of spiderman is big and there must be a lot of people who when Peter die, they take the place of spiderman. But knowing how the plublic is being, when Peter die, a black person will take over.
“What’s the problem with Spiderman being play[ed] by a white guy?”
What’s the problem with Nick Fury being played by “a black guy”?
Answer: Nothing.
Ergo, the question is…what’s the problem with Peter Parker being played by “a black guy”?
STAGE SOUND: crickets
N.B. You don’t have to kill off a character to write stories set in the future of his timeline. For example, the Indiana Jones films were shown out of chronological sequence (the second film depicted events years before the first film), as were the recent Hannibal films (Red Dragon takes place before Silence of the Lambs, yet was filmed after; yes, it did get made first as Manhunter, yet they went back and re-did it, even though it meant going back in time). And of course the Star Wars sequence (the last three films took place decades before the first three). So it isn’t necessary to “kill off” Peter Parker before making Miles Morales films. Instead they remade the same Peter Parker origins story twice! But again, that still doesn’t change the fact that if Nick Fury can be black, why can’t Peter Parker?
What’s the problem with Nick Fury being played by “a black guy”?
Answer: Nothing, because he is Nicholas Joseph Fury Jr, the son of Nicholas Joseph Fury.
If you have seen Captain America: the winter soldier, there’s a place in the movie where the Captain and Fury Jr are at a box gym and you see Fury Jr talking about his father and than give a motorcycle to the Captain.
Ergo, the question is…what’s the problem with Peter Parker being played by “a black guy”?
Because as I said Peter Parker is white.
The Indiana Jones films and Star Wars are different from a movie that is made from marvel. We can see that Marvel as made movie where there superhero will connect with one and each other. We already have a big hunch that the guardian of the galaxy will be with the avenger. Also, if we make a spiderman movie that is suppose to happen when Peter Parker died, the ennemie and ally will change and if marvel make two movie of the same superhero with different timeline and universe that will cause a lot of problem for further movie.
That answer didn’t make any sense.
Also, should I point out that marvel still need the same spiderman for upcoming movie. Here’s for where spiderman might appear in some other movie: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Forget-Civil-War-Spider-Man-May-Show-Up-Marvel-Movie-69163.html
If it were your football you could dictate who is on the team. It isn’t; so you can’t. Simples.
Actually, the customer is always right.
AKA
If you ignore the fans, your sport ain’t that great.
According to Stan Lee, what has been evermore shall be, amen, amen.
OK. Spiderman has existed for 53 years. Assuming Peter Parker was at minimum 15 years old then, therefore Spiderman by Stan Lee’s own logic must be at least 68 years old.
Fine, let Spidey deal with an enlarged prostate, age discrimination at his day job, failing teeth, osteoarthritis, and the occasional bathroom accident in his Spidey suit.
Enjoy your comics, white boys!
Richard asks: “What’s the problem with Nick Fury being played by “a black guy”?”
And it was at that time that comic book fans around the world did a face palm. Nicholas Joseph Fury Jr. is black; and so it is fine for Jackson to play him.
Ah, so we’re asking now about Peter Parker, Jr.
[Or not.]
A. Not relevant to my point.
B. Nothing in what Lee said (or what’s apparently in the agreement) would prevent that.
C. See B.
As it happens that Black Widow [Latrodectus] is played, oddly enough, by a white [jewish?] lass. ‘N no-wun bats an eyelid.Great. How about sumwun , p’rhaps a (nativ) american/east asian/caribbean extraction/ transgender playing uhm the incredibl hulk?
N ‘au kum John Steed isn’t in the Avengers gang?
From Aryan Jesus, to John Wayne as Genghis Khan, to making the MIT blackjack team white, no non white is too established or too sacred to avoid being white washed, yet Peter fucking Parker is too precious to be black? And this is in a genre that regularly features multiple universes, alternative timelines, time travel, magic and alien technology. Those things are all acceptable; but, having a black portrayal of a character coming of age in New York City, being raised by his grandparents, and losing a father figure to violence, stretches your imagination?
Ed and Some Dude are both a little confused. Samuel Jackson isn’t playing Nick Fury Jr., because NFJr did not exist until AFTER Samuel Jackson’s portrayal of Nick Fury.
Nick Fury was re-imagined as a black man in Marvel’s Ultimate universe, and modeled after SLJ because, well, because he kicks m-f-ing ass. SLJ loved it, even though it was an unauthorized likeness, and basically agreed not to sue them over it as long as he got to play the part if the character ever made it to the movies.
Nick Fury Jr. came along later, after the success of SLJ’s cinematic Nick Fury, as Marvel’s way of updating their main universe’s Nick Fury to match the ultimate and cinematic universes.
IMO, obviously some characters were designed in part as a racial character, so recasting them is right out. Black Panther is an obvious example. One could argue that Captain America is another. Would a black man ever have been chosen as the symbol of America back in WWII?
But for most characters, I wouldn’t object to racial recasting in principal. I’d just rather it be justified by creative reasons rather than editorial or studio mandates. Like Nick Fury. So the question to me for Spider-Man isn’t could Peter have been a young black science nerd instead of a white one, but rather who is making the decision, and for what reasons?
And of course, this being entertainment, in the end all that matters is if the final product is fun and entertaining. And whether it is good or not, I would bet money that either way the reason won’t be Peter’s skin color, but rather the writing, plot, acting, directing, etc. IOW, the creative decisions.
Thanks for that informative comment, Daniel. All very illuminating. And I concur on principles.