The intermission was especially long, with boys hyped up on sugar with nothing to do but ask their parents to purchase one of the doodads being hawked by vendors canvassing the seats. The mother in front of me balked at the $25 price tag on a watch that would light up at a key part of the performance. When her son insisted she held up his Captain America motorcycle, “Do you know much this cost? $15.” Then she held up his popcorn in a box covered in Marvel characters. “Do you know how much this cost? $7.” Then she held up a picture her son had taken in front of a green screen so it looked like he was posing with the Avengers amid some rubble. “Do you know much this cost? $27. Do you know how much that seat you’re sitting in cost?” He shook his head. “No. Well, Citibank does.”
The intermission was especially long, with boys hyped up on sugar with nothing to do but ask their parents to purchase one of the doodads being hawked by vendors canvassing the seats. The mother in front of me balked at the $25 price tag on a watch that would light up at a key part of the performance. When her son insisted she held up his Captain America motorcycle, “Do you know much this cost? $15.” Then she held up his popcorn in a box covered in Marvel characters. “Do you know how much this cost? $7.” Then she held up a picture her son had taken in front of a green screen so it looked like he was posing with the Avengers amid some rubble. “Do you know much this cost? $27. Do you know how much that seat you’re sitting in cost?” He shook his head. “No. Well, Citibank does.”
Hey, White Americans. We Need to Talk.
Hey, White Americans. We Need to Talk.
Okay, fellow white people. We need to talk.
Let me tell you a story: I was an angry punk teenager. Not violent, but I did a shitton of trespassing, and I got into a…
Here you see an internal Time Inc. spreadsheet that was used to rank and evaluate “writer-editors” at SI.com. (Time Inc. provided this document to the Newspaper Guild, which represents some of their employees, and the union provided it to us.) The evaluations were done as part of the process of deciding who would be laid off. Most interesting is this ranking criteria: “Produces content that [is] beneficial to advertiser relationship.” These editorial employees were all ranked in this way, with their scores ranging from 2 to 10.
Anthony Napoli, a union representative with the Newspaper Guild, tells us: “Time Inc. actually laid off Sports Illustrated writers based on the criteria listed on that chart. Writers who may have high assessments for their writing ability, which is their job, were in fact terminated based on the fact the company believed their stories did not ‘produce content that is beneficial to advertiser relationships.’” The Guild has filed an arbitration demand disputing the use of that and other criteria in the layoff decisionmaking process. In a letter to Time Inc., the Guild says that four writer-editors were laid off “out of seniority order” based on the rankings in the spreadsheet above.
…Holy shit. (From here.)
As the popularity of the mix suggests, Star-Lord’s mother was no amateur when it came to mixtape sequencing and aesthetic consistency—qualities any mixtaper worth her weight in underappreciated B-sides would go to the mat for. But the new additions don’t fit. Every other song on the mix is a hit from the ’70s, while “I Want You Back” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” were released in the ’60s. Their inclusion ruins the thematic purity of a mix clearly crafted by Peter Quill’s poor, dying mother for her son. How dare you, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)? These additions dishonor the memory of Quill’s mother, misrepresent one of her last gifts to her son, and insult her skills as a mixtaper.
And maybe, in the subconscious of the uni-mind of Marvel Comics, is the understanding that Luke Cage may unfortunately always be a relevant fantasy idea for the Black man.
2012 – Trayvon Martin is shot and killed.
2013 – Jonathan Ferrell is shot and killed.
2014 – Michael Brown is shot and killed.
2015/2016 – Luke Cage premieres on Netflix.
I just can’t.
Like, I know what they’re going for – and the heart is in the right place, ultimately – but seriously: Am I the only one who finds this in amazingly poor taste? “Hey, America’s race relations are still fucked up! Real people are being murdered! Luke Cage is gonna be relevant when his Netflix series drops!”
(From here.)
Not that Marvel is much better. Comics-wise, Marvel is slowly but surely getting more diverse, but the MCU is a more depressing story. While the MCU has been good at not actively excluding us non straight/white/male fans, they haven’t been very good at including us in the content we’re fanning over. Black Widow, Pepper Potts, Agent Hill, Peggy and Sharon Carter, Rhodey, and Falcon are awesome, but they don’t really get to do anything outside of the white male superhero protagonists. We saw Steve Rogers hang out at a coffee shop while off the clock, but what does Natasha do when she’s not SHIELD-ing? Why only three straight black dudes in the movies (with no romantic interests so as to keep them “non-threatening”)? Why not an Asian, Native American, Middle Eastern, or Hispanic character with a major role? Or a trans person? I like John C. Reilly and Peter Serafinowicz a ton, but why not hire people of color for those roles instead? Why couldn’t Corpsman Dey go home to his husband instead of his wife? Where in the MCU are the rest of us?
Quite why Guardians of the Galaxy has proven to be the movie that sees Marvel finally get called out for its lack of diversity, I’m not quite sure, but it’s fascinating to watch. (From Tor.com.)
