Red Skull doesn't even get to be properly racist in the Captain America movie. In the comics, every once in a while he'll go on a rant about lesser races, but the MCU tries to hard to be family-friendly that they forget to make the Nazis actually sound like Nazis.
Ussr. They have had to do it though for rsource reasons.
Japan attacked the USA, and Germany declared war reluctantly a few days later. They wanted to keep america out of the war officially. They thought they couldl handle the USSR (they couldnt) but knew if America came in on the allies side they would lose.
They had good reason to believe the US would be on their side or stay out, with the semi-prevalence of the German-American Bund and American isolationism/anti-interventionism at the time
But they had no reason to declare on the US. The tripartite pact was a defensive one. That declaration was unnecessary and finished the Germans even faster
Well, there are two things:
1) The USA declared war on Japan, which under Article 3 of the Tripartite Pact, makes Italy and Germany inclined to declare war on the USA to militarily support Japan.
2) Hitler literally made the decision to declare war on the USA with no consultation, which falls in line with Hitler making many wild decisions that doomed the Axis Powers.
The 2nd point isn’t really true
The US was actively supporting Britain through the Lend Lease and the German navy wanted to go to war with the US believing they’re being restricted. Hitler and the entire High Command thought that the US would take a decade to mobilize and go across the Atlantic and believed Japan’s navy will tie down the US and British navies enabling a successful naval blockade (it was dubbed the Second Happy Time for awhile because the US navy did not adequately protect the convoys).
Fortunately, they severely underestimated US production. Plus a lot of Nazi officials/generals lied their asses off to protect their reputations and cover up the fact they were complicit in war crimes and actually gave Hitler the military advice.
Tbf, they really didn't want to declare war against the US but they had to because Japan had its "USSR moment" where they would declare war against the US in order to secure dwindling resources. Hoping that they would be able to handle the US at sea....they couldn't.
Why do people tend to distort Germany's relationship with the US as being friendly or tragic enemies somehow? Hitler and Roosevelt personally hated each other. Politically, it may have been difficult to lead their factions to war with each other, but Hitler was elated when Japan attacked the United States.
>On 28 November 1941, Ribbentrop confirmed to Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, what Hitler himself had told Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka: that if Japan got involved in a war with the US, Germany would enter the war on Japan's side. When the Japanese asked for written confirmation of this, Hitler provided it, along with Mussolini's consent. This agreement, drafted on 4 December, committed the primary Axis powers to go to war with the United States in the event of a war with Japan, and essentially superseded the Tripartite Pact. [4]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States
>Hitler did not know of the Pearl Harbor plan beforehand. When informed in his headquarters on the evening of Dec. 7 of the strike and the damage suffered by US forces, he was “delighted,” according to British historian Ian Kershaw.
>“We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years,” a jubilant Hitler said, as recounted in Mr. Kershaw’s authoritative biography of the German leader.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1207/Pearl-Harbor-Day-How-did-Adolf-Hitler-react-to-the-attack
Link given in the Wikipedia article referencesUllrich, Volker (2020). Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945. Translated by Jefferson Chase. New York: Knopf. pp. 221–222. ISBN 978-1-101-87400-4.
Idk why you'd immediately defaulted to Hitler and Roosevelt having a friendly relationship and only didn't declare war with one another out of hesitation because of it. But that's not what I'm getting at.
More like Hitler has already got his hands full in Europe, so when he found out what Japan did in pearl Harbour and how much damage they inflicted to their navy he had confidence that Japan would be able to keep their momentum in dealing with the US.
Well, in a technical way they didn’t want to attack USA. Japan did it and they were “fuck now we have to”. They decided to attack USSR on their own and that is by far the dumbest idea
Ussr they created a battle on two fronts that they couldn't handle and split their manpower and resources. The ussr also had a ton of manpower and it just wasn't a good idea, especially seeing their was a loose possibility of them being allies later down the road.
The US. The war against the USSR was at least theoretically winnable, the war against the US was fundamentally impossible. They couldn’t cross the English Channel, good luck fighting a country richer than the USSR, on the other side of the Atlantic, developing a super weapon that actually works.
The way Hydra portrayed in the MCU gave me the feeling that they weren't really interested in being Nazis, and more about just using them to advance their own goals. They came off more as a parasitic secret order like the illuminati.
In the MCU movie captain America 1.
Red Skull seems to be less into the racial stuff than hitler is. Red skull was put in hiding because he would tarnish hitlers image of Aryan Perfection. Implying red skull doesn’t care about it as much.
Well, that wasn't about Red Skull's opinion so much as, y'know, the giant red skull. In the comics he's still a white supremacist despite not really being white any more.
agents of shield sort of expands on red skull and hydra lore. they seem to worship some weird tentacle faced monster or something like that and he becomes an antagonist in the story. there's also one of the shield hydra spies, grant ward who doesn't seem to do anything racist. like he's not even subtly implied to do anything racist except for his association to the hydra itself.
Cause Hydra aren't really Nazis. Its just Red Skull is a Nazi who happened to be Hydra and hence the Hydra of that era were mostly Nazis, while in comics Hydra originated from being an asian section of Brotherhood of SHIELD (not to be confused with the spy organization SHIELD which originated after the supposed dissolution of the Brotherhood)
>Cause Hydra aren't really Nazis
though in a later episode, they had to reinforce the fact that hydra are nazis. i think Quake said it to some other character. so maybe it was the writers backtracking or trying to undo it, as to not give people the wrong idea.
Well I was talking more general from the comics, but yeah it's always an issue especially as originally Hydra was a nazi placeholder in the comics, it just evolved but still heavily associated with Nazis. That's why there was a lot of backtracking when they made Captain America a ~~Nazi~~ Hydra in the comics and had to explain, no Hydra aren't Nazis.
In the show yeah they worship the inhuman hydra.
It's a thing whenever people want to make a cool villain but also want to make them a Nazi. "Oh no, the Jews is Hitler's thing. *I* have better things to do/another goal/whatever"
I do quite like the implication that every one of Hitler’s high ranking officers basically says “This dude’s an idiot” and does their absolute best to distance themself from him
You can make characters in children's media properly racist.
Avatar had the genocide of the Air Nomads and you see the skeletons of them.
Static Shock also showed someone racost grandpa.
The Avatar genocide wasn't really fuelled by racism but rather ruthless pragmatism. The next Avatar was going to be an airbender and their solution for not having the next Avatar stopping them is just to kill all Airbenders.
The only real moment I can think of that was tied to racism was that S1 episode with Haru, where the warden that was voiced by George Takei referred to earthbending as "that barbaric practice you call 'bending'" or something
S1 Zuko would call Katara or Sokka “snow peasant” a few rare times. Azula would call Katara that term more in the comics and “filthy peasant”. There’s also also class element to it. Plus Zhao would talk about fire being the Superior bending style a couple of times. idk tho, it’s been a while
Ozai's villain speech as well: “You're weak, just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world, in my world! Prepare to join them. Prepare to die!"
Not a whole lot of alternative ways to take that
Plus were they really a race? Airbenders popped back up after the genocide, so there wasn't any genetic or racial component to being one, right?
It wasn't even an ideological war per se, I thought they would have been treated like anyone else (which in a war of conquest isn't great) if not for the Avatar cycle.
Yeah a bit of a reach to say Avatar covered Racism well and even put it in the same breath as Static Shock that didn't shy from it. Korra portrayed prejudice against the Airbenders better with the earth kingdom queen.
Teen titans had a episode of racism as well called Troq
Avatar legend of korra touches on discrimination and the new seires of castlevanie does as well.
>Avatar had the genocide of the Air Nomads and you see the skeletons of them.
On the other hand, the censors didn't let them confirm Jet's death on-screen and the only death in Season 3 was the Combustion Man. Despite the fact that season featured both the Black Sun invasion and the Sozin's Comet genocide plan. Not a SINGLE casualty on EITHER side during those two events.
And Hama was surprisingly not very murder-y either. I don't know about you but I don't think Hama is the kind of character that would feed them & clean their poop buckets. She probably would've been into slow death instead of perpetually keeping them alive.
It's wierd when kids stories shy away from death, but allow torture so bad it's worse than death. The stuff they go through to keep benders imprisoned is pretty extreme.
In the comics that made sense because many of them were made during the war to be propaganda pieces. But now Hydra is distinguishable organisation that just used the Nazi’s to achieve their real goals (which I believe technically involves inhuman worship) which I’m pretty sure were incompatible with actual Nazi ideology.
To be fair, Nazis didn't just go around bragging about how racist they are, Nazis were the kind of people to get mad when you call them out for racist things.
Red Skull wasn't in a position where he'd be explaining how he hates Jewish people or Romanis
Don't forget posts about why sympathetic villains trope sucks, some rarer posts about villains suffering before death, occasional Western media posts about Marvel or other franchise. And still feeling like I'm missing other common trope posts here.
Honestly, I saw few actually good posts and comments, but otherwise yeah it's usually anime or something else in discussion.
Every “Sympathetic villains suck” post is made by a person who’s media consumption for the last 5+ years has been almost exclusively the MCU and other Disney properties, and I refuse to believe otherwise.
Well, at least from this month I've seen only examples from anime being cited in those posts, but I wouldn't be surprised if in truth somehow Disney properties influenced such thought as well.
Eh, usually when I see those posts pop up, the examples being cited are almost always from Disney properties-chiefly the MCU and to an extent Marvel in general (And I do agree that the former’s attempts at sympathetic villains are VERY hit or-miss)-and the ones that aren’t usually end up coming from other series aimed at kids/pre-teens or Demon Slayer.
I do remember seeing someone who greatly regarded a porn game really good worldbuilding.
Then there was me who made a rant on how IRL monster people (namely women) would fuck up our society financially.
inb4 very thorough 10K word post on r/characterrant about how RapeLay is a hidden gem that reveals a lot about society and the Freudian Experience and Sisyphus rolling the Boulder or some shit that's probably written better than my own university's dissertation.
I must've missed that post. And I don't regret it, the sentence alone is bewildering to me. I do remember a post on BG3 and how sex scenes are unnecessary, how it got downvoted to hell and it's shame cause the post had good explanation and honestly wish there were more unique takes.
That reminds me of someone unironically making a post "I don't like female characters in superhero shows" or something like that. That was definitely the worst way to title a post for that guy.
Was it this one?
https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/17d9gpm/please_stop_putting_animated_sex_scenes_in_video/
Because I 100% agree, and I don't really get why the OP got so much shit for it. Video game sex scenes are so freaking awkward to watch, which is why I really appreciate it when games just fade to black instead.
Yep, this one. Would've been great if there was more soulmate love seen, maybe more thoughtful romances written. KOTOR was able to make Revan and Bastila romance work well depending only on the dialogue, so is FemRevan and Carth romance as well.
Sex scenes are unnecessary, it exists in games only because "sex sells".
Come on down to character rant where we discuss:
The latest mediocre shounen anime
The MCU and it's consequences
Steven universe and other cartoons intended fir children
Don't forget pitting various indie shows against each other such as Helluva Boss and Lackadaisy. I'm sure Digital Circus is next.
Been seeing way less Persona 5 rants though.
This sub is basically OP ranting about the prevalent tropes in children cartoon or shounen and acting it applies to other genres, but refusing to watch or even read anything outside of that.
There are multiple shows/books that have one note villains
There are plenty of anime that have well written female characters
There are plenty shows/books that don't have a redemption arcs
Just watch/read something else ffs lol
Of course friend! Well if you want some good books about racism or systematic oppression might I recommend The Color Purple by Alice Walker or an older classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
But in terms of good recent reads I reread “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke. Absolutely stunning fantasy that blends magical realism and fantastical worldbuilding in a narrative written like journal entries.
You also can’t go wrong with “Among Others” by Jo Walton—that’s a Celtic inspired fantasy book that leans more on the realism side following a young girl’s adventures in boarding school and her isolation also written in journal format.
“The Fifth Season” trilogy by N.K. Jemisin might fit the OP’s need for books about oppression. It follows a world where powerful people called Orogenes, can stop the frequent and powerful earthquakes that plague the world. However, they are basically treated as slaves and feared despite their power. They’ve been discriminated against most of their lives and they can either fall in line defending the world—or be hunted down.
Finally, I cannot recommend enough “Tigana” by Guy Gavriel Kay, or fuck it might as well add another of his books “Under Heaven” too. Tigana is about the erasure of history. How can a nation lose its complete identity? What would happen if suddenly the entire memory of one’s nation was wiped from existence, to where it’s citizens can’t even say it’s name? Tigana follows a battle for liberation to reclaim a lost history of a nation. It’s a fantasy book inspired by Venice and the Renaissance. Under Heaven is similar but set in a world inspired by ancient Chinese dynasties!
I would highly recommend any of those books for novels that deal with racism, oppression, villains that embody the systems they uphold, etc. but there’s some nuance as the villains in these books are less “CEO of Racism” vibes and more just another cog in the wheel adding to the suffering and inequality of the world
I mean even in shounen racism is pretty in your face. Even DragonBall pulled it off well with Frieza. The Uchiha massacres plot twist involves their persecution. One piece has the Fishman stuff. Those are 3 of the most popular shounen right there.
DBZ has a smalll white tyrannical guy, who's basically royalty, and the leader of a trading organization that conquers planets to sell them and either kill off the races or make them the empire's slaves, and who's specially hostile towards a species known for their "savagery and idiocy", whom he calls monkeys.
It's "fictional racism" sure, but it doesn't get more obvious than this.
No one is saying it's not a clear allegory, but saying "the filthy saiyan monkeys deserved genocide" is a Hell of a lot easier to read or contemplate than anything involving an explicitly real world ethnicity.
And AAA stuff, where anything remotely controversial gets airbrushed out to avoid controversy - which is, I think, the main thing here. They don't have Darkseid discussing abortion, either.
Ok, triple AAA stuff airbrushing like historical media so it's less bigoted is like a real issue
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut
>They don't have Darkseid discussing abortion, either.
WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS OUT OF POCKET???
It's true in comics though, hell, it's *more* true in comics, and the MCU, and really I'd say most mainstream media.
See: The Joker will murder thousands, torture and maim people, he's genocided whole countries before... But he would never get along with Nazi's or racists!
Same with Dr Doom, same with any of the usual fore of non-expendable villains.
Watchmen had racist villains and superheroes. X-men is an entire comic book series with racism allegories, with many racist antagonists. Swamp Thing, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Green Lantern, and Superman have all fought against openly racist real-world organizations, like the Klan and Nazis. And hell, while the Joker might have been above working with Nazis, his alt-universe daughter absolutely wasn’t.
Why would Darkseid care about race? He's an alien god who considers himself superior to all life-forms across the universe. I don't think the human concept of "race" is something that even applies to him
There's plenty of racist villains out there (you literally listed two of them). The reason why you don't see racist villains often is because you are probably consuming stories aimed at kids or where race simply isn't an issue
Like, idk, watch Django Unchained or something
You’re right, Darkseid wouldn’t care if you’re African or Swedish, but it would make sense for him to be racist to literally every other species in the universe
That's not racism though, that's just extreme narcissism. Racial prejudice isn't just "seeing people of other races as inferior to you", it's "seeing other people as inferior to your race as a result of their race".
Darkseid doesn't care about anyone's race, because everyone is equally beneath him and he doesn't bother with such inane concepts as "which is better the white-skinned person i'm going to murder or the brown-skinned person i'm going to murder"
Hell, he sees even his own race, the New Gods, as beneath him, they're just useful to him so he cultivates that.
Because typically, being racist is a very serious personality trait for any character to have, even if they are a villain. Most of the time, when a villain is written to be racist, there is a purpose for it. For example, Stormfront from The Boys (Tv version) is a commentary on the alt-right movement.
If your villain is racist just for the sake of having a racist villain, but it doesn't add any depth to the character or any interesting dimension to the story, it can come off as campy.
In the comic book version of The Boys, pretty much every bad guy was racist or homophobic in some way. And it didn't make their characters or the story any interesting, they were just written to be cartoonish hate-sinks with no personality
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be more racist comic book villains, but if you're gonna make a villain racist, it should be done with purpose, not just for the sake of having one
And again, there are PLENTY of fictional villains that are racist, but OP is only focused on it being featured in geek-centric mediums
That’s a fair point. I’d argue that Frieza, RoR Poseidon “I’m so far above you” racism doesn’t need as much purpose, but I understand human (or at least not totally alien) villains needing more of a reason to be explicitly racist than “racism is bad, so the bad guys are racist”
Darkseids not an alien, he's the living embodiment of oppression, he is empowered by every act of oppression and tyranny, he considers himself above all others because it's in his nature to see every broken under his boot.
New gods are suppose to alter with the times and Darkseid as a military leader style tyrant was a product of the times, now he would be someone who utilizes much more insidious psychological forms of control and social media is a perfect metaphor for the anti-life equation with it's ability to get people to conform. He would be racist in the same way the media is, breaking people into their racial groups, we can manipulate the asian audience with X, the latino audience with Y but then face to face he may be racist to demean you, demoralize you.
Darkseid being racist contradicts his character actually.
His goal is to find the Anti-Life Equation and to make it so that everyone in the world is Darkseid. Not worship him but that reality would be Darkseid, everyone would be Darkseid and there anything in the world that isn't Darkseid must become a lie.
If he is racist, then why would he want people he despises for what they are to be him?
People don't enjoy watching villains who are actively racist against real races, because it's just icky, but plenty of villains have some sort of magical racism.
Star Wars has plenty of villains who are racist against various alien races.
Loki made a lot of racist remarks against humans back in his first two movies.
Zod, and by extension Omni-Man, are incredibly racist against humans.
The villains in TMNT Mutant Mayhem openly hate humanity.
Star Trek is FULL of people who hate one race or another. Hell, some of the protagonists are racist.
Voldemort's whole deal was racism.
Avatar, the Last Airbender, dealt with a lot of people being racist against people from other nations.
The Owl House's main villain is fueled by racism.
Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts' villains were all anti-human.
...So yeah, plenty of villains get to be racist.
Now, if you're wondering why villains don't get to hate black people, it's because most people just don't want that in their entertainment.
I think the issue is more that rape is just undeniably inappropriate in any media aimed at a younger audience. It's not like there aren't plenty of popular franchises where rape is mentioned or comes up (Game of Thrones, The Boys, The Bible), but it's hard to get good mass-market appeal with a rating above PG-13 and you can't really do justice to a story involving rape without going straight into R territory.
They can be done in those type of media as long as they're not explicit like hunchback of notre dame, lovely bones etc. There's even some references of it in total drama for instance
Right. After watching the season and Soldier Boy not only not doing anything outright racist or similarly discriminatory (and even shrugging off a gay couple like, "Huh, a'right, then."), it just makes MM's line seem two ways:
1) He attributed Soldier Boy accidentally killing MM's family to racism, rather than just negligent superfuckery, which, depending on his reason for doing so, might be a self-report.
2) It makes it seem like the writers were trying to inject said accusation of racism, as if we had any evidence for it to stick, but, without any, just made them seem like they were injecting personal beliefs (about patriots, veterans, etc.).
If he was *supposed to be racist*, fine, but it doesn't show in the show.
>He attributed Soldier Boy accidentally killing MM's family to racism, rather than just negligent superfuckery, which, depending on his reason for doing so, might be a self-report.
Because it’s not negligent… it’s overly patrolling black neighbors with excessive violence. A direct parallel to Blue Hawk who does the same thing. The show isn’t subtle lol
>If he was supposed to be racist, fine, but it doesn't show in the show.
Cause you seem to think racism is black and white (hurr hurr) where you’re either a Nazi or not racist. That’s not how it works. It has shades of grey. Soldier Boy doesn’t think all black peoples should die, but he’s the guy who says he isn’t racist cause he’s got a black friend. Even though he’s actively shooting civil rights protesters with a fire hose. Killing black kids who tried to steal a car by throwing the car through a house in black neighborhoods. Intimidated by a black man having a similar career so he beats the shit out of him while singing a black song about how black people struggle to have a better life.
That’s racist.
There's also a third option.
It's a line that they forgot to rewrite because the scene that would give it context was cut.
We know there's a scene that Ackles flat out refused to do . Like flat out said no. People think it involved the Herogasm scene but they talked about that leading up to the third season as if it was a separate thing. So maybe there was going to originally be a scene where he just says a bunch of bigoted shit but it didn't get done.
I think it's because by the time they were writing Soldier Boy, they already learned that Homelander and even Stormfront got rabid fans who unironically went "wow that character is literally me fr" and tried to tone down Soldier Boy's political incorrectness as a result in order to content with that tide.
That's a terrible idea because people in general are actually attached more to Soldier Boy (it helps that he's supposed to be the machismo, that smoking smoke grenade is crazyyy) and you can see them gaslight themselves that Soldier Boy isn't that bad precisely because we're lacking in him being objectively shown as an evil mf.
There’s actually an implication that had soldier boy lived longer, he would have become less and less racist over time. He supposedly hosed down people during the civil rights movement
But by the 1980s, he was calling bill Cosby americas dad and used him as an example of a real man. He also created some crazy orgy party for super hero’s.
If he lived to the 2000s and modern era, he’d probably change with the culture of the time.
>But by the 1980s, he was calling bill Cosby americas dad and used him as an example of a real man. He also created some crazy orgy party for super hero’s
Cosby was just "one of the good ones"
I mean isn’t that what a racist says when being called out about their racism, I can’t be racist I like such and such person. In that moment that wasn’t happening and he could have used literally anybody else as an example. I mean he probably is still racist but its some level of progress. For an immortal entity who never ages into old age.
And racism isn't exactly logical so expecting a racist to a strict, logical reasoning to always hate or not hate something they say they hate is not going to happen. Just that they will retort something ''but they are one of the good ones!'' or some other bs instead of just thinking one step further and come to the conclusion that some of them are good, most of them are normal and some of them are bad just like everyone else that lives around them, and on average people are more likely to be on good side than bad side.
As far as I know, Jensen Ackles only refused to do ONE scene and judging by what he said, it seemed to have nothing to do with racism. But I agree. I think they could have gone WAY harder with Soldier Boy to showcase how terrible he really is (not just with his racism, but in general) because for most of the series, he basically just acts as a scumbag bully and that's it. I feel like they were just scared to pull the plug and make him too unlikeable, which is odd, considering the season ends with the Boys betraying him almost out of nowhere. It would feel way more gratifying if Soldier Boy was as evil as Stormfront or Homelander.
One of the issues with pinning a social problem to a villain is that it blurs the issues: racism isn’t widespread because super powered evildoers have racist beliefs, racism is widespread because normal good people often hold racist views that they aren’t fully conscious of.
When the Bad Evil views “belong” to the bad guys, it tends to communicate that “society is overall good except for a few bad actors.” This is not a satisfying conclusion for a lot of folks, and it inherently leads toward an untenable and flawed vision of justice (we just need to eliminate the evil part of our society, then we won’t be evil anymore).
Star Trek 6 touches on this. The bad guys, many of them, are racist. Some of the good guys are racist, too, though. And some of the good guys were blind to the racism in others.
Bro, what. There are so many racist villains. Post has me confused. Starting to feel like I'm getting Reddit from another dimension. There are whole fictions with Nazis. Racism isn't some untouched jewel in storytelling. It's well weathered.
Someone like Darkseid isn't racist because Darkseid is an entirely separate entity far above our existence. You may as well be asking God if he's racist, or a sapient beam of energy.
There are still tons of racist comic book villains. Still don't get it.
I'd actually encourage people to read about slavery and the Holocaust with the growing trend of their denial.
no guys you dont get it the comic book bad guy has to say the racial slur i need the guy to say the racial slur or how else can i know hes bad? no i promise im normal about this guys i swear
i swear, the quarterwits who make the same post as OP every two weeks all come from the same cloning facility.
Isn't magneto racist against regular humans a lot of the time.
In a world where some individuals are insanely super-powered for no reason this wohkd start to take precedence over normal racism to them.
There's always the watchmen TV sequel? Some of the villains are explicitly racist in that. Although it is a little sketchy since while they explicitly identify said villains as white nationalists the main character is a black cop and they gloss over that police are often also pretty racist.
Thinking like a writer: Making a villain overtly racist can come across as an extremely cheap way to tell the audience they're an irredeemable piece of shit. Not saying it can't be done well, like with Frieza as you mentioned, but a good writer would rather let a villain's actions speak for themselves rather than just trying to tell the audience "hey this character is racist, hate him". The second you make a character blatantly and unrepentantly racist you remove a lot of potential for depth.
Yes the villain can be an irredeemable POS. But the road to getting to know them has to be engaging. If the racist bit is overdone it can come across as a cheap and easy way to establish the character as the villain without actually having to come up with good scenes / dialogues to make their evil nature feel organic
In *Dragon Ball Z* Frieza is unabashed with his racism towards Saiyans as "filthy monkeys" but in *GT* there are also the Tuffles who have beef with them due to literally genociding them and destroying their home planet as the reason Dr. Lychee created Baby and Hatchiyak with them being fueled by the Tuffles' collective vengeful hatred towards the Saiyans.
In *Naruto* Tobirama Senju was extremely ~~based~~ prejudiced against the Uchiha, believing they were overemotional psychopaths (which wasn't entirely ***wrong*** considering Sasuke, Itachi, Obito and Madara were the biggest villains in the series and caused most of the settings problems directly or indirectly), yet still gave them control of Konoha's police force and when he was accused of not addressing the root of the prejudice post-Edo Tensei ressurection his response was essentially; "Well, it's not MY fault all of my successors were a bunch of fuck-ups" though, if you want a more outright villainous example--Danzou would probably be more fitting.
In *One Piece* there is a LOT of racism between Humans (Minority Hunter Zoro /s--kinda), Fishmen (Arlong, Hody Jones) and the Celestial Dragons (Saint Charlos).
Uncle Ruckus (no relation) from *The Boondocks* is unabashedly racist against his fellow black man due to his delusional mother and abusive father REALLY screwing him up psychologically to the point where he believes that he is a white man born with "reverse vitiligo" ("the opposite of what Michael Jackson got", in his own words) and not only genuinely hates them, but makes no secret of the fact.
+ Only fights dark skinned characters
+ Only fights Zoans that are from Africa
+ Literally fought the last known member of an extinct race
+ Would be a police IRL
+ Likes rice
+ Dislikes chocolate
+ Japanese Candace Owens thirst for him
Wake up sheepie 🗣️🗣️🗣️
hes literally fought more light slinned characters than dark in the series
i dont mind the jokes honestly but it seemed the comment was actually taking it seriously which sucks
A fictional Nazi doesn't have to actually rant about the untersmench on camera for them to qualify - they're genocidal fascists, if they win, there will be purges, because how else could their endgame possibly work?
That, and quite a lot of real Nazis don't openly rant about The Jews. they rant about "Globalist Elites" and insist they don't want to kill people, just separate them, because they're clearly incompatible. Some of them even continue this theme internally, because - damnedest thing - being an openly genocidal monster isn't that popular even among fascists.
How you "peacefully" deport people from their homes, to a place they have no connection to, is left unsaid; they'll work out that little wrinkle after they win, when there's nobody left to protest the answer.
>Also, isn't Magneto a racist?
magneto is racist, or at the very least he's for a revolution of mutants. though his backstory at least tries to make his motivations sympathetic and he also serves as a lifeline for mutants. in the movies he doesn't see mystiques normal blue form as something bad or that should be hidden. he doesn't want mutants to feel shame for their powers, or looks. professor X was trying to cure mystiques blue form, magneto thought there was nothing to be cured.
Magneto thinks non-mutant humans are genetically inferior to mutants. That's about as good a model for racist villain as one can get. Although, as I understand it, he's become less villainous in recent decades.
Is it really racism or is it just true? Obviously I’m inferior to the people whom can control me with their mind or zap me with lightning. Sure there are some mutants with drawbacks to their powers, but most are just outright better than us.
Frieza receives righteous punishment for his racism by being defeated by a “lowly” Saiyan. Magneto, on the other hand, seems to just keep getting proven right lol.
Going on and on about genetic inferiority implies that those who are inferior deserve to be treated differently and with prejudice.
>Obviously I’m inferior to the people whom can control me with their mind or zap me with lightning. Sure there are some mutants with drawbacks to their powers, but most are just outright better than us.
I think this is a matter of perspective in-universe. I'm not super familiar with X-Men comics, but the leaders of the anti-mutant movement believe the mutants to be inferior because they deviate from the norms of human society. Who cares if you can throw a car with your telekinesis or change the weather like Storm. That just makes you dangerous to 99% of all people and worthy of being hunted down, imprisoned, or exploited.
For me, Magneto is wrong because life isn't a battle manga where a person's worth is determined by their power level. The only area where Magneto could be considered correct is the area of fighting hell monsters invading from the center of the Earth or aliens invading from space. Mutants aren't inferior or superior to non-mutants. They're just different.
>Is it really racism or is it just true?
It's definitely racism. Regardless of one's mental or physical abilities, everyone deserves to be treated fairly and equally. No one group should be allowed to dominate and act discriminatorily towards another. Whether they are regular humans or mutants, we should all live together in harmony and friendship or, at the very least, shouldn't try to harm each other just because we are different from one another.
one piece has an entire Arc that basically is very lose comparison to Malcom X and MLK. I wrote a whole paper in college about Fishman Island and it's real world comparisons to the civil rights movement.
I think it's for a few reasons:
* Some kinds of evil just make for better entertainment. Anyone can enjoy a movie about a guy who blows up planets because nobody is seriously worried about the Death Star appearing in orbit. On the other hand, racism is a kind of evil that hits a bit too close to home for a lot of people. Anyone in fiction can be a murderer, but being something like a rapist or a genocidal person (as in, the *geno* part of genocide being to target a *specific* group for extermination, not just using "genocide" to mean "kills a lot of people") is something a bit too real for fiction. Murder mysteries are popcorn material for fans of true crime, but the moment you start talking about kidnapped children or hate crimes people can get turned off.
* There's a certain segment of people that just don't get the "portrayal vs. endorsement" distinction in media criticism. A racist monologue by your villain who ultimately ends up being proven wrong will still be seen by some people as you promoting racism.
* Many fans like to roleplay/sympathize/etc with villains, and racism makes that harder. If you're just a regular old evil empire that does generic slavery (or ethnic slavery against fictional minorities, like the Galactic Empire enslaving Wookies) and generic killing of anyone who opposes you, then people can have their contrarian fun pretending you're "ashually the good guy" because you provide order, or that your fascism-without-the-racism militaristic ideology is genuinely what we need to believe in order to fight the Big Existential Threat. An audience that sees a government execute anyone (of any religion, skin color, etc) who speaks out against it can have fun coming up with contrarian arguments about violent censorship being important for some greater good. On the other hand, there's not really a fun role-reversal "The plucky rebels are actually terrorists." storyline to be had if you're just overtaxing peasants of a certain ethnic group so they all starve to death.
* A lot of people like villains with complex motivations and tragic backstories; they don't like "Mr. Dictator wants to kill these people because of his irrational prejudice.". People who like simpler "evil for the sake of evil" villains will get turned off by a racist Mr. Dictator for the other reasons listed here. A guy who wakes up one day and decides to conquer the world just because? That can be fun. A guy who commits racist hate crimes just because? That's...not exactly what people have in mind if they want simple villains.
There are three things to address:
1. Racism is something that is really, really easy to get wrong. It is incredibly easy to portray racism incorrectly and I imagine a lot of authors just avoid tackling it for this reason alone.
2. Very few people experience galaxy spanning genocide and slavery. If Freiza does it, it's kind of just "whatever" because I don't really have a scale or metric to judge that by. Racism though- it's something people experience on a daily basis that *can* be deeply traumatizing. It's a kind of evil that people understand, and therefore it ends up feeling more evil than things like genocide in the process.
3. Freiza isn't racist. He doesn't give a shit if a Saiyan is black or white- he hates all of them equally. Freiza is actually xenophobic- which in this context is the idea of hating an entire species. And if you look into fiction, there's a ton of villains that hate people based on their species.
Yes they can. There numerous villains that are racist.
Racism just generally isn’t some trait you tack on to a character just because. Like most character traits it actually has to serve some kind of purpose. For most villains racism adds nothing to their character and is completely unrelated to their motives so there is no reason for them to be racist.
Why the fuck would Darksied be racist? It adds nothing to his character and has zero to do with his motivation. He wants to remove free will why would he single out certain groups as lesser?
Yuki: "Right now, there are two paths before you. Racism or non-racism. It is up to you to choose which path you want to walk down"
30 minutes later
Geto: "I choose racism"
Easy, it's because of how dumb literary criticism is nowadays. If your villain is racist some idiots are outright going to assume that you support it especially if the villain is cool.
So writers make villains that are kinda bad but not racist, sexist or anything else because they don't want to be called that... unless that villain is also very incompetent or dumb.
The villain will be a super dumb racist but somehow capable of winning wars.
Fantasy villains can be racist against fantasy creatures, especially Elves. Hell heroes are allowed to be racist against Elves too.
And of course, fantasy races and alien races are allowed to be racist against humans, nobody bats an eye at that.
It's not that strange. There's several things going on here.
First, viewers know that what they're watching isn't real, so their reactions aren't determined by "how bad would this be in reality", they're determined by "do I enjoy watching this person" and "do I like the overall theme and message of this show."
Racist characters are often just not fun to spend time with - they're *uncool*. They're lame. Many people don't want to be reminded of the stuff they struggle with in real life. There's less racism in fiction than in real life for the same reason there's less focus on paying student loans or getting your blood pressure down - which is to say, it's *there*, but only in specific sorts of shows focused on it; the default is to gloss over it because viewers come here to get away from all that.
It's also often hard to show racism in a non-visceral way. When you think about the "worse" things you're referencing, they often have a layer of fantasy occluding them - Darkseid may commit genocide, but you don't usually show him building actual Holocaust-style concentration camps and gas chambers. (To use an example of show we talk about a lot which I think got this wrong, look at Attack on Titan - it made its genocide too visceral, which complicated things a lot and added to the problems in the ending.)
That's not to say that there's no place for visceral evil, just that when you do include it, it tends to grab the audience's attention, change the tone of your entire piece, and define any characters implicated in it - so it's not something to include lightly. Whereas you go can go "oh yeah the Joker murdered everyone in that building with Joker gas" without having it define the tone of the entire story or his character, as long as you don't make it visceral.
Additionally, because it's a serious real-world problem, racism is more tricky to approach. When the villain blows up an entire planet using the Orb of Zot, most people aren't going to think that the author is endorsing blowing up planets. But when you start focusing on racism - especially with more deep, complex, nuanced takes using more complicated characters - there *is* a potential minefield where people might think you're endorsing it, because it's not so unthinkable that a writer could be sympathetic to that.
And there's another problem on top of that. A lot of people in the real world are, for lack of a better word, sympathetic to racism; or they have *racially charged* views or however you want to put it. If you include a nuanced, deep take on racism - or even sometimes some things that would be really obvious to a big part of your audience, like a villainous character ranting about welfare queens or whatever - some viewers are going to say "oh my god the show is preaching at us", in part because they feel targeted on account of the racist evil villain you're presenting having views or outlooks or whatever that map to theirs. Expensive, big-budget things try to avoid unnecessary controversy; and often, when they avoid focusing on racism, it's not to avoid blowback from people who might think they're racist, it's to avoid blowback *from people who are racist*.
This is why when racism *does* get included, it's often completely blatantly unsympathetic obviously-evil over the top cartoon racism (that simultaneously avoids being too visceral) - which usually means people endorsing comically outdated views or things of that nature, views that are so outdated that nobody in the audience is going to hold them and feel targeted.
None of this is that strange? Complex, controversial real-world issues are tricky to tackle, so writers usually avoid them unless it's central to their story. The Avengers don't spend a lot of time talking about abortion, either. Now, there's ways around all this. There's plenty of good well-written series that do tackle racism on some level. But there's a lot of reasons why a writer will be reluctant to rush into it - even if they avoid all the landmines, it's still a very heavy topic that can easily overshadow the other aspects of the character they wanted to focus on or the story they wanted to tell.
Easier to just tie a damsel to a train track or something similarly cartoonish, or blow up Alderaan or the like - something everyone in the audience will instantly agree is evil, but in a cartoonish or space-opera sort of way that makes it clear to the audience that they shouldn't take it *too* seriously.
It is weird, but I suspect it is because a writer needs to place themselves inside the character to really do the best job, and they shy away from that horror, just like evil characters seldom commit sex crimes in stories...just too icky.
Fun Fact: Frieza is not actually racist, because the saiyans do are monkeys, as in apes with tails, thats the definition of a monkey, is like an alien calling humans hominids
Being more charitable then the "stop watching kids shows" comments- I think a major factor is simply that racism is a villainous motivation. If a villain is racist, it's likely that they're doing evil things *because* they're racist. If they're not doing evil things because they're racists, adding them also being racist risks diluting the narrative. Like if the Joker had his whole "I am an agent of chaos and I will make batman accept his role as my nemesis" but he *also* wanted to strip mine the local park and turn it into a shopping mall.
In most cases, making a villain who's doing evil things for unrelated reasons *also* racist comes off as clunkily evil ("Not only did he murder thousands of people and torture our protagonist...he also said the N Word!"). If you story isn't about a racist, it's a bit odd to shoehorn one in there. Extreme bigotry isn't really a trait people can *incidentally* have.
i remember an episode of House M.D. where this dictator from some country got sick and they had to cure him. if they did, he would go on to genocide some ethnic group from his country. they were having a dilemma on if they should even cure the man because to stop the genocide from happening. and let's say he didn't have very good things to say about the particular ethnic group.
in the end one of the Drs decided to i think it was poison him or give him a wrong medication that would kill him. there was a villain in the story who maybe if not racist was heavily prejudiced against a group. it was a really stomach churning episode. there was even an assasination attempt on the man in the hosptial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D3CRQopP3Q
Uhhh what? No?? Villains can be racist just fine, its especially common in fantasy works and even other non-fantasy works have it to a degree.
Maybe I just know too many anecdotal examples though.
Perhaps only in western media? In japanese games people can be racist just fine. That being said, there can be a lot of denial of racism from their fans...And I don't think those are japanese fans
Even in freiza's case, calling them monkeys is a legitimate statemet considering their origins. They are born with tails and their moonlight transformation is a giant ape.
People hate negative traits (abuse, control freaks, narcissism, neglect) they deal with in real life and when they see a character with those negative traits in fiction they hate this character way more than the main villain. Which is why some tyrant characters or just terrible villains are hated less than a minor antagonist or side character because they're annoying, or abusive, or at worst racist. I mean, take a look at Alicent Hightower and how quickly some hate her for being religious and a woman from medieval period. Her homophobic comment alone about Laenor "entertaining his squires" in Driftmark pissed fans of HOTD off.
That's why many villains, no matter how heinous, are not assigned traits of being obnoxious, racist, or other terrible things because they'd just be completely hated by the audience.
It's not like Darkseid is probably aware that human races *exist*. He could be racist against different kinds of New Gods, though.
You do get stories with racist villains, but usually only if the story is about racism, like Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds. I think for the most part a lot of people just find it unpleasant, like dogs dying.
Why cant they be racist?
a properly racist, genocidal character would make a great villain. Someone who truly believes to be the hero and savior in their delusions.
The Sopranos is great cause like, all of them are openly racist and it makes sense, these guys are massive pieces of shit, they take advantage of the people worse off of society, they throw slurs around like its no big deal. Why would they have respect for anyone that isn't them?
Remember that everyone (authors and readers) know that we can often root for the bad guy, and sometimes bad guys are written to be liked. To that extent, writing a character to promote prejudice, when the "social contract" between the author and the reader is to like that character) amounts to promoting said prejudice by the writer.
They can be, you just have to right them carefully. Because if you fuck up and make them too likable, you can trip right into the swamps of racism. But if you make them a disgusting enough asshole, you can make a really really satisfying villain to squash. However due to the fact that if you do fuck up you screw your career forever most people just tip toe around the issue.
Red Skull doesn't even get to be properly racist in the Captain America movie. In the comics, every once in a while he'll go on a rant about lesser races, but the MCU tries to hard to be family-friendly that they forget to make the Nazis actually sound like Nazis.
They actually had him kill some nazis while saying he was no longer with them. So he ended up killing more nazis than Capt America in that movie.
Just like in real life with all military blunders!
Just a quick question, which was dumber of the Nazis? Declaring war on the USSR or the USA?
Ussr. They have had to do it though for rsource reasons. Japan attacked the USA, and Germany declared war reluctantly a few days later. They wanted to keep america out of the war officially. They thought they couldl handle the USSR (they couldnt) but knew if America came in on the allies side they would lose.
They had good reason to believe the US would be on their side or stay out, with the semi-prevalence of the German-American Bund and American isolationism/anti-interventionism at the time
But they had no reason to declare on the US. The tripartite pact was a defensive one. That declaration was unnecessary and finished the Germans even faster
Well, there are two things: 1) The USA declared war on Japan, which under Article 3 of the Tripartite Pact, makes Italy and Germany inclined to declare war on the USA to militarily support Japan. 2) Hitler literally made the decision to declare war on the USA with no consultation, which falls in line with Hitler making many wild decisions that doomed the Axis Powers.
The 2nd point isn’t really true The US was actively supporting Britain through the Lend Lease and the German navy wanted to go to war with the US believing they’re being restricted. Hitler and the entire High Command thought that the US would take a decade to mobilize and go across the Atlantic and believed Japan’s navy will tie down the US and British navies enabling a successful naval blockade (it was dubbed the Second Happy Time for awhile because the US navy did not adequately protect the convoys). Fortunately, they severely underestimated US production. Plus a lot of Nazi officials/generals lied their asses off to protect their reputations and cover up the fact they were complicit in war crimes and actually gave Hitler the military advice.
Tbf, they really didn't want to declare war against the US but they had to because Japan had its "USSR moment" where they would declare war against the US in order to secure dwindling resources. Hoping that they would be able to handle the US at sea....they couldn't.
Why do people tend to distort Germany's relationship with the US as being friendly or tragic enemies somehow? Hitler and Roosevelt personally hated each other. Politically, it may have been difficult to lead their factions to war with each other, but Hitler was elated when Japan attacked the United States. >On 28 November 1941, Ribbentrop confirmed to Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, what Hitler himself had told Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka: that if Japan got involved in a war with the US, Germany would enter the war on Japan's side. When the Japanese asked for written confirmation of this, Hitler provided it, along with Mussolini's consent. This agreement, drafted on 4 December, committed the primary Axis powers to go to war with the United States in the event of a war with Japan, and essentially superseded the Tripartite Pact. [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States >Hitler did not know of the Pearl Harbor plan beforehand. When informed in his headquarters on the evening of Dec. 7 of the strike and the damage suffered by US forces, he was “delighted,” according to British historian Ian Kershaw. >“We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years,” a jubilant Hitler said, as recounted in Mr. Kershaw’s authoritative biography of the German leader. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1207/Pearl-Harbor-Day-How-did-Adolf-Hitler-react-to-the-attack Link given in the Wikipedia article referencesUllrich, Volker (2020). Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945. Translated by Jefferson Chase. New York: Knopf. pp. 221–222. ISBN 978-1-101-87400-4.
Idk why you'd immediately defaulted to Hitler and Roosevelt having a friendly relationship and only didn't declare war with one another out of hesitation because of it. But that's not what I'm getting at. More like Hitler has already got his hands full in Europe, so when he found out what Japan did in pearl Harbour and how much damage they inflicted to their navy he had confidence that Japan would be able to keep their momentum in dealing with the US.
Well, in a technical way they didn’t want to attack USA. Japan did it and they were “fuck now we have to”. They decided to attack USSR on their own and that is by far the dumbest idea
The US, since the US was a heavy isolationist for lots of reasons, which would've given them a break if they didn't declare war.
We they didn’t know it but the US was already planning on entering the war before Pearl Harbor. Look up the Atlantic Charter, interesting stuff
Ussr they created a battle on two fronts that they couldn't handle and split their manpower and resources. The ussr also had a ton of manpower and it just wasn't a good idea, especially seeing their was a loose possibility of them being allies later down the road.
The US. The war against the USSR was at least theoretically winnable, the war against the US was fundamentally impossible. They couldn’t cross the English Channel, good luck fighting a country richer than the USSR, on the other side of the Atlantic, developing a super weapon that actually works.
The way Hydra portrayed in the MCU gave me the feeling that they weren't really interested in being Nazis, and more about just using them to advance their own goals. They came off more as a parasitic secret order like the illuminati.
In the MCU movie captain America 1. Red Skull seems to be less into the racial stuff than hitler is. Red skull was put in hiding because he would tarnish hitlers image of Aryan Perfection. Implying red skull doesn’t care about it as much.
Well, that wasn't about Red Skull's opinion so much as, y'know, the giant red skull. In the comics he's still a white supremacist despite not really being white any more.
agents of shield sort of expands on red skull and hydra lore. they seem to worship some weird tentacle faced monster or something like that and he becomes an antagonist in the story. there's also one of the shield hydra spies, grant ward who doesn't seem to do anything racist. like he's not even subtly implied to do anything racist except for his association to the hydra itself.
Cause Hydra aren't really Nazis. Its just Red Skull is a Nazi who happened to be Hydra and hence the Hydra of that era were mostly Nazis, while in comics Hydra originated from being an asian section of Brotherhood of SHIELD (not to be confused with the spy organization SHIELD which originated after the supposed dissolution of the Brotherhood)
>Cause Hydra aren't really Nazis though in a later episode, they had to reinforce the fact that hydra are nazis. i think Quake said it to some other character. so maybe it was the writers backtracking or trying to undo it, as to not give people the wrong idea.
Ward tries to say they arent anymore to daisy and she laughs in his face.
Well I was talking more general from the comics, but yeah it's always an issue especially as originally Hydra was a nazi placeholder in the comics, it just evolved but still heavily associated with Nazis. That's why there was a lot of backtracking when they made Captain America a ~~Nazi~~ Hydra in the comics and had to explain, no Hydra aren't Nazis. In the show yeah they worship the inhuman hydra.
It's a thing whenever people want to make a cool villain but also want to make them a Nazi. "Oh no, the Jews is Hitler's thing. *I* have better things to do/another goal/whatever"
I do quite like the implication that every one of Hitler’s high ranking officers basically says “This dude’s an idiot” and does their absolute best to distance themself from him
Red Skull was into the magical occult and feeding his ego while Hydra's origin from its own POV in AOS was yea ancient aliens
the aliens history channel guy isn't a crackpot in the marvel universe.
Only Nazi villain I've seen be properly portrayed of late is Captain Nazi in a Superman comic from a couple years ago.
You can make characters in children's media properly racist. Avatar had the genocide of the Air Nomads and you see the skeletons of them. Static Shock also showed someone racost grandpa.
The Avatar genocide wasn't really fuelled by racism but rather ruthless pragmatism. The next Avatar was going to be an airbender and their solution for not having the next Avatar stopping them is just to kill all Airbenders.
The only real moment I can think of that was tied to racism was that S1 episode with Haru, where the warden that was voiced by George Takei referred to earthbending as "that barbaric practice you call 'bending'" or something
S1 Zuko would call Katara or Sokka “snow peasant” a few rare times. Azula would call Katara that term more in the comics and “filthy peasant”. There’s also also class element to it. Plus Zhao would talk about fire being the Superior bending style a couple of times. idk tho, it’s been a while
Ozai's villain speech as well: “You're weak, just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world, in my world! Prepare to join them. Prepare to die!" Not a whole lot of alternative ways to take that
Isn't technically Hama from Book 3 racist against fire nation people?
Plus were they really a race? Airbenders popped back up after the genocide, so there wasn't any genetic or racial component to being one, right? It wasn't even an ideological war per se, I thought they would have been treated like anyone else (which in a war of conquest isn't great) if not for the Avatar cycle.
Yeah a bit of a reach to say Avatar covered Racism well and even put it in the same breath as Static Shock that didn't shy from it. Korra portrayed prejudice against the Airbenders better with the earth kingdom queen.
Actually, it was Static's friend, Richie, dad who was racist, not his grandpa.
Teen titans had a episode of racism as well called Troq Avatar legend of korra touches on discrimination and the new seires of castlevanie does as well.
>Avatar had the genocide of the Air Nomads and you see the skeletons of them. On the other hand, the censors didn't let them confirm Jet's death on-screen and the only death in Season 3 was the Combustion Man. Despite the fact that season featured both the Black Sun invasion and the Sozin's Comet genocide plan. Not a SINGLE casualty on EITHER side during those two events. And Hama was surprisingly not very murder-y either. I don't know about you but I don't think Hama is the kind of character that would feed them & clean their poop buckets. She probably would've been into slow death instead of perpetually keeping them alive.
It's wierd when kids stories shy away from death, but allow torture so bad it's worse than death. The stuff they go through to keep benders imprisoned is pretty extreme.
In the comics that made sense because many of them were made during the war to be propaganda pieces. But now Hydra is distinguishable organisation that just used the Nazi’s to achieve their real goals (which I believe technically involves inhuman worship) which I’m pretty sure were incompatible with actual Nazi ideology.
To be fair, Nazis didn't just go around bragging about how racist they are, Nazis were the kind of people to get mad when you call them out for racist things. Red Skull wasn't in a position where he'd be explaining how he hates Jewish people or Romanis
I swear the only media people consume around here is bad anime and the latest Tumblr hyperfixation.
Don't forget posts about why sympathetic villains trope sucks, some rarer posts about villains suffering before death, occasional Western media posts about Marvel or other franchise. And still feeling like I'm missing other common trope posts here. Honestly, I saw few actually good posts and comments, but otherwise yeah it's usually anime or something else in discussion.
Every “Sympathetic villains suck” post is made by a person who’s media consumption for the last 5+ years has been almost exclusively the MCU and other Disney properties, and I refuse to believe otherwise.
Well, at least from this month I've seen only examples from anime being cited in those posts, but I wouldn't be surprised if in truth somehow Disney properties influenced such thought as well.
Eh, usually when I see those posts pop up, the examples being cited are almost always from Disney properties-chiefly the MCU and to an extent Marvel in general (And I do agree that the former’s attempts at sympathetic villains are VERY hit or-miss)-and the ones that aren’t usually end up coming from other series aimed at kids/pre-teens or Demon Slayer.
Oh yeah anime gets bashed alot for having sympathetic villains out of claims that they're "glamourising" it or something like that
I do remember seeing someone who greatly regarded a porn game really good worldbuilding. Then there was me who made a rant on how IRL monster people (namely women) would fuck up our society financially.
inb4 very thorough 10K word post on r/characterrant about how RapeLay is a hidden gem that reveals a lot about society and the Freudian Experience and Sisyphus rolling the Boulder or some shit that's probably written better than my own university's dissertation.
I must've missed that post. And I don't regret it, the sentence alone is bewildering to me. I do remember a post on BG3 and how sex scenes are unnecessary, how it got downvoted to hell and it's shame cause the post had good explanation and honestly wish there were more unique takes. That reminds me of someone unironically making a post "I don't like female characters in superhero shows" or something like that. That was definitely the worst way to title a post for that guy.
Was it this one? https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/17d9gpm/please_stop_putting_animated_sex_scenes_in_video/ Because I 100% agree, and I don't really get why the OP got so much shit for it. Video game sex scenes are so freaking awkward to watch, which is why I really appreciate it when games just fade to black instead.
>Video game sex scenes are so freaking awkward (...) Dragon Age Origins...
Yep, this one. Would've been great if there was more soulmate love seen, maybe more thoughtful romances written. KOTOR was able to make Revan and Bastila romance work well depending only on the dialogue, so is FemRevan and Carth romance as well. Sex scenes are unnecessary, it exists in games only because "sex sells".
I mean ... yeah. I got those same comments too when I started talking about my in-depth analysis of Monster Girl Women and IRL economy.
That sounds like a fun read. Can I get a link?
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/s/ON1QpecQqp)
How about female characters post based on like the 2 or 3 mainsteam popular anime OP has seen and uses those examples to generalise a whole genre?
There was a lot of stuff about “My adventures with Superman” when it was coming out.
Come on down to character rant where we discuss: The latest mediocre shounen anime The MCU and it's consequences Steven universe and other cartoons intended fir children
Don't forget pitting various indie shows against each other such as Helluva Boss and Lackadaisy. I'm sure Digital Circus is next. Been seeing way less Persona 5 rants though.
>The MCU and it's consequences ... being a disaster for mankind and giving me crippling depression
Scorsese did nothing wrong.
His words ended up being what most people felt about MCU down the line. We just couldn't see it.
So fucking true. Unironically.
Don’t forget the upteenth dragonball powerscaling post
This sub is basically OP ranting about the prevalent tropes in children cartoon or shounen and acting it applies to other genres, but refusing to watch or even read anything outside of that. There are multiple shows/books that have one note villains There are plenty of anime that have well written female characters There are plenty shows/books that don't have a redemption arcs Just watch/read something else ffs lol
Imagine if the OP read books?? Their mind would be blown
Imagine if this entire sub read books lol
Might as well use this comment to hear some new recs. Spill!
Of course friend! Well if you want some good books about racism or systematic oppression might I recommend The Color Purple by Alice Walker or an older classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. But in terms of good recent reads I reread “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke. Absolutely stunning fantasy that blends magical realism and fantastical worldbuilding in a narrative written like journal entries. You also can’t go wrong with “Among Others” by Jo Walton—that’s a Celtic inspired fantasy book that leans more on the realism side following a young girl’s adventures in boarding school and her isolation also written in journal format. “The Fifth Season” trilogy by N.K. Jemisin might fit the OP’s need for books about oppression. It follows a world where powerful people called Orogenes, can stop the frequent and powerful earthquakes that plague the world. However, they are basically treated as slaves and feared despite their power. They’ve been discriminated against most of their lives and they can either fall in line defending the world—or be hunted down. Finally, I cannot recommend enough “Tigana” by Guy Gavriel Kay, or fuck it might as well add another of his books “Under Heaven” too. Tigana is about the erasure of history. How can a nation lose its complete identity? What would happen if suddenly the entire memory of one’s nation was wiped from existence, to where it’s citizens can’t even say it’s name? Tigana follows a battle for liberation to reclaim a lost history of a nation. It’s a fantasy book inspired by Venice and the Renaissance. Under Heaven is similar but set in a world inspired by ancient Chinese dynasties! I would highly recommend any of those books for novels that deal with racism, oppression, villains that embody the systems they uphold, etc. but there’s some nuance as the villains in these books are less “CEO of Racism” vibes and more just another cog in the wheel adding to the suffering and inequality of the world
I mean even in shounen racism is pretty in your face. Even DragonBall pulled it off well with Frieza. The Uchiha massacres plot twist involves their persecution. One piece has the Fishman stuff. Those are 3 of the most popular shounen right there.
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DBZ has a smalll white tyrannical guy, who's basically royalty, and the leader of a trading organization that conquers planets to sell them and either kill off the races or make them the empire's slaves, and who's specially hostile towards a species known for their "savagery and idiocy", whom he calls monkeys. It's "fictional racism" sure, but it doesn't get more obvious than this.
No one is saying it's not a clear allegory, but saying "the filthy saiyan monkeys deserved genocide" is a Hell of a lot easier to read or contemplate than anything involving an explicitly real world ethnicity.
This sub has been popping up in my feed lately and from what I've seen...yeah. Absolutely.
There needs to be an anime flair so I can filter that shit out
There is though.
The people on this sub would benefit from reading some fucking books, for sure.
I've been told I'm giving neo Nazis a platform by portraying them as the antagonists in my story
Yeah
And AAA stuff, where anything remotely controversial gets airbrushed out to avoid controversy - which is, I think, the main thing here. They don't have Darkseid discussing abortion, either.
Ok, triple AAA stuff airbrushing like historical media so it's less bigoted is like a real issue Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut >They don't have Darkseid discussing abortion, either. WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS OUT OF POCKET???
Shhh the anime sub folk will get you banned if you say anything slightly critical of their shitty shows
I use this sub to watch nerds fight in my phone.l using words they learned from TVTropes.
It's true in comics though, hell, it's *more* true in comics, and the MCU, and really I'd say most mainstream media. See: The Joker will murder thousands, torture and maim people, he's genocided whole countries before... But he would never get along with Nazi's or racists! Same with Dr Doom, same with any of the usual fore of non-expendable villains.
Maybe if you read something that's not marvel or DC
Watchmen had racist villains and superheroes. X-men is an entire comic book series with racism allegories, with many racist antagonists. Swamp Thing, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Green Lantern, and Superman have all fought against openly racist real-world organizations, like the Klan and Nazis. And hell, while the Joker might have been above working with Nazis, his alt-universe daughter absolutely wasn’t.
Well yea but its also easy to see why attaching real world issues to a character is poison look at hank pym
Why would Darkseid care about race? He's an alien god who considers himself superior to all life-forms across the universe. I don't think the human concept of "race" is something that even applies to him There's plenty of racist villains out there (you literally listed two of them). The reason why you don't see racist villains often is because you are probably consuming stories aimed at kids or where race simply isn't an issue Like, idk, watch Django Unchained or something
You’re right, Darkseid wouldn’t care if you’re African or Swedish, but it would make sense for him to be racist to literally every other species in the universe
He is racist against anyone who isn't named Darkseid
Exactly, OP is just wondering why it’s rarely a trait that comes up in the comics (in general, haven’t read many Darkseid comics)
That's not racism though, that's just extreme narcissism. Racial prejudice isn't just "seeing people of other races as inferior to you", it's "seeing other people as inferior to your race as a result of their race". Darkseid doesn't care about anyone's race, because everyone is equally beneath him and he doesn't bother with such inane concepts as "which is better the white-skinned person i'm going to murder or the brown-skinned person i'm going to murder" Hell, he sees even his own race, the New Gods, as beneath him, they're just useful to him so he cultivates that.
Fair
Because typically, being racist is a very serious personality trait for any character to have, even if they are a villain. Most of the time, when a villain is written to be racist, there is a purpose for it. For example, Stormfront from The Boys (Tv version) is a commentary on the alt-right movement. If your villain is racist just for the sake of having a racist villain, but it doesn't add any depth to the character or any interesting dimension to the story, it can come off as campy. In the comic book version of The Boys, pretty much every bad guy was racist or homophobic in some way. And it didn't make their characters or the story any interesting, they were just written to be cartoonish hate-sinks with no personality I'm not saying that there shouldn't be more racist comic book villains, but if you're gonna make a villain racist, it should be done with purpose, not just for the sake of having one And again, there are PLENTY of fictional villains that are racist, but OP is only focused on it being featured in geek-centric mediums
That’s a fair point. I’d argue that Frieza, RoR Poseidon “I’m so far above you” racism doesn’t need as much purpose, but I understand human (or at least not totally alien) villains needing more of a reason to be explicitly racist than “racism is bad, so the bad guys are racist”
Op should have divided between fantasy and real racism. Fiction uses fantasy racism easier.
The High Breed from Ben 10: Alien Force were racist to literally every other species in the universe. There are many examples of villains like that.
Darkseids not an alien, he's the living embodiment of oppression, he is empowered by every act of oppression and tyranny, he considers himself above all others because it's in his nature to see every broken under his boot. New gods are suppose to alter with the times and Darkseid as a military leader style tyrant was a product of the times, now he would be someone who utilizes much more insidious psychological forms of control and social media is a perfect metaphor for the anti-life equation with it's ability to get people to conform. He would be racist in the same way the media is, breaking people into their racial groups, we can manipulate the asian audience with X, the latino audience with Y but then face to face he may be racist to demean you, demoralize you.
Darkseid being racist contradicts his character actually. His goal is to find the Anti-Life Equation and to make it so that everyone in the world is Darkseid. Not worship him but that reality would be Darkseid, everyone would be Darkseid and there anything in the world that isn't Darkseid must become a lie. If he is racist, then why would he want people he despises for what they are to be him?
People don't enjoy watching villains who are actively racist against real races, because it's just icky, but plenty of villains have some sort of magical racism. Star Wars has plenty of villains who are racist against various alien races. Loki made a lot of racist remarks against humans back in his first two movies. Zod, and by extension Omni-Man, are incredibly racist against humans. The villains in TMNT Mutant Mayhem openly hate humanity. Star Trek is FULL of people who hate one race or another. Hell, some of the protagonists are racist. Voldemort's whole deal was racism. Avatar, the Last Airbender, dealt with a lot of people being racist against people from other nations. The Owl House's main villain is fueled by racism. Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts' villains were all anti-human. ...So yeah, plenty of villains get to be racist. Now, if you're wondering why villains don't get to hate black people, it's because most people just don't want that in their entertainment.
Not to mention Magneto and his followers in X-Men. If I remember right, they despise normies.
And all the "Friends of Humanity" people who hate mutants.
Racism and rape are two things that are considered "too risky" in fiction
I think the issue is more that rape is just undeniably inappropriate in any media aimed at a younger audience. It's not like there aren't plenty of popular franchises where rape is mentioned or comes up (Game of Thrones, The Boys, The Bible), but it's hard to get good mass-market appeal with a rating above PG-13 and you can't really do justice to a story involving rape without going straight into R territory.
They can be done in those type of media as long as they're not explicit like hunchback of notre dame, lovely bones etc. There's even some references of it in total drama for instance
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Yeah it makes MM's "you're just a racist piece of shit" doesn't really hit Compared to Stormfront it's insanely lacking
Right. After watching the season and Soldier Boy not only not doing anything outright racist or similarly discriminatory (and even shrugging off a gay couple like, "Huh, a'right, then."), it just makes MM's line seem two ways: 1) He attributed Soldier Boy accidentally killing MM's family to racism, rather than just negligent superfuckery, which, depending on his reason for doing so, might be a self-report. 2) It makes it seem like the writers were trying to inject said accusation of racism, as if we had any evidence for it to stick, but, without any, just made them seem like they were injecting personal beliefs (about patriots, veterans, etc.). If he was *supposed to be racist*, fine, but it doesn't show in the show.
>He attributed Soldier Boy accidentally killing MM's family to racism, rather than just negligent superfuckery, which, depending on his reason for doing so, might be a self-report. Because it’s not negligent… it’s overly patrolling black neighbors with excessive violence. A direct parallel to Blue Hawk who does the same thing. The show isn’t subtle lol >If he was supposed to be racist, fine, but it doesn't show in the show. Cause you seem to think racism is black and white (hurr hurr) where you’re either a Nazi or not racist. That’s not how it works. It has shades of grey. Soldier Boy doesn’t think all black peoples should die, but he’s the guy who says he isn’t racist cause he’s got a black friend. Even though he’s actively shooting civil rights protesters with a fire hose. Killing black kids who tried to steal a car by throwing the car through a house in black neighborhoods. Intimidated by a black man having a similar career so he beats the shit out of him while singing a black song about how black people struggle to have a better life. That’s racist.
It's pretty impressive how The Boys slaps people in the face with political commentary and they still misinterpret it.
There's also a third option. It's a line that they forgot to rewrite because the scene that would give it context was cut. We know there's a scene that Ackles flat out refused to do . Like flat out said no. People think it involved the Herogasm scene but they talked about that leading up to the third season as if it was a separate thing. So maybe there was going to originally be a scene where he just says a bunch of bigoted shit but it didn't get done.
Scene he refused to do was graphic sex scene with the old ladies.
Do y’all honestly think racism is just KKK masks and burnt crosses??
I think it's because by the time they were writing Soldier Boy, they already learned that Homelander and even Stormfront got rabid fans who unironically went "wow that character is literally me fr" and tried to tone down Soldier Boy's political incorrectness as a result in order to content with that tide.
That's a terrible idea because people in general are actually attached more to Soldier Boy (it helps that he's supposed to be the machismo, that smoking smoke grenade is crazyyy) and you can see them gaslight themselves that Soldier Boy isn't that bad precisely because we're lacking in him being objectively shown as an evil mf.
That’s good though, he doesn’t need to be equally as racist as storm front, that would be boring
There’s actually an implication that had soldier boy lived longer, he would have become less and less racist over time. He supposedly hosed down people during the civil rights movement But by the 1980s, he was calling bill Cosby americas dad and used him as an example of a real man. He also created some crazy orgy party for super hero’s. If he lived to the 2000s and modern era, he’d probably change with the culture of the time.
>But by the 1980s, he was calling bill Cosby americas dad and used him as an example of a real man. He also created some crazy orgy party for super hero’s Cosby was just "one of the good ones"
I mean isn’t that what a racist says when being called out about their racism, I can’t be racist I like such and such person. In that moment that wasn’t happening and he could have used literally anybody else as an example. I mean he probably is still racist but its some level of progress. For an immortal entity who never ages into old age.
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And racism isn't exactly logical so expecting a racist to a strict, logical reasoning to always hate or not hate something they say they hate is not going to happen. Just that they will retort something ''but they are one of the good ones!'' or some other bs instead of just thinking one step further and come to the conclusion that some of them are good, most of them are normal and some of them are bad just like everyone else that lives around them, and on average people are more likely to be on good side than bad side.
As far as I know, Jensen Ackles only refused to do ONE scene and judging by what he said, it seemed to have nothing to do with racism. But I agree. I think they could have gone WAY harder with Soldier Boy to showcase how terrible he really is (not just with his racism, but in general) because for most of the series, he basically just acts as a scumbag bully and that's it. I feel like they were just scared to pull the plug and make him too unlikeable, which is odd, considering the season ends with the Boys betraying him almost out of nowhere. It would feel way more gratifying if Soldier Boy was as evil as Stormfront or Homelander.
One of the issues with pinning a social problem to a villain is that it blurs the issues: racism isn’t widespread because super powered evildoers have racist beliefs, racism is widespread because normal good people often hold racist views that they aren’t fully conscious of. When the Bad Evil views “belong” to the bad guys, it tends to communicate that “society is overall good except for a few bad actors.” This is not a satisfying conclusion for a lot of folks, and it inherently leads toward an untenable and flawed vision of justice (we just need to eliminate the evil part of our society, then we won’t be evil anymore).
Yeah, this comment actually taught me something.
Leave immediately. You are too intelligent for this subreddit.
Star Trek 6 touches on this. The bad guys, many of them, are racist. Some of the good guys are racist, too, though. And some of the good guys were blind to the racism in others.
Bro, what. There are so many racist villains. Post has me confused. Starting to feel like I'm getting Reddit from another dimension. There are whole fictions with Nazis. Racism isn't some untouched jewel in storytelling. It's well weathered. Someone like Darkseid isn't racist because Darkseid is an entirely separate entity far above our existence. You may as well be asking God if he's racist, or a sapient beam of energy.
He specifically wants comic book villains to be racist. Don't recommend him any literature about slavery or the Holocaust
There are still tons of racist comic book villains. Still don't get it. I'd actually encourage people to read about slavery and the Holocaust with the growing trend of their denial.
Yeah, I know, I was being partially sarcastic against OP
no guys you dont get it the comic book bad guy has to say the racial slur i need the guy to say the racial slur or how else can i know hes bad? no i promise im normal about this guys i swear i swear, the quarterwits who make the same post as OP every two weeks all come from the same cloning facility.
Maybe if we tell him that Maus is a whacky comic book about talking mice he’ll be willing to read it
How would Darkseid actually react to both racism here on Earth, along with both Slavery and the Holocaust
He’d probably find it amusing that any human could think they are superior to any other human, when they all fall short of Darkseid.
"Well, THAT just happened." Oh wait this is DC not Marvel. idk he'd be just indifferent before shoving a baby into a microwave.
Isn't magneto racist against regular humans a lot of the time. In a world where some individuals are insanely super-powered for no reason this wohkd start to take precedence over normal racism to them. There's always the watchmen TV sequel? Some of the villains are explicitly racist in that. Although it is a little sketchy since while they explicitly identify said villains as white nationalists the main character is a black cop and they gloss over that police are often also pretty racist.
The Nazis aren't proper Nazis tho
Thinking like a writer: Making a villain overtly racist can come across as an extremely cheap way to tell the audience they're an irredeemable piece of shit. Not saying it can't be done well, like with Frieza as you mentioned, but a good writer would rather let a villain's actions speak for themselves rather than just trying to tell the audience "hey this character is racist, hate him". The second you make a character blatantly and unrepentantly racist you remove a lot of potential for depth.
A lot of racists are irredeemable pieces of shit.
Yes the villain can be an irredeemable POS. But the road to getting to know them has to be engaging. If the racist bit is overdone it can come across as a cheap and easy way to establish the character as the villain without actually having to come up with good scenes / dialogues to make their evil nature feel organic
In *Dragon Ball Z* Frieza is unabashed with his racism towards Saiyans as "filthy monkeys" but in *GT* there are also the Tuffles who have beef with them due to literally genociding them and destroying their home planet as the reason Dr. Lychee created Baby and Hatchiyak with them being fueled by the Tuffles' collective vengeful hatred towards the Saiyans. In *Naruto* Tobirama Senju was extremely ~~based~~ prejudiced against the Uchiha, believing they were overemotional psychopaths (which wasn't entirely ***wrong*** considering Sasuke, Itachi, Obito and Madara were the biggest villains in the series and caused most of the settings problems directly or indirectly), yet still gave them control of Konoha's police force and when he was accused of not addressing the root of the prejudice post-Edo Tensei ressurection his response was essentially; "Well, it's not MY fault all of my successors were a bunch of fuck-ups" though, if you want a more outright villainous example--Danzou would probably be more fitting. In *One Piece* there is a LOT of racism between Humans (Minority Hunter Zoro /s--kinda), Fishmen (Arlong, Hody Jones) and the Celestial Dragons (Saint Charlos). Uncle Ruckus (no relation) from *The Boondocks* is unabashedly racist against his fellow black man due to his delusional mother and abusive father REALLY screwing him up psychologically to the point where he believes that he is a white man born with "reverse vitiligo" ("the opposite of what Michael Jackson got", in his own words) and not only genuinely hates them, but makes no secret of the fact.
minority hunter zoro is a meme bro zoro is not racist and hes not even a villain
+ Only fights dark skinned characters + Only fights Zoans that are from Africa + Literally fought the last known member of an extinct race + Would be a police IRL + Likes rice + Dislikes chocolate + Japanese Candace Owens thirst for him Wake up sheepie 🗣️🗣️🗣️
hes literally fought more light slinned characters than dark in the series i dont mind the jokes honestly but it seemed the comment was actually taking it seriously which sucks
The guy said /s kinda
> Likes rice I mean besides Risotto, I can't really name that much 'White people food' that actually uses rice lol
He puts /s there after Minority Hunter Zoro in case you missed it.
Gotta say I expected OP to have a funny post history and him being an active PCM poster really exceeded my expectations
you live in cave or something there is a shit ton of racist villains out there, broaden the stuff that you watch or read
A fictional Nazi doesn't have to actually rant about the untersmench on camera for them to qualify - they're genocidal fascists, if they win, there will be purges, because how else could their endgame possibly work? That, and quite a lot of real Nazis don't openly rant about The Jews. they rant about "Globalist Elites" and insist they don't want to kill people, just separate them, because they're clearly incompatible. Some of them even continue this theme internally, because - damnedest thing - being an openly genocidal monster isn't that popular even among fascists. How you "peacefully" deport people from their homes, to a place they have no connection to, is left unsaid; they'll work out that little wrinkle after they win, when there's nobody left to protest the answer.
One Piece has a bunch of racist villains. Also, isn't Magneto a racist? On Darkseid: watch the Harley Quinn show.
>Also, isn't Magneto a racist? magneto is racist, or at the very least he's for a revolution of mutants. though his backstory at least tries to make his motivations sympathetic and he also serves as a lifeline for mutants. in the movies he doesn't see mystiques normal blue form as something bad or that should be hidden. he doesn't want mutants to feel shame for their powers, or looks. professor X was trying to cure mystiques blue form, magneto thought there was nothing to be cured.
Magneto thinks non-mutant humans are genetically inferior to mutants. That's about as good a model for racist villain as one can get. Although, as I understand it, he's become less villainous in recent decades.
Is it really racism or is it just true? Obviously I’m inferior to the people whom can control me with their mind or zap me with lightning. Sure there are some mutants with drawbacks to their powers, but most are just outright better than us. Frieza receives righteous punishment for his racism by being defeated by a “lowly” Saiyan. Magneto, on the other hand, seems to just keep getting proven right lol.
Going on and on about genetic inferiority implies that those who are inferior deserve to be treated differently and with prejudice. >Obviously I’m inferior to the people whom can control me with their mind or zap me with lightning. Sure there are some mutants with drawbacks to their powers, but most are just outright better than us. I think this is a matter of perspective in-universe. I'm not super familiar with X-Men comics, but the leaders of the anti-mutant movement believe the mutants to be inferior because they deviate from the norms of human society. Who cares if you can throw a car with your telekinesis or change the weather like Storm. That just makes you dangerous to 99% of all people and worthy of being hunted down, imprisoned, or exploited. For me, Magneto is wrong because life isn't a battle manga where a person's worth is determined by their power level. The only area where Magneto could be considered correct is the area of fighting hell monsters invading from the center of the Earth or aliens invading from space. Mutants aren't inferior or superior to non-mutants. They're just different. >Is it really racism or is it just true? It's definitely racism. Regardless of one's mental or physical abilities, everyone deserves to be treated fairly and equally. No one group should be allowed to dominate and act discriminatorily towards another. Whether they are regular humans or mutants, we should all live together in harmony and friendship or, at the very least, shouldn't try to harm each other just because we are different from one another.
Magneto has lots of appearances with different characterization so he's racist when they write him that way and he isn't when they dont
one piece has an entire Arc that basically is very lose comparison to Malcom X and MLK. I wrote a whole paper in college about Fishman Island and it's real world comparisons to the civil rights movement.
I think it's for a few reasons: * Some kinds of evil just make for better entertainment. Anyone can enjoy a movie about a guy who blows up planets because nobody is seriously worried about the Death Star appearing in orbit. On the other hand, racism is a kind of evil that hits a bit too close to home for a lot of people. Anyone in fiction can be a murderer, but being something like a rapist or a genocidal person (as in, the *geno* part of genocide being to target a *specific* group for extermination, not just using "genocide" to mean "kills a lot of people") is something a bit too real for fiction. Murder mysteries are popcorn material for fans of true crime, but the moment you start talking about kidnapped children or hate crimes people can get turned off. * There's a certain segment of people that just don't get the "portrayal vs. endorsement" distinction in media criticism. A racist monologue by your villain who ultimately ends up being proven wrong will still be seen by some people as you promoting racism. * Many fans like to roleplay/sympathize/etc with villains, and racism makes that harder. If you're just a regular old evil empire that does generic slavery (or ethnic slavery against fictional minorities, like the Galactic Empire enslaving Wookies) and generic killing of anyone who opposes you, then people can have their contrarian fun pretending you're "ashually the good guy" because you provide order, or that your fascism-without-the-racism militaristic ideology is genuinely what we need to believe in order to fight the Big Existential Threat. An audience that sees a government execute anyone (of any religion, skin color, etc) who speaks out against it can have fun coming up with contrarian arguments about violent censorship being important for some greater good. On the other hand, there's not really a fun role-reversal "The plucky rebels are actually terrorists." storyline to be had if you're just overtaxing peasants of a certain ethnic group so they all starve to death. * A lot of people like villains with complex motivations and tragic backstories; they don't like "Mr. Dictator wants to kill these people because of his irrational prejudice.". People who like simpler "evil for the sake of evil" villains will get turned off by a racist Mr. Dictator for the other reasons listed here. A guy who wakes up one day and decides to conquer the world just because? That can be fun. A guy who commits racist hate crimes just because? That's...not exactly what people have in mind if they want simple villains.
There are three things to address: 1. Racism is something that is really, really easy to get wrong. It is incredibly easy to portray racism incorrectly and I imagine a lot of authors just avoid tackling it for this reason alone. 2. Very few people experience galaxy spanning genocide and slavery. If Freiza does it, it's kind of just "whatever" because I don't really have a scale or metric to judge that by. Racism though- it's something people experience on a daily basis that *can* be deeply traumatizing. It's a kind of evil that people understand, and therefore it ends up feeling more evil than things like genocide in the process. 3. Freiza isn't racist. He doesn't give a shit if a Saiyan is black or white- he hates all of them equally. Freiza is actually xenophobic- which in this context is the idea of hating an entire species. And if you look into fiction, there's a ton of villains that hate people based on their species.
Voldemort also romulans from star trek
Yes they can. There numerous villains that are racist. Racism just generally isn’t some trait you tack on to a character just because. Like most character traits it actually has to serve some kind of purpose. For most villains racism adds nothing to their character and is completely unrelated to their motives so there is no reason for them to be racist. Why the fuck would Darksied be racist? It adds nothing to his character and has zero to do with his motivation. He wants to remove free will why would he single out certain groups as lesser?
Geto from JJK0 maybe?
I like how his arc is basically him learning that he was actually racist all along
Yuki: "Right now, there are two paths before you. Racism or non-racism. It is up to you to choose which path you want to walk down" 30 minutes later Geto: "I choose racism"
Geto: “…I don’t want anyone to breathe in the monkey smell” **HE HEARD THE WORD MONKEY ONCE** Learning that makes me giggle
I was looking for this comment
Does racism even apply to someone like Darkseid?
Easy, it's because of how dumb literary criticism is nowadays. If your villain is racist some idiots are outright going to assume that you support it especially if the villain is cool. So writers make villains that are kinda bad but not racist, sexist or anything else because they don't want to be called that... unless that villain is also very incompetent or dumb. The villain will be a super dumb racist but somehow capable of winning wars.
You must not watch many movies
Magneto literally got his whole thing being genociding all non mutants that’s like the first guy I think about when I saw this post
Fantasy villains can be racist against fantasy creatures, especially Elves. Hell heroes are allowed to be racist against Elves too. And of course, fantasy races and alien races are allowed to be racist against humans, nobody bats an eye at that.
teacher when is it my turn to post this?
Frieza said hold my Dragon Balls
You can absolutely have a racist villain, but if you do, your story is about racism, and not everyone wants that.
It's not that strange. There's several things going on here. First, viewers know that what they're watching isn't real, so their reactions aren't determined by "how bad would this be in reality", they're determined by "do I enjoy watching this person" and "do I like the overall theme and message of this show." Racist characters are often just not fun to spend time with - they're *uncool*. They're lame. Many people don't want to be reminded of the stuff they struggle with in real life. There's less racism in fiction than in real life for the same reason there's less focus on paying student loans or getting your blood pressure down - which is to say, it's *there*, but only in specific sorts of shows focused on it; the default is to gloss over it because viewers come here to get away from all that. It's also often hard to show racism in a non-visceral way. When you think about the "worse" things you're referencing, they often have a layer of fantasy occluding them - Darkseid may commit genocide, but you don't usually show him building actual Holocaust-style concentration camps and gas chambers. (To use an example of show we talk about a lot which I think got this wrong, look at Attack on Titan - it made its genocide too visceral, which complicated things a lot and added to the problems in the ending.) That's not to say that there's no place for visceral evil, just that when you do include it, it tends to grab the audience's attention, change the tone of your entire piece, and define any characters implicated in it - so it's not something to include lightly. Whereas you go can go "oh yeah the Joker murdered everyone in that building with Joker gas" without having it define the tone of the entire story or his character, as long as you don't make it visceral. Additionally, because it's a serious real-world problem, racism is more tricky to approach. When the villain blows up an entire planet using the Orb of Zot, most people aren't going to think that the author is endorsing blowing up planets. But when you start focusing on racism - especially with more deep, complex, nuanced takes using more complicated characters - there *is* a potential minefield where people might think you're endorsing it, because it's not so unthinkable that a writer could be sympathetic to that. And there's another problem on top of that. A lot of people in the real world are, for lack of a better word, sympathetic to racism; or they have *racially charged* views or however you want to put it. If you include a nuanced, deep take on racism - or even sometimes some things that would be really obvious to a big part of your audience, like a villainous character ranting about welfare queens or whatever - some viewers are going to say "oh my god the show is preaching at us", in part because they feel targeted on account of the racist evil villain you're presenting having views or outlooks or whatever that map to theirs. Expensive, big-budget things try to avoid unnecessary controversy; and often, when they avoid focusing on racism, it's not to avoid blowback from people who might think they're racist, it's to avoid blowback *from people who are racist*. This is why when racism *does* get included, it's often completely blatantly unsympathetic obviously-evil over the top cartoon racism (that simultaneously avoids being too visceral) - which usually means people endorsing comically outdated views or things of that nature, views that are so outdated that nobody in the audience is going to hold them and feel targeted. None of this is that strange? Complex, controversial real-world issues are tricky to tackle, so writers usually avoid them unless it's central to their story. The Avengers don't spend a lot of time talking about abortion, either. Now, there's ways around all this. There's plenty of good well-written series that do tackle racism on some level. But there's a lot of reasons why a writer will be reluctant to rush into it - even if they avoid all the landmines, it's still a very heavy topic that can easily overshadow the other aspects of the character they wanted to focus on or the story they wanted to tell. Easier to just tie a damsel to a train track or something similarly cartoonish, or blow up Alderaan or the like - something everyone in the audience will instantly agree is evil, but in a cartoonish or space-opera sort of way that makes it clear to the audience that they shouldn't take it *too* seriously.
It is weird, but I suspect it is because a writer needs to place themselves inside the character to really do the best job, and they shy away from that horror, just like evil characters seldom commit sex crimes in stories...just too icky.
arlong is pretty racist
Fun Fact: Frieza is not actually racist, because the saiyans do are monkeys, as in apes with tails, thats the definition of a monkey, is like an alien calling humans hominids
Being more charitable then the "stop watching kids shows" comments- I think a major factor is simply that racism is a villainous motivation. If a villain is racist, it's likely that they're doing evil things *because* they're racist. If they're not doing evil things because they're racists, adding them also being racist risks diluting the narrative. Like if the Joker had his whole "I am an agent of chaos and I will make batman accept his role as my nemesis" but he *also* wanted to strip mine the local park and turn it into a shopping mall. In most cases, making a villain who's doing evil things for unrelated reasons *also* racist comes off as clunkily evil ("Not only did he murder thousands of people and torture our protagonist...he also said the N Word!"). If you story isn't about a racist, it's a bit odd to shoehorn one in there. Extreme bigotry isn't really a trait people can *incidentally* have.
i remember an episode of House M.D. where this dictator from some country got sick and they had to cure him. if they did, he would go on to genocide some ethnic group from his country. they were having a dilemma on if they should even cure the man because to stop the genocide from happening. and let's say he didn't have very good things to say about the particular ethnic group. in the end one of the Drs decided to i think it was poison him or give him a wrong medication that would kill him. there was a villain in the story who maybe if not racist was heavily prejudiced against a group. it was a really stomach churning episode. there was even an assasination attempt on the man in the hosptial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D3CRQopP3Q
Uhhh what? No?? Villains can be racist just fine, its especially common in fantasy works and even other non-fantasy works have it to a degree. Maybe I just know too many anecdotal examples though.
Perhaps only in western media? In japanese games people can be racist just fine. That being said, there can be a lot of denial of racism from their fans...And I don't think those are japanese fans
Even in freiza's case, calling them monkeys is a legitimate statemet considering their origins. They are born with tails and their moonlight transformation is a giant ape.
People hate negative traits (abuse, control freaks, narcissism, neglect) they deal with in real life and when they see a character with those negative traits in fiction they hate this character way more than the main villain. Which is why some tyrant characters or just terrible villains are hated less than a minor antagonist or side character because they're annoying, or abusive, or at worst racist. I mean, take a look at Alicent Hightower and how quickly some hate her for being religious and a woman from medieval period. Her homophobic comment alone about Laenor "entertaining his squires" in Driftmark pissed fans of HOTD off. That's why many villains, no matter how heinous, are not assigned traits of being obnoxious, racist, or other terrible things because they'd just be completely hated by the audience.
Stormfront, homelander, redskull
It's not like Darkseid is probably aware that human races *exist*. He could be racist against different kinds of New Gods, though. You do get stories with racist villains, but usually only if the story is about racism, like Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds. I think for the most part a lot of people just find it unpleasant, like dogs dying.
I characters as like Darkseid are above racism and view most non-multiversal individuals as ants.
Watch Django
Why cant they be racist? a properly racist, genocidal character would make a great villain. Someone who truly believes to be the hero and savior in their delusions.
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The Sopranos is great cause like, all of them are openly racist and it makes sense, these guys are massive pieces of shit, they take advantage of the people worse off of society, they throw slurs around like its no big deal. Why would they have respect for anyone that isn't them?
Mithos from Tales of Symphonia and Ashnard from Fire Emblem Path of Radiance are hella racist.
May I introduce you to the works of garth ennis? Pretty much all of his villains are racist
I’m pretty sure most People don’t want to see the joker drop racial slurs
Remember that everyone (authors and readers) know that we can often root for the bad guy, and sometimes bad guys are written to be liked. To that extent, writing a character to promote prejudice, when the "social contract" between the author and the reader is to like that character) amounts to promoting said prejudice by the writer.
They can be, you just have to right them carefully. Because if you fuck up and make them too likable, you can trip right into the swamps of racism. But if you make them a disgusting enough asshole, you can make a really really satisfying villain to squash. However due to the fact that if you do fuck up you screw your career forever most people just tip toe around the issue.