Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics Fans. As I've told
you before, TikTok has been such a gold mine for me, not only
of ideas, but of finding new people who I just realize are have incredible
things to say, great perspectives, and people I want to bring on the
podcast. And that's what I'm gonna get to do today. Cage Bishop Cosplay.
You may have seen them on TikTok, on Twitter or on their podcast
Blurred Perception. They have been talking about great things about fandom and race and
how we interact with each other as fans and how we can be better about
that, topics that I really love, and so I'm so glad to have
them on the podcast today. Cage Bishop, say hello and tell us a
little about yourself. Hi, everybody, I'm Cage Bishop Cosplay, also known
as Perception Blurred or the Unapologetically Blurred. I have been cosplaying for the better
part of i'd say twelve years now, and i've been podcast asking for the
better part of five ish, not starting Perception Blurred until twenty twenty, but
I had a former show with some friends before that, and that just kind
of fell a little wayside because you know, life happy. I hear that.
I hear that well. And this is a perfect episode now because just
recently we released an episode on my other podcast, Star Wars Universe, specifically
about cosplay there. So I'm excited to talk to you about all the things
you're doing. And let me gotta just start by talk to us about yourself
as a fan. I've seen you talk about a number of different things.
I think I see you wearing an Avenger's T shirt right now. Yeah,
although I embarrassed myself, where did you kind of get started as a fan
and what are the fandoms you kind of think of yourself as most in?
Okay, so well, my fandom history goes back for almost the full forty
years of my life. My dad and my mom are major geeks. My
mom's a geek in her own right with certain things. She's not a huge
sci fi or fantasy nerd, but she has heard things. My dad is
where I learned all my sci fi and fantasy and action film stuff, and
he was always a fan, so he got my brother and I into that
very very young children. I started my major fandoms with all things eighties giant
robots, so transformers, Vultron, Gobots, Yes, gobots. I was
a fan of gobots. All that type of stuff was my wheelhouse. And
as I said in my origin story video on TikTok this past week, my
big first memory was I was two years old, my brother was just born.
To get me out of the hospital, a manic two year old running
around and to let my mom and my baby brother rest, my dad took
me to the theaters to see Transformers the movie, and the rest is history,
like it just fell into place from there, and anything that kind of
correlates along with that type of genre, like so Transformers, you know,
Ghostbusters, anything sci fi really was my thing. And then we got into
the nineties with Power Rangers and X Men, and my dad started me and
my brother on comics, and I'm just into a little bit of everything,
you know, like if it's yeah, some kind of connection to the greater
sci fi world, or like even some fantasy in some way, shape or
form, my dabbling. I love that. I love that, and I
love when we get stories about how our parents helped get us involved, because
I think there's often the perception you and I are similar generations, and I
think a lot of times there's a thought that our generations kind of the you
know, people in their forties or whatever, was kind of their first of
the like real nerd generations, and like, you know, my mother was
a huge Star Trek fan. She wasn't, I think, geeky in a
lot of other ways. Maybe at cooking, that's the whole other kind of
thing. And she went like, she wasn't super into the science of it.
But as a young kid, she would sit me down and we watch
episodes of the original series. This was before Next Generation came on, and
then she would ask me about the kind of questions it raised, you know,
about like religion and like, you know, and race and gender and
all these things. And that was kind of my first introduction to the idea
of that spaceships and phasers and people with pointy ears could also be ways to
really inform us about how we live in the world and our ethics and morals
and stuff like that. So, yeah, I just love hearing it when
it comes from the parents. Oh yeah, absolutely. My mom and my
dad have always encouraged our creativity and encouraged our curiosity. My mom will be
the first to tell you, you know, honestly, I grew up my
brother and I just grew up with our mom parents separated at a very young
age. My dad is still a part of our life. But my mom
always will tell people that she didn't sugarcoat anything for us. So if we
had a question based on watching something on television or based on playing a video
game, she was there to answer those questions and to teach us the difference
between fantasy and reality, much like I do with my daughter. Now,
my daughter could watch or play just about anything she wants to to a degree.
Now, you know, things are a little bit more detailed than when
we were kids growing up, So there's still some stuff my daughter can't play,
But if she were to get into it and had a question, I'd
be there to answer it for her and be realistic and be logical about it.
You know, you can't hide these things from kids and expect them to
not fall into it some way. So that's that was my mom's philosophy,
and that's how she raised us. And she just said, hey, this
is fake, this is real. Don't do this because in the real world
there are consequences for it, right, I mean, you can't solve all
your problems by just jumping on top of them and running from the left side
of the screen to the right side of the screen. As much as I
would like to, yep, I hear that. I hear that well,
And there's so much they I want to talk about, but I want to
kind of further set the scene with people. So what is a blurred I
think a lot of fans if I heard that term. Some may well have
not, but a lot of people haven't really thought too much about it.
What is it blurred? What does that mean to you? Because I know
that's an important part of your kind of fandom journey. Yes, okay,
So a blurred is a portmanteau of the words black and nerd spelled b l
e r D, And it is basically that it's a subgenre of African American
culture or actually world black culture, to be honest, because there are blurreds
all across the planet. And I think the biggest thing for me is there
was a time, and I mean I've seen this going around a lot on
TikTok lately actually in the last couple of days, to where being black and
nerdy was something that was made fun of and it was stigmatized. Ye.
Thus, I mean, like you know, that's where the Steve Ercles of
the world come from in the old TV show, And it was a thing
that was looked down on as something that wasn't part of black culture. If
you were nerdy, that was you were considered the white kid of the black
family or the black group. And that was something that as I've gotten older,
and as other Blurds have gotten older, we've separated ourselves from because it
doesn't diminish our blackness being a nerd. It just means that we are allowed
to like and love the things that we're into, and pardon me, I
share those things with the people around me. You know. I want people
to understand that you can be black and be into hip hop and myself the
Power Rangers. You can be black and you can like Matta like a and
in the same breath watched the Tyler Perry movies. You know, those are
things that are not musually exclusive just because you're of black descent, Like you
can band all of that and enjoy it and not let the world beat you
down because of it. Whether it's other Black people, whether it's white people,
whether it's Asian people, whatever, be blurred, be on, apologetic,
love who you are, and love the people around you. Yeah,
now I love that. I love the way you talk about it, because
you know, as a white person, there's a lot of that, of
course that I've never experienced, but I've seen it in others. I remember
one of my best friends in my friend group in high school was black,
and he wasn't often getting peased by the other black kids that are school because
he was into the role playing games and goth lifestyle and all that kind of
stuff. And it was only later this is kind of my own ignorance of
realizing that, like, you know, part of where that came from also
was how incredibly white all the things that those things were, you know,
that that you know, the superhero worlds and all those kind of things.
And one of the things that I've seen a way that it comes up a
lot as well is also I think the you know, as you say,
it's coming from both directions, because it's there may be some of the like
you know, from from other polks in your communities of like why you know,
all the nerds stuff, but also like when I see you know,
and this is a tendency I would fall into that trying to be much more
careful of in later years of like, okay, there's you know, if
a podcast has a black guest on, it's to talk about Black Panther,
you know. Or when a black nerd comes out, the first thing they're
asked about is Luke Cage and stuff like that, right right, that does
happen all too often. And I mean, honestly, aside from as you
know, Luke is my favorite superhero. But aside from Luke Cage, like
I grew up with the X Men, I grew up with Spider Man.
I can talk to you about nineties Spider Man cartoons. I can talk to
you about Spider Man comics. I can talk to you about X Men characters
that aren't Storm and Bishop because I didn't have them all the time, and
a lot of people don't realize that that. Like, you know, when
I talk about Power Rangers, I don't have to talk about Zach. He
was one of my favorites because I got to see a live action black superhero
for the first time. But honestly, Jason was my favorite Power Ranger for
the longest time. And it's not because he looked like me. It's because
of what he represented as a leader and that positive role model and that strong
friend. So I was like, hey, that's my guy. I'm the
Red Ranger. When we're playing Power Rangers in you know those at the playground,
I was the Red Ranger because I thought he was the coolest. Yeah,
but, like you said, the problem is being a black nerd in
nerdy spaces. The first thing people want to talk to us about is is
black media. Which is great if that's what's popular, right then, Like,
if there's a new Black Panther movie out and you want to talk to
me about it, fine, But if we're having a regular conversation to challis
shouldn't be the first thing that comes up, you know, Like, yeah,
I can talk Anime, I can talk Final Fantasy, I can talk
Lord of the Rings, I can talk all that stuff. I might not
be super well versed in all of it, but I am a fan,
so let's talk about it, you know, Like yeah, And I think
that's such an important conversation to have because for myself, as a person who's
wink, as a person who's non binary, as a person who's disabled,
I often use a wheelchair, like I often want to be careful not to
say like, oh, the experiences of all different you know, non privileged
groups are the same because they're obviously unique and different in different ways, and
there's nothing no time for the oppressional Olympics or comparisons of the like, but
there's definitely, I think similarities people can hear and see, and I know
for myself at least in listening to a lot of the conversation from black nerds
such as yourself and some other great content creators on there, it got me
thinking about times when, like, you know, someone has seen me in
the wheelchair and a fan thing or something like that, and the first thing
I want to do is come up to me and ask me about like different
disabled heroes and things like that, and like I'm the onely a hand.
There's a great part of it of you know, oh hey, cool,
this is actually not a conversation most people get to have. But also it's
that same kind of tokenization of Okay, you think this is the part of
my identity that you see. You don't see all the other parts. This
is the part of identity that is most visible to you, and so you're
going to you that that's the fan of that care most about exactly exactly,
And I totally understand what you're saying. I do think it's lost on a
lot of people that the non majority people we are fighting a very very as
you said, very similar battle. Not the exact same battle, but we
are fighting a very similar fight, and I think people need to realize that.
And like, if I were to see you out at a con in
a wheelchair but you were like cosplaying, say you were cosplaying Commander Riker.
I'm going to talk to you about Riker. I'm not going to be like,
oh, well, you're in a wheelchair. You're clearly this character from
Star Trek. No, I'd be like, hey, man, I love
the Riker costume. That's dope. Cool, I'm glad you're a fan.
What do you like most about the show? Blah blah blah blah blah.
I try not to, like you said, generalizes, general generalize people and
put them in a box. One of the people that I've known for a
while, I'm gonna name drop a little bit here Michael Knightmage Wilson. He's
a cosplayer from the Ohio area. Man has hundreds upon hundreds of cosplays.
One of the things he shouts out is the fact that he is a black
cosplayer, but he gets tired of hearing he's the black version of the character.
And I get that because he has like an Oliver Queen. He has
a green arrow and people are like, oh, you're a black Oliver Queen.
He's like, no, I'm just Oliver Queen. Or he'll have he
has a shredder. It's like, oh, you're a black shredder. No,
I'm just shredder like you. You don't have to put a qualifier in
front of it because we're slightly different than you. You know. Yeah,
I remember one of the things that I was most struck by when Black Panther
came out, and there's just one of the cosplay stuff is you know,
I was in a neighborhood New York City at the time, in Brooklyn where
tons of kids would go out and in nothing caught well Halloween outfits, which
I don't know if that's like six year old vote cosplay, you know,
whatever you call it, but the number of white kids that I saw in
Black Panther outfits. Yeah, and there wasn't black face, there was none
of that kind of nonsense. It was just the kids want to dress up
like their favorite hero and they didn't see it as I have to. It
was just like, hey, Tachalla can be black Panther. I want to
be Black Panther as a six year old white kid, And I just I
love that because that seems it's it's the flip side. It's it's that kind
of like it doesn't have to be that the race of the character, and
for time want to enjoy it as a kid, right exactly. And that's
the thing is a lot of people again miss that as well. I had
a friend asked me, a white guy asked me if he could cosplay Killmonger
the year that the movie came out, and I was like, you can,
but maybe give it a little bit, let us enjoy this for a
bit first and then maybe but as children. I love seeing kids embrace all
of these characters because that shows you what the character actually means. That shows
you the purity of the art form. You know, you see a little
white kid that wants to be Tachalla and the same breath that you see a
little black kid that wants to be up thor you know, like that happens.
These kids want to be these characters because they think they're cool, not
necessarily because they are a reflection of themselves, but because they think they're cool.
On that same token, I love seeing the kids that want to be
the characters because they see themselves in them. You know. I love watching
my daughter watch Black Panther and she gets to see Shari and Okoye and Nakia
and Queen Ramuda and all of those strong, powerful black women get to be
those characters. I loved watching Black Lightning with her, and her getting to
see Thunder and Lightning be badass teenage superheroes with their dad. I love watching
the Ghostbusters answer the call and her getting to see for women get to be
Ghostbusters. And that was the same feeling that I had when I was a
kid watching Ghostbusters with my dad, because as a little boy, I got
to see for men, you know, kicking ass with proton pack, and
my daughter gets to see that as a little girl now and now with the
new movie, you know, the little girl's lead. So that's great,
But it's just that that pure innocence of it can teach the world a lot.
If we took time out to watch kids more often in fandom spaces,
I think we would solve a lot of the world's problems. Honestly, if
you just watch kids at comic cons, if you watch kids in a comic
shop, if you watch kids in a toy store, it's about the purity
of those characters and what they represent and what they mean to these kids.
And as a fan base for all these things, I think we inherently forget
that these things are four kids. Like they may not seem like it.
Put Star Wars as a children's franchise. The Lord of the Rings was written
as a children's franchise. People miss that because we have always loved them.
And I'm not saying to stop loving them, but I'm saying, hey,
take a step back, take a breath, and realize that things aren't going
to go the way we want them to all the time, because our generation
is aging out finally, right, and these kids now are coming up and
they're loving this stuff and they're appreciating this stuff, and they get to see
themselves represented now, and they get to see their friends represented, and they
get to see all kinds of walks of life now because we're not just seeing
you know, the straight white male characters as superheroes with the minority characters being
the villains. You know, like we're black black people in LGBTQI plus people
are not relegated to just background characters anymore. We're getting in the forefront and
we are being seen, and our kids and our families get to see this,
and I love it. I love it so much. Yeah, no,
I hear you. And I think there's something so important about that.
Like with any of these communities, you have characters where there's a part of
their identity that is a defining part of their character, you know, Like
I think like Luke Cage's blackness is an essential part of who he is.
Absolutely, you know, Seung Chiese asianness is an essential part of who he
is. But then a character like I can't forget his name, but the
agent played by Randall park in Oh Jenny Jimmy Whoo. Yeah, he's a
character. And I've heard his actor talk about, like how important is for
him to be playing an Asian character in Marvel who's not a martial artist,
who's not like he the actor who's playing him, unless the character is Asian,
but the Asian is isn't inheritant to his character, And like, you
know, he had talked about how that he loved Shang Chi, but he
thought it was important for both to be in the MCU exactly, absolutely,
and I love that. And that's again to go back to Black Panther.
That was the importance importantness of that story was my brother and I talked about
this at length. It didn't show black people as a monolith. It showed
Black people's potential as a people. It showed that even our bad guys were
written very well. Hillmonger was an excellent villain and the fact that where you
looked at him for like a couple of seconds, you're like, I kind
of get why you're doing this, and then you're like, wait a minute,
this guy has kurt thousands of people to get where he is just to
do what he wants to do. Yeah, maybe he's not who I saw
he was, but like that's not a reflection of black people as as a
as a race. And what I loved is like, there were no drug
dealing, there were no gang banging, there was no police force that was
shooting at random black people. It showed black people can be the hero and
can tell the story without having those like inner city, ghetto, downtrodden elements.
And when it showed the inner city, when it showed where where Eric
was raised. It didn't show it as a bad place to live. It
showed it as just, hey, it's a it's a high rise building where
he's downstairs playing basketball while you find out that his father is actually a secret
or Conden spy. You know, look right. And I love that because
I think with representation, people often get like again, it can become very
polarized, and I think there's kind of a middle ground between oh, you
know why you know. On the one hand, you get the white folks
who are like, well, oh no, you should never race swap characters
or like every or you know, why can't a white person then play you
know, kill Monger or whatever it is, and all the way to the
other side. And the way I would look at it is something like,
you know, you take a character named kill Monger, and I see that
character on two levels. On the first level is the general experience of I
have been shut out of the world that I'm supposed to be a part of,
and I have been very badly treated by a community, and thus I
want revenge against the community. Those are things that I can relate to.
And then there are parts of his experience that are specific to growing up as
a black man in Oakland, in that community, and then you know all
the other stuff you were just talking about that I can't relate to, but
that I watch that, I'm like, oh, okay, so here's this
general story that I've experienced, told in a much more specific way in a
specific context, and I'm not part of. But I get still watch that
and then learn from it as how it fits my own context. Because like,
to me, one reason I love kill Monger so much is because he
reminds me so much of Magneto. I think in many ways there are very
similar characters. Magneto is that if kill Munger is the that in a black
context, Magneto is that in a Jewish post post Holocaust complex. And for
myself, as jewet has a lot of Jewish family and experienced anti Semitism,
myself like I relate more to Magneto, but I can see in kill Munger
story, Okay, here's this general story. Now every time you take that
general story and put it into a specific context, it changes. It's like
what is similar, what is different? And how do we learn from that?
Exactly? Like, I'm actually glad you brought up Magneto. I know
you saw my helmet this week. Yep. I love Eric as a character.
I love him, especially in modern comics. I'm not up on all
the X Men stuff that's going on right now because there's a lot and it's
very convoluted, but a lot of it can be boiled down to Passtag.
Magneto was right because Charles has shown that he is like not the upscale citizen
that he claimed to be in the mutant community, and Magneto was shown to
be the hero that we knew he could be. Now, you don't always
agree with the methodology of these characters, either Killmonger or Magneto, but their
overall message resonates with a lot of people because you're like, this is us
if we're driven to the breaking point. I get it. I get it.
And as you said, though, I can relate to a certain part
of the core of Magneto's character, but there are things about him as a
Jewish man that it was a Holocaust survivor that I can't relate to, but
I can respect. Yeah, And that's what people need to do, is
you take these pieces of these characters, excuse me, and you respect them,
and you realize that it might not be the same journey that you're taking,
but you're on a very similar path. You are walking in the same
general direction that they are. You might just not be going the same way.
But that doesn't mean that these characters have to look different or be different
for you to relate to them. And then I do understand, well,
no, let me rephrase that. I don't understand. When people flipped out
about Miles Morales becoming Spider Man, it did not destroyer or erased the character
of Peter Parker in the Ultimate Universe. At that time, Peter was gone,
he was killed off. Miles happened to be another character that stepped up,
and then when they brought Myles to six one six, Miles and Peter
co existed. So people got mad and up in arms about Miles Morales being
Spider Man. Yet we had what a year and a half two year run
of Ben Riley as Spider Man before that, And yeah, people didn't like
the clone saga, but people love Scarlett Spider So what's the difference? Yep,
you know. And I just think that Stanley said it hit himself about
Spider Man and other characters that anybody can be these characters. You're putting on
the mask it's the same thing that DC feels with Batman, and that's why
we got you know, Tim Fox as Batman recently in DC. Because the
cal is the symbol, the mask is the symbol, Captain America's shield is
the symbol. These symbols can be carried by anyone, and that is why
the characters themselves are important. But passing that mansilon makes sense, you know,
it just to me, like people complaining about quote race swapping bothers me,
or now you know, the whole anti m she you movement, that
bothers me because it's like, you guys clearly don't read comic books because all
of these characters existed before these movies came out. Yeah, all of it.
It's the same, the same thing. And you know, my particular
favorite fandom Star Wars, where people say, oh my god, why are
they putting all of this politics into Star Wars, and like go back and
watch interviews with George Lucas in the early nineteen eighties and he's explicitly saying the
rebels are the viet Cong and the death Star is America. Like he's,
you know, like there's always been politics in these things. And one thing
that really kind of clicks for me as you're talking about them. Also,
is that I think one thing people forget is that the way different communities are
viewed in the world changes over time. You know, I know that,
like uh, like I've talked off with my with my father and with my
My father's parents were both dead by the time, yeah, my grandma was
again. My grandparents and my father's side were both dead by the time I
was, you know, fairly young. But I've talked to other people in
my family of that generation or you know, from other families and communities and
stuff, and come to realize that, like, you know, for me
Grant, I was an interfaith family. I'm part Christian. I'm now religionsly
Christian, but I being born at least into a Jewish family, I never
felt that my Judaism made me not white. My grandparents absolutely did. You
know, at the time my grandparents were born in the twenties and thirties,
if you were Jewish, even if you were Ashkenazi in very pale skin,
you weren't white. You know. That's just the nature of those terms has
changed, same with class and other things like that. And where I'm going
with that is at the time that Stanley and Kurt Jack Kirby created Spider Man,
being a white kid from a poor neighborhood in Queens, you know,
maybe there's an implication of ethnicness, maybe there's a you know of like,
you know, Catholic or Jewish or something like that, and that's certainly been
argued about quite a lot. But certainly you are treated very socially differently than
if you'd been born to rich parents in Manhattan. And that was a very
clear stratification that today in New York City doesn't exist in anywhere near the same
way. And so to say Peter Parker is always supposed to be kind of
the outcast in a way that a kid born even poor in Queens isn't as
much today as they were in the sixties when it was created. So let's
make a new version that character who kind of actually is a lot more similar
to the Peter Parker of the nineteen sixties and seventies. And I just,
I mean, that's something people forget all the time, and I love when
it's when writers are really willing to wrestle with that, right right absolutely,
And it like like you're saying with Star Wars and I've had people that got
mad years back because you know, Obama was on the cover of a Spider
Man book and he's like, I just want my comics to stay politic free.
And I was like, so, you don't read comic books at all,
because like, every comic book is political, every single one of it,
down to archie comics. Every comic is political in some way, shape
or form. That's the point of the media form. The literal first version,
I think it's the first. Like the second episode of Superman, one
of the villains he goes up against is a landlord who's being like who's trying
to evict their tenants and using goons to do it, like literal the first
you know, the first Captain America ever, he's punching Hitler right before the
United States is in the war. And when it's to a political question,
right it's always been there, it baffles me, like you know. And
then I had someone to share a picture with me. He's a buddy of
mine that is a huge Shoe Jacksmann fan. He's a much bigger X Men
fan than I am, but he's my go to X Men guru. If
I have questions, I'm like, hey, bro, what's going on in
Da da Dad? What do I need to read? Well, he showed
me a picture from a fan group that got taken down. This guy actually
made up a T shirt and was going to go to a con and cosplay
one of the members of the Friends of Humanity, you know, the known
hate group and the X Men universe. And I was like, what made
him think that was a good idea? Not my friend, But he showed
me a picture that this guy had posted, and I'm like, what made
him think this was a good idea. I'm pretty sure I'm throwing hands if
I see a guy like that in public, because you're like, at that
point, you're no better than a Nazi in my opinion, Like you want
to cosplay a known member of a hate group, like I get. I
honestly understand people they want to cosplay Red Skull. I get it, especially
because Hydro separated himselves from the Nazi party, you know, especially in modern
times, they made sure to go out of their way to be like,
hey, we're not that's not up. But I also do not understand why
you would go out of your way to miss the message of an X Men
book and still call yourself a fan. The X Men books have always been
about diversity and about the minority experience, and people get mad at that,
and I'm baffled by it, Like I don't understand. I mean, let's
let's go ahead and cards on the table won't be blunt about it. We
saw comic books at the shop I work at. A kid was coming in
in twenty twenty in a mega hat buying X Men and buying Avengers comics,
and I had to stop myself from asking him all the time, how are
you reading these and completely missing the message? Yeah, I don't understand how
you are getting into these books and you don't understand the message behind them unless
you think the Sentinel program is a good idea. It's like the cops who
adopted the Punisher as their symbol when like, the whole point is that the
Punisher is wrong on some level, know that, like the vigil anti justice
that he's doing. Yeah, it's just it's baffling. And there are times
where I do think, like there's stuff, some stuff that I'll watch when
I'm like, I think you as the author too subtle, you know,
And I think you as the author holds some responsibility for the fact that people.
But then yeah, some of the stuff like the X Men, it's
like the blinders you have to have on to claim this right. But I
think that's unfortunately. What some people can do is they can be like,
you know, I just love the spectacle of it and I missed any skipped
the politics entirely. Yeah, well, I mean to send with the Punisher
logo thing. It's funny you mentioned that because my wife, every time she
sees a thin blue line Punisher logo, whether she's on her way to work
or out and about, she takes a picture of it and sends it to
me and she goes, I just want to ruin a stranger's day so bad
because she wants to go up to them and say, so, you don't
read comic books, do you? The Punisher would hate cops, and he
would hate you. He'd probably target you because you had that logo on your
car. My favorite way that fandoms and memes and stuff like that have done
this is there's a thing that I've seen in the queer community a lot when
you see the thin blue line, like it's the it's the American flag.
But as the Blue Lives Matter nonsense and people call it a oh this person
has has forgotten to fill out there, do it? You're queer flag,
and so they just start coloring the other lines with the rainbow colors. I
love that'd be like, I assume admitted to be a queer bright flag and
it's like that, you know, that's that's fandom his best Yeah, yeah,
it is, it is, and you know it just it baffles me
so much that these people, no matter how much did the I mean,
you know, Marvel did a whole issue with the punisher yelling at cops are
using his logo, and they still ignore it. They think that that's the
the woke agenda these days, and it's like, it's not. That's not.
Frank Castle killed cops way before you guys started using the logo. I
don't understand why you Oh it's I do understand. You don't read comics.
You've watched a movie or a clip or two of a movie, and you
think you get it when you don't. Yeah, like, and I don't.
I don't expect everybody to that as a fan of the MCU or the
DCU, to read every single comic book. I don't expect everybody to recomics
all the time. If you don't want to recomics, it's fine. You
just want to be a movie fan or a cartoon fan, that's fine.
But still respect the identities of these characters, Respect the stories that these characters
are telling. Understand that there's a reason behind all of them, and it
might be political and you might not agree with it. So maybe pick somebody
ill like if you want. I mean, people don't realize that the Tony
Stark we got in the MCU is not the same Tony Stark from the comics
until recent memory, and that's not a bad thing. They evolved the character
from modern times to make him a more sensible character and make him realize the
air of his ways as a weapons deal. They don't realize that that didn't
happen overnight. It wasn't one issue, and then Tonio was always like,
I'm giving up the weapons game. No, that took time. Even after
getting kidnapped and making the Mark one, that still was a build up before
we got to the Tony Stark. We know and we love the Danda endgame.
And again going back to the fact that like all these alpha male dude
bros want to be mad at female characters as if they don't exist, and
haven't you know outside of the male gaze, Like, yeah, am I
gonna complain honestly about a nine foot tall Jennifer Walters working on the TV show.
Absolutely not. I don't understand why people did. I was like,
she's talking with Megan the Stallion, what's wrong with you? I'm enjoying this
and I love the show for what it was it did. It did exactly
what it sought out to do, and people missed the point because they were
mad because they were who they were talking about, the same thing, and
not to go too deep into the you know, movie territory and everything,
but the same thing. I told my wife and my daughter we went to
see the Barbie movie. Any guy that watches them, any person that claims
that is a sist male or is male identifying, that watched the Barbie movie
and is angry about it is exactly who the movie was talking about. I
watched it and I was like, this is hilarious. I love everything about
it. And Ken is supposed to be Paul I get it, okay,
yeah, and honestly, like, I mean, like you, I haven't
done a fish recoverage in the Barbering movie in part because of the strike,
but honestly, even before it, I was like, I'm mask identified,
Like my voice is not the one that's needed. But then I saw the
movie and I was like, you know what, the strike's over. I
want to make content about how. I know that women are bringing their daughters
to see this, and I think that's fantastic. But I want young men.
I want boys, like you know, all kids, but especially like
mask identified kids, you know, six to twelve to see this movie,
because, frankly, if I had seen Ken's Journey as a kid about how
you don't have to define yourself by which women are interested in you, and
you don't have to try and see every other man around you as competition,
and basically all the things it did to break down the toxic masculinity that I
was taught as a kid, my life in my twenties and thirties would likely
have been far far better. My friend who hit the nail on the head
with that as a as assist male up, there's a sist straight male.
I watched that movie and I felt the same way I had, like a
lot of my nephews and my baby cousins and everything. I was like,
I really hope they watched this movie because there's so many messages, particularly to
go back to what we were talking about with blurred them, particularly in the
black community. There are so many messages from that movie that need to be
seen because you know, I was listening to music at work yesterday and I
think it was Marvin Gaye where he said a man is not supposed to cry,
and I was like, why, ye who taught you that? Whoever
taught you that was wrong because you have to show your feeling. You don't
have to be that hard rock all the time. I do. I credit
myself as a provider for my family, Yes I do. But on that
same no, my wife makes more than I do. So am I gonna
sit here and act like I'm the breadwinner? No, my wife is.
I do what I can and I am the protector of our family. Like
if anybody comes through that door that's not supposed to do, they got to
get through me before they get to my wife and my daughter. But on
that same note, if I'm having a bad time, if I'm having a
rough mental health day, if I am just sad and tired, they know
it because I talk to them about it. You know, if something's actually
bothering me. We have a conversation about it. I can talk to my
wife. I can talk to my daughter, she's eleven years old. I
can talk to her. I can call my brother, I can call my
father, I can call my mother, and we can have these conversations.
And my parents know now that these are all things that they should have been
doing. And that's not to discount anything that they did do, don't get
me wrong, but that now they know this when I'm almost forty, that
we need to break away from the generational trauma, from these generational curses of
acting like men weren't allowed to show emotions and women had to be subservient and
had to be the ones in the household. I'll be damn if I teach
a little girl that if if my daughter decides she doesn't want to get married,
doesn't want to have kids, doesn't want to be at home all the
time, she wants to go to the moon, and you know, solve
the alien conundrum. I don't care. I'm proud of whatever she does.
And that's the way it should be in every one of these households. And
that's what Barbie was showing us with the kins and Alan, who was arguably
the best character of the movie. Ye and I would say non binary mask
claimed Allen. You know, I get it, I get it, and
more more power to y'all because he Alan was dope. I just I did
not see that out of Michael Sarah, like I loved him and Scott Pilgrim
because you're supposed to, but you're also supposed to hate him. But seeing
him as Alan, where he was playing Michael Sarah, but he wasn't playing
Michael Sarah as he was a nerdy, not quite good enough male figure in
that community, right, but then he kicks the crap arl the security guards.
You're like, that's the guy. Yeah, that's the guy. And
I love what you said because I think it really kind of illustrates one of
the points that you're making before that Basically we're circling around a word that I
was put on the table, intersectionality, you know, in that like there's
a conversation like I think race is a very small part of Barbie, but
there's a conversation that Barbie is very much having about gender and about gender roles.
And you and I two people who have different relationships to masculinity but are
both on the masculine side of things and also who come from different racial backgrounds,
can both talk about like all the ways we both connected to it as
well as like you were talking about how there are some ways that is particular
to the Black experience of masculinity that are part of your version of it and
that are different from mine, but also gonna help to inform mine because I
had so many of the same converence feelings that you were talking about. And
funny because I've been like tearing up three times right was podcast, you know
about the crying nonsense. But I am a community organizer by trade. My
spouse is a computer programmer. There was no world she could go to work
for like the lowest paid part of her professional I could go to work for
the highest paid part of my profession. She's still gonna be making two or
three times what I make because just we have different brain sets, different skills,
different things we love. I do most. So basically she works full
time. I work about halftime, and I, you know, do the
most of the cooking around the house and a lot of the cleaning. We
don't have kids, but I probably would be a you know, a stay
at home dad. If that was more what was happening, And yeah,
there was some weirdness around that and people. You know, there was about
two years or so when we'd be out at a party and someone ask her
what she does, and then when someone would ask me what I do,
and I had to kind of work through why does it bother me so much
to have to admit that I'm not like the hard working bread earner by those
definitions that my spouse is seen as, because actually I'm just as hard working.
I'm just doing the work that is much more devalued. Why it's really
the work that women would normally be doing, right and all this is part
of that Ken story, you know, Like I haven't gotten it yet because
again I'm gonna wait till after the strike. But I'm one and buying the
I Am Knough kind of shirts, you know, because it's and I just
love that we can have that conversation of hey, like I think you can
get a bunch of men around a table together and say, hey, let's
all talk about what did Ken's story mean to us? And part of that
conversation is here's the things that we all related to. And then there's the
conversations about like, hey, here's how I, as a black man saw
this story, and I here's how I, as a person in a wheelchair
which is so tied into masculinity, saw that story. And here's that someone
else would say, as a gay man, I saw that story, and
I just to me, that's the conversations more than anything that I want to
have where we can say what's the thing that unites us and we can be
okay agreeing to all that well also saying let's be careful not to speak for
everybody, but also it doesn't mean like your version of Ken's story, micy
version of Ken's story aren't completely different. It's how can your unders Kin's story
better inform and help me to better understand my own version of it? But
absolutely agree with you, there is no right or wrong way to describe the
journey we took with that with all of those characters. As long as you
we all come out on the same side of it, and that is that
patriarchy as a whole is toxic, and we all have our different struggles with
it, we all have our different journey with it, But as long as
we come out on the other side of it and can have a conversation and
say, Okay, this is what I took from it, this is what
you took from it. How does this make us better as people? How
can I watch this movie and realize aside from the entertainment value of because it
was hilarious and it was a great film, but I cried during a movie
about a sentiendul you know, but it it's leaving so many people I think
better for watching the movie, just for getting to see it. And like
you said, more people need to see it. More mask presenting people need
to watch that movie and go, oh shit, I get it now.
It's not just about a doll. It's not just about playing with toys.
It's not a glorified toy commercial. As you know, most movies to be
blunt shot through the mail gays are, you know, like we can love
the MCU, but there's merchandise for them to sell. I love Transformers.
I love everything about Transformers. At the end of the day, Transformers is
a giant toy commercial. You know why because it works for me. It
works on me all the time. I know that, so I can take
lessons from each of those things. But going into a Barbie movie, I
didn't feel the need of aside from like needing to buy a kinough t shirt
or hoodie at some point in time, I didn't feel the need to rush
out, like I gotta get my daughter the dolls from all from this movie.
I gotta go get you know, all the collectibles from this movie because
it's gonna be really valuable and it's gonna be really cool. I left that
theater and I was like, huh, I feel like I just had like
a great experience and I feel like a better person because of it. And
I was with my family and one of our best friends watching it, so
it made it that much better. Yeah, And I just I can't wait
for it to come out on digital or hard copy so I can watch it
with my mother. Pardon me, because I think my mom and my daughter
watching that together. My mom is gonna go damn. I did not expect
that from a Barbie movie, you know. And my baby brother, my
brother's gonna love it too when he gets a chance to see it. My
brother is a is a gay black man, and I think there are things
about it that he will see that I didn't understand, and we'll talk about
it, and you know, it's the same experience yet again come in full
circle to the geekiness and the geetam and everything of all of it. It's
the same experience as the two of us growing up loving X Men together.
Is there are things about X Men that I see that don't necessarily impact him,
but there are things about X Men that he sees that impact him that
don't necessarily packed me. And we talk about it and we learned from it,
and we learned from each other, and we've had conversations about it where
it's like, Okay, well blah blah blah blah, x y Z ABC
one two three, you get this, I got this? What does this
mean as a whole? What? What can we do? What are people
missing about the narrative of this movie? And we talk about it, and
you know, people didn't see it that we talked to, We're like,
oh, well, you missed this point of it. I had the conversation
not to jump around too much. But when Zutopia came out, I had
a conversation with a friend that had seen it and what she saw from the
movie, Oh my god, that ring camera. Where was I Oh?
But Zutopia. What she got from the movie was it was just a badass
story about a woman that got to be, you know, the hero of
her own story. And I said, you're right. I said, but
the movie was also about institutionalized racist and she was like, well, I
didn't get that, and I was like, well I did. I was
like, what do you think Predator versus Price stood for it? I was
like, it was classism and racism. That's what that movie was about.
And it's a very good way to have those conversations with children. When you
watch it, you're like, oh, hey, this is what this means.
This is what this allegory meant, this is what this character represented.
And this is why of the Fox, I can't remember his name the state
of my life right now, but this is why his character was the way
he was, because he was supposed to represent that ideal of it to where
we are now seeing that he's not the swindling bad guy. He actually was
a good person at the heart of it. And Judy, the main character,
had to break her own worldview to see the rest of the world outside
of Zutopia and see what it meant for everybody. You know, she wasn't
just a cute little She literally says that cute is our word in the movie,
and I had to explain to people that that was about racism, and
people still missed it. I mean, I had the same experience because I
don't know how I'm a Star Wars fan. You are, but have you
seen andor Yes? Yes? So I watched that and I got to talk
about it on the Star Wars podcast with a number of great creators, and
there's so much of it that I was getting. But two of my favorite
podcast guests and favorite TikTok creators are two people named written in the Star Wars
and uh Uh Jedi star Killer. I'll link to them in the show notes.
Both of them, either themselves or their family immigrated from Mexico to the
United States. And they were talking about how they see and or through that
lens of his character being an immigrant, you know, and that he you
know, he he and his people spoke a language that we as the audience
didn't get to hear, and that he was basically, you know, kind
of like kidnapped, forced adopted into a non immigrant family when he was rescued
from his planet. And they just brought this level analysis that I would have
never seen and and to me, I felt like that made my life as
a fan so much better. And yeah, I love what you're saying there,
because that's to me that the whole point is that like these stories.
Yeah, there's great fight scenes, and there's great costumes, and there's you
know, the nine foot tall woman working with Megan the stallion, and I'm
loving all of that. But also, to me, what makes these stories
so powerful is when, yeah, these sneak that they're not hitting you over
the head with a message, but there's a message there that different people are
gonna get different parts of. And the best between that's the very best part
of fandom is when we can get together and say, oh, hey,
here's this part of the story that I saw. But I can then say,
oh, cool, but here's a part of the story that I saw.
How can we all learn from the conversation? Right? Right? And
that's why, honestly, I think, and as a man, you know,
there's only so much of this I had a right to say. But
that's why I think, in my opinion, Wonder Woman was a better movie
for feminism versus Captain Marble. Now, mind you, I liked Captain Marble.
I liked a lot, but I felt like Marble was intentionally trying to
beat the message over your head with it. And again I enjoyed the movie,
but Wonder Woman spoke for itself. We didn't need the quippy smile more
from a guy to Diana in that movie because Diana was just a badass.
Carol is a badass and I loved her more in Infinity War and Endgame,
and I can't wait to see her in the Marvels compared to Captain Marble meets
Nick Fiery the movie. You know, Yeah, again, I liked it
for what it was, but there were things about it to where I was
like, that was a little much, that was a little on the nose,
and I feel like Marvel did it on purpose because of all the criticism
they got for it. Right, Brie Larson is absolutely wonderful. I think
she did an amazing job. And again it's it breaks my top ten honestly
for what it was because we got a lot of backstory. But I do
I enjoyed Wonder Woman better to see them Like what a year or two apart,
Wonder Woman was a more like Diana in the uniform or out of the
uniform, Like you're like, I respect this woman. Wonder Woman eighty four.
That's a holy that's a whole different story. We want to talk about
that, but it was a very eighties movie and that it told women you
can have your career or your love, but not both, right. But
it was wonder Woman meets Lifetime. That's why. Yeah, with Steve Trevor
back. Nope, Nope, we're not gonna do Nope, Nope, we're
not gonna do it. We're not gonna do it. But yeah, like
I just again, I enjoy watching these movies, and I enjoy getting to
see these strong characters through everybody's lens. And I I have the privilege of
watching a lot of this stuff with my eleven year old little girl, who
is incredibly smart, incredibly talented, and she gets to tell me saying the
same thing like I said, watching movies with my brother, watching movies with
my little girl, my wife, my little have black daughter gets to watch
the movie and tell me things, Hey, dad, that's what this means.
And I'm like, oh cool, because no, I'm learning from my
child as much as she's learning from me watching these films, or playing these
games, or or watching these TV shows, are reading these comics together,
or watching these cartoons and to see that and to see to get the familial
aspect of it, and things like Moon Girl and Double Dinosaur or Black Panther,
Black Lightning and Star Wars like my daughter loved Ray and the second the
second all three of those movies were finished. That's what I saw them for,
was because yet again my kid got to see the like. Admittedly enough
they made me mad by putting Finn on all the posters as if he was
going to be a Jedi, and then not making him a Jedi. That
bothered me. But the argument where people are like, oh, Ray is
too strong. She only trained for a little while, Mike, so did
luke ye your arguments invalid. They basically told four or five and six over
through a modern lens in seven, eight and nine, and people hated it.
And I was like, if we got new movies like we did with
one, two, and three, you would have hated them too. I
understand the fair criticism of these movies, but again, at the end of
the day, my daughter watched seven, eight and nine, and after seven
immediately wanted a Ray costume. That Halloween. She wanted a lightsaber, she
wanted Ray staff. And then she got to see when we were going to
other cons. She got to see other ray cosplayers and she wanted to take
pictures with them because that character resonated with her. And I think that's something
that we miss as fans as fan and fandoms as a whole. Like I
said at the beginning of the show, these are children's franchises. Yeah,
we need to not argue about them. If we don't like them, that's
fine. Move on. I don't need to harp on it for ten years
because I didn't like something. Move On. There's a lot of stuff I
don't like, and I'll talk to my family about it. I might make
a post it's like, hey, you know what, this got a three
out of ten from me. But I move on. That's what we need
to do. I'm so with you that, and that's gonna be a transition
to kind of lasting. I want to talk to you about about what we
do with fandom. I want to say one thing quick on what you're saying
four is that I was somewhat different view of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel than
what you're saying. But I think we're in similar places. But because I
love Captain Marvel, I actually liked that movie a lot more than Wonder Woman.
But to me, I think more than anything, I think fandom needs
both because I remember how before we were talking about how sometimes the point is
there, but the idiots are going to it's subtle and the idiots are gonna
miss it. No, I read a lot of people kind of like you're
talking about the maga hat person talking about x men. I saw a lot
of posts from people making really sexist takes and why they loved Wonder Woman.
No one missed the point in Captain Marvel, you know, And when I
saw to me, when I remember watching like the way women talked about Wonder
Woman, and some people were like, this is the best thing I've ever
seen, and some were like this could have gone so much further. I
wish it hadn't tried to be so subtle. And then when Captain Marvel came
out and some were saying, this is my story in a way Wonder Woman
never was, and others were saying, like it didn't have to be like
hitting me over the head quite the same way. And to me, the
two of them are like this wonderful picture of like, yeah, each of
us individually is can respond differently to them and like someone's gonna like one one
and the other. But to me, it's not about which one's better.
It's about I want both in the fandom, you know, I want the
fairly like to me, I want Falcon and Winter Soldier, where race is
kind of like a small part of his journey but it is played up a
lot versus you know, Luke Cage and T'Challa and and you know whatever characters
it is. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I see where you're
coming from with that for sure. I mean it's like the duality between and
there are two different studios, but like between Black Panther and Black Lightning.
Whereas Black Panther was inherently what we call ultra black or super black, to
where that was like the pinnacle of blackness, that's what black people can be,
but then you have street level black Black Lightning to where it was like
the it's set in the fake city a guard of I can't remember where it
is now, but it's basically Cleveland because that's where Tony Isabella is from.
And you know, you get the hood aspect, but you get that positiveness
of it too, and you get the drug dealing and you get the gang
banging, but they don't. They do it in such a way to where
it wasn't illustrated as like her tuny or corny. It was real life even
though they were superheroes and superhumans in it. So I kind of get that,
you get the duality of the two again. I, like I said,
I loved Captain Marble, and I definitely see the aspect of like you
were saying, where sometimes you need to be smacked in the face with it,
because I definitely get that. A lot of times you do need that
handprint across your face that sizzles and you get that little burn of oh,
oh I get it, Oh I get it, because sometimes the subtlety is
just not enough to where you're like, oh, I didn't get that.
Well, Like I was staying with Utopia to where my one female friend didn't
understand where I was coming from within and socialized racism of it. That's not
what she saw from the movie. So I guess sometimes if you just say
it, yeah, you need to just come out and say, hey,
nope, that's what we're talking about, that's what this is about. Yeah,
not totally well, and so let's let's kind of wrap up with this
question about like how we are as fans. Know, that's something you talk
about a lot. You do a great series of no hashtags, only facts
that I love and and I want to talk more about what you're saying.
They're about like being winning as fans to let go when we don't like something,
because I think there's there's such a difference between conversations and the arguing and
the fighting, And what I see this most is like, I think it's
totally legitimate to say, like, hey, I don't like where this story
wound up. But I think there's like aspects of the story that our homophobiack
or ablest or racist or sexist or whatever it is. And that's a good
conversation to have. But I also think that there's times in place, you
know, and I think that one of the things, and Star Wars,
I think is unfortunately the perfect example of this. For about five years after
Last Jedi, I'm bad at math, but for a while after Last Jedi
came out, and it's don't It's dimmed down somewhat, but it's still there.
You could make a post if you made a post about like, I
love Luke's journey in Last Jedi and someone wants to argue with it, Fine,
if you said, like, you know, I love Ray and like
my daughter, you know, and and someone wants to talk to you about
it. Sure, But then when someone comes in with the like very old,
we've all heard it before, arguments of like, oh, Ray is
just this badly written character that Mary Sue all that nonsense, Like what's the
point of bringing that up right? And and to me, where it goes
so much further is like like, as an example, I made a post
about how I loved seeing Admiral Akbar in the Last Jedi because I had I
had an Admiral Akbar costume for Halloween when I was six, and so I
strongly identified with that character because I loved him so much, just because I
just was talking about like the joy of having a character a costume when you're
six years old and how that plays out for you thirty five years later watching
a movie, and I had like dozens of people comments, Oh, but
Acbar story was ruined because it had to be all about Ray instead or lay
it. It was just like, dude, we all know you feel this
way, right, why do you have to make this point and why do
you have to bring it into conversations that have nothing to do with that,
right, so to piggyback on that, as you said, all facts,
no hashtag people just want to be contrariant. And these people just they hate
everything just to hate it, not because they genuinely just like just like it,
but because they don't like it, because it gets them used, it
gets them comments, it gets them engagement, because rage farming is easier for
them to do than to have a general positive take of something. Even if
you don't like the inside, Like you said, you like the Akbar because
it was general Akbar because you got to see Akbar again. Yeah. I
loved Lando coming Back because I got to see Lando again. Yeah. That
doesn't take away from the rest of the movie or the things we don't like
about the movie. Doesn't take away from seeing our favorite characters again. One
of the things that I'm having I am struggling with these days. And I
tell people this, I love individual fans, I hate fandoms as a whole.
As a Power Rangers fan, this is the big thing for me.
As I said, these are children's franchises. We have had people in the
Power Ranger community actively attacking the showrunner of the last two seasons because they don't
like decisions that were made because oh, you didn't do what I would have
done. Oh I would have done this differently. You should have done this,
You could have done this, and it's like none of you could have
done that, because if you could, you'd have the job. I need
people too. If you don't like something, don't consume it. You have
that option. If you don't like a book, don't read it. If
you don't like a movie, don't watch it. If you don't like a
video game, don't play it. If you are actively spending the money on
these things just to complain about them, they're a fan. Whether you act
like it or not. You are. You secretly love it, and you're
just hating because you know you're gonna get the feedback for that. You're gonna
get the two pennies from YouTube for posting a video saying you hated Star Wars
seven, eight and nine and what you wish They had to kept the Expanding
Universe. And while I understand people's feelings about that, shut up. The
Expanded Universe might not exist in movie form, cartoon form, or anything.
The books and the comics still exist. You can still consume that media.
The biggest phrase that I hate that I absolutely hate, is it ruined my
childhood. Because unless they invented time travel and went back in time and destroyed
what you loved from your childhood, it still exists and your childhood is still
intact. It didn't ruin anything. Ghostbusters Answer the Call did not ruined one
and two. Granted was the new movie was Afterlife better? Yeah? I
think it was. My biggest problem with Answer the Call was it wasn't connected
to the original two movies. I think it should have been. But let's
be real, Ghostbusters two is kind of trash. We don't talk about that
enough. But if we're gonna hate on it, hate on it. You
don't have to consume anything you don't want to, especially as adults in these
fans faces, we still have the ability to watch the things we love.
You don't like the fact that the cast Hallie Bailey is as aerial and the
live action Little Mermaid, don't watch it, watch the original one. You
don't like the fact that Will Smith is a Genie in Aladdin, don't watch
it, watch the original one. You don't like the fact that Ray is
the most powerful Jedi that we've seen live action, don't watch it. Watch
four or five and six, watch one, two and three that you claim
to hate the children you love because you hate seven, eight and nine.
You don't have to take time out of your day, out of your week,
out of your month, out of your gear to consume this shit if
you don't want to, You're making an active decision to do that. And
I think as fans we need to call people out more often about it.
We need to stand up. And I'm not saying argue with people, fight
with people like you said, Like if I make a post tomorrow that says,
hey, Jason was my favorite power anger and somebody's like, but you
know Tommy was the best my blah, I'm not gonna argue with you.
That's your opinion. That's fine. You like Tommy cool, Tommy wasn't my
favorite. I love the Rest in Peace JDF, I love the character,
but he wasn't my favorite. I'm not going to argue with you about it
because that's your opinion. I'm not trying to have a fight with you.
If I say something that is factual though, like hey, I like the
first Michael Bay Transformers movie because I really like seeing optimists along no Semi again,
and you say optimist problem was never a long nose Semi. I can
argue with you about that because I have proof that he was. Just because
he wasn't after you dropped out of the fandom doesn't mean he wasn't. You're
wrong. And I love that you keep bringing up the Power Rangers because I'll
admit I think in a lot of fandom circles and I'm guilty of this as
well, power Rangers are the furries of geek fandom. Yeah, and I
say that also is like I think that like a way a lot of like
sexuality communities treat the furries is not cool either. Like one of the things
that communities love to do is to say people are going to attack me,
so I need to find someone else who's even more out there than I am,
and I need to throw them under the bus to say, look,
we're not them. And talking to you makes me be like, yeah,
at some point I should go and like check out some Power Rangers stuff,
because for too long I've been in spaces and probably participated in where we'd say
like okay, well, yeah, I know you think we're weird about how
much we love these things, but at least we're not the Power Rangers fans,
you know, like it was that that dynamic. And in terms of
what you're saying about the attacks and all that, I totally agree, and
I think to me, people have truly separate. I think if you don't
like Ray, if you don't like anything like that, if you want to
put a post on your own social media, go for it. If someone
posts the open question that says, hey, I want to have an honest
discussion about what do people think about Ray? And you can contribute to that
conversation even though you're on a negative opinion of Ray, without falling into sexist
diet tribes, without falling into like the same nonsense we've heard a million times.
But you want to make actual critique of Ray, go for it.
But when someone says I love Ray and as a young woman, this character
really meant this to me going out of their post, especially if you're not
a woman, so seeing a woman Jedi and screen didn't mean as much to
you, That's not the place to do it, exactly. You know,
in the same way I agree with you that I think Finn was badly treated.
I think the fact that like the first one, he's kind of paired
with a white woman, and then the next one he's kind of paired with
an Asian woman, and then the next one was like no, no,
no, okay, well to be paired with an another black person, like
John Boyegas talked about that. There's all kinds of racism comments he's made.
But it'll also be the first to say when I saw Finn holding a lightsaber,
there was no I was like, oh cool, a black Jedi.
That'd be fun to see. But there's no part of me that was like,
that's a Jedi who looks like me. And so because of that,
even if I disagreed with some of that stuff, you know, if you
post on your page how important it was to you to see Finn holding that
lightsaber as a black man, I have no place going in there and telling
you you're wrong, right, because I need to start by saying you're having
an experience of the character that I don't get, or I can. I
can empathize with it. I can sympathize with it because it speaks to a
longing that I've never had, because I've never had to have it, you
know, like, and I think that's something people forget all the time.
Yeah, it's it is something that people forget all the time. And our
experiences, again, like you said, our experiences aren't going to be exactly
the same. But you have to respect other people's experiences with these characters,
and you have to as fans. We need to be better in the aspect
that we don't need to attack actors, actresses, writers and directors for decisions
that were made because you didn't like them. There's no reason that Kelly Murray
Tran should have had to delete or social media, not whatsoever. There's no
reason that Bree Larson should have had to take a hiatus from social media.
There's no reason that any of these actors and actresses should have to run away
and hide because we hated the character. They They got paid to play a
character. They might not have liked that character, but they got paid to
play a character. And I'll even talk about one where a lot of the
fans this podcast might agree with me and disliking stuff. I think that Zack
Snyder fundamentally misunderstand Superman, oh and to some extent Batman he does. I
do not like Zack Snyder's take on those characters. And if I make my
own content, or even someone says, hey, what did you think about
Justice League? I will say that, but I'm never going to tag him
in those commus. I'm never gonna attack him personally. I'm never gonna write
letters to him. I'm I'm he, And I will start by acknowledging that
I could study filmmaking for twenty years and not know as much as he does
about the craft, Like he is a very talented writer and director who makes
choices that I don't like. And then I think that, you know,
it's not my Batman, it's not my version those characters. But I watched
Justice League, hated every minute of it, and then went home and turned
on some of my favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series, and guess
what, they were still just as good. Right, nothing was ruined about
them. He didn't take that experience away from you by making a movie,
right, Yeah, there's a shocking aspect that that could happen, That you
could go home and do a palate cleansers after like Ghostwriter. Watch Ghostwriter in
theaters, hated every second of it, went home, watched like classic X
Men cartoons, fell better about life. For my reason, I went to
see Ghostwriter too in theaters, came home and watched like a bunch of comedy
specials because I was like, I need to get this out of my mind.
I was stupid Green Lantern. I got to see Green Lantern in a
theater for free and came out and demanded my money because it was so bad.
And I love that Ryan Reynolds acknowledges that, but I've never faulted him
for that movie. Yeah, I realized what was going home with Warner Brothers
is that they were like, Hey, the Dark Knight trilogy work. Let's
make everything dark and gritty. What's some comedy in it, and let's catch
Ryan Reynolds and he'll do it. And you know that wasn't his fault.
But you have to, as a fan remember that again, these are fantasy
worlds and if we want to not enjoy them, we're allowed to. But
you don't need to write a ten page essay about why Green Lantern is the
worst superhero movie ever. You know, I also don't think it is.
Honestly, there's much worse, but but you need to understand ends that if
again, you write on like I wrote a review of Smallville, the finale
of Smallville when it came out on my own personal Facebook page, what fifteen
years ago when it happened, and I wrote a blog post about it,
and I didn't like it the ending specifically, But I didn't expect everybody to
like send that to CW or Tom Welling or Michael Rosenbaum or any of those
people and say, hey, this particular guy didn't like the end of your
show. You guys should listen to him because he knows more than you as
actors and as writers and a show. I don't want any of that,
because that's not what that was for. Yeah, you know that was for
me to set just say hey, this is why I didn't like this.
If you get the chance to watch it, maybe you'll have a different experience
with it than I did. I just didn't like it, and I understand.
I know there are people that did like the end of it, and
I don't argue with them about it because that's they're prerogative. It's not that
hard. We don't have to on everything, and as fans and his friends,
you're not supposed to agree on everything. But sharing your experiences is what
makes these shows, these movies, these cartoons, these comics, these novels,
these video games is what makes them better. It's because, like you
might have seen something in a movie and experience something with a movie that I
didn't, So now we could talk about it and I go rewatching my damn
you know ethical Banda was right, man, this is this. I get
this now. It's a different experience for me because of the way they saw
this film. Now I see a part of it that I didn't see before.
Or you might take something that I've said, like you said, you
might go watch some Power Rangers. Don't get me wrong, it's campy as
hell. Some it's really really hard to watch. But you might look at
it, you know, through a different lens now and go, oh,
I get why Bishop has still been liking this thirty years later. I understand
it might not, which is fine, you know, yeah, And I
think it's important that that can be critical as well. If you're seeing a
part of it that I didn't see, like and here I might be attacking
one of your sacred cows. I don't mean that, and I hope you'll
hear that. My point is you can still love it like you. I
saw Ghostbusters as a young kid. It is still one of my absolute favorite
movies. There are lines from it that I can still quote entire scenes from
and if someone mentions it, I am absolutely in love. And I watched
it with a woman I was dating, maybe like ten years ago, and
she'd never seen it before, and you know, and I noticed she was
not having a very positive experience about it, and I was like, okay,
and like kind of about you know, we've finished the movie, and
I asked her, like, hey, I get a sense you didn't really
love that. What's going on? And she's like, Bill Murray is a
stalker. He's a horrible, horrible person. And I was like, thinking
about all the ways in which he treats the Data character and continually ignores her
when she says that, you know, she's not interested. And I was
like, you're right, you saw that movie in a light. And I
don't think that movie went out of its way to be a sexist. I
think it treated women characters the way a lot of movies in the eighties treated
women characters, which is quite awful, to be clear. And when I
saw it as a six year old, I missed that entirely. And because
of that watching, I think like, if i'd seen it for the first
time. Today, I might have been bothered by it, but I saw
it for the but I still was like, you know what, I saw
it through the eyes that six year old who first watched it. Yeah.
Now, after she said that to me, I changed my view of the
movie. And then a year later it was on cable or whatever, and
I watched it again and I still thought it was hilarious. And now I
cringed a little bit more at the Bill Murray parts, the romance parts.
But it didn't like make me not like the movie anymore. But it also
made me realize, wait a minute, there was a thing I was blind
to about this movie that she puts out that gives me a better understanding this
movie. And it also helps me understand why it's a part of the movie
that's really not aged well. And we're going to have that conversation, but
in a because what she was never saying was like, you're a terrible person
for liking this movie. She was just saying, Hey, here's my experience
in the movie, and what I don't enjoy it the way you do,
and that's perfectly that's acceptable, and that's fine, and and like you said,
that's a way for us to be critical of these characters and everything.
You're not supposed to relate to all of these characters. I mean, one
of my biggest takeaways from the Ghostbusters franchise as a whole, which they have
rectified now pardon me, is Winston and yet again eighties, So I get
it. But like street smart black guy doesn't need to be the thing all
the time. That's the one thing I loved about the comic continuations, which
are supposed to be cannon, but I'm not sure how much they are anymore.
But Winston goes on to get his PhD as well in quantum physics in
the comics, and he's also a scientist. Now it looks like based on
Afterlife, Winston goes on to be a booming businessman, which I love that
they did that, and that's the way. Ernie Hudson has talked about it,
and he said his character needed to evolve. But then in answer to
the call, they did the same thing with Patty with Leslie Jones's character to
where a street smart black woman where she wasn't a scientist, and that bothers
me again. It doesn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the films,
but it lets me be critical as an adult to watch these movies and go,
I don't like that, you know. And it's the same thing with
a lot of the way that black characters were treated in media in the eighties
and nineties, and like, again, I've said this, you know,
to keep circling back to Power Rangers. The first time I saw Walter Jones
outside of Mighty morphin Power Rangers or Space Cases on Nickelodeon, outside of kids
shows, was on a cop DRAMAA where he played a drug dealer, and
I was like, wait a minute, that man's a superhero and you guys
relegated him to a drug I don't like that. I don't like that at
all. That again doesn't take away from the actor for me, but it
made me think a lot about things even as a kid growing up, and
I'm like, this doesn't make any damn set, Like why are we getting
these roles all the time? And then I had to say have similar conversation
with somebody about Luke Cage where they didn't like the character of Scarf the crooked
cop because the only white guy in the show was a bad guy, and
I was like, welcome to my life. Yeah. Typically when we are
background characters or secondary characters, we're the bad guy or where the cooked cop?
Or where the drug dealer? Or where the gang banger? Or where
the abusive husband or boyfriend, where the cheater where whatever. So to see
that and to see a show to where it's like, huh no, I
mean not gonna be wrong. Luke was a little bit of a womanizing and
not a little bit a lot of it. That's that's the character. But
I totally understand why Scarf was the bad guy in Harlem. And I had
people that straight up told me, you know, I didn't see enough of
myself in the show as as white people. And I'm like, yeah,
well, that's because it's in Harlem. I don't know if you know this
about Harlem, but there are white people, but Harlem is a majority ethnic
area. That's why you see the majority of ethnic people. And a lot
of people missed the fact that Alfrey Woodard's uh black Mariah wasn't correctly prejudiced.
When she was, you know, talking about opening the hospital and shaking the
hands of little kids, little kids, she immediately sanitized her hands after touching
little white kids immediately, and that stuck out to me because I was like,
I've had white people do that to me when I was a kid,
So just see this black woman do it like you're supposed to hate the character,
and she was a great villain, but I was like, I think
a lot of people are gonna miss that subtlety, and like you said,
sometimes you need to be beat over the head with it. And I think
towards the end of season two, when she actually is straight up evil,
you get that beating over the head of who she is and you're like,
oh shit, this is the way she's been the entire time. But I
think that you're supposed to be You're supposed to take critical view of all of
these characters. And that was again a lot of the argument with Killmonger for
Black Panther too, to where people are like, oh, he should be
the Black Panther, and I'm like, he is a whole villain, he's
a bad guy. No, he should be to me, one of the
whole points as you were seeing, like Black the First Black Panther was a
chance to tell a story about what would a black world that hadn't been touched
by white supremacy be like. And in many ways, I think one of
the tragedies of the first Black Panther in movie is that kill Monger is like,
in some ways it's not the kill Mongers an even horrible person, is
that he is the person who's been really touched and hit by white supremacy and
how that's affected him, and that it's there's a tragicness to him. And
that's part of why like this is going way back. We're talking earlier about
kill Monger and Magneto. I think one of the things that unites them,
and this is becoming a trend borne more with some villain characters, is by
the end of the movie, the hero thinks they were right, you know
that, Like T'Challa is, like, I disagree with what Eric was doing,
but everything he said about how Black Panther needs to stop being so walled
off is wrong, And I'm going to go to the exact place that Eric
is from of you know, the downtown areas of Oakland and try and rescue,
you know, trying do what what conduct can to help the kids like
Eric in the way that Eric never got and you know saying with a lot
of times pressor X winds up doing that with Magneto stuff and for somebody else
you said that, oh yeah, and just go alas with something else you
said about Luke Cage. One of the things that I think those shows can
do that I think I get why it so speaks to people in the community,
but also so helpful to folks outside the community like myself is. Like
you said, it can it gets past the oh you know, because all
you ever see is the black character who's the drug dealer. Then yeah,
that is part of what reinforces the stereotype in the minds of white people of
that's how they see black people. As you know, as I said,
the Rental Park was saying, you know, if every time an Asian superhero
is a martial artist like that creates all those kind of ideas. And to
me as someone who grew up, you know, my mother lived like she
she's not doing well financially, and so she was basically as the upperwast side,
the up west side butts up against Harlem in New York City, and
she was basically always like just on the line of it. And as the
Hipps side would expand further and gentrifying some parts of Harlem. And that's a
whole of the story that's really problematically we can talk about. But she was
always going to push north and north, and so I always lived on the
edge of parts of Harlem and had a lot of experience that community, although
obviously not within the community. But one thing that I was very well aware
of is that there were, you know, a number of distinct communities within
people who just call the black community. But one of the biggest separations was
between African American and Caribbean American, and that the Caribbean American immigrants often saw
themselves very differently as the people who were the descendants of slaves in here in
the United States, and that there's a lot of community tension about that,
and that community tension is a fundamental part of Luke Cage season two, and
I was I loved that, and I love listening to black creators talk about
that about like, yeah, this is a this is a this is a
me within black communities that white people don't see, and that there are differences
there between the people who see America as the country they came to as with
a hopeful immigration story versus the people who were kidnapped and taken here their ancestors.
And that's the experience of America and that I'm briefly summarizing it, but
I like, to me, that was such a brilliant part of that show
that it made plain for the people who don't see that. I like,
No, this isn't one monolithic community, right, absolutely, and again like,
you still need to look at the nuance and things, and you still
need to look at the minutia and these characters and these settings in these worlds
and realize that sometimes everything ain't about you. As a fan, everything ain't
about you. You might not see yourself in a character, but you don't
need to see yourself in every character. It is absolutely nice and representation matters,
and I love it. Like I said, go back and look at
little kids it's watching these things and realize why representation is so important. But
as a fan and as a fandom, the ways we need to do better
are to realize that not everything is for us. You don't have to love
everything. You don't have to like everything. Move on, like seriously,
move on, dislike what you want to dislike. I don't need a ten
page essay you know double space at mL E format about it, Like,
I don't care like you can post, Hey, I didn't like blah blah
blah blah blah. I had somebody spoil Endgame, Dude. The week it
came out, I had somebody spoil it on Facebook. I don't even know
why. I was friends with this guy and he complained about he's like smart
Hulk and he dabs and I was like, bro, the movie's been out
for an hour? What is wrong with you? And I deleted and blocked
him, like I'm okay, cool, you don't like it. You don't
have to spoil the experience for everybody else. It is not our job as
fan ends to do that. It is not our responsibility to spoil the experience
for everybody else. Let somebody find help. They don't like something, maybe
they'll like it anyway, just because you don't like it. My wife and
I don't see eye eye on every TV show. I will say she's gotten
me in the Desperate Housewives lately, and I dislike it because I love it
so much, I can't every time she's got it on, I'll be out
of the room and I'll come in a room with like a snack or something
and sit down like it. So we watched Desperate Housewives. Okay, cool,
you know, but I walked in the room one day I ended up
podcast early and my spouse looks stricken because she's watching too hot to handle.
And I started watching it so that I can make fun of her for watching
it. And then I was like, and I sat down with her and
we watched it and we want like biddah seasons of it, you know.
So I'm all with you about that. We had a great conversation. We
could go on so much longer, which tells me I'm gonna have you on
as a guest again. Let me just ask, is there any last parts
about the blurred experience or your thoughts and fan number, any other like last
questions or points you want to bring up. I mean, I guess really
what it comes down to is enjoy the things you enjoy, let others enjoy
the things they enjoy. And to be absolutely blunt, there'll be a dick
about the things you like. You know, like and love what you want
to, but let people enjoy what they want to and don't be hateful because
they like something that you don't. Yeah, or because I think that's the
thing is like, be solid enough in your feelings as a fan that other
people either liking it or disliking it doesn't challenge you, because I'm sure you've
seen this as well. It's like, there's the thing that you don't like,
maybe because you think like there's some racism or some sexism in it,
or maybe because you just think the acting is bad. And people will be
like, oh my god. You know you're not a real fan if you
don't love every version of Power Rangers or whatever. Like, allow for both,
give like, let people have space to experience their feelings and something.
If you think there's problems with it, point that out, but also let
people enjoy the things they're gonna enjoy, and let people not enjoy the things
they don't like, right absolutely, And that's that's really like you said,
like, you're not gonna like everything, you know, We're we're what twenty
seven movies in the MCU know, I haven't liked all of them. Yeah,
you don't have to. It's fine, nobody's making you. We are
twelve Fast and Furious movies, and now I don't like all of them for
some odd reason. There's a fourth Expendables movie coming out. I'm gonna watch
it. I didn't like three. I'm gonna watch for but you don't have
to like all of it, and then if you think you're not going to
like it, don't consume it. I haven't seen The Meg because I think
it looks stupid. I love Jason Statham. I'm not watching those movies.
Yeah, that's fair, you know, but just enjoy the things you enjoy.
Yeah, well, thank you so much for being on here. We're
gonna have a brief section for our patrons, which is actually now our members.
I'm not talking about this much, but these podcasts have you probably may
have noticed, had moved entirely over to the true story dot fm community,
and so I'm kind of phasing out Patreon. If you are a p t
already, you're gonna get a free month of membership. But the best way
now is you can sign up to become a member of this podcast on the
True Story Fm. All the links are in the show notes, and if
you do that, it's either five dollars a month or fifty five dollars for
the whole year save five bucks. You get bonus content, You get access
to a lot of discord conversations, and you get the bonus content. You
can add free content, all the great things and mostly you get to know
that you're helping to support this podcast, and as I was doing with Patreon,
because I really want to help support the strike and all weeken, twenty
five percent of any money that we get from those membership fees is all going
to go to the Strike Fund. That's helping the actors, the writers and
only them. It's helping the hairstylists, helping the makeup artist, it's helping
the people who you know, the guy who owns the pizza shop that used
to deliver pizzas all the time to the studio and now it doesn't have any
business because no one's at the studio. Like this fund is helping all those
people. So please consider it becoming a member. Please consider going to you
know, we love going against feedback. What'd you think of the episode and
everything that Cage Bishop had to say? Go to a website, go to
the show notes. You can find our email, our Twitter, our TikTok,
all the ways to contact us. We love feedback. But most importantly,
I hope that you've as I have, listen to all the things that
my guests had to say. You want to know more about what they're doing.
So Dave just tell me as we finish up where places people can find
all you and all the great stuff you're doing. All right, So if
you want to check me out on TikTok, which is my primary I am
Caged Underscore Bishop Underscore Cosplay. On TikTok, you can find my show Perception
Blurred Why Not? That is Perception b L E R D Y Apostrophe NLT
on all major podcasts platforms. Just search that. I have a segment called
on Apologetically Blurred, which is just about the blurred the experience. Perception Blurred
is more about the experience of a black man in the world. Currently,
and I did a spin off show with my best friend and my wife and
my daughter called Tables, Ladders and Dice where we talk about professional wrestling,
and I swear we are going to get to tabletop at some point in times.
Just wrestling has been really hot right now, so we've been talking about
that. You can find that all on Spotify, Apple, Google, wherever
you find podcasts. We're there. Yeah, I've got an episode coming up
about wrestling that I definitely want to get you on for if you're up for
it, and I'll commit now when the strike ends, we can talk about
that media again. I'm doing an episode on Power Rangers, so we'll definitely
get you on for that as well. Yeah, I also want to say
that I'll give a warning here. No, i'll give a spoiler here.
I don't know if it'll be any good, but given what you said about
that, like, you know, you'd come up to me if I was
in the wheelchair doing a Riker cosplay at some point in time. I take
me years, but I've got to do a Riker costplay because what is one
of the defining things about Riker that we all love to laugh at. He
doesn't know how to get into a chair normally, So I have to do
one about weird ways of getting into my wheelchair in a Riker costplay. So
it's gonna happen sometime, I don't know when, and I'll give all the
credit to my friend Cage Bishop. So thank you as much for being a
guest. To all of our members, We're gonna have more discussion with Kage
Bishop of about cosplay injured a second. To everyone else, thank you so
much for listening. We have spoken where we are