Disjointed thoughts on Tokenism

I was reading David Brothers's awesome post on dismissing minority characters as "editorial fiat" or "token" and well, I pretty much wanted to post how much I agree with it.

I've blogged my own thoughts about tokenism before.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize the practice of token characters. I've blogged before about how I hate the "And then there's the girl" phenomenon where there's that one female character amidst the crowd of male characters that essentially is supposed to embody everything that is woman. I'd imagine that the frustration is similar for black readers, gay readers, and so on.

There's a flipside, however. As annoying as I may find Cheetara as a character (to use one of my own examples), if she's taken out...well then, there would be NO adult women on the original Thundercats team.

That's not a solution.

I get rather uncomfortable when I read people dismiss a particular character as being "token" because I think it oversimplifies the issue. (I am being a bit of a hypocrite here, because I know I've done that too, but it's my blog and thus my prerogative.) A lot of really good characters came about as a "token" effort to include a bit of diversity.

Like Supergirl for example. Supergirl is the poster child of a token created character. While I have no way of truly knowing what the creative process was behind Supergirl, I bet you ten-to-one that the creators started with this line on paper: "A girl version of Superman."

Of course "girl-Superman" isn't all that Supergirl is as a character and doesn't encompass all of Kara Zor-El's particular ins and outs (regardless of which version you look at). But that's probably how it started.

And that's not a bad thing. What's bad is when creators take the token concept and just stop.

The thing is, that's pretty curable. A walking stereotype can be developed fairly easily with an interested creator behind him or her. Take for example, Snapper Carr. I know not everyone who visits this blog is a fan of course. But I quite like him. In his first appearances in the JLA though, I'd say he fits a token "young slang-using audience stand-in" type role. He's pretty fucking annoying at that. But the thing is, ultimately, over the course of years and even decades, a couple of writers decided to try new things with the character. Some of it was stupid, sure, but some of it was good, and by the time I read Hourman, I ended up finding him one of my favorite characters.

That's the nice thing about comics. It's really easy to add depth and layers long after the character is originally introduced. They never have to be static.

And in general, I think the results are pretty good. John Stewart is awesome. He is always awesome. And I challenge anyone who doesn't think he's awesome to read Mosaic. And heck, you don't see Hal, Guy or Kyle being offered membership into the Alpha Lanterns, do ya? (If you do, don't spoil me, I'm behind in my comics again. :-))

Firestorm? Jason's fantastic. My favorite parts of the comic were when he was teamed with Ronnie inside his head because we really got to see the contrast between the characters and I really liked the rapport, but I pretty much enjoyed every inch of his run.

Michael Holt is brilliant, awesome and easily handles both Checkmate and JSA with aplomb. And for all that "Black Lightning" is not the most original codename, I think they've managed to do a lot with Jefferson Pierce over the years to give him a very interesting perspective and a weight of experience that a lot of the other heroes lack.

It is kind of amusing how they keep dragging out previously-unheard-of offspring for him, but I'm the sort that loves to giggle at the Summers family tree. I really enjoy family dynamics and generational herodom. So I'm looking forward to seeing the new guy.

I won't argue that all of these characters probably did originate as editorial fiat or an attempt to shove a "token" black person on the team. But honestly, with results like these, does it matter? Besides, is it really that different from making the upteenth new young white straight male hero and shoving HIM on the team? If you're gonna make a new character anyway, why not occasionally change the pattern up a little?

Personally, I think what matters is results. We should have more diversity in our heroes, not less. If a writer decides he or she wants more women, racial minorites, gay characters, and decides to throw a few more out there, that's great! If the editors decide the teams are a little too lily white and want to try something new, I think that's a good thing. Even if they fuck it up, and I'm SURE they're going to fuck it up occasionally, they've still added something to the giant shared sandbox that is the DCU (or Marvel U, for that matter) that someone else can pick up and spin to gold.

I think it's worth the try.