ok but even if wanda and pietro aren't magneto's, they're still roma and/or jewish, right? mr brev, we can't just look back on comic books' history of being a medium for jewish empowerment without giving marvel's two newest a-listers, courtesy of AOU, their pretty gosh-darn important ethnoreligious background, can we?
I’ve asked this before, and had no takers: can you point me to a single story, just one, in which the “fact” that Wanda and Pietro come from a Jewish background is in any way relevant?
I don’t think you can. So far as I can see, no such story exists. So this feeling of Jewish empowerment exists solely in the minds of readers who projected it onto those characters via the background of Magneto. So eliminating that link doesn’t actually eliminate anything tangible, just an idea that some people had in their minds rather than anything on the page.
Wanda and Pietro are still Roma, in fact they’re more legitimately Roma now, as they’re no longer Jewish kids brought up by a Roma family, but legitimate members of the Roma people. That’s a background that informed a whole lot of stories over the years, so that all needed to remain in place regardless of whatever else we might do.
I mean, Tom, narratively, this all makes sense, but it’s not really very sensitive to Jewish identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You know how many people of Jewish ethnicity have had their identity ripped from them in ways that were out of their control? Because from a metaliterary perspective, that’s what’s happened here, and that’s why people are upset about this. It’s not necessarily narratively important to you but for people who identify as Jewish or part-Jewish, it’s all too similar to things that have happened to us and our families in real life, and that’s why you’re getting pushback. Yeah, narratively, sure, your argument is perfectly cogent, but that doesn’t make it considerate of the full implications of what that story means to readers, and that means that your explanation isn’t even touching on the aspects of the question that matter to readers who are bothered by this.
Hey, so I’m probably like the worst person in the world to jump in here. I only got into comics a few years ago with the Avengers movie, and I’ve caught up a fair amount (thanks Marvel Unlimited!), but I’m still not really well-versed. I can’t cite chapter and verse on most comics-related topics.
The fact that their ethnic background wasn’t relevant to the particular stories didn’t matter; my being Jewish often isn’t relevant to my day to day activities, either, but it informs those activities nonetheless. Whether or not it was intentional on the parts of the writers, artists, and editors, these characters’ Judaism colored my understanding of their actions, the same way it informs my understanding of Ben Grimm’s and Kitty Pryde’s.
It may not have mattered in terms of who they saved or how they did it, but it matters to me as a reader.
‘more Roma’ THEIR MOTHER WAS ROMA GESUS FUCKING CHRIST
Just adding these links to other good and valid points that are replies to this post x, and this one is more of an emotional reaction which ofc is also valid x.
If you’re working for Marvel and looking back on decades worth of stories with Jewish characters and saying those characters’ Jewish background doesn’t matter because it’s not “relevant” then you should write stories in which their Jewishness is important, not make the character not Jewish and act like it doesn’t matter. To do otherwise is lazy writing. And honestly to me it’s anti-semitic. You can’t just say that a character suddenly isn’t Jewish and act like it doesn’t matter to the character or to readers. Because even if it’s not “relevant” to our day to day activities or aren’t religious, it’s a part of our identity.
I am so
shocked
That a white dude would not only find the concept of representation completely irrelevant, but also less important than a bafflingly unnecessary retcon of the parentage of some of Marvel’s longstanding characters.
Shocked, I tell you.
A gentle reminder as well that the Maximoff twins were created by Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) and Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber).
Two Jewish creators among many to whom the current industry owes a debt.
And what the current industry needs is more diversity and representation, not the erasure of what already exists.
#that was a very bad response#really bad#Sometimes people don’t have a REASON for their religion or ethnicity or background or disability#they don’t have to justify WHY they are#they exist#it is part of their existance#and if the media we live with was better with representing people other than white males#played by white dudes NAMED CHRIS#then they wouldn’t have to come up with a justification for WHY they’re Jewish#They just are#and it changes their point of view#it changes things in small ways and big ways#it changes them#to take that away
ALL OF THIS. And holy shit, can we demolish the “white as the default” mentality already? The idea that straying from it has to be narratively justified is utterly repugnant and exactly why the few diverse characters we get are so often written as harmful, stereotypical caricatures.
Out of the hundreds of white characters Marvel owns, how many have been a part of stories in which their whiteness is “relevant” to the narrative?
… Can we just talk about the fact that Tom Brevoort just implied that racial purity is a thing and one worth actually subscribing to and believing? “More Roma,” jesus fuck.
