+2
On the topic of forced diversity:
I've now seen the 2 newest Spider-Man films (Homecoming and Far From Home) and the forced diversity just seems so... forced.
Peter Parker's class just has the most perfectly dispersed ethnic diversity as to be unrealistic - it reminded me of a cartoon that was on when I was little called Kid Power. I loved watching that cartoon - it had a diverse cast of characters and taught kids about tolerance, acceptance and appreciation for differences in race, nationality and relgions - but that was its purpose, that's WHY the characters were so diverse in a very equitable distribution so all backgrounds could be represented equally.
Peter's class on his class trip to Europe looks like a racial Noah's Ark: two white kids, two black kids, a couple Latino kids, a couple Asian kids, a few of mixed or indeterminate race (and of course a token girl wearing a head scarf because... ya know - everybody's got to be represented.) It's a nice concept, but it's not necessarily realistic (unless maybe they go to a high school for children of U.N. representatives). Again... it seems so forced as to be noticable.
As usual, the movies felt compelled to change the ethnicities of established white characters that have been around since Spider-Man's inception. But that's not all - several characters from Peter's adult life (his job as a photographer in the comics) over the course of his character's 58-year history are now the same age as him and in his class! (Why? Why do they do this stuff?) Namely: Ned Leeds & Betty Brant - always have been older than Peter and were his co-workers: adults in the news industry - but now they're teenagers!
Of course the counter argument is comics and movies have been white-centric for too long. Agreed.
And the solution is to utilize characters created over the years of various ethinic backgrounds or create new characters for a diversity of actors to play (but changing established characters just feels like a forced kind of tokenism that is not meant to just increase diversity, but is designed to stick-it to the majority, force them to repent for the sins of history and disrespect the original fans).
I gave the movies credit for at least creating a new love interest for Peter, rather than having a mulatto (yes, that's somehow a dirty word now) actress play either Gwen or Mary Jane - I encourage creating new characters if filmmakers have a need to fill some sort of ethnic quotas, rather than changing the biological nature of established characters - so kudos for "Michelle" in Spider-Man Homecoming (2017).
But now "Michelle" from Homecoming is "MJ" (what are the odds Peter would have two girlfriends named "MJ")? They couldn't even leave this alone. So now Spider-Man's "MJ" is no longer a red-headed caucazoid (not considered a dirty word because it refers to white people), but a woman of color. I know it's only supposed to be a wink to the name and she's not supposed to be the original MJ - but there's only ever been one "MJ" in Spider-Man and it looks like an attempt to change her as well.
Is all this "racist" on my part?