InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "In your head they are dying."

starwolf_oakley (starwolf_oakley) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-23 23:27:00

Entry tags:

publisher: wildstorm, title: the authority

runespoor7's post of Jason Todd talking to Mia Dearden led to a thread discussion about billionaire vigilantes beating up poor criminals.

A panel from THE AUTHORITY: TRANSFER OF POWER shows that at least a few comic creators are aware of this.

"The Authority" was always pretty "out there" for superheroes. But that's Warren Ellis and Mark Millar for you.

For more than a few superheroes, actually being a superhero can be seen as a case of Noblesse Oblige. Noblesse Oblige can be seen as "With great power comes great responsibility... and a really smug sense of superiority."

It came back to Batman, as these things do. After all, we never really go into detail about how "well-off" the Kents were from farming, or how much Clark Kent's Daily Planet take-home pay is. Some seem to think it ties into "Lonely Place of Dying," that since Tim Drake's family is wealthy, Tim isn't as "street" as Jason Todd.

Quotes from users via http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/987439.html?thread=27947311#t27947311:

runespoor7 said: "The fact is, 'Oh, Jason was lower class and her turned out badly, and then he was replaced by Tim, who came from a good family the same side of the streets as Bruce and who did very well as Robin' leaves a strange impression."

lynxara said: "In particular, confronting the class issues at work in the Batman stuff is impossible without coming to the conclusion that most of the characters involved are selfish monsters so steeped in white privilege that they've lost all grasp of reality."

icon_uk said: "Dick was suddenly an ethnic Romany with angst about the likelihood of him ending up in jail like so many of his kin."

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	bashzilla 2009-09-24 04:24 am UTC (link)
	~~I thought Italy was the only country criminalizing Romani?~~All I could think of while reading this page, despite the intelligent argument you're presenting, was 'That fucking white Midnighter suit...' (Reply to this) (Thread)

	runespoor7 2009-09-24 05:46 pm UTC (link)
	I thought Italy was the only country criminalizing Romani? So very not. I know strong anti-Romany prejudice exists in all(? at least a big part) of Western Europe, plus the United States. I don't know about the rest of the world. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

neuhallidae
2009-09-24 06:55 pm UTC (link)

I can't speak for the rest of the US, but in a lot of places here in the southeast, you start talking about Roma as an ethnic group, and you get blank stares. Then you resort to "gypsy" and it's all "Oh, like in that Disney/Stephen King/whatever movie!" or "Oh, like that creepy old lady at the fair!" There's a good portion of people here who apparently didn't know they even existed outside of fiction.

Apparently, the stigma still exists in enough of the big city areas, though, that when they wanted to return Magneto back to old-school villainy for awhile, they tried retconning his background to Roma. That didn't work out so well.

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