Outrage Watch: Marvel has a Tilda Swinton problem

Welcome to Outrage Watch, HitFix's (almost) daily rundown of entertainment-related kerfuffles. Not anxious enough already? Get your fix of righteous indignation below, and stay posted for outrage updates throughout the week.

The good news: Tilda Swinton is reportedly in talks to play a gender-bent Ancient One in Marvel's “Doctor Strange.” The bad news: Tilda Swinton is reportedly in talks to play a whitewashed Ancient One in Marvel's “Doctor Strange.” How are we supposed to feel about this?

Pretty angry, according to a contingent of tweeters who are miffed that a character depicted in the comics as an elderly Tibetan man (birth name: Yao) has been reimagined for the upcoming MCU entry as a willowy white goddess. Here's a sampling of the outrage:

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And it's not just Twitter. Some members of the online media also aren't particularly pleased.

“…don't expect to get something as awesome as Tilda Swinton in a Marvel movie without her role also turning out to be super racist,” writes Daily Dot contributor Aja Romano, who continues later: “While it's awesome that Marvel is proving willing to genderbend characters in order to give fans the female representation they have been demanding, it completely defeats the purpose if those roles come to white women at the expense of other actors who can and should play roles that were written as other races to begin with.”

While Romano does highlight the argument that casting a white woman in the role at least avoids the rather offensive nature of the comic-book character to begin with — a.k.a. Asian stereotype mentors white hero — she concludes that “the role could easily have been written in ways that rethought the characterization and made the dynamic between Yao and Strange less problematic.”

Over at The Outhousers, meanwhile (“Your source for comics news, reviews, opinions and muckraking!”), writer “Jude Terror” takes a snarkier approach, calling the Swinton casting a “diversity 'wash'” before concocting a faux-statement by Marvel Studios head “Kevin Feige” that reads in part:

“'We're excited to have made neither forward progress nor backward regression in this casting,'…Often, the superhero film genre feels like it's making one step forward and two steps back when it comes to responsibly handling issues of inclusion in a universe of characters that was mostly created decades ago with outdated and occasionally offensive ideas of diversity.'”

I cannot stress enough that this is not an actual Kevin Feige quote. Satire! We support it here.

[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]