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Haters and Static Shock
Mar. 4th, 2007 11:08 amBeau99's post about an idiot on Toon Zone who has a vaguely racist bias against anime got me thinking about Static Shock and it's detractors who hate the show vehemently without any real reason.
Now I love Static Shock, but even as a fan I can acknowledge that the show oftentimes had horrid dialogue and could be incredibly stupid. But I feel the exact same way about some of the early run of BTAS and the first season of Justice League. Why do those two shows get a free pass on crappy dialogue and stupidity but Static is allegedly SO bad that people were practically weeping when The Once and Future Thing on JLU made it unequivically DCAU canon?
Some of the comments on Toon Zone in that thread King zrz started about him not being happy about Batman's appearances in Static Shock had a vaguely racist undercurrent to them. I've heard on more than one occasion that there shouldn't be any place for superhero rappers (see Rubberband Man) in the DCAU and that the show takes away credibility from the DCAU. I think that's crap. (likewise that similar recent thread about which animation poses in Epilogue were realistic or not was truly eyeball-rolling worthy).
First of all, the same whiny fanboys who say Static Shock takes away the credibilty of the DCAU and makes it less believable OBVIOUSLY believe a world that has demigods running around saving the universe in underwear which is brightly and gaudily colored from talking gorillas, psychopathic clowns, and guys who fight Superman with giant deadly toys is inherantly more believable than Static Shock are delusional. The DCAU franchise is a franchise of KIDS cartoons and the only limit to what is possible in it is the limit in which a KID would be able to imagine. Myxyzsptlixaed is a CRAZY Superman episode and cartoony as all get out. But people think Static Shock isn't realistic.
I've also heard complaints that Batman would NEVER have revealed his identity to Static and that it was out of character but I call b.s. on that too. If ANYONE understands Batman and his character it's Paul Dini who wrote Hard As Nails.
I think an uncomfortable truth is that most fanboys are young, white males with limited life experience and DON'T GET how prevelant racism is in our society. Having a black Superhero on Saturday Morning TV was a HUGE win for African American kids and I think all of the efforts to marginalize the show, for whatever it's faults shows a real lack of understanding about how racist the comments they snidely make are. Dwayne McDuffie was driven off of Toon Zone by a HUGELY racist thread that had a clip of him talking like Kingfish from Amos and Andy. The Mods there tried to do damage control by pretending that they never made comments about how funny it was and editting their original posts. I don't think the mods meant any harm but it just goes to show how limited a lot of fanboys' life experiences are. The whole thing pissed me off so much because it made Style92 believe he had done something wrong when he made a bad joke to Dwayne earlier. If the mods had owned up to their part in the fiasco instead of covering it up Style wouldn't have felt like he shouldn't post there anymore. THAT pissed me off.
There is SUCH an undercurrent of racism on a lot of message boards and it bothers me to think that the only reason Static Shock gets so much crap thrown at it is because they dared to make a black teenager the star of his own show.
Now I love Static Shock, but even as a fan I can acknowledge that the show oftentimes had horrid dialogue and could be incredibly stupid. But I feel the exact same way about some of the early run of BTAS and the first season of Justice League. Why do those two shows get a free pass on crappy dialogue and stupidity but Static is allegedly SO bad that people were practically weeping when The Once and Future Thing on JLU made it unequivically DCAU canon?
Some of the comments on Toon Zone in that thread King zrz started about him not being happy about Batman's appearances in Static Shock had a vaguely racist undercurrent to them. I've heard on more than one occasion that there shouldn't be any place for superhero rappers (see Rubberband Man) in the DCAU and that the show takes away credibility from the DCAU. I think that's crap. (likewise that similar recent thread about which animation poses in Epilogue were realistic or not was truly eyeball-rolling worthy).
First of all, the same whiny fanboys who say Static Shock takes away the credibilty of the DCAU and makes it less believable OBVIOUSLY believe a world that has demigods running around saving the universe in underwear which is brightly and gaudily colored from talking gorillas, psychopathic clowns, and guys who fight Superman with giant deadly toys is inherantly more believable than Static Shock are delusional. The DCAU franchise is a franchise of KIDS cartoons and the only limit to what is possible in it is the limit in which a KID would be able to imagine. Myxyzsptlixaed is a CRAZY Superman episode and cartoony as all get out. But people think Static Shock isn't realistic.
I've also heard complaints that Batman would NEVER have revealed his identity to Static and that it was out of character but I call b.s. on that too. If ANYONE understands Batman and his character it's Paul Dini who wrote Hard As Nails.
I think an uncomfortable truth is that most fanboys are young, white males with limited life experience and DON'T GET how prevelant racism is in our society. Having a black Superhero on Saturday Morning TV was a HUGE win for African American kids and I think all of the efforts to marginalize the show, for whatever it's faults shows a real lack of understanding about how racist the comments they snidely make are. Dwayne McDuffie was driven off of Toon Zone by a HUGELY racist thread that had a clip of him talking like Kingfish from Amos and Andy. The Mods there tried to do damage control by pretending that they never made comments about how funny it was and editting their original posts. I don't think the mods meant any harm but it just goes to show how limited a lot of fanboys' life experiences are. The whole thing pissed me off so much because it made Style92 believe he had done something wrong when he made a bad joke to Dwayne earlier. If the mods had owned up to their part in the fiasco instead of covering it up Style wouldn't have felt like he shouldn't post there anymore. THAT pissed me off.
There is SUCH an undercurrent of racism on a lot of message boards and it bothers me to think that the only reason Static Shock gets so much crap thrown at it is because they dared to make a black teenager the star of his own show.
