r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Character_Growth_397 • 12h ago

Hated Tropes Things meant to be progressive just end up being incredibly offensive

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What If - In one of the comics Miles becomes Thor, and it's full of stereotypes about black people such as the Mjolnir having graffiti on it and the infamous "by Odin's fade"

Emilia Perez - Everything about the movie

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u/Thundersting 12h ago edited 12h ago

Lois Lane turning Black for day. Maybe it was better recieved in 1970 but now it just seems tone deaf. Also weird that Superman owns a raceswapping machine.

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u/steventhecow 12h ago

especially since he himself doesnt need a machine to swap races

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u/MissSharkyShark 11h ago

I hate how hilarious these are. I understand it’s a product of its time and today it’s horrid, but lord is it funny

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u/LavishnessCurrent726 10h ago

I am fucking crying while watching this.

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u/Turbulent_Lunch4548 1h ago

I think the joke works better nowadasy in a way. Back then, these were just stupid low effort jokes, barely worth a real chuckle, even to those who would like it.

But nowadays, we don't make these kind of jokes off the cuff. So the writer displaying such a hilarious case of either 'gross social incompetence' or 'intentional absurdist parody' is what brings in new tension and therefore comedy.

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u/Mist_Rising 4m ago

Superman was a dick on the average anyway.

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u/sharktail_tanker 11h ago

The only way he could have been more racist is to put a pointed hat on and paint himself yellow

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u/parabolateralus 10h ago

Not the only way! They could’ve swapped the Ls and Rs.

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u/____-_______-_--_-_- 9h ago

Rois Rane

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u/calilac 7h ago

Cralk Kent.

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u/HoneyPastaSweets 8h ago

Y’know maybe the multiversal resets are a good thing, cause it means every time it happens superman is further separated from this version

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u/Stackbabbing_Bumscag 7h ago

While the racial caricature is what obviously jumps out here, what's also funny is the "distort my facial characteristics" ability. Many Golden Age or pulp-era heroes had some sort of "precise facial muscle control", whether as a superpower or just a trained skill, that let them disguise themselves simply by moving their face around. The hidden motivation for writing them this way was that the writers worried that the hero using makeup for disguises would seem too effeminate.

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u/____-_______-_--_-_- 6h ago

They got nothing on Jim Carrey

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u/Mist_Rising 1m ago

Superman still has most of these talents because his power set is basically "physical anything."

For example Superman often "appears as Clark Kent" by claiming he morphed his body, and he has shown off that he can mimic a lot of people besides Clark (he uses the excuse when someone finds out him being too Superman, and Clark gets "inside scoops" from Superman.)

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u/____-_______-_--_-_- 9h ago

I'M ASIAN AND THIS IS FUCKING AMAZING!

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u/mugenhunt 12h ago

Lois wants to do a story on the black experience in the slums of Metropolis, but no one is willing to open up to her because she's white. She asks the Superman can use a Kryptonian device from a previous adventure to temporarily make her look black.

With the caveat that this was made by white people in the early 70s trying to make a story about racial equality for children, it was good for the time. There's a really nice moment where Lois has a favorite cabbie she uses to get around, who just drives past black Lois. She has a moment of realizing that people who are kind to her may in fact be prejudiced and racist, and she's never realized it.

But it does suffer from the fact that apparently there are no black people working at the Daily Planet, and it is only about the poor black experience. A radical black activist learns a lesson that not all white people are bad when Lois gives him a blood transfusion. So, racist white cabbie doesn't ever suffer any comeuppance, but the black guy is the one who has to learn a lesson.

The most memorable bit that people post for memes is when Lois asks if Superman will marry her even if she's black, and he reminds her that he's not marrying her no matter what the color of her skin. Also that he isn't even human. Lois counters that he sure does look like a white person and is treated differently because of that, but then the device wears off and Superman changes the subject.

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u/Wardock8 11h ago

"Would you still love me if I was black?"

"I don't even love you while you're white."

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u/Dudeman240 8h ago

I'm fucking crying oh my god hahahaha

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u/Ok_Writing_7033 3h ago

“Still? What do you mean still?”

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u/DeliciousPark1330 11h ago

"Kryptonian device from a previous adventure to temporarily make her look black."

superman just has that lying around? i wonder what that previous adventure was

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u/mugenhunt 11h ago

If I remember correctly, a Kryptonian scientist who escaped the destruction of his home planet Dhar-Nel, fell in love with Lois and showed off his invention, a device that changes your appearance. She decides to marry him, but he dies at the end and Superman just takes the device for safekeeping.

Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane #90.

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u/SpiffShientz 11h ago

home planet Dhar-Nel

Oh hell no dude is from Planet Darnell??

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u/mr-kvideogameguy 5h ago

Does that mean he's a Dhar-man

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u/mr-kvideogameguy 5h ago

Stealing from a villan and keeping it as "safe keeping", wonder who Superman learned that from

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u/MyGamingRants 11h ago

She has a moment of realizing that people who are kind to her may in fact be prejudiced and racist, and she's never realized it.

This is actually pretty poignant. I say all the time, as a cis het white ally that I don't always see the bigoted side of people, but I hear about it from my friends

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u/blitzbom 10h ago

As a cis white guy who was often the only white kid among his friends some of the stories I have make other white people shocked.

Like when I was a teen with 3 black friends. I was in the backseat and the driver got pulled over for being black.

The cop looked in the car and saw me then immediately asked what I was doing in the car with them.

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u/Belfbry 10h ago

Seems pretty inoffensive for a single comic book from almost 60 years ago

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u/Karasu-Fennec 10h ago

Yeah I mean, for a piece of art by and for the cultural hegemony, pretty good
Especially compared to whatever the fuck black Thor was

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u/TotalBlissey 10h ago

I've only just recently started kind of passing as a woman, got my first weird comment the other day! Yay...?

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u/ChiefsHat 3h ago

I never saw the bigoted side of my Irish grandparents, but I have heard about it and it caught me by surprise.

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u/NihatAmipoglu 10h ago

>he's not marrying her no matter what the color of her skin.

r/Superdickery moment.

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u/Infamous-Warthog8555 11h ago

Well, that sounds like it might’ve been inspired by Black Like Me, which was a true story. I think this one gets a pass.

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u/lumpboysupreme 9h ago

The cabbie not getting punished is kind of the point though, if society cracked down on the racists it’d be whitewashing the racial situation of black people.  And there’s something to be said for the idea of encouraging not being paranoid toward allies, black separatism was on the decline by then but was still a rhetorical concern.

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u/FirstDukeofAnkh 9h ago

It’s based on the book “Black Like Me” by John Howard Griffin, which is now problematic in its own right.

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u/Infamous-Warthog8555 6h ago

I wouldn’t agree with that at all. You can’t look at a social experiment that a guy did in within the milieu of the culture of his era, about the culture of his era, that was deeply impactful with respect to the understanding of competing cultural forces of his era in a positive way, and retroactively call it problematic.

If someone were to do it now, it would be problematic. At the time, it wasn’t, and if anything, was probably the opposite.

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u/FirstDukeofAnkh 6h ago

I meant that it’s problematic to base your empathy on your own experiences versus listening to the experiences of others.

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u/Infamous-Warthog8555 6h ago

I think it was an exercise to develop and share empathy. I don’t see that as an issue at all.

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u/Ccaves0127 8h ago

The concept is based on a novel called Black Like Me, where a white writer dressed himself as a Black man and wrote about his experience

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u/SmartAlec105 8h ago

It sounds like it could have been great with just a few tweaks. Have Lois explicitly address that there aren't any black reporters. Instead of a radical black activist, have her meet a black guy that is an out-of-work reporter himself due to racial discrimination. She helps him get a job at the Daily Planet. Have her tell off the cab driver when she takes a cab with the new black reporter.

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u/ChiefsHat 3h ago

Yeah, this is one of those “products of its time, but commendable for trying.”

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u/Stewart_Games 1h ago

I liked that Superman story where it is revealed that he actually looks like a gigantic fucked up bug monster, but his escape pod/kryptonian cradle altered his DNA so he could blend in and live as a human. I think it was Martian Manhunter that showed Supes what real Kryptonians look like.

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u/Garlador 12h ago

What’s funny is they literally include this story in Lois Lane’s 75th anniversary comic as an important milestone issue.

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u/Pyyric 7h ago

.... does his abs have titties?

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u/mr-kvideogameguy 5h ago

Supes is so strong, his abs are tit muscles

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u/Optimal_Weight368 12h ago

I think it was supposed to be based on John Howard Griffin, who pretended to be black in order to record his experiences in a segregated society. Though a lot of people didn’t like his approach, either.

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u/Ill-Personality-4437 12h ago

The title is sending me, wtf is “I AM CURIOUS (BLACK)” supposed to mean? Is it a pun that I’m missing? What are the parentheses for? It makes less sense the more I think about it

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u/princess_ferocious 12h ago

It's a reference to two 1960s Swedish films called I am Curious (Yellow) and I am Curious (Blue).

No idea if it the plot is in any way connected to the movies.

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u/teeno731 11h ago

There's no way American comic readers in the 1960s were fans of Swedish cinema, right?

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u/princess_ferocious 11h ago

I just went to google and see if there's any known reason for the name choice, but unfortunately the content of the story is such a ham-fisted racial empathy plot that all I could find was people discussing that and occasionally commenting on how weird the name is, and not a damn thing about WHY the name is something so weird 😂

They were erotic films, so, maybe it says something about the team behind this particular comic?

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u/wvgeekman 6h ago

The Swedish movies were actually quite popular at that time, at least among adults. They're some of the first films to be released in the US that actually showed pretty explicit sex.

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u/thatwasnowthisisthen 8h ago

There would definitely be some. Im an avid comic reader and watch various arthouse films. Guessing it was a play on the “curiosity” of the black experience. Still very weird since the films were notorious at the time for their sexual content.

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u/FeastingFiend 12h ago

That’s actually a reference to the 1967-68 Swedish erotic drama duology of films I Am Curious (Yellow) and I Am Curious (Blue), which would have been two years old at the time of this comic’s release

EDIT: I’m sorry that 300 other people got there before me and now you have every film nerd on Reddit clogging your inbox, my bad

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u/Thundersting 12h ago

It's a riff on a 1967 move called "I Am Curious(Yellow)".

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u/trevorpogo 12h ago

it's a play on 2 films that would've been fairly recent at the time called I Am Curious (Blue) and I Am Curious (Yellow)

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u/EndOfTheLine00 12h ago edited 9h ago

It’s a reference to the Swedish films I Am Curious (Yellow) and I Am Curious (Blue). The parentheses in those is because they were supposed to be a single 3.5 hour film but was cut in two. Yellow and Blue are the colors of the Swedish flag.

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u/misterdannymorrison 12h ago

It's a reference to a famous Swedish sexploitation film called "I am Curious (Yellow)".

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u/NyraKyle01 12h ago

Curious Black, the not so well known other younger brother of Sirius Black

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u/Local_Shoe6988 12h ago

I appreciate this comment immensely, well done.

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u/NyraKyle01 5h ago

I appreciate you immensely

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u/Krelliamite 12h ago

Curious black.... Wonder if that's where jk got sirius black from

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u/herecomesatrain 12h ago

Curious Black was the original (very racist) rendition of Curious George

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u/Main-Discussion9294 12h ago

Like a lot of stuff for the 70

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u/forbiddenthought 11h ago

“Why do you even have this machine?”

“I use it for exactly the purposes you might imagine.“

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u/Reds_Strongest_Chef 10h ago

Switching it on for a few minutes during the COD session.

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u/Jimmyg100 12h ago

I don't think the machine is specifically for race swapping, but for changing your overall appearance. Race is just one thing it can alter.

Anyway black Lois was an upgrade IMO.

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u/ConfidentHousing8422 12h ago

I think that definitely makes it worse on her part. She used the all purpose character creator launching machine to specifically race swap herself. On the other hand, Superman doesn't have a dedicated Blackface Device, which is good to know.

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u/Jimmyg100 12h ago

Yeah about that...

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u/ConfidentHousing8422 11h ago

Hey look I was very specific that he doesn't have a Blackface Device and that was for good/terrible reason

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u/Jonny_Entropy 8h ago

It's a shame she didn't go in dressed as a reporter and come out in that outfit.

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u/LoopStricken 6h ago

I am curious (BLACK)!