Neo-Nazis go nuts over black Thor in Marvel movie

Various neo-Nazi nutjobs in the USA are up in arms at the news that Marvel Comics is doing a Thor movie in which some of the Norse gods are played by black actors. Apparently, the ethnic identity of fictional beings of imaginary sky-beings from antiquity is of real political moment for the sort of person who believes that humans can be subdivided into distinct "races."

Marvel is headed by radical left-wingers who insert their ideologies and agendas into their comic books and movies.
In February 2010, the TEA Party movement was viciously attacked in an issue of Captain America. Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Qesada publicly defended the issue.
Marvel creator and front man Stan "Lee" Lieber is a notorious left-winger and financier of left-wing political candidates.
"What is needed is a school campaign to get White kids to boycott everything that comes out of Marvel Studios," wrote a human being called Annis Isbell. Another fan of the boycott, James Hick wrote, "Need to try and get black sepratists in on this to. Let them know that marvel is trying to negate and down play their racial culture & heritage and saying by default blacks are cultureless unless they imbrace the white mans culture. That would sit a black back lash," which we suppose is an almost utopian sentiment for someone whose Facebook profile pic is the Confederate flag.

Racists Totally Freak Out Over Idris Elba Playing Norse God in 'Thor' (Thanks, John!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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MrJM

A black Heimdall is like Thor without his beard.
-3-

While i admit it’s kind of odd to have a black Norse deity, i’m surprised that there hasn’t been a backlash of the opposite sort. Heimdall is basically the doorman of Asgard, and that’s the one they decide to make a black guy?
That’s just asking for it.
;)
Anonymous

If you think they’re upset now, just wait until Thor announces his upcoming gender-reassignment surgery. :)

“Council of Concerned Citizens” my ass. More like “Senile Group of Disaffected Racist Busybodies With Way Too Much Time On Their Hands Who Wish It Was 1890 When Black People Knew Their Place”.
karl_jones

This just in: Attis is *not* a Life-death-rebirth-entity, after all.
Anonymous

Wrong again, Cory! Thor is played by a white man in the new film! The black guy is playing a secondary god, dammit!

Black people should protest against this discrimination!
Rezwitch

So they are upset about “Asgardians” being black, but no-one has mentioned anything about “Thor” being a little grey alien with 3 or 4 fingers on “StarGate” Well, all of the “Asgard” are an advanced alien race that ‘helped’ the humans in their struggle against the Egyptian Gods “Goa’uld”(which are actually little snake symbiont’s that take over human bodies without discrimination against gender/sexual preference/religious or political views tho they do like “pretty”)

A Sci-fi movie A comic book it’s ENTERTAINMENT and believe me, I find all the fussing ENTERTAINING:))
Ryganas

Perfect, now I can go ahead and pitch my idea of re-shooting Roots with a white Kunta Kinte. If anyone bats an eyelash, I’ll just accuse them of being racist. This can’t lose.
travtastic

So now when you go to see Thor, there won’t be any white supremacists in the theater with you.

Is it worth it? Are you happy, America?
Bergjylt

Fun history fact: The norse didn’t even have a concept of race. Like the sterotypical feudin’ hill folk they were, they filtered the world by clan.

Further fun mythology fact: Thor is the result of what you might term a mixed-race liaison; born of Odin and Jord (Earth) of the Jotun (antrophomorph natural forces, opposed to the gods, who can be classified as anthrophomorp human virtues; in greek terms they’d be titans. Also known as “Trolls”).
Malgwyn

The Gothic, Visigothic, Austrogothic, Saxon, Dane, Jute, Norse, Sammi etcetera peoples weren’t known for their racism. Vikings loved taking a cruise down the Danube to pick up on some hot Colchian chicks. The wide presence of Haplogroup H in Western European populations clearly indicates this.

Consider the “blacksmith” as an example of cross-fertilizing cultures. Iron smelting came from Indonesia, and took root in most of the cultural hotspots of the world. Hellenism was the dominant culture in Africa, Asia and Europa, and they are bringing in these skilled workers from the outlying parts of the world. The so called elves and dwarves of Nordic Sagas are possibly people from other parts of the world. A seafaring culture would value skilled peoples and either steal or entice them to come home. Ships from Ethiopia and Phoenicia were plying the British Isles for tin, that is why there are curly-haired redheads in Ireland and thereabouts.
angusm

If Heimdall is “the whitest of the Aesir”, they should just have chosen the rest of the cast so that Idris Elba was the lightest-skinned amongst them. Hey, it’s all relative, right?

(OK, OK, I know that Heimdall was “the white Ãs” which implies an absolute, but it would be fun to mess with the white supremacists just a little more).

Heimdall was always my favorite Ãs, as he seemed to be the go-to guy to actually get shit done right: Odysseus to Thor’s Achilles, so to speak. And certainly, my understanding was always that he was supposed to be light-skinned and fair-haired. Still, the sight of the white supremacists throwing tantrums over the casting of Idris Elba is so satisfying that I’m happy to forgo mythological accuracy for the sake of entertainment.
- Bergjylt
  
  Heh. In norse, “White” means pale, sickly, cowardly; as in “Come on, do it, don’t be pale”.
Mark Temporis

It would be kind of funny if they cast Donald Blake as a black guy and still had the blonde-haired, heavy metal lead singer-type Thor. I mean, their bodies aren’t at all similar-Blake having the bad leg and all.

It might be a bit culturally insensitive, but still funny. Kind of like this hero/ine I remember who was a guy in his secret ID but when he said the magic word turned into a super-powered…woman.
Fifth

The neo-nazis upset about this are only openly racist; everyone else complaining about it are pretty much children coming up with ridiculous rationales to excuse themselves for being racist.

I’m choosing to believe that this entire thing is deliberate trolling on Marvel’s part because if it is then that raises my opinion of them enormously.
szielins

Strictly speaking, that should be “White supremacists go nuts over black Heimdall in Marvel movie.”
ultranaut

Run whitey, Thor is coming to fuck your women!
Anonymous

Personally I think they’ll go easier on this than the fanboys will.
Antinous / Moderator

I have no idea what it means to “sit a black back lash”, but I admit that I’m vaguely titillated.
- szielins
  
  Remember: establish a safeword before beginning imbracement play.
Matthew Caron

Now I know there is at least one thing I’ll like about this movie. If it pisses off white supremacists its doing something right.
turn_self_off

my palm, their face, repeatedly…

The direction of US politics worry me greatly.
2k

omfg
InclinedPlane

I approve of this boycott. Think about it, there are almost certainly not enough idiots to effect Marvel’s profit margins much. On the other hand it will deprive young racists in training of Marvel comic books. Which will either make devout racists unhappy or deligitimize racism in the eyes of those who would otherwise be most vulnerable to it.

It’s win/win.
Micah

Stan “Lee” Lieber

Lieber? You mean…. Stan Lee is Jewish???

Nooooooo!!!!!!

</sarcasm> (just in case)
so1omon

I was going to write a fairly long, detailed post on how annoying it is that the Confederate flag is always automatically linked to ignorance and racism… but I realized that no-one cares.

It’s seriously annoying, though. Stop it. All it does is tell me that you’re just as ignorant as the poor dumb racist bastards you’re trying to mock.
- travtastic
  
  I just wear white sheets at night because I like the way they feel on my skin!
- Anonymous
  
  The Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of treason and slavery. And don’t try to pretend you know better what the Confederacy was about than the Confederates themselves. They were very, very clear and consistent that the reason they seceded was to protect slavery.
aelfscine

I don’t really care much, but I have to admit, it does feel a little odd. It’d be like making a movie about Oda Nobunaga and not having him be Japanese. Or having Jesus, Allah, or Shiva be Caucasian. I don’t say that with righteous anger, just a sense of being mildly perplexed. Why would you do this? What assertion is made? Or am I just randomly swapping in different ethnicities/genders and pretending I’m making some sort of grand statement?

It’s Joan of Arc… PLAYED BY A DUDE
It’s the Sun God Ra… But with a CAT HEAD, and he’s CHINESE
It’s Hitler… but he’s A BLACK JEW LIZARD

I mean, if I pick enough names and combinations, I’ll eventually come up with something that will offend a lot of people. But is it really anything deeper than that? Do I GAIN anything by doing this, and make for richer storytelling?
- grimc
  
  Name a single movie where Jesus isn’t played by a white guy.
  
  And movies with a Hispanic character named Jesus don’t count.
  - karl_jones
    
    Name a single movie where Jesus isn’t played by a white guy.
    
    Black Orpheus.
    
    Jesus is basically a retelling of the Orpheus/Osiris/Attis myth — the Dying Son, reborn annually.
  - neilwheel
    
    Jesus wasn’t a black guy; he wasn’t a white guy either. Nor did he have a Mediterranean appearance. That’s because he didn’t exist.
    
    Oh, and Thor – he didn’t exist either.
    - grimc
      
      I’m not a religious person, but I think Jesus existed. I think there are contemporary Roman records that have established that.
      
      What I don’t think is that he was a deity. I think he was a wise, kind and charismatic person with groupies that went overboard.
      - neilwheel
        
        There’s always the Turin Shroud, just in case anyone was in any doubt about his existence or appearance.
  - aelfscine
    
    That’s my point – having Thor be black is just as weird as having Jesus be white.
    
    And I guess I’m just seeing less of a purpose to this than something like Battlestar Galactica changing characters’ genders in the reboot. In that case it was responding to decades of societal change, and the fact that certain characters were female meant the story could move in different directions than before. There’s plenty of ways to reinterpret stuff and have it be interesting.
    
    Thor seems like more of a ‘LOL he’s black’ sort of thing.
  - gravytop
    
    Black Jesus.
    
    http://www.blackjesusthemovie.com/
    
    You seriously ask a question like “Name me one movie where…” ? Have you heard of the Internet?
- tim
  
  Not picking on you, just picking up on the words-
  
  It’s Joan of Arc… PLAYED BY A DUDE
  It’s the Sun God Ra… But with a CAT HEAD, and he’s CHINESE
  It’s Hitler… but he’s A BLACK JEW LIZARD
  
  There’s this thing called ‘acting’. It’s where someone plays the part of *a different person*. A really good actor of any skin shade, height, gender, or other factor can play the part of any other combination of those factors and have the audience forget the difference
  
  Should only French people play French people? Or can a Brit play French?
  
  And is it ok for a typical anglo-saxon looking person to play the part of a Masai? Why/why not?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Check out Orlando. Nobody plays Elizabeth I like Quentin Crisp. Oh yeah, and Tilda Swinton plays the male lead.
    - tim
      
      Check out Orlando
      
      A good point and an excellent movie. And don’t forget that Tylda Swanson played the female lead as well as the male.
Anonymous

I always thought Thor was a ginger.
KNHaw

Regretfully, this is no surprise to me. About a century ago (1995), I had numerous acquaintances in the SCA who were in “The Kindred,” which was basically the testosterone obverse of Wicca – Norse paganism instead of feminine witchery. They were all very serious about their myths and rituals and to a man were White Supremacists. It was one of the things that soured me on medieval reenactment – I could only turn a blind eye so often.

Which reminds me: next time I have the misfortune of seeing Lee/Thorin I’ll have to ask if Obama’s taken all his guns like he predicted.
- arikol
  
  The Kindred are generally not welcomed by other pagans of any sort. I take part in the Icelandic Asatru society (and can pretty much read the original Old Norse texts) and can assure that racism is not a part of the original ideas (the old northern people could not afford to be racists and did business with everyone) and we do not stand for that kind of crap.
  Neo nazis can just f*** off.
  
  The guy who played Stringer Bell is VERY cool, but is a strange fit for the character Heimdall (Heimdallr) who was described as “inn hvÃti Ã¡ss” and “hvÃtastur Ã¡sa” (the white Ãs or the whitest of the Aesir – Ãs being the singular of Aesir or that particular group of gods).
  I mean, we’re talking of a dude who should be white on white. White skin and white hair or something like that. Totally exaggerated in that direction.
  Having the great battle god TÃ½r portrayed by Idris Elba (the actor behind Stringer Bell) could totally work, as could a number of the other more physically imposing gods, but Heimdall…. I dunno man. I could much rather buy a black Odin. Thor’s image as a red bearded barbarian, however, is just too stuck in people’s heads for that to be easily changeable.
hongaku

Well, they get the dude that played Stringer Bell in The Wire (and Luther in…Luther in the UK) to play a Norse God.

That said, I do think this is about as weird as getting a white guy to play a Japanese god in a comic book movie. Sure, why not since it is a comic book but still…odd.
mgfarrelly

As a teen I worked in a comic shop. While my reading habits ran more to Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison (ah, the comic snob I was and am!) I learned, through osmosis, more than I can ever unlearn about super-hero books.

To Whit:

Asgard, where the Asgardians such as Thor, Loki and Heimdall (who is causing all this ruckus) dwell is another dimension. The Asgardians are not Gods, rather they are, in essence, aliens. Humans worship of them, their place in history, their interactions with earth (midgard) are all just the impact of alien visitation. The “magic” of Asgard is little more than hyper-science. Asgardians as post-scarcity, post-humans. Add some Jack Kirby craziness, mix, stir and pour. Ah, that’s Marvel’s take on the Norse “Gods”. In fact, the recent runs of Thor (Overseen by Matt Fraction and Joe Straczynski) have further emphasized this “interdimensional” take on Thor. He’s not a god, he’s just a really weird alien dude. With a sci-fi hammer.

This all squares nicely with Marvel being a “scientific” universe, with aliens and alternate dimensions instead of gods and devils.

Of course, then Doc Strange shows up and it all gets shot to hell, but I digress.

Pardon me, I need to go watch some sports or chop lumber or something. Get the nerd off me.
- turn_self_off
  
  for all the years reading (translated) marvel series, i have not picked up a hint that Thor and the rest where aliens. Hell, was not the origins on the character a human finding the hammer somehow?
  
  Tho magic and tech blends at the edges, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
  - mgfarrelly
    
    The original Marvel take on the character had Dr. Donald Blake finding a hammer in a cave that allowed him to change places with Thor. Blake was “lame” and walked with a cane, the cane, when tapped, became the Hammer of Thor.
    
    The modern comics has Thor and the Asgardians living on earth, specifically Oklahoma.
    
    The shift away from gods and towards a more “rational” origin was kind of gradual over the decades.
stygyan

Offtopic: Who would win in a fight? Jesus Christ or Thor?

Thor, of course. Thor had a huge hammer and Jesus died nailed to a cross. Hammer, nails.
timbaer

aelfscine makes a good point, and I’m pretty sure it goes further than that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there still people in Scandinavia who still hold true to the ancient beliefs? Messing with people’s beliefs can get pretty hairy…. it’ll be Passion of the Christ all over again.

I do think, however, that a lot of those protesting this move are just bigots who would get riled up by anything involving a black person doing something awesome. Ah, well, sign of the times and all that.
- mdh
  
  okay, but so what if they are offended? I’ve never heard of Norseists before, and I’m not about to start worrying about a movement that comes from the land of flat pack furniture and safe reasonable cars. I suspect they’ll be reasonable about it.
  - gravytop
    
    “I’ve never heard of Norseists before, and I’m not about to start worrying about a movement that comes from the land of flat pack furniture and safe reasonable cars. I suspect they’ll be reasonable about it.”
    
    Boy, are your prejudices ever wrong.
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Chaos_(book)
Anonymous

Penny Arcade released a 4th Panel where they discuss it. http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/pa-the-series/205/

I have nothing against multicultural casting but… it does feel a little odd for a Norse god to be black. It’s a similar situation to the Avatar movie, but because in that case it was asian actors being pushed out of obviously asian roles so people felt it was right to raise a fuss (as they should! terrible casting). But when it’s a minority cast into a majority’s spot it feels like people feel too awkward to say anything, you know, other than racist groups who just want to be racist and aren’t really concerned with mythological accuracy.
Mister44

Well – unfortunately they have a point, as a Norse god wouldn’t be thought of as being black. In this case it doesn’t matter because I don’t think the audience had a lot invested in the character to begin with.

I was a little disappointed with the casting of Kingpin in the Daredevil movie. I think some characters can switch race with out problems. But some characters have spent time building up their personality and you ‘know’ them. Suddenly their understanding it turned on its head and they loose that connection.

Hey hey – fun ironic fact.

White supremacists pride them selves on whites, especially Aryans being the “pure race”.

Not so fast!

New genetic research shows that Europeans and Asians interbreed with Neanderthals. We all have trace genes from our thick browed ancestors.

However, in Africa they did not interbreed, and thus Africans have more “pure” genes.
IronyElemental

I am no expert on Norse mythology, but I’d wager after a traditional myth goes through first the comic book and then the Hollywood sausage factories, turning one of the characters black is probably one of the least egregious departures from the original.
Isoko

Idris Elba is so badass, I don’t care what character he plays. As long as he’s in the film, prominently.
hbl

Idris Elba is just about the coolest man alive. If they wanted to make a film where he plays Winston Churchill I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
Jack

So let me get this straight. The neo-Nazis want the story to be true to the original, but Stan Lee created that as well so are they in favor of a liberal JEW telling â€œNorse legend?â€ Schmucks!

Seems like one of those logic episodes that would make a robot or computer explode at the end of a Star Trek episode.
- JasonsRobot
  
  There ya go – exactly.
  This is the Marvel Comics’ adaptation of Norse mythology into the Marvel Universe – which should be blasphemous in and of itself.
  I’m guessing there’s a lot that’s not true to the ‘original’ mythological stories and characters. But enter a black man as one of the gods and, suddenly, these guys are offended..?
mn_camera

Given the rather…creative approach to the spelling of some of their comments, I propose the following: No one is permitted to call himself a “white supremacist” before being able to demonstrate the ability to spell the term correctly, without prompting.
Anonymous

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/12/20/
William George

“Marvel is headed by radical left-wingers…”

Someone really needs to explain to these types that the political center is not located out there with them in Lunatic Land.
Gabriel

What next?? Tom Cruise as a samurai?
LightningRose

The god of the old white bigots in the Tea Party was nailed to a cross.

Thor has a hammer.

Save me a seat in Valhalla!
GeekMan

I could care less about Thor, but I do have to say that when multi-ethnic casts are shoehorned into traditional cultural roles it bugs me a bit.

Would I be upset if someone depicts Gods from the Hindu pantheon as white dudes? YES. VERY UPSET.

Would I be upset if someone shoehorns inexplicable white characters into a medieval Chinese epic? Yeah!

This implication seems to be that, if you create a group based on the Norse pantheon and make them all incredibly white and Scandinavian-looking, that there would be something wrong with THAT. When the Lord of the Rings came out, there were a number of similar complaints (“Why only whitey?”), despite the fact that Tolkien’s world is derived from European legends and cultures.

Again, racists can fuck themselves. But we also can’t exist in a place where we accuse anything that’s monocultural of being whitewashed: our bucket of rainbow-paint and giant brush ready to slather over anything that has too much ethnic sameness in it.

(P.S. – And if you’re going to make the argument that the Marvel Norse gods are aliens. Heck, why not blue too? Or red? If they’re not like us at all, show us.)
- Xof
  
  Would I be upset if someone depicts Gods from the Hindu pantheon as white dudes? YES. VERY UPSET.
  
  What kind of a monster would do something like that? Oh, right, Peter Brooks, in one of the best adaptations of the Mahabharata ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mahabharata_(1989_film)
  
  Anyway, this isn’t adapting the Mahabharata; this is adapting “Lord of Light.”
- jjsaul
  
  Hindu pantheon is a bad choice for your argument to cast mythologies according to source melanin. Take a look at traditional paintings of them, and behold a glorious and inspiring “bucket of rainbow-paint.” Unless there’s a subculture of robin’s-egg blue folks hiding in some lost valley there, rubbing shoulders with blood-red, canary-yellow, and black (as in onyx, not as in african) neighbors.
  - GeekMan
    
    “… and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, painted blue, as Shiva…”
Anonymous

It’s common knowledge that they purposely make sure to cast a black person in a high profile role to ensure stronger attendance from the black consumer base.

Its not really a racial issue for the film makers. Its a money issue.
Mitch_

It seems pretty reasonable to me to cast Nordic looking actors as Nordic gods unless you’re trying to do something “arty” and unconventional. Mixing American jazz and blues with Hindu mythology worked pretty well in Sita Sings The Blues. I don’t really know if casting black actors as Norse gods works in this film or not because I haven’t seen it. In any case it hardly seems like something to be angry about. White supremacists are really an embarrassment to Northern European people.
incomesword

I always though Thor was a clone of an African Diety anyway. I guess Black people should start complaining about all of the movies concerning ancient history that were played by whites when the people of that region were definitely black. I won’t go into detail so check out a real superhero. Black History Month – Black Power – Are You Afraid of Black Magic? Then check out the Video. http://awe.sm/5GOKS
Jesse M.

People who think there is any legitimacy to this complaint should really watch the trailer (or just look at some stills from here); it’s clear these aren’t the Norse gods of mythology, but rather a sci-fi alien race from a planet with two moons who visited Earth long ago and were taken to be gods. Complaining about this is exactly like complaining that the aliens in “Stargate” that were supposed to have been the real Egyptian Gods aren’t all played by Egyptians.

Oh, and there’s also an asian Asgardian in the trailer, not sure why the white supremacists only mentioned the black guy (well, I have a pretty good idea actually).
arikol

I guess that what I mean is that for anyone with even a passing interest in mythology this casting may create a break in suspension of disbelief and as such may not serve the movies greater goal.

I hope to stand corrected after seeing the movie.
Antinous / Moderator

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this a film adaptation of a comic book, not Norse sacred texts? This is like screaming about a version of Romeo and Juliet because it’s not set in 13th century Verona.
andygates

Mythology schmythology, this isn’t Snorri Sturluson’s Thor, it’s Marvel Thor. They’ve got got gold space armour and a robot that fires lasers out of its eyes already and nobody’s complaining about that!

Two words, really: Jack. Kirby.

Me, I’m more worried about the young slim Volstagg (who happens to be Asian) — how’s he going to fill his Falstaff role without belly and beard, man? How? ANSWER ME THAT!
jjsaul

After all the white Othellos, and John Wayne as Ghengis Khan? Not to mention all the guys who looked like Abe Vigoda cast as Apaches?
sapere_aude

If it pisses off the white supremacists this much, I’d be in favor of having ALL of the Norse gods played by non-white actors.

Why do we have to assume that the Norse gods are white, anyway, just because the Norse people are white? Gods have always been pictured as somewhat different from the people who worship them. (After all, not many ancient Egyptians had the head of a jackal.) Besides, as others have pointed out, the Norse “gods” in the Thor comics are really supposed to be beings from another dimension; so why should we assume that they resemble the Norse people?

However, I should point out that I’ve never really been a fan of the Thor comics, and will probably not even bother to see the movie; so perhaps my opinion is not worth much. But anything that spits in the face of bigots gets a thumbs-up from me.
jjsaul

Just wait until they hear that Wesley Snipes is playing Elric of MelnibonÃ©.
- Morrigan
  
  Dude. That is genius.
- andygates
  
  Y’know, if he can get that Blade sneer out of mothballs, he could totally pull that off.
  - Tynam
    
    Seconded. Snipes would be an awesome Elric.
    
    @andygates: You’re completely right there. Hollywood-good-looking Volstagg is just wrong.
PalookaJoe

I see a lot of claims that the movie is “shoehorning” a black actor into an inappropriate role. But have you seen Idris Elba act? Apologies for a bit of fannishness, but the man has exactly the kind of depth, range and presence you’d want in an actor who’s playing a god. They didn’t make a superficial decision in teh name of political correctness. They simply chose a great actor for the role.
Anonymous

PaddyDog, in a response to a Pajiba article on this, said:

“I know I’m raising the argument way past any level that a racist idiot could handle, but has it ever occurred to anyone that deities per se could look any way they wanted? The Scandinavians only believed their deities were white and blue-eyed because they created them in their own image. But if they were really deities, then they weren’t human Norsemen and could be as Black as they felt like being.

Suppose Thor was flying his winged chariot over Ethiopia one day and thought to himself “self, those guys look like kick-ass warriors and boy can they run a marathon in under two hours, I think I’ll look like them for a century or so.” So he waves his magic Thor stick and tada, he’s Black. And may I add that if he looked like Idris Elba, then I assume all the female deities from the neighboring mythologies would be lining up to have little Godlings with him.”

I think that about sums it up.
rick386

It is kinda silly to cast the Norweigan god of thunder as black. It’s kinda like casting Mathew McConaughey as Chaka Khan. But I wouldn’t pitch a fit over it. Really, so what?
Baron Karza

Wow, so many inaccuracies. First, the misleading headline, CORY: It’s not a black Thor, it’s a black Heimdall. I don’t give a damn about what racists think, but most of them are too ignorant to realize that Heimdall was more or less Asgard’s door porter, which should make them happy, suh! Heimdall guards the gate to Asgard at the top of the Bifrost, the rainbow bridge between Earth and Asgard. But he can kick ass to defend that gate!

The casting irks me much more simply as spineless corporate pandering to audience demographics. What kind of media or race group uproar do you think there would be if Marvel made a “T’Challa the Black Panther” movie (and I hope they do someday), but cast a few white people as Wakandan tribal council people? There would be a HUGE backlash and uproar about it! NEITHER miscasting serves the individual story, it’s just pure corporate demographic pandering. Similar to the awful musicial number in the first Spidey movie, black Kingpin and Nick Fury, etc.

Sure, it’s all fiction, but it’s based on en existing work and real cultural myths. The old Marvel comics were a mix of magic and super-science, and Kirby got plenty wrong from the start, like having Thor be blond and clean-shaven, and Lady Sif having black hair when the best-known myth about her is about her long golden hair! Loki was originally Odin’s half-brother, not Thor’s, which I think would have made the comic more interesting as well.

Bottom line, it’s probably going to be just another crappy Marvel movie anyway, hopefully no worse than Ghost Rider, which makes me nauseous just thinking about it.
Anonymous

I find it interesting that they use Stan Lee’s actual last name rather than just the pen name under which he is well-known.

If they had a story about Mark Twain, would they refer to him as Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens? Or how about Marion “John Wayne” Morrison?
Avram / Moderator

Hey, a bit of cross-pollination between two current news stories:

Have you heard about how Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour recently got in trouble for praising the Citizens Council’s actions back in the civil rights era? The Citizens Council (originally the White Citizens Council) was basically the “respectable” arm of the southern segregationist movement. Instead of burning crosses and lynching people, they’d organize boycotts and refuse to provide services (sell groceries, rent apartments, let hotel rooms) to civil rights workers and activists.

The lunatics getting all upset over black Heimdall are the Council of Conservative Citizens. Modern version of the same group. Several leaders of the new group were former leaders of the older group.
- travtastic
  
  How quaint!
Forkboy

Personally I hate it when some marketeer inserts a black man/asian woman in a random place somewhere in an advertisement or story to “diversify.” It always seems forced and fake. Which is what this looks like to me : insert black guy to appeal to young “urban” demographic. They should just have left it alone.

Look at Sam Jackson as Nick Fury for how to do this right: the role calls for a bad-ass and they just cast a bad-ass who’s also black and it didn’t matter one bit.
MadRat

To me it mostly depends on how the movie handles it. A movie is supposed to suspend your disbelief. If you spend the whole movie thinking, “Thor has been a white guy for almost 50 years, why did they make him black?” then it’s distracting. If they make Donald Blake a black guy it just won’t work for me. It would be the same as if they had a white Storm in the X-Men movies. But if Donald Blake gets in a car crash or something and he hands Mjolnir to some random person and tells them to save the world until he recovers, then that’s fine. It would just be the movie’s way of saying, “The power is in the hammer.” I didn’t see the Hollywood version of Godzilla because they made too many changes and I didn’t see Last Airbender because of casting. Morgan Freeman as God in Bruce Almighty? A black guy as Green Lantern in the animated Justice League? Go ahead, I have no problem with that.
- turn_self_off
  
  I think Fury in the movies is black partially because they seem to be set to the Ultimate “reboot” of the franchise.
  - -3-
    
    That may have been a condition for them getting the rights to use Samuel L. Jackson’s likeness for Fury in the comicbooks. What i had heard (no confirmation) was that he sold them the rights for $1, with the provision he gets to play Fury in the movies. Makes his kid crazy happy, you know.
jjsaul

They could just poison him with colloidal silver to get the blue tinge. In another generation, body modification tech might even allow us to cast actors with several pairs of arms.
bardfinn

Hi! I’m not presuming to lecture an Icelander about the cultural legacy of Iceland. However:

“inn hvÃti Ã¡ss” and “hvÃtastur Ã¡sa” are kennings. They are not descriptions of the person’s physical characteristics, but of the role Heimdall played. Heimdall is the guardian of the rainbow bridge – he is described as “whitest of the white” as a reference to clouds after a storm has passed, when a rainbow would be visible. Heimdall is the ‘most senior’ of the Aesir after Odin – It is from within clouds that thunder and lightning spring, ice and snow fall, hailstones pelt, fog blankets. As Loki is bound beneath the earth and he and Heimdall are foretold to kill one another in Ragnarok, there is an earth-sky dichotomy represented there.

————

As for Heimdall ‘necessarily’ being a white Norse man, there are three things to remember here:

1: IT’S A MOVE BASED ON A COMIC BOOK — THESE NEO-NAZI IDIOTS ARE ARGUING ABOUT WHETHER SHAKESPEARE SOUNDS BETTER IN THE ORIGINAL KLINGON;

2: Clouds can be dark and ominous. Heimdall is here to kick ass and chew hailstones, and he’s all out of hailstones.

3: Neo-Nazis are — by definition — cretins. Their understanding of skaldic tradition is right up there with their understanding of the Bible and genetics and Nazism. Ignore them.
Anonymous

As if I didn’t already want to have sex with Thor enough already, now we have Black Thor??

I’m in love :)
Anonymous

Everybody knows Thor was white. It was *Jesus* who was black.
Anonymous

@-3-
Was thinking that. Heimdall job is mainly to stand outside Asgard checking people’s ID.

I’m more annoyed that the norse gods seem to be mainly British
Rayonic

Having Thor himself be black would be fine, since he starts as some regular guy who finds a magic hammer in a cave. Actually I think that would have worked better.

Instead, what we’re getting reeks of “let’s take one of the background characters and make him black”-ism. Tokenism, I suppose.