Really?

I had an interesting back and forth on Facebook a few days ago. Like most things on Facebook it was about nothing important but yet showed how people insert race and their own childish fears into some of the dumbest things. It all stemmed for a guy getting upset about the race of fictional characters from movies and comic book being changed, which also was an off shoot of a leaked email from a high ranking movie studio executive. Remember the Sony Entertainment Network Breach? Well that leaked email came from all of that, and it was idea not anything set in stone, but just an idea mind you. An executive from another studio was suggesting Idris Elba as the next James Bond. Naturally this wan't the only the focus of the Facebook pundits, apparently there was another rumor and April Fools Gag floating around about making Batman and Captain America black in the next series of movies, which only added gas to the fire.  Now back to the Facebook version of the The Bell Curve, in this rant of post the writer took the time to state the genealogy of James bond, Captain America and Batman as if they were flesh and blood. As I read the post and continued on to the comments of that same post, the people that replied acted like as if a great injustice was pushed upon White America by changing the races of their most iconic pop culture characters. There are a few things that were taken way out of context here, besides the fact that all three of these men are fictional. Take James Bond for example is an invention of Sir Ian Fleming from a WWII era England. We have seen the story of this character evolve from printed word to motion picture and has since been updated to reflect the both the social and political climate of the world in each movie, which means the only thing that's current with the books is the name of the main character. So after I commented back few times only to hear this person screaming about maintaining the integrity of the author's / creator's original work as if there was some racially based conspiracy for black people to get ahead in the entertainment industry, by taking over roles meant for white actors.  I then tried to point out that we live in time where ideas and visions are bought and sold multiple times over and after someone gives up creative control there's not a lot they can say about how that idea takes form. I not saying that changes are good or bad, just that I see an industry who's changing to play catch up with a shifting demographic and a more open minded world. Sorry but I feel that race and gender don't matter as long as the writing, acting and pacing tie in together to make a great product. After all fictional characters live in our minds, for all we know there's blind kid that thinks Batman is really Native American. If it's all make believe in the 1st place, then why the fuss, it's not like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in a movie.  Now that was a bad idea.

I would like to say thanks to a friend of mine for telling me about the book Bell Curve, can't wait to read it!