As many of you may have heard, Marvel came out with a new show recently, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and it’s GOOD. Now I am a huge Marvel fan so I may have a tiny bit of a bias but when I say it’s good, I mean it. Not only is the cast diverse and the acting amazing, the chemistry that the two main characters have is just phenomenal. I noticed while watching the show that the writers bring up a lot of important things and injustices that are relevant even to this day. For this specifically, I want to focus on a scene in Episode 2 of the show called “The Star-Spangled Man.” In this scene, the two main characters, Bucky, a white man, and Sam, a black man, who are both considered superhero’s now, visit a black man in what seems to be a predominantly black neighborhood. They talk to this man and there ends up being an altercation between them. Sam, more-so than Bucky, leave the house emotional and upset which leads them to having a serious conversation on the street. Voices were raised a bit but there was no violence what-so-ever. All the sudden, a cop car pulls up and asks if there is a problem, then proceeds to ask for only Sam’s ID which he does not have on him at the moment. They tell him to calm down and Bucky steps in to remind them of who Sam is, the Falcon. The cops then realize this, apologize profusely and then eventually leave. This scene is so important because it shows the injustice the black community faces when it comes to the law or cops. Those cops were against/threatened by Sam before even having a conversation with him. The fact Bucky had to tell them he was a superhero in order to be treated correctly blew my mind. Having big companies like Marvel point out these flaws in our system is such a good way to show support and bring awareness to these things. This problem the black community faces with cops and being treated equally with the law is something that needs to be pointed out and talked about, Marvel did this in a very good way that I think a lot of people will appreciate.
Author: lichtenberg.27
Context Presentation- Black Panther
The movie Black Panther was released in 2018 and took that year by a storm. The reason this movie was so successful was because Marvel has never created a movie focusing on not only almost an all-black cast, but a black superhero and powerful black female roles. For those who don’t know, this movie is about T’Challa, a black superhero/king who comes from a fictional country called Wakanda that is supposed to be based in Africa. This movie shows the importance of black culture and although not all of it is real, a lot has been tied into it, so people get a feel and learn about certain aspects of black culture.
Although having a black superhero is super important to this movie, I want to focus more on the women. For people who have not seen this movie before, King T’Challa has not only a full force of woman as his guards, he also has a sister who makes all this technical equipment and weapons for him. As I’m sure many of you know, women are very underrepresented in STEM which ultimately tends to be a male dominate field. Women in STEM hold less than 25 percent in the field and in STEM specific jobs compared to men (Beede et al. 1). Showing a young women of color in the STEM field and based in Africa was a representation we didn’t know we needed. Although there has been an emergence of women in STEM fields over the past decade or so, more still needs to be done to even the playing field (Su and Rounds, 1). More women need to be seen and acknowledged in this field and this movie was a step in the right direction for that.
Lastly, having a group of women as his guards is another great representation we needed. There have always been stereotypes about women in leadership positions, how women tend to be more nurturing and the caretakers whilst men are strong and decisive (Rhee and Sigler, 11). This has obviously portrayed women leaders in a negative light, especially ones of color due to racist tendencies. However, this movie does a phenomenal job portraying these woman as strong, capable and reliable and also in a way that shows women can do anything men can, sometimes even better.
Citations
Rhee, Kenneth S., and Tracey H. Sigler. “Untangling the Relationship between Gender and Leadership.” Gender in Management: An International Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 13 Apr. 2015, www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/GM-09-2013-0114/full/pdf?title=untangling-the-relationship-between-gender-and-leadership.
Su, Rong, and James Rounds. “All STEM Fields Are Not Created Equal: People and Things Interests Explain Gender Disparities across STEM Fields.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 5 Feb. 2015, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full.
Beede, David N., et al. “Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation.” SSRN, 26 Nov. 2011, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1964782.
Diary Of Systemic Injustices: One-Size Fits All
The systemic injustice that I have already written about and want to shed more light on is the idea of one-size fits all when it comes to clothes and clothing stores. I’m sure many have heard or have had the issue of some stores having one-size fits all clothes. This is a common issue due to the fact that no one is one-size therefore exempting certain body types from being able to wear certain clothes they should be able to wear.
One store that has a lot of controversy around their sizing issues has been Brandy Melville. Brandy Melville is a store that I believe has become very popular all across the nation. This store has a certain brand to it, and it hasn’t changed nor will it ever probably since little to no change has happened so far. Brandy Melville is known for their branding, pictures and models being skinny, white girls with little to no diversity mixed in. Their brand and store was obviously made for a target audience so why not make clothes for that target audience only?
I’m not going to sit here and act like I have never shopped from them before because I have. They have cute and trendy clothes which is so unfortunate that they had to ruin it by sticking to the one-size fits all façade. A lot of people, including myself, have stopped shopping there since this controversy and have spoken out about the fact the brand discriminates certain body types. I hope one day they will try to be more inclusive to not only all body types, but also all races as well. Brandy Melville has had a lot of people try to reach out about this problem of only subjecting to one type of body image but has not really had a response (The Campanile). Times have changed and many brands have adhered to the fact that all bodies are beautiful. A prime example of this is Aerie, a brand that came from American Eagle and really puts the idea out there that all bodies should be excepted and celebrated. Even Victoria’s Secret has changed their brand of models to be a bit curvier because they have a lot gone through a lot of controversy about not representing all body types as well. Hopefully Brandy Melville in the future will learn from these mistakes and look at their competition for some good advice.
Article on real life encounters with Brandy Melville:
