Will Spiderman Become a Teabagger? Will Loss Of Super-Hero Diversity Hurt Our Culture?
flickr image FAKE SPIDERMAN by David Hepworth;
Will Wolverine become the Darth Vader, Cheney-Style, of comicbook-dom?
The Walt Disney Company, which, through it's network, ABC, has channeled right wing messages, has acquired Marvel Entertainment inc.
Will edgy characters become Bambi-like because Disney is pressured by
the Religious right? Or will Disney enter the darker worlds that Marvel
Comics has historically explored?
Will Disney's management, with its history of channeling conservative
messages on ABC, subtly influence the way superheroes operate--
defending torture, invading countries that didn't start a conflict?
Will Captain America become a privatized Blackwater or Xe mercenary,
killing innocent bystanders in Iraq?
Will the Fantastic four carry signs into outer space demanding they keep their private insurer health care? Will Johnny, the Torch, spell out, in flaming letters in the sky, "NOBAMA."
Will The Hulk-- the big ugly green alter ego for professor Bruce
Banner-- become the spokesman for the other green-- capitalist greed?
Maybe Disney will spin him off to Goldman Sachs. Then they could name a
stadium after him. "The Goldman Sach Hulk Green Is Good Stadium?" Er,
maybe not.
But the Disney company DOES have a history of doing conservative message. Take the 9/11 documentary
they created. Matt Stoller speculated how it came about, with primarily
if not totally conservative input. He commented, back in september
2006,
"Disney wants to buy everything, since media is seen as a scale
business. It's pretty obvious to Democrats if this movie airs that
Disney is not a responsible public steward of the airwaves it controls
right now. Why should they be allowed to engulf even more assets?"
D'ya think Disney has gotten any better?
I have a friend who writes a Disney comic. It'll be interesting to hear
from him if anything changes with the new owners. Every day, I see
changes in the way the Wall Street Journal handles "news" that shows
Rupert Murdoch's hand. It took a little time, but the great WSJ is
devolving, losing its news section independence, with more and more
conservative perspective and coverage bleeding into the supposedly
pristine news pages.
You might be thinking, "hey, it's just a comic book company." But Financial Post reports,
"Today, films starring Marvel characters -- including Wolverine,
Spider-man 3 and Iron Man -- are among the highest-grossing at the box
office every summer.
According to its website, Marvel comics have a higher circulation than People, Time or Sports Illustrated.
In the most recent quarter ended June 30, Marvel reported net sales of
$116.3-million with a $29-million profit and earnings of 37 cents per
share."
Next Page 1 | 2
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)