Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is the latest show to star everyone’s favorite wall-crawler in animated form. It debuts on Disney+ on January 29, but it’s already a target for racists.
You see, YFNSM is changing some characters, as most Marvel shows and movies have done. The show will have a larger amount of characters of color than the original Spider-Man comics, with Peter’s closest friend in this continuity being Nico Minoru (Grace Song). (It’s also worth pointing out that Nico is LGBT in the source material.) But most of the vitriol thrown at the show has been regarding the Osborns – major characters in Spider-Man – who have been race-swapped. Norman Osborn and his son Harry are now both Black and will be played by Colman Domingo and Zeno Robinson, respectively.
If you’ve been in online fandom for any length of time, you’ll already know how race-swapped characters and, worse, their actors quickly become targeted by racists. For example, both Halle Bailey and Rachel Zegler ended up under fire for playing the Little Mermaid and Snow White. Nico Parker was slammed for taking the role of a white blonde character in the upcoming live-action How to Train Your Dragon. Some people really do have nothing better to do than send hatred to an actor who is just doing their job, and it’s painful to watch it happen again and again and again.
This is why a recent comment from a Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man star has raised eyebrows. Hudson Thames, who will play Spidey/Peter Parker himself in the show, recently gave an interview to Collider where he said:
“I thought [the show] was awesome. I mean, my biggest fear was that it was gonna be annoying and woke, and it wasn’t, and I was like, ‘Yes, this is great, it’s so well written,’ like it feels real. I’m the oldest of five boys, so I feel like I kind of know what’s happening in their lives and in high school, and it felt like it was doing that justice.”
That has gotten fans wondering – what exactly does Thames see as being “woke” and why does he consider being “woke” bad? If Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has a diverse cast of actors, why isn’t that a good thing?
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Twitter/X user Jeremy Writes said it best: “Define woke @hudsonthames and why you’re scared of it. I just want to see something.” It is an unfortunate truth that when a person says a show or movie is “woke” what they actually mean is “too many people of color” or “too many LGBT people.” It’s an immensely frustrating thing to have wormed its way into fandom spaces, and this comment from Thames has touched a nerve with a great many people.
Some have compared the situation to a Spider-Man fan film scandal that happened a few years ago. In 2022, many Spider-Man fans were eagerly awaiting the release of the technically impressive fan film Spider-Man Lotus when messages suddenly leaked indicating that lead actor Warden Wayne and director Gavin J. Konop had a history of racism, including saying slurs. While the YFNSM situation isn’t anywhere near as repulsive, you can’t blame fans for making the connection.
When it comes down to it, Spider-Man is at his core very woke indeed. He respects everyone and doesn’t approve of racism, homophobia, or any other kind of bigotry. It’s a shame Hudson Thames can’t see that.
Published: Jan 28, 2025 03:10 pm