Michelle Rodriguez at San Diego Comic Con 2013. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

David Betancourt, THE WASHINGTON POST

 
(The Washington Post)—“It’s so stupid. It’s like, stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes. Make up your own, you know what I’m saying? Like, what’s up with that?” – Actress Michelle Rodriguez, to L.A. paparazzi over the weekend, in remarks that went viral (she later posted a “what I meant was” video)

Michelle Rodriquez doesn’t get it. But she doesn’t have to. Not everyone gets the comic-book thing going on in pop culture right now.

But while listening to her paparazzi-enabled denial of being involved in a Green Lantern franchise reboot, I realized that Rodriguez couldn’t give a damn about comic books and the movies inspired by them — and how their creators and guardians are trying to make them slightly more diverse than, say, the Academy Awards (which only occasionally show respect to comic-book films; see: an Oscar for Heath Ledger’s Joker performance).

So a Puerto Rican/Dominican actress is telling minorities to stop trying to “color in” white superheroes? And she’s saying that minorities should just make their own superheroes?

As Ledger’s Joker said: “Where do we begin?”

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Reporter II

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