My Response to Jon Del Arroz's bigoted criticism over the 'woke' Spider-Man (Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man)
I've been wanting to write this piece for a long while now, but I kept putting it off, mostly because of how much there is to say about Jon's review.
People being upset over YFNSM being 'woke' has always been funny and absurd to me. Spider-Man is and always has been woke. He is a vigilante who stands up for the oppressed, bullied and ostracised. The only difference and only reason why people are now complaining and upset, is because newer Spider-Man media (like YFNSM) finally reflects the real and culturally diverse New York City.
But for some reason, a loud minority have taken offence to this accurate and long-overdue representation of people of colour in New York. So, in the spirit of being woke (hey, it is pride month after all) I want to dismantle an apparent journalist's biased, bigoted and factually incorrect take on YFNSM.
Just from these titles and thumbnails, it's obvious how Jon relies on fearmongering and sensationalist language to frame basic, accurate and needed representation as some kind of catastrophe, and writes his reviews in a deliberate way to provoke outrage instead of writing a genuine critique of the show.
'WOKE NIGHTMARE', 'Fans LIVID', 'RACE SWAPS EVERYONE!' are just a handful of this weird, melodramatic language he likes to use in his videos, and one thumbnail even says 'SO WOKE IT HURTS!' as a reaction to Peter and his crush in the series, Pearl.
I mean seriously... what's so 'woke it hurts' about Peter Parker being straight and white while having a crush on a taller brown girl? Heterosexual and interracial relationships aren't revolutionary, Jon, and it's actually happened multiple times within Spider-Man media. For example:
Cindy Moon, a Korean-American woman who first appeared in 2014 and was a love interest of Peter Parker.
Liz Allen, a mixed black woman who appeared in Homecoming in 2017, and was a love interest of Peter Parker.
Michelle Watson, an African-American woman who appeared in Homecoming in 2017, and later became a love interest of Peter Parker.
Sha Shan Nguyen, a Vietnamese woman who first appeared in 1972, and became a love interest of Flash Thompson (however this was unfortunately an aborted arc, likely due to racism.. a further testament to why representation is needed in media). She reappeared in Spectacular Spider-Man Season 2 as Flash's planned love interest.
There are many more examples, and these are literally just the ones from the top of my head, but it proves that no, heterosexual, interracial relationships within Spider-Man media aren't new.
Another hyperbolic exaggeration... he really likes his hyperbole, doesn't he? Jon's claim that 'all of the supporting cast' was race swapped or changed to be BIPOC is wholly incorrect, and in actuality, YFNSM reflects the racial demographics of NYC, where 69% of citizens are non-white. Jon acts like this accurate representation is a conspiracy to pander to a 'woke' audience, when YFNSM simply just reflects the real world.
What Jon fails to understand, is that Spider-Man hasn't recently become 'woke' in the 2020s, as he's always been woke. More characters just so happen to be non-white, which is accurate considering Spider-Man is set in Queens, New York, which is an incredibly diverse area. (This map is from 2015 while YFNSM is set in 2017).
In fact, NYC has always been a pretty diverse area, even in the 1960s when Spider-Man was first created. The reason people previously didn't see as many POC in Spider-Man media was because the creators of comics were predominantly white, and this homogeneity caused a narrow range of perspectives. The lack of diversity within creators and executives lead to a cycle where black people weren't written as predominant characters, and were even absent from backgrounds as a whole.
Obviously, I cannot talk about the erasure of black people within comics without talking about the extremely racist society that poisoned the 1960s, which is infamous for the widespread segregation, marginalisation and violence against African-Americans and other people of colour.
But Jon, as a self-proclaimed advocate for Christian values and the 'leading Hispanic voice in science fiction', I'd hope I wouldn't need to give you a history lesson as to why your claims are uneducated, rooted in bigotry, and simply wrong.
Jon's rhetoric dehumanises people of colour, where he describes Pearl Pangan, a Filipino woman, as a 'large, brutish black woman'. Insulting Pearl using the adjectives 'large' and 'brutish' are deeply routed within racist stereotypes and despite his claim of having 'Christian values', he contradicts Galatians 3:28, which teaches how God sees everyone as equal, no matter their race, class or gender.
'There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'
His entire article also directly contradicts the Christian Golden Rule (Matthew 22:39) which is to 'Love your neighbour as yourself', as he continues to judge the characters of this show for their race, gender or sexuality, and by extension, real people. He fails to uphold the most basic Christian values, which is compassion and empathy, and is degrading billions of people who deserve to see themselves reflected within media, and not cast aside or degraded for being too 'woke'.
It's also incredibly ironic how he's been claimed as the 'leading Hispanic voice in science fiction' by PJMedia despite failing to uplift his own community by perpetuating racist stereotypes against black people, as well as brutalising other marginalised groups, such as the LGBTQ community, where he sneeringly calls Nico 'queer-looking' and Harry's design to be 'suspiciously transgender', despite the man bun being a common hairstyle.
However, I'm not at all surprised that PJMedia was the one to honour him with this title, considering they've been known to spread misinformation, with articles often written by highly biased bloggers instead of exercising objective journalism.
Despite Jon's article being only 722 words, he focuses an unwarranted amount of space to mentioning, insulting and belittling transgender and queer identities, despite YFNSM having no canonical transgender characters, and only one canonical queer character (Nico) whose bisexuality is only implied with jokes of her wanting to date Pearl and the existence of the bisexual pin she has on her school bag (which you'd really have to squint to see at first).
In all honesty, I haven't gone through all of Jon's articles or videos surrounding YFNSM, as I'd hope just by this post, it is clear he writes complete biased and discriminatory slop. However, I will discuss this video where he adds onto the claims in this article, and once again has a hissy fit over accurate NYC representation.
'If you watch the background of the show, you would think that America is an 80-90% black country' is a direct quote from Jon's 'woke nightmare' video, however it is once again factually incorrect, as with one glance to the first episode, we can see that YFNSM doesn't have an 80% black cast, and in fact, it seems pretty accurate to real NYC statistics (around 31% white, 28% of Hispanic origin, 20% black and 15% Asian) with Queens being a predominantly black area anyway.
Jon even says 'very very odd that this exists' over this show set in Queens having a mostly non-white cast, but if he'd care to look at the statistics, he'd realise that Queens' white population is only 23% (rounded up), so this racial representation of Queens is actually very accurate.
Unsurprisingly, Jon talks again about transgender people, despite the show having absolutely no transgender cast. He deadnames Caitlyn Jenner and compares her to Aunt May's appearance in the show, saying 'ew, gross' at the thought of the former athlete. His obsession is overwhelmingly strange and irrelevant to his claim of YFNSM being a 'woke nightmare' or 'so woke it hurts'.
Not only is that comment unmistakably transphobic, it is also extremely unprofessional for a so-called journalist.
However his transphobia doesn't stop there, as he goes on to claim that Pearl is 'towering over Peter like a transgender person', despite Peter being 14 or 15 years old, while Pearl is 17 or 18. Oddly, Pearl isn't even significantly taller than Peter, and in fact, she only seems to be 6 inches higher than him.
I don't know why Jon had an issue with this, and much more, why he decided to use this as an excuse to mention, insult, and stereotype trans people again, because as I mentioned earlier, that goes entirely against his alleged Christian values.
Him having an issue with Peter, a literal 15 year old, being shorter than his crush, just reeks of insecurity and reflects Jon's fragile masculinity.
And wouldn't you have it? Another mention of transgender people... you really are obsessed, aren't you Jon?
This mocking description of Nico as an 'Asian they/them whatever' is simply ridiculous and honesty laughable. Despite her wearing a dress, having long hair and wearing jewelry and makeup, which are stereotypically 'girly' attributes, Jon still has an unquenchable obsession with transgender individuals, and can't help but mention them at the sight of blue hair and alternative fashion.
Jon also claims that the reason Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson aren't in the show is because 'they [the studio] can't do that anymore, they're just [replaced with] BIPOC girls'.
This is, once again, a factually incorrect statement. Studios can include MJ and Gwen in their Spider-Man adaptations, however the reason they aren't initially in YFNSM is because the show intentionally aims to subvert from the typical Spider-Man storyline and tropes to offer something fresh.
This is why it skips the first few months of Peter figuring out his powers, why it didn't include the Uncle Ben arc, why he goes to Rockford T. Bales instead of Midtown, and why he's bitten by the spider outside of the Oscorp storyline. These are deliberate and creative decisions to prevent the franchise from feeling stale, as by now we all know how Peter Parker gets his powers.
In fact, Gwen Stacy will be featured in the second season of YFNSM, and so Jon can rest easy, she will be white.
For some reason, in both his video and his article, Jon claims that Flash Thompson was replaced by Lonnie Lincoln, which makes zero sense. The only things these characters have in common (looking at YFNSM Lonnie and general depictions of Flash) is that they're both football jocks.
Lonnie comes from a supportive and loving family, while in the comics, Flash Thompson is emotionally and physically abused by his alcoholic father, who is a policeman.
The reason Flash was a bully was because he projected his anger and self-hate onto people like Peter, but he eventually became a better man out of his love and admiration of Spider-Man, a vigilante who the police often distrust. Flash's relationship (and even parasocial obsession) with Spider-Man isn't just fan dedication, but it also rebels against his father's authority.
Jon assumes that Marvel fans are 'fuming' over a few race and gender swaps, when in reality, there were only three notable race swaps and one notable gender swap in YFNSM, which were Harry and Norman Osborn, and Carla (Curtis) Connors, who changed from a white male to a woman of colour.
These characters' original race and gender weren't essential to the Spider-Man stories they were featured in, and so I'm not sure what the big deal is here, and it's clear Jon only finds an issue in this because of his blatant racist and sexist views.
Jon Del Arroz's critique of YFNSM is bigoted, dehumanising and objectively wrong. His rhetoric isn't towards the writing, the dialogue, the framing, the animation or the acting, as he instead only cherry-picks and discusses his own personal, biased issues with the show, most of which come down to character design.
He ignores the real diversity of New York City and contradicts his 'Christian values' as he doesn't abide by basic principles of empathy and respect.
PJMedia labelling Jon as the 'leading Hispanic voice in science fiction' is disgraceful and a complete an utter joke. He fails to respect marginalised communities while attacking and insulting them, which exposes his un-Christian hypocrisy and PJMedia's lack of journalistic integrity.
As a site note: Jon Del Arroz is also a Neo-Nazi and a wife beater, which I only found out after writing this post. So yeah, fuck this guy.
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