What’s interesting to me, regularly, is two-part: First, fandom refuses to acknowledge how there’s racial bias in how stories are written - aka comics Elektra is white and MCU Elektra is not - and WOC Elektra is literally written with ugly racial tropes about dragging a good white boy down. White comics Elektra and comics Matt/Elektra doesn’t have this happen. Her origins are story are completely rewritten when she’s a WOC. Funny, that! Second, all of Matt’s relationships are toxic. He’s toxic for Foggy and Karen. But there’s always hope that that can change or fandom just ignores that fact all together. Elektra, and Elektra/Matt however, is just hopeless. Again, funny that.
The only relationship this white centric fandom will consistently come for however is the one where Matt prioritizes a woc. This isn’t even the first time. Every time there’s a WOC that the white protagonist heavily prioritizes, this occurs.
It’s easy with Claire because the protagonist and the show literally ignored her romantically after S1. She was no threat. The issues with her relationship with Matt is how the show framed her as being emotional support and emotional labor working for Matt. And nothing else that would benefit Claire herself. That itself plays into racialized tropes for Afro-Latinx women.
Is Matt/Elektra healthy? No. Absolutely not. But idc. White ships thrive despite that. And yet, this is the time we’re going to play performative concern? Are WOC not allowed to be in ships that aren’t coffee shop AUs? Are WOC not allowed to be in ships where they are the first priority? I mean, that’s the basis for so many popular white ships after all. Do we always have do emotional labor for a white man for it to be a healthy ship?
https://mattelektras.tumblr.com/post/164419248397/people-are-so-threatened-by-how-elektra-a-woc-is
https://zisas.tumblr.com/post/183350421186/i-love-how-matt-has-tons-of-chemistry-with-two
http://candyumbrella.tumblr.com/post/143236443166/some-thoughts-on-mattelektra-and-mattkaren
“Like it’s not even IMO it’s based on the entirety of shipping history for all fandoms ever I know for a fact that fandom preference would be for Matt->Elektra in a landslide. It’s a separate question entirely from whether the ship dynamic is “healthy” or whether it’s actually something aspirational for women–regardless of whether or not it’s something actually desirable, it’s naive to ignore the fact that it’s generally what the vast majority of fandom WANTS, and that this want is telling us something important. The trope of a ship that borders on “unhealthy” because the man is ostensibly “helpless” in the face of his compulsive pull towards the woman is the basis for many of the most iconic and sought-after white woman/white man ships of all time.
Like, Matt/Elektra is the kind of ship that fandom would eat up with a spoon if Elektra were white. Of course, there are some character archetypes that are damaging when applied to Asian women in particular. But Elektra isn’t a stereotype? She’s not a typical Dragon Lady at all, IMO–she’s given depth and emotional POV and backstory, both with and outside of Matt.
And like I said above, one of the most crucial points is that her hold over Matt isn’t supernatural or artificial, it’s emotional–and that’s one of the most universally popular shipping tropes there is. In fact, Elektra’s a character type from which WoC have been excluded until now, a type that has been reserved almost entirely for white women, by virtue of their PRIVILEGE OVER US–the humanized femme fatale with a soft spot for the lead guy who in turn has a soft spot for her, like Selina Kyle in the Batman franchise. She falls into an archetype that is widely considered to be desirable for women, one in which WoC have largely been barred from enjoying and seeing themselves represented in previous years on TV, the way white women have been able to do”
https://candyumbrella.tumblr.com/post/157862946356/ive-been-trying-to-figure-out-how-to-broach-this
“…for me the same argument applies–these ships are also the kinds of ships that, until very recently, almost exclusively featured white women. Matt/Elektra is a classic setup with the femme fatale being an Achilles Heel for the male lead–not only that, she’s his First Love, his Forever Love, his “I can’t shake you” love, his “I will run away with you” love, and so obviously his clear #1 romantic choice. Bamon is a White Bad Boy ship that combines many of fandom’s favorite shippy tropes. And they’re both argued against on the basis of the ships being “unhealthy” or “bad for” the WoC in the ship (either bad for her within the story itself or bad representation.) And whether or not there’s a case to be made there (I’d argue that the issue is more complicated than it’s often made out to be in fandom conversations–still, putting that aside for now), my point is that WoC are only rarely in such ships for a reason, and that reason isn’t because we have it so much better than white women. So it’s one thing for WoC to choose to embrace or reject these ships on their own initiative, but it’s quite another for white women in the audience to dictate on moral grounds that we SHOULD all collectively reject them, when they’re speaking from a place of having had that CHOICE, and being able to make it based on a lifetime of experience being represented in such ships, which has thus far been denied to us.”
annaxmalina
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