It was announced recently that a mixed-race black Miles Morales will replace the character Peter Parker in the future Marvel’s Spider-Man in collaboration with Sony Pictures.

As a non-comic guy who doesn’t really know (and actually care) if there are numerous versions of Spider-Man and other superheroes in the Marvel Comics, it’s pretty interesting to note the recent realisation the Hollywood has been experiencing in depicting diversity in their motion pictures.

But what would be pretty disappointing is that we still depend on the ‘necessity’ to portray diversity instead of having the natural common sense of having to show diversity logically.

Almost like the movement to ensure gender equality in career and job prospects, it is puzzling why would we need a quota or a reminder that we need to specifically enlist a certain ignored group of people when it is actually meritocracy and performance that we should measure.

Back to diversity, are we really sincere in wanting to show diversity as a logical sense or rather just to please people because they are offended by racial stereotypes?

For example, one of the royal guards in the new Disney’s Cinderella is black. But long ago in the land of Britain, was the Black really influential to that extent?

This is not in any way an attempt of giving a sceptical idea towards black people, but this is rather to question whether we are giving people the right idea about diversity relating to the any story.

A very good example of diversity depiction in a motion picture would be the Oscar-winning Steve R McQueen’s ‘12 Years A Slave’.

The casting choice for the characters were very good that we believe the events actually took place (and indeed, they did).  The realistic sense even made Lupita Nyong’o earned her an Oscar for Performance of an Actress in a Supporting Role and the movie itself for Best Picture.

Well fine, maybe you would say, “Of course the slaves should be cast as black per the novel itself!”.

Some other hypothetical ideas

In that case, how about visiting some other hypothetical ideas?

Say, we want to make a movie about a tragedy in a kampong at Besut, Terengganu, Malaysia. Although generally the Malays and bumiputera (the natives of Malaysia) only make up at most 60 percent of the population, it is not a logical idea to cast 40 percent of the villagers of Besut to be non-Malays and Muslims since the Malays of Terengganu may make up 80 percent population of the state!

To consider a more general view, instead of considering that there must be at least a certain number of native Hawaiian cast in a movie shot in Hawaii, why didn’t we consider because most Hawaii residents are the native Hawaiian, it will be more logical to portray the native Hawaiian as the public servants of the island?

While it is a good small step to introduce the ‘necessity’ of depicting diversity, it is the spirit of logical depiction of diversity that will make a story more believable at the same time respecting the logical fact of diversity in the long run.

Going back to the superhero, why don’t we, from now change the way we think from “We should make at least a non-Caucasian, non-male superhero,” into a common sense-like “Does a non-Caucasian, non male not deserve to be a superhero”?

In fact, the Americans should slowly stop referring to themselves as ‘Caucasians’; they are making it to sound almost exclusively white and European-like.