#this calls again for proper caps and punctuation y'all

[wandaposting]

Can you talk about the whitewashing controversy? I think it's a shame, but some people are acting like the people looking forward to WandaVision killed their dog lol.

They were originally white from 1964 until 1978/1979 where the Magneto connection was retconned in. Then from the late 1970s to 2014 their boilerplate backstory was that they were children of Erik/Max/Magnus/Magneto of 12 names (obv German/Jewish) and Magda Eisenhardt (usually Polska Sinti), and raised by Balkan (specifically fictional country Transia) Roma Django and Marya Maximoff with no discernible Jewish influences.

In 2014, during the height of Disney-Fox corporate childishness, it was once more retconned that Django and Marya were their birth parents, thus making them full Romani still with no discernible Jewish influences which is their current status quo.

It’s a messy situation stemming from their whiteness being carried over from the era where they were, in fact, generically white Europeans. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that George Perez revamped her design to give her the ample curls and “Transian” superhero costume, perhaps inspired by the recent release of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Transian costume didn’t last, though the hoop earrings have been known to reappear ever so often. Notice, of course, how they were still colored as white people.

Some people frequently point to this era for proof that Wanda has historical pre-2010s instances of being drawn with darker skin after all — well, no, that’s just the palette they used for white characters at the time.

That one Avengers vs X-Men: Infinite issue definitely looked promising at a glance, until you realize it was the lighting all along and the colorist made no effort to make her palette distinct from Tony’s and Hope’s.

Same goes for Olivier Coipel art. Same even goes for the gorgeous Daniel Acuna panels where she’s famously known for not looking pasty white, in the context of lighting and how every other (definitely white, not counting fanon and headcanon) character gets drawn and colored.

It really wasn’t until the era of modern Representation Matters (specifically those All New All Different 2015/2016 halcyon days) and a couple of conscientious artists like Kevin Wada decided to take a serious look at that Romani backstory, and present her as how she should really look. And that redesign was amazing. You can go into my archives and see 2015/2016 me fangirling over how 🔥🔥🔥 it was.

Unfortunately, this too did not last. The outfit is still (mostly) in use from artist to artist, but the darker skin and the distinct Roma features- not so much.

*And, before you get on my case about colorism, which has been an issue for Sunspot and Storm, that argument is less compelling here when Wanda is literally white in her initial appearance.

The whiteness is still very much entrenched in the Scarlet Witch brand. You can see this in all of her merchandise and every pre-MCU adaptation she’s ever had. Unlike Mickey Rooney’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s role or Emma Stone pretending to look like her last name could be Ng, none of these adaptations are perceived as embarrassing or dated transgressions. They are all Wanda, for better or for worse. (Update: In an anonymous ask I recently received, someone likened the 70s Romani inclusion and the 90s Perez and Busiek interpretation of her “Romani roots” to a bad case of cultural appropriation. I’m inclined to agree. They really did just retrofit a white character into culturally appropriating a real group of people so that they could give her that exotique “g*psy witch” aesthetic.) 

Some people will counter with: Well, just because she’s been whitewashed before doesn’t mean it’s okay for her to be whitewashed now. And that all of this is a result of systematic racism and is gross and everyone who supports it is part of the problem.

Well, sure, but all those versions are part of the tapestry that make up her character. You can take a revisionist’s paintbrush to try and make that tapestry align more with your ideals, but at that point she becomes more your own personalized creation than what she actually is. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with stubbornly supporting a personalized, idealized take on a character, but all of that other content isn’t suddenly going to lose its fan following and vanish from the mainstream.

And the specifics of how the Romani elements were included in her backstory kind of actually were shadowed by this blissfully ignorant 1970s American kind of racism. The “g*psy witch” trope most of all. And the kind of ignorance that permeates in presenting that sort of character as levitating criss-crossed over her bed while reading tarot cards surrounded by candles all mystic-like.

If you can recall any of this or perhaps the one George Perez era panel where she’s screaming to Pietro about how “my father was a kind g*psy man named Django,” or how she’s casually written into referring to herself and her family as that slur over and over again, you can recall that 99% of Marvel Writers’ other sparse attempts at reminding audiences that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are, indeed, Roma made them out to be blindly romanticized caricatures that I suppose creatives behind adaptations would prefer not to tackle.

I don’t have a solution for the people who are hurt by this, and for the people who expect and demand for Wanda to become a vehicle for authentic Roma storytelling— something she’s never really been before, aside from a few shaky glimpses in the Robinson run. It’s not my place to tell them what to do or think, and I definitely wouldn’t tell them to stop being upset.

Different people feel strongly about different things. I don’t expect I’ll be seeing Mulan in theaters due to its pandering to China’s very problematic government with their literal concentration camps, but I don’t expect everyone to have the same feelings as I do, or hold it against them if they don’t. It’s a movie. I’m personally not comfortable supporting it, but who made me the God of Consumer Morality?

That’s the thing with MCU Wanda and with WandaVision or every other verse or artwork where Wanda is Still White. A mass snub of it isn’t happening with or without my help. If you’re excited for it, stay excited for it (with an understanding of why some may be upset)! If the thought of it breaks you out into hives, I’m very sorry to hear that (and I’m also impressed you got this far), hope you can focus on the things you enjoy instead.