I actually like P. Diddy, not his music as much as his persona. He dreams big, he works hard, and is actually inspiring. If you look at his story you'll see the process of his rise to fame and riches is repeatable for those that have it in them. That being said, Diddy made an ignorant remark the other day that showed up on YouTube. By ignorant I mean uninformed because I truly don't think he really knew. Anyway he made a series of statements about the absence of Black Superheroes in his childhood and that thanks to Will Smith and the movie Hancock, we finally have a Black Superhero. You already know my feelings about that movie from my earlier post. The truth is, in his video, Diddy seemed to have trouble remembering White ones too. There were quite a few Black Superheroes that rose to prominence during his childhood. He just wasn't aware of them. Watch it and read below:
I didn't very much care for his comment and considered not even mentioning it in these pages but as I looked around I found that a great many people put a lot of effort into making answer videos to his. Believe it or not P. Diddy actually sparked a new level of awareness of Black Superheroes. There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of videos an comments about his post. True, many of the videos are negative but quite a few are informative and nicely done and a large portion of them weren't created by Black people either. So I have this to say:
Thanks Diddy, your words inspired an awareness of Black Superheroes that this blogger dreams of one day achieving. I may not agree with all of what you said but I am glad you said it.
I'm a fan of Will Smith and a fan of Black Superheroes so when Hancock came out I got in line to see it. I worked to subdue my negative expectations and for the most part succeeded. I didn't hate the movie. I didn't love it either. I was just that there was something missing. As far as I'm concerned, it could have been a made for TV movie.
What would I have changed? During the second half of the movie, if you still haven't seen it then don't read any further, they talked about him having been around since the Egyptian days. Now that, I would have loved to see more of. A Black Superhero that had been around forever, leading people into their greatness generation after generation would have been awesome. It would have really spoke to the character's plight and how far he had fallen. That story within itself only showed up as an inadequate, conversational, explanation to Hancock's origins. I've only briefly perused the original source material, Tonight, He Comes, but I know the movie could have been better...much better. I'm still a Will Smith fan though. I know the movie wasn't written for a Black Man but if it wasn't for Will, there would be one less Black Superhero for children of color to look at.
