So... For like the last year I have become acutely aware of how increasingly difficult it is to find movies to watch that aren't just white male glorification.

When I'm drawing I like to have a movie playing on my desktop as well as video on a tv in the background. It keeps my eyes moving and focusing differently and provides visual reminders of how people move in different environments.

That gets ruined when, from several different systems, most of what dominates the selections are just "that"... to the point of it now almost being synonymous with "American" film and tv.

The relationship between comics and the screen becomes increasingly clear when remembering what D.C. and Marvel did to their industry in the 80's, when they glutted the distribution system and capsized the foreign and independent presence here.

We, pros and fans, are still reeling from the effects of that, as the readership is now less than a tenth of what it was... they having driven out most of the audience that was more receptive to what actually made the medium great... creatively risk-taking approaches to dynamic storytelling content.

Now we are mostly left to sift through the productions of the most insecure segment of a population that already dominates all of our visual media... and is actually tired of seeing how desperately they are promoted... all the time.

That is why these industries have to spend so much on hypnotizing promotion... because even the population they are promoting is tired of only seeing "themselves"... and in reality, are insulted when they haven't bought into a culture that divides them from the rest of humanity because of paler skin and straighter hair.

Like telling someone he's "just a white guy" is an obvious insult, right? And how many times have you heard people who identify as "White" insult others by referring to them as "So White"...?

No one actually believes that any grouping of people only find themselves interesting, right?

Isn't that a little narcissistic on one end... and incestual on the other?

So how or why are "they" working so hard to sell "that" to "us"?

Whatever...

It's just that, within the reality of how our imagery is being shaped to present one group as the beautiful conquerors and the rest as the less profound, less desirable, less important, bestial, brutish, tainted victims... and sycophants... the perception of what it means to be simply, "human" is fractured... with the smaller pieces swept away with the "refuse".

I am not accepting that.

When I sit down to work... to create... these images that flood through all these networks remind me of why it is important to stay focused on what is trying to be accomplished with this work on my board...

That it is not about me, even when I think it is.

... and there's a job to be done...

Back to the grind.

~ Grey