Being a minority consumer has been a huge nuisance lately. C-list shock jock comedian who made the current infamous “Good Jeans/Good Jane” ad (which clearly riffed on the infamous Calvin Klein ad of the ’80s that featured the then 15-year-old Brooke Shield) and Matt Life, Matt Life and “joking,” appears to be using the media, using the elf plants.
There is an idea over the past decade that it’s funny to screw with minorities, or that minorities are waiting to get mad at things. I consider it to be similar to someone walking down the street and stepping into dog poop. Did I go outside hoping to step on my dog’s poop? No, but now I have to clean my shoes. It’s certainly a nuisance, but it was an accident. It’s like the advertiser keeps poop where I normally walk. If that’s a strange image, it’s good because it’s weird.
Those who use “Libs Trigger” or “wake up” statements and jokes are losers. I was able to go to the whole spill about how it’s wrong to do this, or that it’s a sign of right-wing change in the broader culture (it’s) but most of all, it’s lame and boring. Or persistently make sure the kids call it.
It takes us from the alien book to Mauro Mantera’s Bloody #1.
This bloody variation is being sold as a jump-on point for new readers of the 30-year-old franchise. The story follows the honorable bloodshot, the super-type anti-hero of a mission in Tokyo to kill vampires who have been altered by drug use. That’s a very 90s plot I’d expect. What I didn’t expect was politics in the 90s, leaping off the page in 2025.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but I keep it easy. This is a dog whist about trans people, especially trans kids.
The line indicating “irreversible change” is eerie similar to the commentary that “irreversible damage” has been “flicted” on a trans child seeking gender-affirming care. For the record, it includes reversible adolescent blockers, social transitions, and in some cases hormones. Surgeries before age 18 are extremely rare. This rhetoric is the same rhetoric that removes trans people from public life, makes it illegal to live a decent life, and criminalizes them using bathrooms of the correct gender, rather than being assigned to them at birth.
Also, do you compare monsters to marginalized groups in 2025? Merge queer people into predators that infect people with something that will change forever? Is this in 1992? Was the script sent to the editor by fax?
I know I have a face, but in addition to being deeply biased towards trans people, it’s just a hacky writing. You can talk about vampires that affect young people in many ways, but using that rhetoric is lazy. Ah, no, edgy heroes have something to say about culture these days. “I’m not a guy who screams at the clouds or gets mad at how my wife took the kids. I’m a guy! I’m not as sensitive as these ‘liberals’. ”
On the other side of this is when the writer is a liberal and tries to turn the point of conservative talk above his head. Again, it’s a bad sentence for the same reasons I’ve explained before.
The thing about all three of these events is that they are not new. Advertisements that the trend towards political inaccuracy is not new is not new. Growing up, it was common to see women being considered objects or compared to food in a sexual way. When dark skinned women were drawn, they were not considered women. When lesbians were on TV (if they were allowed), the word was used as an insult or fetish. I was able to continue.
What I get here is that in the brief moments of the 2010s and early 2020s, I pretended to be at least caring for the minority. We all knew they really care about it being their revenue, but that was a signal to the broader culture that treating minorities properly is okay.
Since Donald Trump and his reelection of “Crusades,” many companies have surrendered in advance and changed their marketing strategies to fit the times. Or they believe in Zeitgeist because this is a scary short-term strategy to turn to your product or story if it’s bloody. You’ve angered a lot of people to gain 15 minutes of fame, and you’ll be a shame for years. The pendulum on public opinion on equality looks back. The internet has long memories, and trans people have enough shit to deal with it.
Update: During the writing of this article, Alien Books issued a statement saying that the line in question was a translation error. About 15 hours later, Tweets and Bluesky posts surfaced Mantella’s support and support for anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ beliefs and posts. All my points in this article are still standing.
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