I attribute the sparcity of Ragnarok criticism to tumblr’s obsession with identity politics. You simply cannot criticize a film directed by POC, staring 2 POCs in main roles, with female final boss and implications of queerness of 2-3 characters without overzealous teens too young to have seen Thor and Avengers back when they premiered yelling accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia (and fetishization of abusive relationships if you ship Loki with anyone).

I agree that that’s probably a large part of it, especially in light of my experience of being called a racist for my criticisms of Ragnarok.

I think now is a good time to trot out a term I’ve been using in private to describe this aversion to criticizing any work of art made by a POC: benevolent racism. I coined it (or maybe reinvented it) modeled on the existing term benevolent sexism, which refers to the attitude that women are delicate and fragile and morally pure and must be protected. Benevolent sexism is what leads some academic advisors to go easy on female students and not push them to improve their work as much as they could, because they think they’re too fragile and can’t handle tough criticism (and maybe aren’t capable of getting their work as good as a man’s). Similarly, benevolent racism treats creators of color as something less than full agents who can take responsibility for their work and its flaws. (There’s a start to answering your question, @touterd, though there’s a lot more where that came from…)

I have stuff to say about the “fetishizing abuse” thing, but I have somewhere I need to be… I’ll get back to it later.