"He's adopted"

Recently my wife and I actually went out on a date.  Amazing, I know.
We went to see the Avengers movie, and if you've seen it, you probably know where I'm going with this...
And no, its not going to be about Scarlett Johansson in her Black Widow costume.

image from http://www.movieweb.com

There is a part where the Avengers are talking about Loki, the bad guy.
His brother Thor, is trying to defend Loki's actions...

The joke is at the expense of Loki, the film's villain and adopted son of the god, Odin. Loki's brother Thor defends him to fellow Avenger Black Widow, who then points out that Loki’s “killed 80 people in two days.” Thor then replies, “he’s adopted.”

You can read more about it here, it is where I got the above quote from.

I think the more interesting part, is at the bottom of the site listed above there is a voting option to say if the joke was out of line.  Over 96% of the respondents responded that "No, people are too sensitive", while only a mere 3% voted "Yes, it insulted adoptees and adoptive parents".

My feelings are mixed on this.  I mean, yes, the adopted child is the bad guy in this movie.  However, in almost every other movie I've watched over the past 35 years the bad guys were NOT adopted.

So should the non-adoptive people be complaining that biological children are shown as bad guys...?

Hmmmm, but getting back to what I found interesting... the results of the voting.

The question posed was "Yes, it insulted adoptees and adoptive parents" or "No, people are too sensitive"... I feel that if the bad guy were of a visible minority group, the voting would have been very different.  People would see the question as more of a racial discrimination issue, and maybe would have voted differently.

But still, only 3% voted it was offensive?!  C'mon.

Replace "adopted" with "black" and see how well it goes over...

The joke is at the expense of Loki, the film's villain and he is black. Loki's brother Thor defends him to fellow Avenger Black Widow, who then points out that Loki’s “killed 80 people in two days.” Thor then replies, “he’s black.”

If that sounds wrong, then it is probably because it IS wrong... regardless of "black", "adopted", "mentally delayed", "geek" or anything else.  How about Thor just owning the fact that his brother Loki is a massive jerk who wants to enslave all of humanity?

Oddly enough, the Hulk gets a free pass... even though everyone in the movie is afraid of him and is very intentional NOT to upset him because he has a habit of destroying cities.  But then by Avengers-Logic... the Hulk wasn't adopted.

*siiiigh*  If you can't say anything nice...