Why TMNT Fails with White Humaniazations
Fan culture offers many, many, many fan works, and within these fan cultures, offer many interpretations of the source media. Being a fan of TMNT for over ten years, I’ve seen many, many humanizations of the TMNT, a startling portion of them involving the turtles having white and Eurocentric designs, and as I grew up, I didn't understand why I felt such an intense discomfort with it but this analysis should finally dig at why I do.
The Thesis of TMNT
TMNT, at its core, I believe, is about being an ‘other’ within a society that’ll do anything to take you out, who despises you, and how you’re journeying as an ‘other’ to achieve a personal satisfaction for yourself and to let people know, ‘I am like you, I have thoughts and feelings too and I have a right to live.’ Rise is better at this because it brings in the fact that this not only affects mutants and yokai but also explicitly affects humans who look different than their own kind and have to experience that hatred, demonization, and “othering” from their own.
TMNT and Whiteness: An Incompatible Mixture
Having the turtles with white humanizations, in my opinion, ruins the core of TMNT—aside from the turtles having Japanese ancestry and sharing DNA with their Japanese fathers, Splinter—because whiteness will always be seen as human, no matter what. Even if you are considered an ‘other’ AND white, being white will always protect you in one form or another, and that’s not protection that POC are offered.
POC can try and access those protections either by ‘’talking white/acting white or proper’’ in order to be seen and viewed as human, but it's not always the case/maybe it doesn’t always work, no matter how well we code-switch. Code-switching can be defined as adjusting one’s style of speech, appearance, behavior, and expressions in ways that will comfort others in order not to be discriminated against or to save their lives. This can be either be subconscious or intentionally done.
A clear case of code-switching can be seen in this clip:
Another instance of code-switching is in Always Be Brownies, where April is visible acting not as the April that the audience grew to love. Instead, she’s trying to present herself as ‘’approachable’’ in order to do something that matters to her. She’s seen how people reacted to her and thus, visibly changes her behavior. This is an instance of code-switching not to be discriminated against. An instance of code-switching, this time more intentional for survival’s sake, is in the first episode of Rise of the TMNT: Mystic Mayhem where we see the turtles first interact with Draxum’s henchman and Raph tells the others to initiate Plan H. Here you can visibly see their demeanor change and observe how they switch from their natural stances to a state of shock to a more acceptable ‘’persona’’ to assume: white nerds going to a local convention.
They take on the physical stance that’s associated with white nerds: a physical sense of superiority, smug smiles, etc.
You can even hear how they switch from their natural voices to nasally, high-pitched, smug voices to sound more like a stereotypical white nerd. When Donnie come in a moment later with his awkwardness, there’s an ‘oh shit’ moment where you fear that the turtles are going to get caught/that this instance of code-switching isn’t going to work, and there’s a bigger ‘oh shit’ moment when they’re found out.
Code-switching is not really something that is explicitly taught but rather that’s picked up from within the environment. The fact that the Rise turtles know how to code-switch indicates that they had to have learned it from April or Splinter. There are other forms of code-switching within the franchise. Clothing, for example, is a big one, and the attitudes towards them vary between several different iterations.
’03 only wears clothes to blend in and that’s it. That’s the only way the boys viewed clothes. They all wore the same kind of clothes, nothing that really showed them off. There are open complaints about the clothes, “Geez, we can barely move in this stuff. What is the deal with humans and clothes?”(S1E8 Fallen Angel), the audience can see visible discomfort and how the clothes restrict the turtles. Mikey even has a little throwaway line in the Christmas episode where he mentions having to wear this ‘’itchy scarf’’ in order to spend time in the park, showing a clear desire to not have to wear them but understands that it’s a NECESSITY in order to avoid detection and Danger.
Rise, on the other hand. They don’t really consider clothes as something to blend in with. Sometimes they wear them because they need to, but even then, they’re tailored to them! They wear it because they think it’s fun and wear it with their personas’ to give them more character! They’re being teens and they’re having fun with clothes!
IDW turtles are at the midway point. In early/mid issues, they wear clothes to fit in human society. Later on, during the Mutant City arc, they wear clothes both to emulate a human society and wear clothes they feel comfortable in/appropriate for their personality.
I can not speak too much on ’87, but from the screenshots, gifs, and clips I’ve seen, ’87 seems to coast along with Rise. They clearly wear them to blend in, but they seem to have fun with them and goof around, if only a little bit.
Another interesting point is how the turtles, when they go topside, have a period of ‘adjustment’, more so within the aspect, they can never fully be comfortable around humans, just awkward, much like how BIPOC can never truly, 100% be comfortable around white people. 2012 appears the LEAST adjusted, since they don’t seem to have a human support network, like Rise, IDW, or 2003. For 2012, they have very few humans that they interact completely non-combative with.
Notable Asides
1. In the 03’s turtles' first meeting with April, Mike throws out the line, “Hey we don’t have much practice with talking with humans, it’s going to take some time.” It can be seen as an acknowledgment of the learning curve that the turtles have to compensate for that humans don’t have to, much within the same way that BIPOC has to compensate for certain aspects within society that is no fault of their own and stemming from the white privilege that they do not have.
2. The turtles having their own little vocabulary, especially in ’03, saying things like ‘turtle luck’ among other things can be seen as a way for them to construct their own language that only they know how to use, similar to AAVE.
3. Being a mutant/mutant turtle affects every aspect of the boys’ identity, much like BIPOC. You know how you can make stereotypes about white people and you have so many to choose from. Alt, Surfer, Artsy, etc. but have you noticed that all these stereotypes are based on hobbies, NOT race? That’s because white people and whiteness will never be affected by systemic racism the same way BIPOC are and thus are free to become whatever kind of person they want to be and define themselves by the things they like to do. This is not the same for BIPOC, whose race is inextricably tied to their identity and everything they do. When tied in with the turtles, this has a two-fold result. It makes so much about being a mutant turtle but also fosters a strong sense of community between the turtles and other mutants they befriend.
