Across Hollywood, multiple celebrities are voicing their displeasure with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), even launching campaigns to defund it. Even voice actors are joining the fray. One of them, Yuri Lowenthal, best known for voicing Spider-Man and Peter Parker in Marvel’s Spider-Man games, has also sent out his message against ICE, though some of his fans took offense at it, somehow.
Lowenthal spoke out against ICE on his Instagram account, which he also uploaded around January 25, a day after Alex Pretti died in Minnesota at the hands of an ICE agent. The Spider-Man actor’s message was pretty clear and even empathic, urging people to “Speak out against injustice,” otherwise, it will make it “easier for them [ICE] to [expletive] us in the streets and round us up and genocide entire peoples.”
Lowenthal’s call to action is to literally ask people to disturb politicians at the very least by calling them and asking them to defund ICE. Lowenthal’s post has since gone viral and was shared on multiple social media platforms, but for some particular platforms, it appears the video was somehow mass-reported by certain critics, forcing moderators to step in and ask them to stop reporting the video to try to get it taken down.
“Quit reporting this, it might as well be in character. media literacy, dont be chuds,” according to moderator Jusbreka in the Spider-Man 2 subreddit. Instead, the moderator asked members of the comment section to report people with negative sentiments towards Lowenthal’s message. “Support for ICE = permaban,” according to the moderator.
Lots of Parallels and Comparisons to Spider-Man Have Been Drawn
It’s not clear what exactly the critics were upset with, or if they actually support ICE, but some might have been upset that politics is getting mixed in with their fiction. In turn, they have been criticized by other commenters, “Ppl who are upset and shocked that he doesn’t support Ice clearly have no media literacy on top of having no morals whatsoever,” while another praised Lowenthal, “That’s my Spiderman.”
Meanwhile, Spider-Man fans were quick to make analogies, as the justice-dispensing webslinger has, after all, fought against many tyrannical and corrupt enemies in the comic books, games, and movies. “Ice is the real world sable agents from Spider-Man ps4,” claims an Instagram user.
For those who are out of the loop, Yuri Lowenthal is not just famous for voicing Spider-Man but also other iconic childhood classics, such as Ben Tennyson (Ben 10), Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto), The Prince (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time), and even a version of Superman. This time around, he’s using his voice for some real-life justice.
