No, this reaction existed before the Internet was a thing. Consider all of the flack received by Wendy Pini and Richard Pini’s “Elfquest”, starting back in the 70s and 80s.
The politics of the work come from having a lot of the same elements and even themes of other sword and sorcery stories, told from a female perspective. Something this simple and reasonable was still political enough to freak a lot of people out.
As a side note, the Internet has had the downside of making politically reactionary driving trollies quite easy but it most certainly didn’t invent it.
An ape’s ancestors still come from Africa, though.
Even unconsciously? Sans awareness? Without careful examination, this will happen.
That’s a shift towards interpretation, not creation. The art itself was not made in a vacuum. Then the context becomes significant.
There’s a difference between overt messaging and default messaging, between what is said and what is left unsaid because what is unsaid was part of the culture that made the artist create something. But it becomes overt the moment anyone anywhere objects to inclusive efforts.
Overall, the problem doesn’t even necessarily derive from the fact that spaces used to be closed off—and nobody has a problem with the fact that Lovecraft was white, we have a problem whenever someone (say) tells the genre-consuming public at large that minorities don’t belong in comics.
Once that became a position, it became overtly political. All of it.
There’s no guarantee that a given interpretation will be correct, but once the work is made public, you have zero control of how others decide how to regard your work. This is why art-making is so often a deliberate, careful act, especially whenever the intent is to communicate something specific.
An incorrect interpretation also doesn’t mean the art in question lacks a political context. Look at the culture it was made in.
