Our relationship with the media and entertainment industry has never been a good one. Scratch that, it’s been absolutely deplorable really. From many popular movies being inundated with black characters peddling harmful racial stereotypes to depictions of black animated icons being depicted as animals or other entities that aren’t human, it’s safe to say there’s really no winning for us. There’s just so much wrong with the way we are usually depicted and when we finally get a morsel of representation then a whole social media war surfaces and racists come out of the wood work with colourful racial slurs that one would think died with colonisation and slavery.

It’s hard to see someone who looks like you in the big screen especially if you’re a person of colour. People who usually scream and claim representation doesn’t necessarily matter are those who have representation.

It’s nice to tune into a show and see someone who looks like you and has a personality that goes beyond being thuggish, criminal and ghetto. It’s feels great to watch someone who looks like you leading a life that is normal and tackling school, life in general, romance and families. The easy-going or messy slice of life shows are always a great watch and it’s great to see people who look like you being a protagonist because you can relate. Think of the show “Insecure” or “Chewing Gum”

Black people have always been portrayed very stereotypically. I use the aforementioned word with all due respect, considering just how damaging the images they portray of black people in the media. In America, Black American females were usually presented as these masculine, loud and hyper-sexual beings with little substance. Black American males are usually portrayed as violent and ghetto gun slinging thugs with potty mouths. Africans (it kind of rubs me off the wrong way calling black Africans natives so that we can differentiate them from other Africans).

The depiction of Africans and Africa as a whole can be less than stellar. The way the media paints black Africans is that we’re exceedingly poor, unintelligent, unattractive primates constantly at the mercy of the west and their donations. If we aren’t being subjected to the white saviour complex (a social construct that makes Caucasians seem like the good guys in the media), then we’re criminals who should be put down like rabid dogs.

All these misconceptions have been so deeply embedded in all of our societies and cultures that other races of people genuinely believe all black people are like the ones they see on television. There was an incident with a kpop star who said oh you know because black people are like gangsters and they go, “yo, yo, yo what you mean?”  I sat in my chair, starstruck and ever so confused. There was no way a star of her calibre with that much education had such a myopic view or perceptions about an ENTIRE race of people. It just doesn’t make any sense for me.

But that’s the reality and it is honestly terrifying.

Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, spoke in 2009 regarding ―”The Danger of a Single Story”. During her presentation, she recounts how as a child she read British and American children’s books. When she began to write her own stories at the age of seven, she wrote stories involving white people with blue eyes who lived in areas with snow and remarked often on the weather. Because her only experiences of literature involved foreigners, she felt that they were the only subjects that could be a part of literature.

Just like Chimamanda Adichie, I’ve always loved writing. When I was younger, my initial go to character was always a white woman with blue eyes and blonde hair. I didn’t see anything wrong with this. All my fantasy stories featured white girls as my protagonists. Because of all the literature I had been exposed to featured white characters who were usually the heroines. It was their world and we were all just living in it. It just never struck me as odd that I never imagined black women or black girls being protagonists of a story. When I turned 12, I realised that I had never really read about girls who looked like me or watched any movies or cartoons with girls like me.

I realised then that I had been conditioned to think this way. This is not to say we didn’t have any stories with black characters; however, it has been grossly evident that black creatives or the black perspective never had any narrative control in the western-dominated media and film industry. There’s a long history of negative depictions of black people. Countries like South Africa are among the few countries that have actually grabbed the reigns and started telling stories of their own. In their stories, their beautiful cultures are well represented and the characters are well rounded interesting people with nuanced personalities.

The typical stereotypes we see in movies:

The Black Best Friend

There’s the black best friend. The black best friend’s role is to uplift their white counterpart. They rarely have personalities of their own. Their entire existence was constructed for the sole purpose of making their white counterpart better. These black best friends are usually the comic relief. They tend to have crazy bad luck and they laugh it off because we are supposed to struggle, I suppose. The main function of the black best friend is to steer white people out of their challenging circumstances.

The black best friend is usually a woman, the Black best friend functions “to support the heroine, often with sass, attitude and a keen insight into relationships and life,” critic Greg Braxton noted in the Los Angeles Times.

A television executive known as Rose Catherine Pinkney told the Times that there is a long tradition of Black best friends in Hollywood. “Historically, people of colour have had to play nurturing, rational caretakers of the White lead characters. And studios are just not willing to reverse that role.”

The thug.

We always tend to have the thug in a movie. These are gun slinging, potty mouthed and violent criminals in shows.  Black men are characters written to play drug dealers, pimps and other forms of criminals in television shows and films such as “The Wire” and “Training Day.” The uneven amount of Black people playing criminals in Hollywood fuels the racial stereotype that Black men are dangerous and prone to criminal activities. More often than not these films have thrown black people into the deep end as they provide little to no social context as to why black men mostly end up incarcerated. It’s always “the system”. But no one has bothered to explain the nuances of the system.

These stereotypes have reigned in Hollywood for so long that people genuinely think all black Americans are criminals.

The Angry black woman

This trope irks my soul. It strips black women of their femininity and always has us presenting as masculine types undeserving of love and being damsels in distress. What’s more is that this trope is a tool that gaslights black women because that means they lose the freedom to express themselves. If you express yourself then you’re angry and you have a disgusting attitude. If you don’t express yourself then you allow yourself to be bullied by the masses. It’s all an extremely awful cycle that is so harmful to black women.

White women are depicted as princesses, queens, spies, lawyers and all sorts of nuanced characters who can enjoy being damsels in distress or heroines. Black female characters are rarely accorded the same grace as they are larded into one bracket which usually involves them never needing any help or assistance because they are strong and struggle is innate to them.

The Help.

You could call these characters the domestics. These characters are usually placed in abject positions of servitude. Their role is no different from the black best friend except that in this particular instance, they are domestic workers, cleaners, nannies and well… I’m sure you catch my drift. Their job is to once again help their white counterparts to soar whilst they remain static.

The African in media:

The African is perpetually poor.

The African comes from a war ridden country.

The African is desperate for a white saviour, be they people who adopt them or white soldiers who come and save them from a war. Better yet, they are always saved by another race so it portrays said race as beacons of light and hope saving the starving African. “Eat your food, there are children starving in America.” “I’m doing volunteer work in Africa.” “I’m going to build wells in Africa.” These statements have been said in so many movies and shows that it’s extremely grating because it’s very insulting. I mean, remember that scene in Shooting Stars where he helped them build a

The African is unintelligent and illiterate.

The world is just as it should be just as long as black characters aren’t characters of great note with nuanced personalities. The world is just as it should be if the African character is stealing, plundering, killing, fighting or dying from poverty.

In animation.

Disney has always been one of my favourite animation studio giants. Their stories, ever so beautiful and doused in wonderful worlds filled with magic and whimsy make me so happy. So, I was more than excited to watch a character with skin like me have her own adventure and her own story but alas, I was disappointed. There’s this cycle I’m sure we’ve all noticed from animated shows, films and movies. The cycle involves a myriad of black characters somehow becoming animals or being animals from jump. I adore Princess and the frog with every fibre of my being but I didn’t get to see much of Tiana because she was a FROG the entire movie. She was an AMPHIBIAN.

I was super stoked to watch an animated film with a black protagonist. From the trailer, Birds in Disguise looked absolutely amazing. It looked entertaining and extremely funny. The black protagonist seemed like a handsome, smooth-tongued and an awesome spy to boot. I was more than ready for the movie. Finally, a story with a black protagonist! But guess what? He was a PIGEON the entire movie. He was a bird that’s basically known as the rodent of the bird world.

When Soul was announced, I was excited and ready to watch another animated movie. The protagonist was a black character and I assumed his tale would mark the beginning of amazing animated tales of black characters. Then again, my dude was an entity the entire movie. Then in the end, another character lived in his body. The tale was beautiful and I enjoyed it but I couldn’t shake off the weird feeling that black characters are always transformed into something inhuman. Most of these characters never remain human for the entirety of their story and it’s very debilitating.

There’s the book ‘Witches’ by Roald Dahl. I’ve always loved Roald Dahl, he wrote books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Big Friendly Giant and my personal favourite was The Twits. So, the book Witches was adapted into a movie a few years ago and the protagonist was white. In the books he remained a rat for the rest of his life and came to love his rodent life (I guess). Anyway, the adaptation where the protagonist was a white boy was changed for a happier ending. The protagonist didn’t remain as a rat forever, yaaaay right?  There was a more recent adaptation that was recently created and this time the little boy who was cast was black. He remained a rat for his entire life. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with that because it means they stayed true to the story as narrated in the book, I just find it extremely interesting that the white protagonist’s ending was changed whereas the black protagonist remained a rat FOREVER. HMMMMMMMMMM. A curious thing, me thinks.

You might think this isn’t a big deal but it basically supports the idea that black people are ‘animals’. We have always been compared to primates and other animals because of our skin colour and animations always depicting us as animals aren’t necessarily helping dismantle those racist ideologies either.

The Blackwashing problem…

Before I delve into the world of Hollywood’s race bending issue, there are a few terms that must be defined:

1. Merriam Webster describes whitewashing as the practice of using only white actors, models, or performers, especially the practice of using a white actor to play a character who is not white: White-washing implies that media is not good or profitable or relatable without whiteness. White media is regarded as more digestible and palatable. The excuses of casting white characters is that they are big names that will garner profit and viewership. But it’s an excuse used to not be inclusive. Whitewashing is a byproduct of racism and it continues to uphold the world’s fixation on Eurocentrism and the western world’s standards.

• Alyssa M Smith described “Blackwashing,” as the practice of replacing a traditionally white character or role with a black actor, is the same issue. Blackwashing on the other hand has no racist history or racist connotations in any shape, way or form. Blackwashing is a strategy used by Hollywood to be more inclusive and more diverse.

• Racebending was coined as a term of protest in 2009 as a response to the casting decisions for the live-action film adaptation of the television series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The stereotypes I glazed over are what you usually find in western media. However, when we are steered away from the usual roles the world is accustomed to see us in then World War III ensues on social media.

Remember when Halle Bailey was cast Ariel in the live action version of the Little Mermaid? I was horrified with all the comments she had to suffer through. She became a victim of racial slurs and became public enemy number one. People attacked her looks, her acting and harassed her for so long and I’m sure she’s still being harassed as of today.

Then in 2022, 11-year-old Leah Sava Jeffries was cast as Annabeth Chase in the new Percy Jackson & The Olympians adaptation. If you’re someone who lives on social media I’m sure you’ve been subjected to numerous comments about Leah Sava Jeffries. The racism she faced was so bad that her TikTok got banned and the author of the books Rick Riordan had to come to her defence multiple times. Devastating, isn’t it? How dare she be black? Why couldn’t she be what? White? Or maybe a western digestible or agreeable race like Asian (East Asians, not any other Asians mind you).

There was also the disturbing case of Quvenzhané Wallis. She was also harassed for being cast as Annie in the 2014 movie Annie when she was only 9 years old. She was quite young at the time and was subjected to loads of racism and hatred. Now, in the books Annie was always depicted as white. When it was announced that young Quvenzhané Wallis would play this character, people lost their marbles and were absolutely horrendous online.

A particular tweet read, “They should have probably called this movie Shaquanda.”

Another tweet was, “Why not do a movie about a white MLK Jr.”

Another tweet ran thus, “I want to live in a colorless world but I will NOT stand for a BLACK ANNIE.”

This occurred in 2013 and 2014 but it wasn’t that very long ago.

There was also an uproar of Zendaya playing Mary Jane in Spiderman Homecoming because Mary Jane was not a mixed woman in the original Marvel comics. Then in 2017 people were stark raving mad that Anna Diop, a Senegalese actress was cast as Starfire in the DC comics show “Titans”.  You know, she was that alien with orange skin and green eyes. Because how dare a fictional orange alien be cast as a black woman?

Some of the comments were, “Starfire or Laquisha?”

My issue:

I understand why blackwashing was created. I understand that it was established with good intentions but I would argue that Hollywood isn’t in fact being inclusive and diverse in the long run. It would be wonderful if we could have original characters of our own. It would be wonderful to have stories tailor made with black characters in mind, paying attention to incorporate our many cultures and languages. The Black Panther movie was far from perfect but it was debatably a step in the right direction with regards to apt representation.

Then again, it would be nice to include black people in monumental movies or iconic roles. Everyone deserves to see themselves in culturally significant cinematic pieces. I think we need both original stories and adaptations because I think it would be really good for kids to be able to look back at well established characters and find versions that look like them just as much as we need new stories.

At some point I was rooting only for original stories with original characters to represent black people or other people of colour because when I watch a movie I don’t want all the discourse about it to be centred around the fact that that character is black and shouldn’t have been black. I was sick of the race swapping because I was witnessing the sick racial slurs and bashing some black actresses and actors were receiving for playing an ‘originally’ white character. I felt like these castings were placing targets on the backs of these actresses.

My take is that white people are seen as the norm in stories because they’ve established themselves as the digestible and agreeable race. It becomes extremely difficult for them to see themselves in characters that aren’t just like them. Other races of people have had to see themselves in white characters because they didn’t have much of a choice.

I can’t wait until we can control our narratives so that we can finally see ourselves as nuanced, beautiful people.

The “Weird” Brown Girl.

SOURCES:

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2022/06/19/entertainment/television/Korea-Kdrama-Shooting-Star/20220619142531524.html

Word in Black: Prof. Copeland Discusses Race Bending & White Replacement Theory

https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/9455

Producer Defends Black Annabeth Casting In ‘Percy Jackson’ Disney Plus Series

https://www.thoughtco.com/common-black-stereotypes-in-tv-film-2834653