The Netflix show Wednesday got a lot of attention and weeks after its premiere is still one of the most watched shows of its kind on the streaming service. However, since I was introduced partly by Tim Burton, race was part of the discussion around the franchise, and certain people’s interpretations are really wrong.
Burton came out in 2016 with the movie Miss Peregrines for Peculiar Children. It was noted that it was the first film in which the director had a black lead, with Samuel L. Jackson. Bustle listened to this in an interview and Burtons response wasn’t good.
He said that people speak more about that now. One can say that something should be a thing. I remember when I was a child watching the Brady Bunch as they began to get politically correct. Oh no, so lets have Asians and Blacks. I used to get more offended by that than just a glare of television. I said, that is perfect. I didn’t go like that, I needed more white people in these movies.
Yeah, Bob isn’t great.
We believe that he had Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent back in Batman 89 and Mars Attacks that is largely related to the Burtons statement, and that he thinks diversity as a political correctness rather than just a normal thing when working on big films in which race isn’t part of the conception. It was this that caused people to feel angry about Wednesday’s Bianca.
The Bianca Barclay is a Siren and a Queen Bee at the Nevermore Academy. She eventually lands in a conflict with Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) for most ill-seeking CW reasons. A sudden interest of the ex-boyfriend of Biancas is in the mood for Wednesday so the two girls have become a part of the competition. Eventually, Bianca becomes a character of greater honor, but even when I was one who likes Black villains, I was seriously annoyed that we had two women of color fighting over a white guy. It was interesting to see the whole reductive story at once, but rather because Burton argued about race, it was difficult to see the dynamic in good faith. Even though he hired a big black lead in his movie, it was the bad guy.
While there’s a lot of hyperbole, people who’s partly upset with Bianca aren’t sure why we weren’t doing the work to understand that this is being done as colorblind casting. To know Burton’s intent, the roles of the Black characters in the show (and mostly most of the black characters without Wednesday and her family) still make a lot of sense.
I want a badass Black villain and we want no warning, but when it comes to comparing these quotes in 2016, I don’t notice, or otherwise make anything wrong with the situation – a lot of characters in the background that make up for a few decades of work where, when we showed up, there was as a bit character in the background.
There’s no such thing as Netflix.