I, like many others, spent Halloween in bed watching a spooky Tim Burton movie. As the credits of the Corpse Bride starts playing I decide to look up the cast. Under a list of names and characters, I discovered a series of articles on Tim Burton and multiple racism accusations. How did this happen?
The comment that sparked this argument was when he was asked in an interview with Bustled, about his 2016 Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, where he was questioned on the lack of diversity of his films in general. He answers that ‘things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, lets have an asian child and a black…’. He continued, saying that ‘I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.’
What exactly is Burton trying to say here? He talks about the addition of diverse characters of The Brady Bunch, a children’s TV series in the early 1970s, and that this apparent tokenism of characters of colour had no reason for existing, or as he phrased it, didn’t need to be ‘all politically correct’.
What might defend this argument is that Miss Peculiar is set in Wales in 1943, which explains the mainly white casting. But what about Alice in Wonderland? What about the Corpse Bride? What about Beetlejuice? These iconic movies are set in imaginary towns, in other dimensions and in the afterlife, places that have no need to be reserved for white people. Here there is no excuse as to why an all white cast would be needed. Although movies like Edward Scissorhands or Coraline do have minor characters of colour, it is very much just this: one character of colour in a minor role.
Although Burton might have some good intentions in not wanting it to feel forced to have POC characters or to use diversity as a stunt casting, if POC characters and actors are only in films about race, they are left out of all other genres. In a movie where race is not an important factor, such as the Corpse Bride, there isn’t a necessary reason as to why every single character should be white. This reminded me of the past controversy around the new casting for Disney’s Little Mermaid (2020) which will feature Halle Bailey, a young black singer, as Ariel. There were claims that Ariel was white to begin with and therefore should stay white. But, as many retaliated, there is no reason why Ariel should be white, as race is not an aspect of this movie. The same would go for Cinderella or Rapunzel, whose races play no part in the plot of the story. However, characters races should not be changed where their race is necessary for the plot. For example Merida lives in Scotland in the 10th century, indeed very white at the time, and Mulan, who lives in China sometime between 420 and 589 CE, indeed very Chinese at the time. It therefore is necessary to have a Merida that is white and a Mulan who is Chinese for it to make sense historically and with the plotline.
It is rumored that Tim Burton doesn’t cast POC because of his ‘aesthetic’, which resorts to more gothic elements of pale skin, sunken eyes and small noses and mouths – all eurocentric features. However, he has never mentioned this himself.
Ultimately, it depends on your personal viewpoint on positive discrimination. Should POC be cast in movies with their race in mind to promote a more diverse industry and image, or should actors be casted purely on talent? The danger this brings is that disadvantaged POC actors aren’t able to find a gateway into the industry. But more importantly, the effect is on the viewer, on POC children watching these movies and being unable to find anyone who looks like them.
