Hollywood is in its “white guilt” stage of grief right now.
Nobody overcompensates to societal problems quite like Hollywood does and the irony is they’re the ones who intensify and magnify these societal issues with a reckless disregard to the content they shove down the America consumer’s throats.
But now we’re seeing Hollywood replacing white actors portraying minority characters for this absurd reason.
Whitewashing in film and television is nothing new. Yet, Hollywood acts as though they’re not directly responsible for impeding race relations in this country.
Here’s a great example that should blow your mind: Gregory Allen Howard, the writer of a blacklist screenplay – a comprehensive group of the best unproduced scripts – about the life of renowned slave abolitionist and creator of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, recalled a situation where a producer wanted Julia Roberts to play the titular role. Yes, you read that correctly.
This Hollywood producer’s first thought after reading an incredible script was to see if a white woman was available to play a famous historical black figure? That’s unbelievably absurd. Did they plan on using blackface to achieve realism too?
Gregory Allen recalled that a producer said to him in 1994, “This is a great script. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.”
Whitewashing has been happening since film and television were created. And while Hollywood can play coy like they’re not the ones that are more discriminatory than any industry in the world, they just say they’re changing without really acting to make a change. It’s “do as I say and not as I do,” constantly with Hollywood.
And Hollywood is terrified about the damage they’ve done. That’s why they’re overcompensating by replacing every single white actor playing a minority character, particularly in animated television shows, with a minority actor of the same skin tone.
The absurdity isn’t that they’re finally doing it now, the absurdity is they’re the ones who perpetuated this harmful race relations impediment while pretending they aren’t the direct cause of it.
For instance, white actor Mike Henry will stop voicing the black character Cleveland Brown on Fox’s “Family Guy.”
Co-creator, Josh Gad, of the popular animated show “Central Park,” recently replaced white actress Kristen Bell who portrays a black character on the show. Gad said of the situation, “It was frankly an easy decision to make. We all collectively understood, even before the events of the past few weeks, that we made a mistake, and you have to take ownership of that, and you have to move forward. Kristen has been, as always, one of the most incredibly supportive and collaborative human beings in making this decision as she was to join the show, and so it was a no-brainer, and we’re so excited to move forward to find a new voice for Molly.”
Gad and Bell both played star characters in Disney’s “Frozen” and “Frozen 2.”
Gad has a lot of power in Hollywood. Creators of television shows largely do. But the problem isn’t with Bell portraying a black character, it’s that they didn’t think of the optics beforehand, which in turn, informs us of Hollywood’s true racism and prejudices.
“The Simpsons” also just announced they will no longer allow white actors for non-white roles anymore like Dr. Julius Hibbert, Carl Carlson, Judge Roy Snyder and the Bumblebee Man.
And the thing is, “The Simpsons” has already been through a racial upheaval on the show. If you recall, actor Hank Azaria recently dropped his voicing gig of the India-descent character Apu, who owns the Kwik-E Mart in Springfield, amid mounting pressure to do so.
They’ll only change if there’s mounting pressure, right? This is the same condescending nonsense Hollywood perpetuates over and over again with total disregard of the damage they’ve already done.
