Embedded Files
By Zoë Reiss
Tim Burton is an exceedingly talented storyteller and producer. His portfolio includes "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Corpse Bride," "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands," and his latest hit "Wednesday," which premiered on Netflix this past November. His greatest works of art, however, may be rooted in racism.
His latest trending series at the moment: "Wednesday," follows teenager Wednesday Addams as she navigates her life at a boarding school for abnormal students. While Burton chose to cast hispanic actors for the role of Wednesday Addams and the rest of the Addams family, Wednesday is still known for her signature pale skin and makeup.
More significantly, the show only has three main black characters; all three of which are antagonists. Wednesday’s adversary, Bianca Barclay, is portrayed as standoffish and mean. The other two black characters are the mayor and his son. The character of the mayor is corrupt, and his son bullies the students at Wednesday’s boarding school.
"The Nightmare Before Christmas," Burton’s most famous production, is also predominantly white and includes racist implications. While there is no specific race assigned to most of the characters as they are skeletons and monsters, all of the voice actors are white, except for Ken Page, the voice of the Oogie Boogie man, the villain of the film.
Screenwriter Caroline Thompson told the Insider that “the character, who wears a pointed hood, ‘looks like a Ku Klux Klansman,’ while ‘Oogie Boogie' is an old, southern, derogatory phrase for an African-American" and that “she begged Tim Burton and director Henry Selick to change the character, but the filmmaker told her she was being ‘oversensitive.’"
The visual similarities between the character and a Ku Klux Klan member are shocking, and though Burton was made aware of this, he made no changes.
Burton has made blatantly racist comments about diversity in film and media. "US Weekly" magazine reported that in 2016, Burton said, “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, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just … 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.” His aversion to inclusive casting and his comments on the exploitation of black people in movies is indicative of his attitude towards his own creation.
While some may argue that we should "separate the art from the artist," we must be mindful about the media we consume, especially when the "artist" is alive and profiting from our consumption. If we fail to recognize and educate others about racism in the media, we allow for implicit bias to be further developed.
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