#lightwashing

[afrophunk]

More entries for @creatingblackcharacters Melanin Beam Challenge, this time just some edits of Lottie and the Cheetah Girls!

Notes and thoughts shared below the line

Charlotte/Lottie:

It always bothered me how Lottie got so much praise and, honestly, more attention than the literal Black protagonist of this movie. It doesn't help that Lottie is very much a white savior who seems to be the only friend Tiana goes to, despite their clear economic differences due to their race. We just don't need that kind of storyline in a movie about a Black woman.

In my ideal rewrite, Lottie is of Creole descent. Her father is still the same white mayor who does not generally care about aiding the Black community, as in the movie. You can't tell me he ever gave a damn; his family definitely profited from the plantations.

Due to being raised by the richest white man in the city, Lottie buys into appealing to her whiteness and wealth for status rights. While she is friends with Tiana, she's, for the most part, ignorant of the economic disparities between Black and White people in New Orleans. This eventually sparks a fight between them, causing a rift in their friendship before Tiana goes missing. Lottie has to basically learn to denounce her whiteness, and idk, maybe she goes broke by the end of the movie helping out Tiana.

I have more to expand on her role in the story, but I'll have to write out that rewrite another time.

Cheetah Girls:

Did you know that the Cheetah Girls in the original book series were a group of 5 Black girls? Well, apparently that was one too many for Disney, so they decided to whitewash half of the group 😡. They also got rid of a twin! While I understand finding Black girl twins who can both act and sing at a certain age would be challenging, it still resulted in getting rid of a darkskinned Black girl.

Recently, I found out they are making another Cheetah Girls group, and somehow, they whitewashed them even further! Now there's only one Black girl in the group! WE CAN'T EVEN HAVE 2??!!!

I hate the argument that they did this to add diversity, because the girls were already diverse. Funny how everyone can moan and cry the moment one person in a friend group gets reimagined as Black, but it's crickets when they deliberately whitewash the majority of a Black friend group. Math ain't mathing. So nah Disney,

Give us back our Black teen idol group!

Also, yes, I made the white dog brown too. EVERYONE GETTING MELANINATED!!!!

[lorencethecat]

I am so incredibly baffled by the large scale casual acceptance of the lightening both Sheik and Tetra have been subjected to. Legit don’t care if they are both ~maybe-technically-hypothetically~ paper white pale beneath their tans, the fact remains that they both are physically tanned/brown characters within their stories and they should be respected as such! The insistence that a royal character has to be white is weird! That’s a weird thing for the developers to continue to do! There is legitimately no excuse that can be used to defend that! It’s just racism meets classism and the insistence that those of high social standing must be pale over tan! Nintendo should be clowned on for this!!

[icedsodapop]

You just know Disney execs looking at Chase Infiniti and rubbing their hands together like Bond villains right now. They've already whitewashed the Maximoff twins and refuse to recast, what's stopping them from casting another lightkinned Black actress for Storm?

[dceufandomhatespeopleofcolor]

Have y'all seen the casting for John Stewart Green Lantern ? They casted Aaron Pierre for John Stewart for the Green Lantern show on Max. I think he's a good actor but's too light skin to play John.

So I needed to look him up and like don't get me wrong this man is gorgeous but like...

THIS MAN IS GONNA PLAY JOHN STEWART GREEN LANTERN

wtf?!?!?!

why not Yahya Abdul Mateen II????

ughhhhh lightwashing strikes again.

AND BEFORE THE YTS COME AT ME ABOUT THIS HERE'S SOME READING FOR YOU TO DO

The History Of The Brown Paper Bag Test, The Discriminatory Practice Used To Exclude Dark-Skinned Black People

With origins in American slavery, this test was used during the 20th century to give more privileges to light-skinned Black people.

mod ali

[blackfilmmakers]

SO theres a children of bone movie coming out and amari (who is, explicitly, dark skinned which plays a MAJOR PART OF THE STORY) is being played by amandla stenberg...who is Not That.

Children of Bone is getting a movie?!?!? But also

If yall don't stop casting these lightskinned Black actors-

[inquisitor-apologist]

Just saw something absolutely horrible in the Andor tag. Why is he WHITE

[orlandrake]

I see everyone talking about how the live action ATLA will be removing Sokka's sexism as a plot point. However I have yet to encounter anyone discussing how they removed Sokka and Katara's melanin as well.

I mean it's not entirely whitewashing but it's definitely lightwashing.

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

To be clear, I'm not even talking about the typical colorism of making unambiguous and/or monoracial characters portrayed by light skinned biracial and multiracial actors. I got beef with that, but the thing I'm talking about is within a production, when there are multiple actors playing the same role, and they can't be bothered to accurately cast.

I'm watching Westworld, and this adorable little girl that they let me form a connection with (who look so much like my youngest niece when she was little) ...

They turn around and bamboozle me with an adult version of her played by none other than that girl that had the audacity to steal the representation of Shana Elmsford in that Jem movie that none of us watched, and I personally cannot forgive.

So. Here are a few examples that I recall looking around the room whenever I saw the choices while watching some stuff.

This little girl in the flashback for Ava in Ant Man and The Wasp.

It's not a huge difference in photos, but photos don't be true to how the people look and It's difficult to find images as clear as the production when you're watching it. But, that child is not likely to grow up and look like that. They ain't eeem got the same eyes and Ava was on her revenge thang. She was not about to be bleaching her skin and getting light colored contacts in her revenge free time.

And I was double sideeyeing because that's not even the first time casting pulled that with one of Hannah's characters. Remember baby Dutch on Killjoys?

Maybe Dutch would change her appearance when she got older, because she really wanted tp detach herself from her past... But Aneela wouldn't have, so??? That's simply the form they allegedly grew up into. 🙄

And... I ain't never watch this, because I just didn't, but it's the most agregious example on this short list and that's the Ruby character in The Darkest Minds. Girl, looka dis:

Ruby grew up and lost an ENTIRE HALF of her DNA. Whoever was responsible for this was ON ONE.