That devil-bat thing from that Cuphead screenshot you posted isn't even in the final game, no character in the final game has that sort of face. Anyone complaining about "literal blackface" either hasn't played the whole game or they're being disingenuous.
I’ve had a handful of people point this out to me, but while talking it over with some friends who’ve played the game more than I have, there can be a case made for King Dice.
Now, King Dice himself isn’t explicitly african american, but when you combine it with his theme music (which I hadn’t heard before) it’s very likely supposed to be a tribute to Cab Calloway, or maybe Duke Ellington.
Given Cuphead’s influenced by Fleischer cartoons, it’s most likely Cab Calloway, who made at least one appearance in a Betty Boop. For reference, here’s Cab and King Dice, sporting the same mustache and a penchant for suits with bowties:
Now, that’s not black face. It does mean the second-in-command for the Devil is somebody representing a black man, but if that’s a problem, that means black people should never, ever be portrayed as villains in anything ever again, which is a little weird. King Dice can be a tribute to Cab Calloway and be a villain just the same.
But I guess what’s weird in all of this is that there’s obviously connections here. Ones that aren’t really negative if you stop and examine them beyond finger-pointing panic, but there are people out there kicking up a lot of dust over this subject just the same, and the Moldenhauers (the developers of Cuphead) haven’t, like, made any kind of statement one way or the other, leaving it to the fans to yell endlessly back and forth about. They could solve the whole problem with just a single sentence, but instead they’re keeping their heads down.
On some level maybe I don’t blame them. Even in that last ask, I was worried I was overstepping my boundaries. It’s easy to be ignorant, and the last thing I’d want is to say something ignorant. People have, especially on Tumblr, found themselves up against overwhelming torrents of hate simply by accident. It’s one thing to own your mistakes and apologize for being ignorant, but that’s not to say there aren’t also sharks out there looking for blood. People on this website have been literally driven to suicide over “artistic license” when drawing a Steven Universe character a little too thin. Being afraid of falling on the wrong side of an angry mob is natural.
Similarly scary is what happened to Sean Murray and No Man’s Sky. That game was a monstrous let down, sure, but there were a lot of people who were, and still are, taking things way, WAY too far, and Cuphead being so successful can undoubtedly be a double-edged sword.
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