Variety’s Caroline Framke reflects on the latest removal of blackface episodes and scenes from popular television series and films.
The newest trend amongst big-name companies, studios, and franchises has been removing controversial, offensive, and racist scenes and episodes from popular TV series and films. It’s happened with “The Golden Girls,” “The Office” and more. Even white voice actors who have long voiced Black animated characters are stepping down from their roles. These companies and brands claim that the move is to stand in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. But specialists in the film and TV industry say covering up the racist history isn’t enough, and that it shouldn’t have taken until now for them to realize their tasteless and racist actions.
“It’s a weird moment to be living in, as a society and also for me as a Black person. I’m being asked to play along with this ruse that white people and white companies weren’t aware of these things when they obviously have been. Whether they chose to care or not is a different matter,” said Racquel Gates, a professor of cinema and media studies at CUNY’s College of Staten Island. Gates says that while the act of removing the “problematic” content is one thing, the next part of the issue is discussing why it was approved in the first place.
“It’s just trying to Band-Aid over the history,” says TV writer #AlannaBennett. She says these productions should make “an archive of the mistake” and apologize. “It really feels like trying to protect the legacy of those creators instead of actually trying to address what those episodes did.” Gates explained that the decision to cut the content instead of opening up themselves up to discussion is taking shortcuts. “Part of what’s happening is that these streaming platforms and companies are going for, in their minds, the easiest and most obvious symbols of racism. What gets lost there in any kind of larger context, any kind of discussion of how something functions.”
The other part of the issue is that the production companies are publicly announcing the removal of the controversial content. “They’re doing it for publicity. They want everyone to know they’re doing it,” says Hollywood historian Karina Longworth. Longworth has a podcast, “You Must Remember This,” which recently broke down Disney’s removal of the racist “Song of the South.” The song has been used in several areas within the Disney brand and was pulled from the Disney ride Splash Mountain. The song and the video portray formally enslaved Black people as missing their lives as slaves. Longworth says taking down racist content is how big-name companies hide their racist past. “Both [approaches] are intended to make sure that people can’t actually see the problematic thing, which sort of absolves the company from ever having made it.”
Longworth added: “Because culture is so cyclical, just hiding something is not going to create meaningful change. Having a conversation about it has a better chance of allowing future generations of understanding what came before them and how to deal with things in a more thoughtful way.”
