As a Puerto Rican woman, I don’t necessarily see myself reflected in popular culture too often. With a few exceptions, Latinos tend to be portrayed as overly sexual, “exotic”, unintelligent, submissive, you name it. I have a pretty low bar for Latino representation in the media at this point, and am content with any portrayal that doesn’t veer into “blatantly racist “territory.
When I got around to watching CW’s Jane the Virgin, I deemed the show a godsend. I was hooked on Jane the Virgin from the moment I watched the pilot. Here, finally, was a series with multifaceted characters and unique plot twists. Alba, Xiomara, Rafael and the rest of this cast of characters were not one dimensional stereotypes, they were people I recognized in my life. I fell in love with Jane Gloriana Villanueva, the strong willed and insightful protagonist who endures an unplanned pregnancy with humor and wit. The show incorporated Latino culture in a way that was both self-deprecating yet appreciative, and used beloved telenovela tropes to its advantage. This show was special not only because it was well written, but because it demonstrated how stories from the perspectives of non-white characters were something pop-culture sorely needed. Our stories could be funny and insightful. Jane the Virgin awakened within me a new, ardent demand for better representation. Why should I accept half assed, whitewashed films from mediocre directors when I knew that better representation was possible?
So I was pretty dumbfounded by Tim Burton’s recent comments about diversity in film. Burton, when asked in an interview with Bustle why his latest film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children couldn’t include a couple of non-white actors, he responded with the following:
“Nowadays, people are talking about it more,” he says regarding film diversity. But “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 words straddle the line between baffling and offensive. Like, Burton can make a movie about a giant fish and ghost worms, but somehow asking him to cast a Latino or Black actor/actress is too much? I recognize that his movies are now just an excuse to dress Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in white make up and period pieces, but is his imagination really that limited?
He’s nowhere near the only director who can’t comprehend diversity. Hollywood directors are somehow under the impression that casting people of color in movies is bizarre or unprofitable (because casting white people in movies will always guarantee a movie’s success). Hollywood would rather have white people play people of color than cast actual actors of color because its somehow too difficult or risky to tell stories that are (gasp!) different.
With the high volume of sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots in cinemas, we should be embracing unique stories, not rejecting them. Movies do “call” for narratives written by people who aren’t traditionally represented in Hollywood, directed by people more imaginative than Tim Burton. To ignore this is to give audiences the same stale, shallow cinema they’ve started to reject en masse. You can tell awesome stories of any genre and include people of color. Just ask Ava Duvernay, whose adaptation of the beloved science fiction novel, A Wrinkle in Time, features an awesome, diverse cast of talented actresses. Give diverse stories a chance. When directed with intelligence and understanding, you’ll often find they’re a breath of fresh air.
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