MadameNoire Featured Video

 

Say what you want about Harold Perrineau, but don’t come for his kids. He’s not having it.

That’s the message I got from Perrineau’s open letter, written for TheWrap, called “Stop Saying My Daughter’s Not Black Enough for ‘Jem and the Holograms.'” It’s about critics who deemed his daughter too light to play Shana in the film, adapted from the ’80s animated series, which came out on Friday. As Perrineau explained, people were attacking Aurora before ever seeing her work in the film–that, sadly, flopped hard as hell at the box office this past weekend:

Aurora is the product of a Caucasian mother and a black father and is therefore not qualified or not “black” enough to play a black character from an animated series, according to some people. Her blackness or lack thereof is so offensive to some that they’ve written articles about it. They’ve gone onto social media and spewed their vitriol directly at her. Some went so far as to suggest that she “kill herself” for taking the role. All, without ever seeing her work in the role. All this anger based solely on the color of her skin.

Perrineau’s recommendation for her detractors? Stop complaining about the kind of Black folks you don’t see in films and on television and use the many means out there to create for yourself and give those people a platform:

My hope is to reach the folks writing these articles and pointing fingers at young artists like my daughter and get them to use all of that creative fire and create characters that look, sound and feel like yourselves. We live in an incredibly creative time, where it may not be necessary to have big money and power to have your voices heard. Why not use your power there? Why not put out images you want to see for the reasons you feel are important. Positive images are important in every culture and those images are the responsibility of the people who see their importance and necessity.

And while I can understand Perrineau’s opinions and can agree that those directly attacking his daughter are going hard at the wrong person, it doesn’t change the fact that Aurora’s casting as Shana is problematic. Not because Aurora couldn’t give an excellent performance or simply because she is biracial, and we just have to have Black women of a darker complexion in movies or else. It’s problematic because the original character of Shana was a Black woman of a darker complexion, with a bright purple afro. Aurora is light, and her character in the film has loose, long curls. Not only that, but Shana is the only group member whose appearance was so drastically changed. Hell, the Barbie doll is darker than the young woman picked to play her.

So yes, people who are attacking Aurora are wrong. Hell, if I were a 21-year-old actress trying to get my foot in the door, I would probably take what I could get too. The real problem is with the people who cast this film who felt that a lighter Shana was better. The problem is with a Hollywood that continues to lighten up classic Black characters so that they can look like everybody else. So they don’t seem too Black. Charing Ball called this out in an essay about the casting news for Jem and The Holograms last April in a piece called, “Is Hollywood Whitewashing Jem And The Holograms?

…what I see in the revised cast are women, who with exception of hair color, all have the same look – from the nose to the eyes, cheek structure, and down to skin tone. It’s homogenous without actually being homogenous. Or better yet, it is Noah writer Ari Handel’s everyday man without the vanilla...

Okay, maybe I am trying to start some stuff, but as a fan of one of the few girl-centered cartoons in the history of television back in the day, I really expected better of the casting choices. I mean, if this was Batman or Spiderman, the casting – as well as production in general – would likely warrant more respect than that. And in the age of Lupita Nyong’o and flap over Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone (as well as other very questionable color casting choices), and all the Dencia skin lightening mess, we all should expect better than the continued homogenizing of the entertainment we consume.

And that is the point Harold is missing. We just expect and deserve better. His daughter just got caught in the crossfire of that argument. The real issue is that Black characters, whether adapted from real people or popular characters with a signature look, are consistently morphed for the big and small screen and to fit into Hollywood’s small box of beauty standards.

That’s why people were in an uproar over the fact that not only was Alexandria Shipp (and previously pegged Zendaya Coleman) lighter than Aaliyah, but the people they picked to play Missy Elliott and Timbaland’s characters in Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, were even lighter and looked nothing like both music stars. That’s why people were mad about Zoe Saldana playing Nina Simone. Why people were enraged over Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton playing Moses and Ramses. That’s why it still doesn’t make sense that Mena Suvari played a character based on a Black woman (Chante Jawan Mallard) in 2007’s Stuck. And why people get upset over the fact that people of color, in general, are overlooked for roles of characters of color in favor of famous White folks. From Johnny Depp playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger, and Angelina Jolie playing an Afro-Cuban in A Mighty Heart, to Natalie Wood playing a Puerto Rican Maria in Westside Story, and Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra and so on and so forth since the beginning of time. It’s tired.

But I can agree with Perrineau on his point that we can’t continue to wait on Hollywood to represent us adequately. While it would be nice not to see every Black character get Whitewashed, expecting so much from people who don’t look like us and don’t care too much about our interests is like waiting for Santa Claus to come back and bestow upon you that Easy Bake Oven he didn’t give you when you were 10. And as long as they’re creating the images we see, White and light bright will always seem right.

Comment Disclaimer: Comments that contain profane or derogatory language, video links or exceed 200 words will require approval by a moderator before appearing in the comment section. XOXO-MN