The Political Hat

     “Little Orphan Annie” the classic comic strip about a red-headed orphan who is adopted by super-rich “Daddy'” Warbucks, is set to return to the silver screen as a brand new movie. Meanwhile, jokes about “gingerscrimination” have been bandied about when it was revealed that first Willow Smith, and then Quvenzhane Wallis were the leading contenders to play the role of Annie. Both child actresses, by the way, are Black, and thus not “Persons of Pallor.”

     Such casting could very well be an interesting take on “Little Orphan Annie,” regardless if either of the two child actresses wore wigs of red hair or not. One group that has been suspiciously indifferent to this possible casting is the group Racebending.com, who got their start as a protest group that threw a temper-tantrum about the movie “The Last Airbender” because child actors and actresses were being cast in the roles of fictional cartoon characters originally intended to be of another race (from the TV show “Avatar: The Last Airbender”). While the creator of the TV show thought of the characters as “Asian” and was certainly inspired by East Asian cultures, the movie was an adaptation, and changes happen all the time with adaptations. But was the casting of a “Person of Pallor” such an egregious departure from the character? Compare the cartoon character on the left with the child actor on the right in the picture below. To your humble author, they look similar enough; to the hyper-racial folk over at Racebending.com, it was an evil racial whitewashing.

Pictured: A white child actor (left); A character created by two white guys (right)

     Isn’t it possible that an actor, who happens to be white, could play a character originally voiced by a white voice actor and created by two white guys? Isn’t a good actor supposed to be able to play other people that they are not like?

Continue reading →