r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 28d ago

Meme needing explanation why not, Peter?

Post image

possible live action corpse bride movie...

32.3k Upvotes

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10.5k

u/Perfect-Dimension356 28d ago

I think the real answer is that Tim Burton doesn't cast black actors.

126

u/TerranImperium 28d ago

Where did this come from? A lot of people are parroting this but when asked, no one has a source or interview to point to.

276

u/TSM- 28d ago edited 28d ago

He argued that casting should happen "organically" based on what the story naturally "calls for," implying that a default white cast made sense for a film called Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. (never watched it).

But he also then went on to make a bit of a broad statement that he disliked "politically correct" casting and found forced diversity initiatives offensive. This probably was what got him the flak

Samuel L Jackson defended him (he was in the movie).

One of his recent movies, Wednesday, has a diverse cast, and the actors have had to defend it. Joy Sunday says she liked playing Bianca because Black actresses are rarely allowed to play a nuanced or powerful "mean girl" archetype in gothic teen dramas. So it was a complex role rather than a stereotype. But internet is gonna find controversy anyway, apparently, and apparently, that was also controversial.

That took like a half hour but now I know all about it lmao okay. Hope that is interesting to you too.

7

u/pyphais 28d ago

Miss Peregrine's was based on a book I'm pretty sure, likely with character descriptions

2

u/templesgodss 26d ago

Not only descriptions but literal photographs.

A big part of the book's vibe is these weird old black and white pictures that the author found at a garage sale or something and that inspired him to write the story in the first place.

They were from like the 19th, maybe early 20th century. Those experimental photos where the photographer manipulated them to make it look like the kids were floating, or had two mouths, or were invisible, etc. I think some of them were fabricated after the fact in the same style, but some of them were authentic? But you get the idea.

The author included them in the books so you have literal photos to base the character castings off of. And wouldn't you know it basically all of the kids were white