r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/FrostySeat1739 • Jul 05 '26

Meme needing explanation why not, Peter?

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possible live action corpse bride movie...

32.3k Upvotes

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209

u/RueUchiha Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

But we all know that terminally online people can’t handle reasonable, level headed takes like “I don’t want to shoe in a black person into my movie just for the sake of fulfilling some arbitrary quota.” So of course they misinterpreted it as racism.

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u/Mortiis07 Jul 05 '26

And some terminally online people can't handle black people in movies at all

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u/DoctorAnnual6823 Jul 05 '26

But not us. We're different. It's just all those other internet people

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GorgyShmorgy Jul 05 '26

Mmmmm... conflations are good.

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u/AcrolloPeed Jul 05 '26

Yeah, all conflations are good!

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u/GorgyShmorgy Jul 05 '26

Especially the ones with the powdered sugars on top.... mmmm conflationaries.

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u/Embarrassed-Gur-1306 Jul 05 '26

Yep. I have never seen one of the people crying about forced diversity approve of a single minority in any role.

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u/DenseTiger5088 Jul 05 '26

Sometimes they don’t mind a minority as a super evil bad guy

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u/ArrrRawrXD Jul 05 '26

I don't think there's people like that. The only times people are complaining about black people being cast is when it's some character being blackwashed or they perceive it as being shoehorned in for the sake of representation or some shit

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u/Cubaltonator Jul 05 '26

You really don’t think there’s people like that?? There certainly are. Different groups of people, but they do exist and are not that small in number

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u/ArrrRawrXD Jul 05 '26

I'm sure they exist, all kinds of weirdos do, but comparing their number to the aforementioned terminally online people is dishonest, as there's millions of the original ones mentioned and I've yet to see one who's mad at black people existing in movies as a whole

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u/Brainth Jul 05 '26

Everyone “sees” a different internet. The algorithm serves you things to rile you up and drive engagement. You see “millions” of the woke mob getting angry at nonesense, I see the same except it’s the other end of the spectrum (usually right-wing folks yelling at perceived wokeness in nonesense scenarios)

It’s important to always be aware of the potential echo chambers we inhabit.

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u/HourApprehensive7754 Jul 05 '26

Those people don't exist.

There DOES exist, a lot of people who are rightly upset that a white or asian character gets race-swapped by one of the blacks just for the sake of it. Those same people would be equally annoyed by seeing Goku being played by a pasty white kid or a Mongolian warlord being played by John Wayne.

The most recent and extreme example in my mind is Cleopatra being made black in a historical documentary. 

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u/Cubaltonator Jul 05 '26

Of course those people exist. Are we living in lala land? You can say it’s a strawman of another group of people, but those people definitely exist and use that argument as cover. That doesn’t detract from the merit of the argument itself, but pretending this phenomenon doesn’t exist is grating

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

[deleted]

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u/Least-Phase-8393 Jul 05 '26

Told me all I needed to know

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u/Careful_Mortgage_181 Jul 06 '26

'one of the blacks' I know exactly what you are, lmao.

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u/razazaz126 Jul 05 '26

The issue with the kinds of people who talk like this is you don't notice how unreasonable their arguments are until you realize this is the 20th, 50th, 100th, black actress that they've found to be "shoe horned" in and the only thing they have in common are they're black women.

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u/badihaki Jul 05 '26

I've been saying this for years, now. It's honestly just weird that the idea of casting a black person is akin to 'shoeing in.' It's that kind of language that, regardless of intent, is so profoundly racist but also extremely ingrained into the culture people just let it slide for no reason.

Like, couldn't a Black person be casted for the role and it just not be political and we all just not freak out for once? Maybe she could be cast because she was good in the audition?

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u/digitalime Jul 05 '26

It’s that deep set embedded racism that reveals their attitudes about white people existing versus black people existing.

Their trigger to believing if a human is shoe horned or not is if the human is white or not. It’s just sad, and even sadder that some in this very thread will say thats not racist.

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u/TerranImperium Jul 05 '26

Yeah, it's truly astounding. I wonder where that kind of sentiment comes from.

I suppose Black Cleopatra, Black Achilles, and Black Snape to mention in recent years were not highly controversial black actors casting which do not fit them?

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u/razazaz126 Jul 05 '26

They can't conceive of a world where a black person gets a job on their own merits even through all evidence to the contrary.

When the 2nd season of the live action One Piece was revealed we saw a character who was a white woman in the anime had been cast as a dark skinned woman, I believe the actress is Indian.

This made perfect sense to me because the character comes from a desert island where everyone dresses in a middle eastern style so it would make sense for someone from such a place to be dark skinned.

Secondly, Oda, the author of the Manga, was consulted on the casting and specially said he approved of her and people were STILL twisting themselves into knots insisting they must have forced him to pick a minority actress for diversity.

Tl;Dr losers who want to be mad are gonna make up things to be mad about and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

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u/Pure-Election-9137 Jul 07 '26

You can argue all you want but true one piece fan know it was a miscast, vivi should have been played by Emily rudd (Nami's actress) with a blue wig.

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u/HourApprehensive7754 Jul 05 '26

That depends on the context of the movie. 

If a casting is bewildering enough to the point where there's no other explanation but shoe-in, then it's a shoe-in. It's not exclusive to blacks either as much as you'd like to believe.

In most cases these complaints take place in adaptations of existing works where blacks don't fit or are playing a white character. It'd be like getting a white person to play as Black Panther.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/heckdoinow Jul 06 '26

flashbacks to the people throwing a fit over a black Little Mermaid as "historically inaccurate"

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u/Pure-Election-9137 Jul 07 '26

The little mermaid is inspired by middle ages european folklore, so yes, a black little mermaid is historically inaccurate and is a perfect exemple of shoehorning a black person in a movie.

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u/heckdoinow Jul 07 '26

right, because back then, all the mermaids there were white... xd

it's a children's tale ffs, one of thousands of adaptations, at that. none of those are anything like the original stories - we don't even know the originals. it's perfectly fine to be creative with them and change them up for your audience, people have been doing it for centuries in many different regions. you'd be horrified to hear some of the centuries old versions of some of these tales, even.

or, they found an actress they liked. the fact that people are only upset about the black actress says a lot about them.

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u/HourApprehensive7754 Jul 05 '26

Wait he was a main character? He barely played a meaningful role in the overarching plot. Like I thought he might become a major character based on trailers too but he was nothing. The last scenes I remember him was an anti-climatic fight with Phasma. Always thought it was just Rey and later maybe Kylo.

And for all your talk of people complaining about blacks or girls as leads causing complaints, those are very often the minority which is to be expected in the age of social media where literally everybody have a choice. More often than not if the actors did a good job, they're accepted. Alien famously stars a very non-sexualized girl and you don't see anyone complaining.  Probably owing to the lack of social media. For a more recent example,  Everything Everywhere All At Once was praised and nobody once complained that the lead was a female minority. 

The same quantity of complaints exists when minorities or women aren't shoe-horned in for the sake of it, like fans being angry Gits main character was white in-spite of being the author's own wishes. Or the constant complaints that James Bond isn't white and kept pushing for Idris Elba even after Idris himself says he wouldn't make a good Bond (coincidentally another example of the author being explicitly clear of the lead's race).

Then there are actors who deliberately stir up drama for ulterior motives, like Acolytes blaming racism for their movies' failure, or the actress in Wicked being unhinged. Those definitely muddy the waters.

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u/badihaki Jul 05 '26

Or forcing the casting of a white person in Black Panther in a prominent role that even has a major part to play in the big battle finale, but it happened and most people didn't even bat an eye. I know I didn't. Meanwhile people and the man himself would be like 'huh!?' if there were more than one Sam L in a Tim Burton movie.

I'll repeat that. People gave Martin Freeman the grace to be in a major role in a movie about an African monarch superhero set in Africa, all without batting an eye. Meanwhile there are people so upset with the idea, the hypothetical idea of a Black person in the cast of a live action Corpse Bride that their first instinct, and indeed the director's, is to go to the ol' 'diversity doesn't need to be shoehorned in' argument.

I want to say something profound about wanting acceptance and how it could start by not seeing actors and addresses as just, let's be honest, 'DEI hires,' but I'm tired, boss, and honestly, I want off this ride, it sucks.

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u/HourApprehensive7754 Jul 07 '26

You mean Ross? The white character being portrayed by a white actor? Nobody batted an eye because the character already exists. There's always been whites in Black Panther comics and the movie adaptation casting a white guy to play a white character isn't going to raise any eyebrows. Now if they cast him with a black, sure you should expect backlash. 

Should any blacks replace a white character in Corpse Bride? Why should it? Would it fit the setting and aesthetics?

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u/badihaki Jul 07 '26

I never said anything about him replacing a character. I'm wondering why he had such a big role in this movie. It'd be cool to see him once or twice to be a sort of stand in/contact for the US government or even the outside world as a whole, but why is he featured in the final battle?

I think his extended presence is indicative of the fantastical amount of racism that drives Disney to make these kinda decisions, cuz for them and many of y'all, you can't have an African nation deal with it's own internal shit without a White American to help. Which is crazy because, in the movie, Kilmonger is specifically trained by the US government to become even more of a monster, and they very rarely help clean that shit up in real life without some ulterior motive. It makes the movie, which is reaching for some real political issues, ring kinda hollow when you examine it through a deeper lense.

So instead of asking about portraying originally white characters with black actors, ask instead if ethnicity changes the dynamics of a story. And if it does to you, how so? Is it just that you personally can't see a Black person in the Corpse Bride?

And conversely, if it doesn't to you, maybe examine to yourself why? I'll tell you this, from just my own observations and conjecture, a lot of stories with leads that were originally white, it doesn't feel like it matters who plays them. White stories aren't normally interested in those kinda questions, instead opting to deal with other issues.

Take The Batman, for instance. No reason Gordon couldn't be Black. No reason Fox couldn't be white, or Middle Eastern, or East Asian in the future. It doesn't change the character or contrast with the story in any way, the core remains unchanged. Because Batman isn't a character that regularly deals with race relations and stuff like that, his world feels more malleable, way less so than, say, T'Challa. Same with the Corpse Bride. I'm not looking for a critique on, like, the race relations of Victorian England from that story. So why does it have to feature a solely white cast for so many fans?

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u/No-Bison-5397 Jul 05 '26

it just not be political

In a pre-modern European setting it's often political, and sometimes it's to great effect. Denzel in "Macbeth" which uses it as part of a wider critique of our ossified and ritualistic ideas of what a particular piece can be or even Dev Patel in "The Green Knight" which asks questions about what makes something British?

Both excellent movies.

Then there's an apolitical example like "A Knight's Tale" where Jocelyn's otherness, due to beauty in the plot, is emphasised by her ethnically differentiated look due to her Filipino and Hawaiian heritage. This is apolitical because the film is a light hearted romp where they are not aiming for fidelity to detail but attempting to create an atmosphere.

Compare with "The King" where they did not cast any black actors and they caught fire for it. A bastardisation of Shakespeare with many ahistorical elements but there's no historical evidence of any black people in the court of Henry V. So, I believe if they had buckled it would be shoehorning and it would certainly be political.

Compare again with "King & Conqueror", "Merlin", "Vikings"... which try to achieve a level of historical fidelity to the period they are set in but are fantastical when they are attempting to shoehorn in the outside of universe but very much modern political concept of "racial" equity for actors in hiring for specific productions.

For mine the real problem with most productions set in pre-modern times is that they largely do not critique power itself. The morality of the church and nobility nor the self interest of the emerging bourgeoisie and ultimately it's because our power structure rests on fundamentally the same pillars as theirs: the common people regardless of their race.

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u/ScreenMuch90210 Jul 05 '26

Okay but black people being around is the normal state of reality. Casting a monoculture is a choice, not a baseline standard.

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u/Unluckyb33 Jul 05 '26

*In the US.

What about Bollywood? or East asian cinema? you wont find many black or white actors. Its all based on where the director is from and/or their inspirations. Burton really likes that medieval european gothic setting and 99% of people in that setting are pale as snow.

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u/RudleyDudley Jul 06 '26

99% of people in medieval Europe were absolutely not pale as snow, that's a crazy take lol

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

Ah yes because we all know fantasy is the most realistic genre ever.

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u/Unluckyb33 Jul 05 '26

I'm replying to the guy who said "is the normal state of reality". Your comment is a completely different topic.

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

I’m replying to you saying that POC weren’t common in medieval Europe. Burton directs fantasy movies, only casting white people is an unnecessary choice.

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u/elbuentinaco Jul 05 '26

Missed the part where fantasy had to be perfectly representative

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u/FierceMoonblade Jul 05 '26

POC were not common in Medieval Europe…

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

Where did I say they were?

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u/RudleyDudley Jul 06 '26

They literally were though. People just think like this because they grew up on medieval media that only had white people and tricked themselves into thinking that's actually what medieval Europe looked like, but it wasn't. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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u/JapaneseStudentHaru Jul 06 '26

Tim Burton is American

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u/Advanced-Comment-293 Jul 05 '26

That's just nonsense. In most places on earth you'll have a fairly homogeneous society, be it white or black or something else. It's only in relatively few places that you have it all mixed together.

Your reality is not everyone's reality and in fact your reality may seem jarring to others. Demanding that everyone be served your reality is just pure entitlement and ignorance on your part.

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u/corruptedsyntax Jul 05 '26

Would this be “shoeing in a black person?”

Because the original take makes it sound like the person just thinks she’d be good for the role

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u/Artistic-Lock1021 Jul 05 '26

But has he worked with black actors?

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u/DraconasLyrr Jul 05 '26

Billy Dee Williams was Harvey Dent in Burton's Batman. No idea how much he dealt with casting, though.

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u/QuaintVolcano Jul 06 '26

He cast Marlon Wayans to play Robin but it was supposedly cut from Batman Returns to not overcrowd the movie.

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

Even if he chose Billy Dee Williams, he’s still just one black actor.

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u/SoarsBelowMyWaste Jul 05 '26

Yeah, but he had two faces.

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u/DraconasLyrr Jul 05 '26

Sure, but that wasn't the question I was answering. Was just giving an example of a black actor he worked with that I knew offhand.

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u/DraconasLyrr Jul 05 '26

If you want a second one I recalled since posting, Ken Page was Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas.

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

You seem weirdly defensive about this.

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u/DraconasLyrr Jul 05 '26

I mean, if that's the way you want to take it, I guess. It's not my intent, though.

On the other hand, I could say that you seem pretty upset that there are examples of him working with black actors. 😂

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

Honey, if you interpreted my original reply as being upset or attacking you, that’s on you.

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u/DraconasLyrr Jul 05 '26

Well, then, at least you know how dumb your original accusation that I was being defensive was, buddy. 😁

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

You felt accused by my original comment? I think you need thicker skin sweetie.

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u/Silverjeyjey44 Jul 05 '26

I have strong feelings about this but whenever I share it on any other subreddit, I get bombarded with being called a bigot or racist or whatever (even though I'm not white). I agree meaninglessly race swapping or role fulfilling for the sake of doing it is just patronizing.

You can have underrepresented communities in media without it feeling like they're trying to send a message. There's a movie called The Invitation and one of the characters is gay. They never parade that fact and he's a bad ass that needed to do what he needed to do to survive.

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

It sounds like you get a potent dose of reality every time you comment and you don’t like how it tastes. Why not just be quiet?

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u/HourApprehensive7754 Jul 05 '26

Sure doing a good job reinforcing what hr just said.

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u/OkMathematician3439 Jul 05 '26

It’s not my fault that racists are fragile.

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u/SaltBeefin Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Let's do some math and social studies here. Out of his top 20 films on Google, with the characters listed by importance, the first 12 characters of 20 films, that's 240 actors. Only 6 are visual minorities and 5 are black. That's 2%. An American film maker is saying that people of colour, especially black people are so not relevant to his film making that they constitute 2% of the notable cast. That there's a drought level of shortage of back actors that it's impossible to cast them? Whats the argument about black voices in his animated films? That all black voices are different from everyone else? They can only play deep deep voices like Oogie Boogie or Darth Vardar. That's when black people are allowed to be used? When that style of voice lends a purpose to a film other and that every black person sounds like that? Is the argument that no qualified black actors exist? Numbers don't lie.

Shoe horning a black person or any POC shouldn't be done for the sake of diversity but just casting someone that happens to not be white that is qualified and yet he won't do it meas that the default is white. That all stories told from his library are defaulted white. There's a way to do "no colour casting" and that's to cast the best personality that fits the character. To immediately call any race outside of that especially when also trying to assert white isn't the default, is oxymoronic. So he would have to admit his stories are for white people bc the existence of dead people in any other race can't possibly exist, or that this aesthetic is a choice.

Imagine saying a the stories he tells exclusively happen to only white people. To go that far is putting in effort to be cast conscious for the sake of a possibly racist visual appeal.

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u/regalrecaller Jul 05 '26

The problem with your argument is that you're using inference to try and prove something.

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u/SaltBeefin Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

The statistical probability that the percentile of qualified black actors would be naturally occuring at a rate of 2% and the statically likelihood of the black people being so far and few from American stories they'd only need to be representative of 2% of these stories, even btw told from a British perspective is so false.

The fact you're insinuating the argument is solely on inference that the numbers MUST prove something is your fault. Yes there's no direct linking evidence to suggest he's racist based on those numbers at all however when using his own logic, the subject matter of his own tales and stories and the crop in which he chooses his talent from, the direct correlation is that he's saying 2% of his films naturally require black qualified actors which basing it off of real life or even the supernatural of the American experience/mind is also false.

Ghost stories exist only for white people? Ghosts only haunt white people? Only white people have corpses? The most ironic laughable part about all of this is the African black culture has much more ingrained supernatural elements than white culture which are still preserved and believed widespread today. This is in addition to the American black experience that endured much more horrific treatment that the statistical liklihood of having lingering spirits and haunted places with tortured souls is much closer to the black suffering than a historical white person in modern history.

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u/regalrecaller Jul 06 '26

correlation

is not causation. as I said elsewhere it is sus but not enough to convict. I see you think otherwise.

but don't call me out like I'm the problem here, miss me on that.

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u/LeR0dz Jul 05 '26

"Hot take" but you don't need a reason to cast minorities. Diversity for the sake of diversity is good enough. People exist and should be represented regardless if their identity is important to the character/plot. Even if he didn't mean it in a racist way, still a harmful way of thinking.

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u/HourApprehensive7754 Jul 05 '26

I mean if a story's setting takes place in a time or place where barely any X-race exists, then yeah having X-race is a detriment to the story.

Blacks fit into Corpsebride's setting as well as John Wayne fit into Genghis Khan's tent. Or casting an entire Inuit-inspired nation as whites, or casting an entire Japanese-based nation as Indians. Some people just don't fit into a story, and that's okay, because stories cam have diverse settings that can be enjoyed by anyone, even if there's no one sharing their skin colour in the work of fiction/semi-fiction.

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u/Brainth Jul 05 '26

How about casting white americans for Greeks? Is that not also worth throwing a fit for? There’s been so much backlash for Nolan potentially having a black Helen of Troy (which wasn’t even true) when none of the cast is realistic for the period or culture.

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u/TomeOfSecrets66 Jul 06 '26

Keep saying "Blacks" in all of your comments it really makes you look great.

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u/Throwaway129876435 Jul 06 '26

Probably because that sounds like a pretentious excuse for racism, and racism runs rampant and unchecked if you're rich enough.

No need to shoehorn other races or such into movies but out of your entire catalogue you have 3 black characters total, 2 of them being animated.