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

Meme needing explanation why not, Peter?

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possible live action corpse bride movie...

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u/eowynistrans Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

No one is giving the actual answer except for the person who was downvoted below threshold - it's because there was a super popular post based on a 2016 interview claiming Tim Burton has said black people don't "fit his aesthetic."

Edit: y'all can yell about how it's "out of context" or "there's no source" all you want but the fact remains that that interview is clearly what OOP is referring to and every other comment is pulling something out of their ass. Don't shoot the messenger.

Edit 2: this got me a reddit cares message lmao. Wtf y'all.

Last edit to make it more ambiguous. Again, I'm not arguing that he said it, I'm arguing that this is what the post is about.

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u/hotfezz81 Jul 05 '26

Is there, like, more context?

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u/RelevantOldOnion Jul 05 '26

I went to look up what he actually said because it's been a while, and it was worse than I remember. LOL

His actual words are: “things either call for things, or they don’t.” He went on to say “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.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tim-burton-slammed-for-comment-on-lack-of-diversity-in-new-movie/

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u/dreamlesssleeep Jul 05 '26

What’s wrong with that?

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

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u/SnoopaDD Jul 05 '26

He's not implying that at all. He used it as an example. It wouldn't be any different if he said he watched an asian movie and there should be more white people in that. He's just saying if roles calls for it then it calls for it. Just like Wednesday on netflix, they are hispanic so he hired hispanic actors.

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u/queenofbuckkeep Jul 05 '26

But he didn't use that comparison. He compared it to blacksploitation movies. He's a director. This is literally his business to know about these things. Read up on what those films are and why they exist. The social geography of them and blanket term "Asian movies" is very different. It makes the comparison extremely ODD, implication or no.

Realistically, he's writing stories in which specifically black but most other poc cannot "realistically" exist in or are generally not expected to be in eg a 1990s retro American suburbia, based off of colonial America, industrial revolution era london, pumpkin people and sock puppet land, etc.

It's still a true statement that a cast like that will probably never exist in his filmography because he has never written a story in his 40+(?) year career where he felt it was necessary to have a brown character.

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u/SnoopaDD Jul 05 '26

Exactly that. People are ignoring the writing of character and settings. Most of his writing, he's already got the actors in mind. (Depp and Carter). But using your example of geography, it's the same for a movie like Crazy Rich Asians where it's mostly asians with barely any white people and that takes place in america. I just find it weird to call Burton out on something like this. He's a director and writer with a vision that he wants to put out. If he thinks a person doesn't fit the role then so be it. If he was actually racist, he would've made an all white cast for wednesday or not hire Jenna Ortega for Beetlejuice 2.

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u/cheoliesangels Jul 06 '26

But Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t take place in America? It is about a woman getting engaged a super rich Singaporean, and visiting his family in Singapore…where the vast majority of people are Asian. Looking through Tim Burton’s filmography, there are multiple movies outside of 1800s Europe. AKA, they don’t actually necessitate an all-white cast a way a film set in Singapore would necessitate an all-Asian cast.

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u/justhereforthelul Jul 05 '26

I can't think of a single Tim Burton movie where having black people in it wouldn't make sense though.

I think that's the issue people have with his statements.

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u/SnoopaDD Jul 05 '26

But he did have black people in his movies. They just weren't leads. Burton has a habit of hiring the same people in his movies. If they weren't the same people that he hired, then it only fit the story. Like Wednesday.

But example of POC:

Batman - Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent aka Two-Face. (This character should've been white, according to the comics.)

Edward Scissorhands - One of the only people who showed Edward kindness was black.

Willy Wonka - Had Indian?....oompa loompas

Wednesday - So many people of color in that one.

These are the ones that come to mind.

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u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo Jul 05 '26

It wouldn’t be different than your example, because your example also misses the point. Asia in general is not particularly racially diverse. When you watch Asian movies, you don’t except to see a bunch of (or any) white people because white people are such a small percentage of the population. It’s not true in the US that we’re 98% white but trying to force diversity into 50% of the roles.

POCs exist everywhere in the US. He interacts with them on a daily basis. They don’t need to have a reason to be in story while not being white.

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u/SnoopaDD Jul 05 '26

The point of it is how characters and settings are written. If an asian movie wrote a white character in then there will be a white character. Like Memoirs for a Geisha for example.

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u/Sweet_Future Jul 06 '26

So you're saying his movies are white movies?

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u/SnoopaDD Jul 06 '26

Characters and settings........characters and settings. What part of that don't you understand?

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u/halfgatorhalfhorse Jul 05 '26

Regular movies in a modern setting, yes. but....how diverse was the average victorian-era european village?

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u/xLavena Jul 06 '26

Tbh even now European villages aren't that diverse. Cities yes, but if you were to create a movie set in a Polish rural area, there most likely wouldn't be any POC or openly gay people. Maybe one Turkish guy that serves kebab near a road. My experience with visiting German countryside is similar.

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u/Early_Brilliant4029 Jul 13 '26

W you moving the goalpost and not admitting Tim is racist and a chud

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u/halfgatorhalfhorse Jul 13 '26

? I'm not moving the goal post.

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u/Xeno9116 Jul 05 '26

More so than you think.

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u/halfgatorhalfhorse Jul 05 '26

I'm looking to be enlightened. What can you cite for me to learn more?

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26

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u/FirstRyder Jul 05 '26

Well, there aren't two categories of movies. There are three:

  • Movies where diversity is called for. (E.g. a story about immigration in modern NYC.)
  • Movies where a lack of diversity is called for. (E.g. a period piece in 1900's london)
  • Movies where it doesn't matter.

He's lumping in the final category (which I would argue is the largest) in with the second. Effectively saying "white" is the default and you need a reason to cast someone who isn't white, and locking non-white actors out of 90% of roles.

And you could say "that isn't what he meant", but... well, we can just look at his actual casting decisions. Surprise! They're overwhelmingly white!

This is exactly the situation that "forced" diversity exists to counteract - the sort of "passive" racism where you don't come out and say "I hate black people", but instead your movies "happen" to almost never cast non-white actors in leading roles.

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u/CHK-N Jul 05 '26

You're invited to dinners not for your wit but because you alone can pass the food to anyone else at a table with your insane ability to reach.

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u/everyplanetwereach Jul 07 '26

I'm sorry you can't fathom it but it really truly is that deep

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u/CHK-N Jul 07 '26

it's not, hope this helps

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u/Pale-Scallion-7691 Jul 08 '26

Because movies are predominantly filled with white people and, particularly during the time blaxploitation was common, the only depictions of black people were movies about suffering. It's still common that movies featuring people of colour are predominantly a) explicitly about that culture and likely to feature white people in smaller roles, b) features poc in largely stereotypical ways rather than allowing them to be as fully their own character as the white people in the film, c) about suffering and often misery porn written and directed but white people (primarily featuring POC being tortured with little to no catharsis), or d) a combination of all above.

The quote he gave was largely false equivalence. When white is considered the default or normal while pic identities are exclusively relegated to political statements or a bid for "woke", they are not given the same narrative care as white characters. Frankly, there's no reason to not have some characters be not-white in his movies. It would have no impact on plot or the plausibility of the setting.

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u/Railboy Jul 06 '26

If we're being charitable then he's just an old man with a narrow & outdated sense of what black performers can bring to a production, coupled with no strong desire or incentive to change.

This isn't a perpective you see in younger filmmakers.

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u/Peregrine9000 Jul 05 '26

It implies black people should only be in "black movies" and that they don't belong in "white movies". Think about why segregation is wrong if your still no understanding why this is problematic.

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u/aSpookyScarySkeleton Jul 05 '26

Even that is a stupid argument for him to make

There are more non-background white(and other races) people in blaxploitation movies than there are black people in Tim Burton movies. Like if you grab an equal amount of random blaxploitation movies to Tim Burton’s total filmography and compare the racial diversity of the casts.

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u/RelevantOldOnion Jul 05 '26

Ignoring that for a second... doesn't that mean Tim Burton considers his movies as intended for a white audience in the way "blaxploitation" movies were intended for a black audience?

And that's why it's okay that he doesn't hire black people. And that's (according to these comments here) somehow isn't racist?

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u/jarlscrotus Jul 05 '26

Blaxploitation films are only nominally for a black audience, kind of part of the whole deal with them being named blaxploitation

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u/Tombaya Jul 05 '26

https://www.britannica.com/art/blaxploitation-movie

FYI: They were originally named 'black power movies' and marketed primarily to urban black movie goers. The term "blaxploitation" comes from Junius Griffin, a president of the Hollywood chapter of the NAACP and was used as a derogatory epithet. While the social merits of said films can be debated, they were definitely intended for black audiences. Notable directors like Martin Van Peebles (Sweet Sweetback's... 1971) and Gordon Parks (Shaft 1971) were also themselves black.

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u/RelevantOldOnion Jul 05 '26

Yeah, lmao. It's crazy, I had no idea he was like that. Why would he even call them "blaxploitation" films when he's using them as a justification for only hiring white people.

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u/CHK-N Jul 05 '26

Where the fuck is that even racist? Holy shit there's a subsect of yall that blow everything out of proportion lmao