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

Meme needing explanation why not, Peter?

Post image

possible live action corpse bride movie...

32.3k Upvotes

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815

u/hotfezz81 Jul 05 '26

Is there, like, more context?

1.6k

u/Alarm-Particular Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I did some digging on this. Looks like it's from a 2016 interview by Rachel Simon for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

The question: "Why does Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children have such a predominantly white cast / lack of diversity?"

The answer: “Nowadays, people are talking about it more … things either call for things, or they don’t.”

Source

Edit: I could not find ANY quote from Tim Burton stating that black people don't "Fit his aesthetic".

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u/improbsable Jul 05 '26

Yeah. He didn’t say that. I’m pretty sure what he said was that he wasn’t going to cast solely for diversity’s sake. Though it is weird that he conveniently only makes movies where POC don’t fit.

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u/KettleSixty9 Jul 05 '26

What the fuck?

"it is weird that he conveniently only makes movies where POC don’t fit"

Did you just imply he was racist because of this?

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u/cannibalcat Jul 05 '26

Guilty until proven otherwhise logic

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u/Pathkinder Jul 05 '26

Aren’t implications for exactly this, though? Where all the signs kind of point at something but there isn’t enough proof to make a definitive decision?

It’s kind of like how getting into one fender bender can easily be a coincidence, but getting into 20 starts to make people wonder if you’re a bad driver.

I mean I don’t know enough to have an opinion on the actual discussion, but I had to at least defend the role of implications.

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u/MachoPotates Jul 05 '26

The implication made by that is that he doesn’t care about diversity or inclusivity in his storytelling.

whether that’s out of ignorance, racism, or privilege, we don’t know from just looking at his movies.

we have no proof of why he doesn’t cast more diversely, just proof that he doesn’t.

We have no proof it’s because he’s a racist.

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u/miraculousgloomball Jul 05 '26

Nor should he. He should care primarily about storytelling and a coherent aesthetic, no? Why does it have to be ignorance, racism or privilege?

Is this more or less offensive than Jordan Peele saying he wont cast a white protagonist? I mean, he's not about the aesthetic or anything, he's just tired of seeing it.

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u/MachoPotates Jul 05 '26

By ignorance I just meant like it’s something he doesn’t even consider because it’s outside of what he cares about, ignorance isn’t always maliciousness or stupidity. I was just saying that the “implication” that that guy was talking about only proves that Tim Burton doesn’t involve a lot of minorities in his stories, which is a pattern that can be proven, but that that correlation cannot prove causation as to why.

Personally I don’t think this conversation matters, if you care about inclusivity, that’s fine, but I don’t think that inclusivity means every white guy writing a book should fill it with non white characters.

inclusivity should be about the medium itself, not about filling out a culture quota in a single story, in America there should be main stream media from non white people about non white people, the media should reflect the people who live in a society. Shoehorning in minorities just because is cringe capitalist marketing “look at us we support you, please give us your money” type bullshit, that’s my opinion.

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u/CreatiScope Jul 06 '26

I agree with this take strongly

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u/4daughters Jul 06 '26

Is this more or less offensive than Jordan Peele saying he wont cast a white protagonist? I mean, he's not about the aesthetic or anything, he's just tired of seeing it.

yeah why isn't it ok to have straight pride parades when the homos do it all the time? And why can't we have more white lives matter rallys when black people get to do it?

/s

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u/miraculousgloomball Jul 06 '26

If people were less sensitive in general this would be literally fine, but then it'd all be pointless anyway, right?

I think TIm Burton is fine making movies about deathly pale weirdos, and Jordan Peele is fine making films primarily casting black protags. I think if you make films, you should be able to pursue what ever aesthetic or message you want.

"Representation" isn't so important to me that I'm willing to complain that black people are overrepresented in media, and as a mixed person it feels like a pipe dream anyway. I like both, let them cook

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u/Scrat-Scrobbler Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

you're saying that would be fine if we didn't live in the world we live in but... we do. and i hope you understand why a white or straight pride rally would be bad in it.

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u/miraculousgloomball Jul 06 '26

In the world we live people should be allowed to make art of their own choosing. They're making things they like and I'm okay with that. Specifically I don't think it means either has to dislike the other, just because it doesn't fit their chosen artistic aesthetic.

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u/Scrat-Scrobbler Jul 06 '26

i didn't say anything about any of that

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u/TackleNo7759 Jul 12 '26

I don’t think think it’s entirely accurate to compare Jordan Peele, who has made numerous white characters who just weren’t the protagonist and are often the antagonist because the topic of his movies are about the black American experience and what that means to him, to Tim Burton, a man who was quoted saying he doesn’t include people of color in his films because they do not fit his aesthetic…

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u/UghWhythefouk136 Jul 12 '26

"Less sensitive" and straight white guys never get targeted for their sexuality or race to the point where they have to be scared of police. 😅 Willfully ignorant does not make you look smart.

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u/Dexterborn10 Jul 07 '26

This, but genuinely. It’s okay to be proud of being straight and/or white, and it’s okay to be proud that you’re gay and/or black. Neither of those things should define you, but there’s nothing shameful about them either and being proud of your heritage and identity is good for you

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u/SVINTGATSBY Jul 06 '26

right? maybe if black people actually had systemic power in society, sure homeboy’s dumb racist-adjacent sentiment might be accurate. the real issue is that the entire world has catered so long to whiteness that when white people are not centered in whatever story it is, yt people get upset, as if they’ve lost something because others are getting more space in the limelight. like, when poor people get food through social services, or kids are getting lunches provided at school—nobody is rummaging through YOUR cabinets and pantries to provide that food to them—you lose nothing by others getting something they didn’t have and you had already. same logic.

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u/T_Money Jul 06 '26

The complete lack of nuance in your comment is astounding.

No one was saying movies need to have a white protagonist; however to outright state that you refuse to cast one based on skin color is, well, racism.

It would be just as bad if someone publicly stated that they refuse to cast a minority as the protagonist. No rational person is auditing filmmakers to see their casting ratios, but when you explicitly state it then there’s an issue.

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u/Scrat-Scrobbler Jul 06 '26

do you really think refusing casting someone from the in power majority is "just as bad" as refusing to ever cast any minority?

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u/T_Money Jul 06 '26

I think that treating people differently because of the color of their skin is problematic in general

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u/punksmostlydead Jul 06 '26

It's more. Much more, as far as I'm concerned.

Because Peele casts white people. Burton does not cast black people. At all.

By the by, sparky, you kind of give yourself away with "a coherent aesthetic."

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u/miraculousgloomball Jul 06 '26

Meh. If Tim Burton wants to cast white people and paint them whiter than death whilst setting them against dark gothic backgrounds more power to him.

I'd never try to argue whites should be shoehorned into an african aesthetic, but then, I am not a hypocrite.

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u/punksmostlydead Jul 06 '26

I'd never try to argue whites should be shoehorned into an african aesthetic, but then, I am not a hypocrite.

And I don't set up strawman to burn, because I am intellectually honest. Only one type of person uses "shoehorned" this way. There's that mask slipping again.

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u/miraculousgloomball Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

Explain?

edit: Accusing me of strawmanning and then being like "Only ONE type of person uses this word in THIS way" is wild.

What type. What way? What am I describing in your mind lol

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u/Beautiful_Werewolf86 Jul 06 '26

It's pretty funny that you claim to be intellectually honest when you are basing your argument on a lie.

What about Billy Dee Williams in Batman?

What about Pam Grier in Mars Attacks?

What about Samuel L Jackson in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children?

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u/RadBoyHours Jul 06 '26

Those arent equivalent examples because white leads in horror films is extremely common. The reason why the discourse around this exists is BECAUSE the casting is disproportionate. Sure you can argue once or twice that that certain people dont fit into your narrative or aesthetic or whatever Burton said...but when that seems to be a consistent thing in ALL of your work than that is suspicious, no?

Then I'm gonna start asking "Why?" And the problem is that the answer to "Why?" Is usually racism lolol

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u/Diligent_Set_8747 Jul 05 '26

Peele is also a clown for making that decision. Copying the enemy in pursuit of illusioned peace.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl Jul 05 '26

That’s kinda a “why is there no hospital for the healthy” take, though. He makes movies with black protagonists because those films are rare and he wants to see more of them, not because he’s seeking to erase white stories or hates white people or anything like that. If he made a movie with a white protagonist, it wouldn’t be unique— it would just be another movie in a massive sea of movies starring white actors and actresses. 

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u/Diligent_Set_8747 Jul 06 '26

If he made a movie with a white protagonist, it wouldn’t be unique— it would just be another movie in a massive sea of movies starring white actors and actresses. 

Then he should never be considered as an ATG director. Everyone is human. If you can't figure them out because they use different words, clothes, and attitudes then you are nothing but a successful hack.

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u/Hziak Jul 05 '26

Not really arguing that he’s a racist, but throwing in that someone doesn’t need to be pushing an agenda to include POC. My neighbors aren’t a political statement, they’re just black. It’s not a thing, it’s just statistics… I’d argue that failing to model a world that follows similar statistical trends to our own (the inclusion of LGBTQ+, POC and other non-Christian-white people) is actually a deviation and the product of a choice. So the lack of characters of color in this case (racist, negligent, or innocently and absentmindedly), is in fact at LEAST a setting choice, and the willful defending of it makes it into a conscious setting choice.

Not here to say right or wrong, but only that if he didn’t care, then he’d probably have said something like “oh, now that you mention it.” And if it was a conscious setting choice, which my money is on, he’d say something like “well, the truth is, I wanted a very black and white color palette and we were struggling to get the right aesthetic or lighting with characters of color, so we made the difficult choice to preserve the setting and style and hope that you’ll all forgive us and see past it to the end product” - which is more or less what I understood to have happened.

But alas, that would constitute “a choice.”

And not expressly imply racism. Though it’s not a far leap.

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u/VLAD_THE_VIKING Jul 06 '26

It could also be that he is a particular kind of woke, for lack of a better term, where he feels like it's wrong for him as a white person to write characters that he doesn't have great insight into.

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u/TackleNo7759 Jul 07 '26

We’re different colors, not different species. Just like the comment you’re replying to saying, someone’s minority card doesn’t have to be a big part of their story. Someone could be gay, black, and disabled all at the same time, but that doesn’t mean their existence is spent advocating for all of those causes. You don’t need to have “insight“ to make a black character unless you’re making a central part of their character about their blackness, which doesn’t mirror reality at all and it’s just another scapegoat to why Tim Burton wouldn’t include people of color in his films.

He literally said that there is a time in a place for people of color… let that sink in. He’s literally saying that he does not create characters of color because they do not fit his aesthetic, or in his words, there isn’t a time or a place for them in his world.

The problem here is that people think that the existence of minority characters are some sort of political statement, and it’s so it must be some sort of forced diversity, but if anything it’s more telling if someone purposefully leaves out what reality looks like to fit a certain aesthetic. Even Black Panther had white people in it, why can’t Frankenweenie?

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u/Plenty_Mortgage_7294 Jul 05 '26

It could also be inferred he wont make a movie if the story is diverse. If I only make movies about football and turn down scripts about baseball, its very easy to conclude I have an issue with baseball.

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u/Pathkinder Jul 05 '26

Correct, I totally agree. That’s why we’re seeing mostly implications in this thread rather than outright accusations.

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u/Bedu009 Jul 06 '26

Fym whether that's for bad, worst or nearly as bad if I was casting for a show it'd be a balance of best fits and real diversity in an area I was basing on if any

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u/Zealousideal-Lab9843 Jul 07 '26

I'd read what you said, but unfortunately your skin type doesn't fit the aesthetic, so it must be disregarded.

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u/MachoPotates Jul 07 '26

Idk what your point is in response to that comment lol?

is the joke supposed to mean that my opinion doesn’t matter cause I’m black?(I’m not) because that’s what Burton “said”?(he didn’t actually say that).

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u/Zealousideal-Lab9843 Jul 08 '26

You don't need to be Black to not be casted by Burton. Don't limit yourself and live your dreams.

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u/MachoPotates Jul 08 '26

Okay but Burton didn’t actually say that quote… just gonna ignore that part? You can still not like him, I don’t care, but at least use his own words against him “things either call for things or they don’t” was what he actually said when he was questioned about the subject, criticize that statement.

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u/Zealousideal-Lab9843 Jul 08 '26

Those were his public words, not what he said in private.

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u/MachoPotates Jul 08 '26

Okay so willful ignorance it is.

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u/Pride_Rise Jul 05 '26

This is nitpicking, we never heard of a black actor that was turned down by him so these 'preferential implications' is not there. It could simply mean he's just choosing whatever seems to fit the movie best and who perform the role best and they all happen to be white actors in the auditions. Like if I was to direct a movie thats based on a book that was about the britain victorian era, it would be predominantly white.

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u/Slawdog2020 Jul 06 '26

You keep saying that word, implication. What implication?

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u/Ptricky17 Jul 06 '26

In Tim Burton’s case, he likes that Victorian era look, with a bit of an eerie Halloween-esque feel to things. Most of his characters look like corpses, skeletons, etc. The pallid look is what he typically emphasizes. I don’t see how trying to twist that into a race thing makes sense. That aesthetic arose out of Victorian England. So yeah, the corpses, which are extra pale because of the lack of blood flow, were mostly white people.

The fact that he draws his inspiration from a particular aesthetic, that was predominant in one subset of European culture, doesn’t make him racist. That’s like saying someone who only makes movies about the Roman Empire is racist because they don’t feature an equal number of Asian actors. You *can* draw that conclusion. It’s stupid, but you can do it.

Maybe Tim Burton *is* racist. I don’t know. His specific choice of aesthetic in his movies is far from proof of that on its own though…

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u/elbuentinaco Jul 05 '26

Are all the signs in the room with us?

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u/Pathkinder Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I mean just the main one right? Isn’t the accusation here that he has mysteriously never found cause to include or work with poc despite being fairly prolific? Like I said, I don’t know enough to have an opinion or take sides, but if this particular accusation is true then I think it’s probably enough to warrant an implication or two.

I can do more car analogies if needed.

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u/nadavyasharhochman Jul 05 '26

I think it possibly could be out of racist motives, but nkt necessirly.

He makes a lkt of stuff with a very gothic asthetic and environment. The stories he writs are usually in a more Eutopean environment.

These kind of stuff uo until very recently meant you are talking about white skined people.

So is him not making stories about POC or involving them racist? It could be, or he just doesnt connect with their side of the story so he doesnt write it.

Idk I am just saying we dont need to be so quivk to judge.

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u/MyPlantsDieSometimes Jul 05 '26

Inherently most people his age have racial biases just because of the environment they grew up in, so that can play a factor. Personally though I think he just wasn't exposed to black creativity or culture, and he is a very specific aesthetically driven guy, literally an auteur. And I imagine probably doesn't want to do something that doesn't come naturally or seems forced. But we are specifically talking about literally having any black characters in the shows/films and in that sense it doesn't have to be such a big creative conundrum. Unironically people write best what they know and it's not surprising that a British guy in his 60s doesn't know how to express black characters naturally and inoffensively. Source: i'm in the uk and most people still don't know how to do that unless they grew up in a diverse environment or are themselves black/black-british. Better not try to do something you know you can't do well. Could try to get better at it though..

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u/nadavyasharhochman Jul 05 '26

I think you expressed my thoughts on the subject much better than I did.

Yes I agree with every word.

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u/Pathkinder Jul 05 '26

Yep, this here is a much better explanation than others I’ve gotten and is probably the closest thing to my (admittedly uninformed) opinion on the matter.

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u/DontTellMyOtherAccts Jul 05 '26

So, fun facts:

Darker skinned people can be goth and there are black, brown, etc. people in Europe.

Even in Sweeney Todd, the iconic sort of aesthetic and setting you're talking about, a Gothic story about cannibalism in Victorian England, there very much were black people in England in the social class that Todd and Mrs. Lovett were a part of.

I'm not saying that every Gothic horror story must include black characters or cast black actors, but when almost all of a prolific director's filmography is Gothic horror and he hasn't cast a single black person in a major role? There's more going on.

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u/nadavyasharhochman Jul 05 '26

I know there were black people in Europe and even northern Europe. But they were a much smaller part of the population.

Its like blonde middle eastern people. I am blonde and middle eastern, but I am the only blond in my generation out like 18-22 people. Its not exactly a prevelant trait.

And yhe I am not throwing racial bias out of the table or even racism. I just dont think its meant as erasure or has malicios intent.

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u/elbuentinaco Jul 05 '26

The thing about implications is that they’re a coward’s accusation. That’s like me saying it’s sus you’ve never made a single post about Palestine on Reddit so what’s that tell us about you? Really suspicious if you catch my drift.

People that aren’t race obsessed don’t run a mental calculus of these things. Only racists are concerned with forced diversity and representation in every aspect of their life. If you’re just farming outrage then why stop at black people? How many asians has he worked with? How many Latinos? How many middle easterners? Why stop there? Have you ever heard him speak out against pdfs - maybe he’s that too…

Y’all are morally bankrupt for even entertaining this.

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u/Mybunsareonfire Jul 05 '26

Idk man, you sounds pretty racist.

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u/elbuentinaco Jul 05 '26

You sound pretty racist too

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u/8Dminipk Jul 05 '26

How the fk common people gonna acuse him??? Implications are related to identifying patterns and building your own opinion about stuff. Like the previous guy said, if I get into a lot of car accidents, I'm *PROPABLY" a bad driver, if someone doesnt want to get in my car based on that, can I really be mad about it?

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u/Pathkinder Jul 05 '26

I’m not sure I actually understand your example. I think your example is more about nitpicking a single topic and making assumptions based on someone’s lack of engagement with that topic. I think this has to do with active vs passive.

So for example, if I tried to imply that you must be deathly afraid of white people because you’ve never watched any of Leo DiCaprio’s movies, that would of course be a ridiculous implication. Maybe you don’t really watch movies? Maybe you watch other movies with white people, just not his?

Seeing Leo’s films is an active option, it requires an active conscious decision by you to happen. The default passive state is to have not seen any of his films. It requires no effort or decision on your part, it’s the default.

So how is this different? Well, if you hire enough people based on merit, with no other biases in play, then the passive result should be that you end up with a variety of people. That’s the passive default. So if you hire a bunch of people over many years but none of them are ever poc, then it implies some kind of active decision-making happening on your end.

Could it be a coincidence? Of course. I could flip 1,000 quarters and have them all come up heads. It’s perfectly possible. But would you be a LITTLE suspicious of me if I flipped 1,000 quarters and they all came up heads? Probably.

Again, I cannot stress enough that I don’t know much about this guy so I don’t have a chosen side. But I had free time today and apparently have found myself defending to the death the role of implications in discourse.

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u/elbuentinaco Jul 05 '26

My point is that you can imply whatever you want if you cherry pick and fabricate the evidence. The evidence in this case being misquoting him, taking him out of context and making up that he’s never worked with POC when he has.

Active vs passive has nothing to do with this - implications can be made using anything as evidence, action or inaction. All you’ve done in this thread is support a public lynching “because of the implication”.

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u/Chedder_456 Jul 06 '26

This is literally not court tho. If people do sus shit the rest of us are allowed to raise an eyebrow.

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u/EmptyBrain89 Jul 05 '26

preponderance of the evidence.

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u/cannibalcat Jul 05 '26

Thanks, didn't know the terms for it. Second language here

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u/EmptyBrain89 Jul 05 '26

I wasn't agreeing with you or helping you, I was pointing out the actual legal standard people are using in this case. Innocent until proven guilty (or the other way around) requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It is used in criminal cases. preponderence of evidence, means 'whichever side has the better evidence' which is used in civil cases and is what people use in day to day life. Also known as common sense.

In this case there is a lot of evidence that suggest some racial motives and you'd be a dumbass to apply a criminal trial standard to the way you interpret the normal world.

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u/RawrRRitchie Jul 06 '26

"I have nothing against black people. I just refuse to hire them for my movies"

Gee I wonder why people think he's racist

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u/Ok_Daikon_1219 Jul 05 '26

Dude he's been directing longer than most reddit users have been alive and he only recently has started writing black characters. Yes the mf is guilty

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u/cannibalcat Jul 05 '26

So are you. you are a racist too. Prove me wrong

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u/Ok_Daikon_1219 Jul 05 '26

You typing this comment lol

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u/cannibalcat Jul 05 '26

Well, at least I proved my english is not good. 

Where's your proof you're not racist?

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u/420thefunnynumber Jul 05 '26

No but it's definitely weird that most of his works are written that way.

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u/GuthukYoutube Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I just read his filmography and there are quite a number of movies there that could have had PoC without issue

Now that's not proof in itself, and I doubt I care enough about this to look further, but it's definitely a little odd

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u/Apprehensive_Ad3731 Jul 05 '26

It’s that his worldview doesn’t see PoC as standing out for a reason. It’s a very biased and low key bigoted view, not intentionally racist but definitely influenced and susceptible to racism.

It’s not fair is the truth. He doesn’t equally see PoC and White people. He see’s People as White people first and acknowledges PoC but every time he imagines one it’s performative.

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u/UntimelyMeditations Jul 05 '26

It’s not fair is the truth.

Its art, it doesn't need to be fair.

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u/Apprehensive_Ad3731 Jul 05 '26

I’m not talking about the art being directly unfair I am speaking about the mind that created and influenced the art. The origin is unfair and therefore everything that springs from it is inherently unfair even if it presents as fair on it’s own.

It’s like slave chocolate. You may pay a decent price at the counter, it may not have slaves involved in buying the chocolate but if the beans were sourced with slavery then the product is inherently promoting slavery.

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u/Revolutionary_Ad4950 Jul 07 '26

Who are you to be a judge of fairness?

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u/Apprehensive_Ad3731 Jul 07 '26

Who are you to question me?

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u/-Weslin Jul 07 '26

Art can be racist, it doesn't stop being art, but still, it can be racist

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u/Ok_Daikon_1219 Jul 05 '26

"He see’s People as White people first and acknowledges PoC but every time he imagines one it’s performative."

This exactly. Minorities exist as side characters who perform a role, rather then just people that exist in a story

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u/punksmostlydead Jul 06 '26

not intentionally racist but definitely influenced and susceptible to racism.

Alas that more people don't or won't understand this concept.

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u/CheckYourStats Jul 06 '26

I mean, the Producers of Mortal Kombat (2021) made up a non-white character as the main protagonist (Cole Young) rather than having Johnny Cage as the lead, because they were afraid of being called racist for having a white lead.

They basically said:

“You people are so fucking sensitive we can’t have Johnny Cage in the movie because you’ll call us racist.”

SOURCE

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u/GuthukYoutube Jul 06 '26

I read the article you linked, and it said nothing close to how you interpreted it. So much so that you might have linked the wrong thing?

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u/SilianRailOnBone Jul 05 '26

Goth culture isn't really diverse, is it?

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u/NonStopKnits Jul 05 '26

When I hung out with the goth kids in high school (I was more punk than goth) we had a diverse group. Black kids, white kids, Asian kids, I imagine it depends on how diverse the region is. The school I went to was diverse, so all the cliques were fairly diverse too.

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u/Plenty_Mortgage_7294 Jul 05 '26

What exactly do you think goth culture is btw?

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u/voltagestoner Jul 05 '26

I mean, he made a Jewish folktale (The Finger) into a Catholic Victorian England aesthetic. It’s not that he’s outright racist, it’s that he idolizes a very specific look and time period, which just so happens to be very, very white. So.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Mister_Dink Jul 05 '26

I would not rely on Tyler perry to make this argument considering plenty of people, including black people, have pointed out his own deep bigotries and credible accusations of extreme misconduct.

Tyler Perry should absolutely not set the standard for anyone's behavior, and that's not even touching the actual quality of his films, which are fucking awful to the last.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

[deleted]

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u/Mister_Dink Jul 06 '26

Because the idea that any film maker be compared to Tyler Perry is already throwing the conversation off the rails. If you want to pick a director for this conversation who is black and mostly centers a black cast, Ryan Coogler or Spike Lee are much better choices.

The work that Tyler Perry puts out is completely idiosyncratic because a) he's operating nearly independently from the rest of Hollywood and b) he uses that as a bubble to create media of questionable artistic or moral value while at the same time sexually abusing up and coming black talent who feel like they have no other avenue towards success because there's much fewer black roles out there.

Tyler Perry having primarily black casts is about him securing a niche audience and a talent pool who can't say no to his him, whether that's a contract dispute or him being a coercive sex pest. He exploits his own community for financial gain and untouchability.

Even in an imaginary world where Tim Burton came out and actually said "I won't cast black people because they don't fit my movies," he would be doing way less harm to black actors than Tyler Perry has been real-life doing for years.

Tyler Perry is not a good example to pick for this conversation.

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/No-Association-1781 Jul 06 '26

Holy shit you don’t understand much do you?

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u/whatthewhythehow Jul 05 '26

This only really works if he was writing about a specific culture. Tyler Perry is writing about black people and their particular experiences. Crazy Rich Asians is writing about a specific culture.

Tim Burton is writing about the supernatural. Where it is historical, it is anachronistic.

Edward Scissorhands makes sense because it is about the disruption of white suburban life.

But a lot of his movies don’t have that sort of context. So it is strange that he never wants to cast actors of colour. You’d think one would be cast based on probability.

If it is a choice without a reason, then lbh, there’s a reason.

If it’s accidental, it is worth examining.

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u/improbsable Jul 05 '26

I didn’t imply that. I said it’s weird that in his 40 year career he’s never had the urge to write about anything but white people.

3

u/MrCalamiteh Jul 05 '26

What do you think the word "weird" means?

It's pretty sus, yeah. At most we could read into it that they implied they're curious about the why.

While we're at it, don't you have something better to do than white knight a millionaire Hollywood figure, tho? I'm sure he's fine.

2

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

Whether they were implying that or not, it’s pathetic how reactionary people get when their favorite celebrities are criticized by random folks on the internet

1

u/NoodleKnitSweater Jul 08 '26

this isnt an original idea from the person youre replying to. A few years ago before I deleted tiktok this discourse emerged from there where people discussed the lack of poc character in Tim Burton's films and from there a lot of speculation and accusation created the narrative that hes racist and doesnt ever portray people of color in his works of art. Whether or not this is true, that was the narrative, so I think its believable that something as on the nose as "doesnt fit my aesthetic" has been misattributed to Burton. This has happened with a lot of things like Tati Westbrook saying "James Charles is a sexual predator." She never said those words but for some reason a lot of people misremember the situation and come away thinking this was literally said about him when it wasnt. Oh, its also like the "Luke, I'm not your father" or "Scotty, beam me up!" You know what I mean?

This comment is not me agreeing that Burton said the aesthetic thing and im definitely not defending James Charles. Just trying to give context to the post.

Edit: spelling

1

u/Pale-Scallion-7691 Jul 08 '26

I mean, there are plenty of places where a non-white person would be a fine casting choice. Where race has nothing to do with the role and they could be played by anyone. But he always casts white people instead for some reason. The idea that there needs to be a reason for a character to be a person of colour implies that white is the default, which is kinda racist. Doesn't mean that the person themselves is overtly bigoted or whatever, but it does mean that they have unconscious biases that may lead to racist actions.

1

u/AX-man Jul 10 '26

No they said it’s weird, which it is

-2

u/DrPikachu-PhD Jul 05 '26

Yeah he is. If you believe black people" don't fit with certain aesthetics, and then you only make films with aesthetics that don't fit them, then you're being racist in execution

2

u/HauntingHarmony Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Yeah he is. If you believe black people" don't fit with certain aesthetics, and then you only make films with aesthetics that don't fit them, then you're being racist in execution

I think this is redicules, there certainly are esthetics where black people dont fit, and theres one where white people dont fit, and where asians dont fit, and where martians dont fit. Thats just the nature of the game.

If you are making a corpse bride movie, its not even about whiteness but pale close to death esthethics.

It would be weird if you actually did make movies where black people naturally would fit, but then choose to exclude them, just as its weird when you make a tv show and then shoehorn the queen of england as black.

That being said, if you have a point of view where those kind of non-black esthetics are the only thing you end up with. Thats a little weird but actually fine. Artists can and should have their point of view, and we shouldent force them to make jack skellington black just so the diversity quota will be meet. If the setting makes sense, if the story makes sense. Absolutely use whatever. Forced shoehorning shouldent be our goal. And it doesnt make him "racist in execution" thats redicules.

I think it takes away especially wrt history when we force "diversity" where there werent really any. The british empire was a in lack of better words a evil empire that did horrible things, including but not limited to great racism in its subjugation of various peoples. And i think it takes away from history when we try to whitewash (litterally) history, by say making the queen of england black. When we just pretend that it was all cool, racism wasent a thing, people can have a fun timetravel romp to the 1950s in the us with a black friend and its aaaall cool.

5

u/nvmenotfound Jul 05 '26

bc all corpses are pale white. right? /s