The marketing of movies is another example of society not reflecting positive and normalizing images of people of color.
Movies with black actors that are advertised in suburban areas mysteriously don’t feature the black actors.
A couple of recent examples are ‘Annie’ and ‘Home.’ (Yeah, my frame of reference is children’s movies because that’s about the only thing I get to watch these days.)
Quvenzhané Wallis, the little girl who played Annie, was taken out of Target’s in-store ads for their Annie clothing collection. They featured only white children.
Tip, the main human character in 'Home,' is a black girl (possibly biracial Hispanic/black, it's not entirely clear) from Barbados. She was not in any ads in the suburbs. McDonald's had a merchandising deal for their Happy Meals. The toys were all aliens and Tip’s cat. I wanted to buy a Tip t-shirt for KG because she loves the movie and Tip, but I couldn’t find a t-shirt with only Tip on it. There are a couple of unlicensed shirt with her and the alien, but they aren't very good.
And it’s not just black characters. It affects other races, too. Take a look at Disney’s webpage with all the 'Big Hero 6' merchandise.
The main character of the movie is an Asian boy named Hiro. He's got four sidekicks and a robot. One merchandise item features Hiro. Three feature the white girl sidekick while none features the Asian girl sidekick. The white boy and black boy sidekicks each have one item. The robot has the most merchandise.
Why is the merchandising for characters of color missing? I know most of you will say that it's just a simple matter of supply and demand. It's advertising where the market is.
Well, okay, but why is the demand for white or non-human characters? Seems to me that this is a major indictment on our society's racial values. And I think that's a major problem.
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