From the
NY Daily News
Target is being criticized for advertising its "Annie"-themed clothing line with white models when the movie character is played by a black actress.
More than 10,000 people have signed a Change.org petition asking the company to replace ads with ones featuring girls of color.
"Being African American is not ugly, it is not bad and we are sellable!" the petition says. "These grossly misleading ads are adding to the divide and does not give young African American girls aspiring to become actors anything to be optimistic about."
Funny thing about this is:
Original Annie
The original Annie, including Daddy Warbucks, is white. Had white folks gone about complaining to whomever about the replacement of the white character, as originally conceived, by a black one, people would have shitted themselves. Yet I would completely understand doing so. It's not like The Wiz vs. The Wizard of Oz, in which the former was based on the latter but clearly named to establish that these were in fact different visions of the same movie.
In this case the entire idea of Annie was remade for whatever purpose. Now people want to be mad about advertisements that feature girls of the same race (mostly) as the
originally conceived Annie and folks are upset.
To me, better to have not even remade Annie so that the perpetually outraged could go about making their own stories rather than insisting on placing themselves into others.
Seriously. I cannot get myself worked up over this!
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