Tim Burton Taken to Task Over Lack of Diversity

By Travis Johnson

The students at Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children may display a wide range of weird abilities, but they’re united in their pasty whiteness, and that’s something which is sticking in the craw of more than a few folks.

Burton, who made a number of incredibly good films before going to make a number of incredibly bad ones, addressed the issue thusly:

“Nowadays, people are talking about it more, (but) things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct, like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black — I used to get more offended by that than just — 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.”

…which is a pretty hamfisted approach.

To be fair, Samuel L. Jackson is in Miss Peregrine, although he thinks he might actually be the first black person to feature in a Burton film (he’s obviously forgotten Billy D. Williams in Batman):

“I had to go back in my head and go, how many black characters have been in Tim Burton movies? And I may have been the first, I don’t know, or the most prominent in that particular way, but it happens the way it happens. I don’t think it’s any fault of his or his method of storytelling, it’s just how it’s played out. Tim’s a really great guy.”

Twitter, as is its wont, was less forgiving, with many calling out Burton for his lack of woke.

According to #TimBurton, an emphasis on diversity in film is the real oppression. What a privileged tool.

— Jason, First of His Name (@crazypastor) September 29, 2016

https://twitter.com/LB_JJefferies/status/781616494031536128

https://twitter.com/DaystoTrump/status/781702539913879553

…yeah, that one’s a little creepy.

https://twitter.com/insipid_drivel/status/781702418656624641

Casual Racism in Hollywood. Damn it #TimBurton , now I have to dislike you. Do better, man. https://t.co/ILkqggRo0o

— Basil (@Basil_Elf) September 30, 2016

Representation is a thorny issue, and while you might think that this is a storm in a teacup, it takes only a moment to recall garbage fires like the uproar that ensued when a POC girl was cast as a canonically black character in The Hunger Games (if you don’t actually recall, the tl;dr is that dumb racists were outraged). Also, it’s not like Burton casts colourblind – he casts the sort of people who would have looked good in an FW Murnau film, which is, shall we say, a limited palette. Still, is the Kooky King of Hot Topic’s predilection for pale skin and big eyes the hill to die on here? It’s a tough one.