Tim Burton explains why his films have so many white people as Beetlejuice 2 is labeled 'racist'
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Hollywood, Tim Burton
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images/Warner Bros.
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Hollywood, Tim Burton
Tim Burton offered up an explanation for his casting choices after a number of his movies were called out for featuring predominantly white actors.
Director and animator Burton has established himself as a high-profile name Hollywood thanks to releases like Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Sweeney Todd.
Most recently he's worked with Jenna Ortega on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but the director has received some criticisms from viewers over representation in the movie.
Burton has previously come under fire for some of his casting choices in earlier films, including by The Nightmare Before Christmas screenwriter Caroline Thompson.
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During an appearance on the film podcast Script Apart, Thompson claimed she'd butted heads with creators of the movie over the villain, Oogie Boogie, who was voiced by Black actor and singer Ken Page.
On the podcast, Thompson said: "Oogie Boogie is a derogatory term for African Americans in the American South. I begged the powers that be to change something about that character, because of that.
“I said: this is so ugly and dangerous and antithetical to everything inside me. I did not win that fight… It was a troubling part of the film for me, to be frank.”
The controversy is now continuing with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which features one scene in which Astrid Deetz (Ortega) finds herself on board the ‘Soul Train’ on the way to the Great Beyond.
The scene is a reference to the '70s musical variety TV show Soul Train, which spotlighted R&B, soul and hip-hop music by Black artists.
After watching the scene, one Beetlejuice Beetlejuice viewer commented: “Isn’t this kind of racist, or is it just me?”
Another wrote: “While I was watching the movie, my thoughts were ‘He finally hired a lot of Black actors but why only for this segment of the movie?'"
When it comes to Burton's casting choices, he has previously spoken out about having a predominantly white cast in his 2016 movie Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
When asked by Bustle about the lack of diversity in the film, as well as in his movies more generally, Burton responded: "Nowadays, people are talking about it more … 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."
Though some viewers took issue with the Soul Train sequence in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, others defended Burton.
One person wrote: "I actually felt a piece of amazing Black culture come from the ‘Soul Train’ scene.”
UNILAD has contacted representatives for Burton for comment.