“Racebending” and the Cultural Evolution of Pop-Culture Icons
Changing the sex, gender identity or skin color of your favorite characters is an ongoing debate. Would the creators have approved?
The above photo is not from a film or television show. I found the image on Facebook, shared it on Pinterest to a terrific response, where it afterwards was shared widely on Instagram.
Turns out, the image is a profile pic on Twitter and it has been praised as being “beautiful,” “sensational,” and a “WOW!”
I agree with all those raves.
If this photo, however, was a still for a feature film or television series … I’m convinced all hell would break loose.
There are precedents. Dozens of them.
The following is an opinion piece based on factual sources.
Racebending
As defined by Google, racebending is a neologism (new definition) that describes the changing of a character’s perceived race or ethnicity during the adaptation of a work from one medium to another.
Racebending typically takes two forms in modern-day media, either 1) whitewashing a long-established non-Caucasian character with the usual (lack of) judgement…
