JustShit League

Oh boy here I go I’ve always wanted to talk about the predicted diversity in the upcoming remake!

I completely disagree with both of you here but that’s irrelevant because I believe gender swapping isn’t happening at all this go around. There’s no need for it. The ONLY sway they might be tempted to do is Charlie. That being said the story has been criticized to high hell and rightly so for being a white bread fest. 

The recent news that Charlie was originally supposed to be black pretty much confirms we’re getting a black Charlie that’s most likely a boy. They need to tackle diversity in race before they gender swap or anything. If that ever happened that would be in like 20 years. Anyway. 

I see Wonka staying white. The symbolism of a white man handing over his empire to a little poor black boy is strong. Like mentioned before this was always Dahl’s original intention as it was supposed to be written during the Civil Right’s Era. I always thought they would shoe horn in a black Violet since she is in the musical and taking that away would rightly anger some people. Making Charlie black more than makes up for it though.

Yeah some black female commentators will get pissed but whatever. I’m super sure the cast of bad kids will be diverse and we either are having no white kids or just one. My bet would be Veruca just because she fits the rich white stereotype. That or Augustus since he’s irrelevant and gets booted out quickly. We’re pretty much guaranteed to get a PoC Violet and I doubt she’ll be white or black. So let’s narrow it down. 

Assuming each kid is of a different ethnicity we already have a white and black kid. Who would be the other ethnicities? I feel like an East Asian and Latin kid is a guarantee. The last one I think is going to be either Middle Eastern or South Asian. If they go with no white kids then they both would round it out but I figure that won’t be the case. 

Middle Eastern would be nice because Hollywood being liberal would love some Middle Eastern representation in a movie even if it’s for a rotten kid. On the other hand India is a big movie market and the suits would love another version of Dev Patel playing Mike TeeVee or something. Because of the money I’m betting South Asian.

So in this scenario we have an East Asian (most likely Chinese for their market), Latin, and South Asian (most likely Indian also for Market) for any of the bad kids. I’ve actually changed my mind and think Augustus would be the white kid. He’d get discarded right away and falls into the “Western Privilege” trope of having too much too eat. In a movie playing the diversity card it would be kind of insulting to have a minority play that already dicey role in a more fat positive society. So Violet, Veruca, and Mike.

For some reason an Indian as Mike makes total sense. If Hollywood is looking at it money wise then they’ll want a boy to be the Indian character. India loves its men representing it and Mike is the only guy left in this case. That leaves us a Chinese girl and Latina.

This is a toss up and I’m not going to lie I’m slightly biased but hear me out. The original concept art for 05 Violet actually depicted her as Asian. It’s obvious WB was playing around with breaking their diversity cherry by making Vi an Asian girl. That was 13 years ago though. China is now a huge viable market and they wouldn’t just carelessly throw in an Asian kid “just cause” anymore. I think Veruca will be Chinese or Chinese-American. 

China is notoriously fickle about reviewing and censoring all major western media that comes its way. What better way to please still communist China than to depict a greedy rich Chinese girl getting her comeuppance for being a capitalist pig. I think given this context it’s a given. 

Finally Violet is left and as usual she’s the scraps that no one knows how to define as a character due to her outdated vice. There’s a possibility for a spunky proud Violeta coming off as a Latina ghetto stereotype. But then again they’ve already done a black Violet and avoided that and Latin-American culture is the closest to the black culture template they’ve already paved for Violet. 

I fully expect Violet to be a Latina. Thank fucking god finally. But we have to wait and see. She also wouldn’t be a white or light skinned Latina. I doubt she’d be dark either since we already have Charlie. Mike would be the brown kid so Vi would be the more media depicted “average” Latina of caramel skin. Most likely Puerto Rican or Colombianish but Mexican is also a possibility. In fact now that I’m thinking about it she’s most likely going to be Mexicana for once again, marketing reasons.

So yeah that was a shit ton. I wonder what y’all think of that overly long essay.