The Four Color Media Monitor

The Simpsons continues down the path of political correctness and cultural sensitivity, along with the Family Guy, Big Mouth and Central Park cartoons, as reported by Bloomberg:

“The Simpsons” will no longer have White actors voicing the roles of non-White characters on the long-running series, part of a broader push by animated shows to be more sensitive to matters of race and avoid stereotypes.

Hank Azaria, a White actor who voices several characters on “The Simpsons,” had already said he would stop playing Apu, the Indian convenience-store clerk. Now the rest of the show will follow suit, Fox Corp. said on Friday. [...]

Hollywood has been reevaluating its practices after nationwide protests forced a racial-justice reckoning for the entertainment industry. Earlier this week, Disney said it would rebrand two of its Splash Mountain rides, which have ties to the controversial 1946 film “Song of the South,” and late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel apologized for appearing in blackface earlier in his career.

On “Family Guy,” another animated show on Fox, actor Mike Henry said he would no longer voice the character of Cleveland, who is Black. Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell also said they would stop playing their non-White roles on animated shows this week. Slate has appeared on Netflix Inc.’s Big Mouth, while Bell has a role on Apple TV+’s “Central Park.”

The moral panics in Hollywood are simply stunning. Here's a problem regarding the Simpsons: what if the audience can't connect with the new voice actors they're presumably bringing in? What if they don't have the energy Azaria brought to the characters he was voicing until recently? Well at least then a cartoon that's honestly been running far too long will probably see its long over due ending precipitated.

What's ridiculous regarding Apu is that there are Indians who don't have a problem with the character, and as dishonest as the BBC can be most of the time, it's amazing they were willing to admit that 2 years ago. In their coverage of this new development, however, they tell:

Mr Henry provided the voice of black character Cleveland Brown in the animated series Family Guy for 20 years.

"I love this character, but persons of colour should play characters of colour," he tweeted on Friday.

Ms Bell, who provided the voice of Molly, a mixed-race child, in the cartoon series Central Park, said doing so displayed "a lack of awareness".

"Casting a mixed race character [with a] white actress undermines the specificity of the mixed race and Black American experience," she added.

I think all she's doing is making it sound like it's impossible for white men and women to research and understand all the history and cultures. Or, she really believes there's such a thing as "cultural appropriation". I'm guessing the same belief Henry espouses won't apply to white voice actors by sharp contrast, seeing how these SJW/PC advocates have been going out of their way to race-and-gender-swap veteran creations at all costs. Who the voice actors behind the cartoon characters were was never an issue before, so to make it one now only makes this a whole theater of the absurd affair.

But again, given how the Simpsons has run far too long, maybe this latest PC step will ensure the cancellation the TV show's been long overdue for. And if the Family Guy follows suit, that won't be missed either. The Simpsons long lost whatever charm it may have once had.

Labels: animation, msm propaganda, politics