Comments on this, the movie, the musical, the comic strip, the mediation of orphans, popular culture and adoption? [link]
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Comments on this, the movie, the musical, the comic strip, the mediation of orphans, popular culture and adoption? [link]
I know I’ll perhaps catch grief for “ruining” Annie, but….
The more I study the history of the days of the Orphan Trains, the poorhouses in New York City, the religious private “charities” who saw in the poor targets for their own glorification and profit, the less comfortable I became with this comic and resulting mediation, including the theater play/movie.
There is a particularly sinister “transfer” of malignant agency from the actual powers that be—city officials; religious figures—to those they put in power at the time, here depicted as shiftless drunks (in a remaining anti-Irish stereotype that I’m surprised survives given the “move to white” of that population).
Above and beyond all of this, the elevation of a war profiteer (Daddy Warbucks) to a “hero” is so completely flabbergasting to me that I am almost left speechless. Does Annie grow up and take over the corporation??
That the whole thing be “blackwashed” and this seen as a sign of “healthy diversity” seems perverse to me in the extreme….especially given the replacement historically speaking of white indentured servitude (the functional aspect of adoption previous to “family creation”) with black slavery….
Here’s a stage play from Malawi described by the Malawi Times as: A modern day African “Annie”: Mercy Madonna of Malawi [link].
Here, The Grio gripes about skin-level racism, ignoring the inherent racism and class warfare of the original musical:
http://thegrio.com/2014/12/31/target-quvenzhane-wallis-white-annie/
And the hashtag: #blannie #NoHope
Before there was Ayn Rand, there was Little Orphan Annie…