InsaneJournal

Current mood:	confused
Entry tags:	blah: fandom, coraline

There is a strange phenomenon in the Coraline fandom: portraying Wybie as white. For those who didn't see it, Wybie, Coraline's friend and (possible) love interest, is black. I've seen at least three pieces of CoralinexWybie fanart where he's clearly white (white with red hair, no less) or he's tan.

I've been talking it over with my boyfriend (who saw the movie with me multiple times), and he thinks that it's not a purposeful change: Wybie's race didn't leave a big impression on him (or me either), but we have terrible memories and the second time we saw Coraline, it was actually like we were seeing it for the first time because we didn't remember, like, half the movie.

Here's the scene where they meet for the first time:


I think this is incredibly, incredibly interesting. Around the same time the movie was out, RaceFail was all over LJ, and I followed it through various journals. The observation about lack of minorities in fantasy made a big impact on me -- And it relates to this white-Wybie thing.

So there are two main things about white-Wybie: Are people being intentionally racist (in that Wybie should be white since he's being paired with [a white] Coraline)? Or does Wybie not act "black" enough and thus they don't notice that he's not white? (Do white and black Americans in the same economic sphere act that differently?) I'll agree with my boyfriend that it might not be immediately obvious that Wybie's black, but I find it hard to believe that someone drawing pictures of him would simply not notice it (I mean, if you didn't remember exactly what he looked like, you'd find a picture of him as reference, right?). His race isn't important to the story - there's no racism that he has to overcome, etc - but I think it was a deliberate choice of Henry Selick (who adapted and directed the film) to make him (and his grandmother and great-aunt [who appears as a child-ghost]) black. Gaiman wrote Coraline for his daughter and Selick said that Coraline was a "girls film" (here) -- This is just my assumption, but I can see them trying to engage a minority race, too.

For reference, some of the white/tan fanart are here, here, and here.