The new Annie movie definitely produced controversy when the previews first came out. One of the biggest differences is the racial profile of the main star. In the 1982 movie, Annie, she is an young Irish orphaned girl. The movie was set in the 1930’s, which was a time of depression after a large wave of Irish immigration. Even though America claimed to be accepting of new races during this time, the Irish were intensely discriminated during this time. They were kept from jobs and substantial housing, and people with red hair were thought to be loud and unattractive. Irish children weren’t adopted as much as other children. Annie was overcoming that, although no one ever really notices that aspect of her character.
Flash forward to now, an Annie movie comes out with a very obvious racial bend. An article describing this issue stated, “Today, 37 percent of adopted children are white, and only 23 percent of adopted children are black. Now, while 56 percent of children in the orphanage system are white and only 14 percent are black, there is still a higher ratio of white adoption over black adoption. It’s more likely that a pre-teen black girl in modern times would still be in the orphanage system than a pre-teen white girl.” The creators of this movie were making it more relevant to recent times, where African-American people are discriminated against. Of course not to the extent that they have been in the past (pre-Civil Rights movement) but are still, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not (obviously exemplified in the recent acts at Ferguson and across the country). The same article previously mentioned also said, “The discrimination Annie would have faced as an Irish girl in the 1930s in analogous to the type of discrimination young black girls face today. Even the hair – specifically the hair! – works as an example of why race-bending makes sense. Annie’s bright red hair in the 1930s was an indicator that she was Irish and therefore could be treated as lesser by the community at large. Recently, the military banned black women from having natural hair and hairstyles, including twists, dreadlocks, and naturally grown hair.”
This movie adequately addresses race and cultural change while still staying relevant to the original Annie movie and is 5 out of 5 stars in my opinion.