The protesting of racial injustice and police brutality against Blacks has set off an awakening that includes Hollywood. According to Deadline, streaming service Hulu has removed a Golden Girls episode titled “Mixed Blessings” because the characters, Rose, played by Betty White, and Blanche, played by Rue McClanahan, are seen with a mud face treatment.
In that particular scene, Rose comes out and makes an excuse for their appearance by saying, “This is mud on our faces, we’re not really Black.”
Although it’s not blackface in the sense of what blackface has been displayed in many older films and TV shows, it was reported that series’ distributor, Disney-ABC Domestic Television, had made the request for the removal. This follows many other television shows removing content that had characters depicted in actual blackface.
Variety reported late last week that a scene from The Office, in which a character appears in blackface, has been edited out of that episode as well as 30 Rock creator Tina Fey asking “for multiple episodes of the NBC series to be removed for the same reason, Hulu pulled three episodes of Scrubs, and Netflix removed the entire British sketch series Little Britain.
Comedian Jimmy Fallon, in a Tweet last month, apologized for participating in a Saturday Night Live sketch in blackface back in 2000.
In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There is no excuse for this.
I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable.
— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) May 26, 2020
The Hollywood Reporter stated that “HBO Max has added a disclaimer to Gone With the Wind about its depiction of slavery after briefly removing the film from its library.”
