UK Activists Raise Awareness By Replacing White Actors With Black Leads In Movie Posters
Diversity is still a hot issue in the modern world and a group of young activists from the UK took upon themselves to make a difference.
LegallyBlack is a group of Advocates for Social Justice who came together to fight the way black people are represented in the media. “We have all been affected by the issue directly and indirectly, and can see first hand the damage it causes,” they write on their website.
For their first project, LegallyBlack chose to recreate posters of popular movies and TV shows by replacing the white actors with black leads. “The aim of the project is to increase awareness surrounding the lack of black representation in the media and furthermore create dialogue and discussion around the often inaccurate and harmful depictions that do occur.”
What do you think about the project? Let us know in the comment section down below.
More info: twitter.com | legallyblack.space | Instagram
LegallyBlack recreated posters of popular movies and TV shows by replacing the white actors with black leads
Titanic
Harry Potter
Doctor Who
Bridget Jones
Skyfall
The Inbetweeners
Skins
8Kviews
Share on FacebookWith original movie work, I kind of agree. But with adaptations of books, I disagree. If the main character in the book is white, it would be silly to make a black person play that character. And vice versa.
Plus, please: Don't ignore historical context. Rose in Titanic was British upper class. I would doubt that in 1912 there was a black British upper class, and even if, they probably would have had a lot of different problems with the snobs in the first class, so it would have been a completely different movie.
Load More Replies...Lol am a woman of colour and I don't see colour. I totally agree with that comment. There are bigger fish to fry!
Load More Replies...Then we should do this for hispanic, latinos, and asian people too... usually, if you're NOT white, you get stuck in the same kind of roles. I bet that when you think of a latino in a movie, you think about the role of an illegal immigrant, the housemaid, the gang member, someone poor, uneducated, someone who doesn't speak English... right?
Actually, I think of Rosario Dawson and Danny Trejo, both of whom have played many different roles, and done so remarkable well!
Load More Replies...This is cultural misappropriation, and Racism, at its most blatant! And it amounts to plagiarism. If there isn't enough black literature to turn into movies, why don't blacks write more? Spike Lee is just one example of success.
No, I'm surprised because the fictional character were not black. Mongolians should do this to all Tyler Perry movie covers. It would make just as much sense. Yeah, you know how those black people have been shut out of the entertainment industry for the last few decades. Just ask Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Octavia Spenser, Idris Elba, Jamie Foxx, Sam Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle, Whoopie Goldberg, Forest Whitiker, Halle Berry, Michael B Jordan, Oprah Winfrey etc etc about how hard it is to get screen time *sigh*. This is about as dumb as when Janet Jackson's album tanked so she blamed racism, then went crying all the way back to her mansion.
That Doctor is AWESOME! I definitely would love her as The Doctor. All of these "alternative posters" are actually quite good, the team behind them cared to "cast" the models so they really fit the characters. Four thumbs up!
Oh my gallifrey I've finally found fellow whovians! AnyWHO, I agree! I think she'd make a great Doctor!
Load More Replies...Silly thing to do. Try putting a white face on the poster for "Ali" or "The Colour Purple" or any Spike Lee Joint. Or is this just racist because the didn't include Asians or Latinos ? Can we please stop making everything into a race-issue ?
The only one that bugged me was Titanic. It's a film based on history and I get the feeling there weren't a lot of colored people on the Titanic... just a feeling.
Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson!!!, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, James Earl Jones, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Michael Clarke Duncan, Djimon Hounsou, Alfre Woodard, Hally Berry... Do i have to contieu?
You can. Those are some good actors and actresses.
Load More Replies...Don't judge me! I looked into the first picture for about a minute trying to figure out which movie/tv show was that... I guess they just wanted to introduce the team... :(
Except for Harry Potter and Titanic, the posters were really nice and I wasn't surprised at all. But maybe for HP and Titanic, the actors' expressions weren't able to invoke the emotions fans would usually feel for those movies which is why I would still prefer the original poster. But I still appreciate the idea of this article. We should be more inclusive of minorities, at least in media since it gets the most attention.
Dear Black People, get your own s**t. Culture appropriating m***a fuckas. Signed - Woke White Folks
Well, I think that this isn't only blacks, it's latinos and asians, and really anyone who is discriminated against. However, at least we can celebrate that we've gotten a lot better at this over the years while we work on getting even better.
Yes and we can even talk about gays getting married now. . .. I am old enough to see there has been progress. Mostly driven by people who just up and work out a way to start advancing the human race. * Encouraging all of you to find your passion / anger, and USE that energy to meet up with like minded people and DO something to help.
Load More Replies...Moving to countries of white people and having problems that most of movies, books and paintings is about white people.
Are they countries of white people, though? Most of these are American, and if you know history.....
Load More Replies...or maybe I'd just be surprised to see a movie about a young first-class travelling black woman from a wealthy family in the early 1900's, considering the general racial injustice in that timeframe
If these are not for commercial purposes, then they should be fine. Also, Mac Hayes, it's not plagiarism because the source material for these were made obvious.
Load More Replies...To be honest, as an Asian I didn't even give a damn f**k in the race of the actor in a movie... If you came out from a movie thinking there isn't enough black people in the casts, you are the one racist here.
The fact they are black people does not surprise me. What surprised me was to see different faces on familiar posters. Put a white guy that's not Daniel Radcliff for Harry Potter and I'd be surprised too. Similarly, put a white guy for Blade or black panther and I'd be surprised ...
Titanic is not a good choice for this given that the male lead and the main supporting actor are both of mediterranean decent - lol - Likewise Harry Potter with its English boarding school setting, upper-class prejudice and themes of racial supremacy is a terrible choice of film to randomly make all the protagonists a racial minority. Yes, I think we probably need more non-white major roles in the media but Castaway, John Wick, The Martian, The Revanent etc are all movies better suited to this sort of project.
If you're black and like Harry Potter, check out 'Rivers of London'....
I'm sorry, but she is way too young to be playing Bridget Jones. And thin.
People of colour, there are bigger fish to fry, this is not important.
If black characters were replaced with white characters there would be outrage, but for some reason it seams perfectly fine when its black people replacing white people.
This is a bit silly because if the person is supposed to be white according to the story line and dates then why change that. I do agree white actors and actresses always get the lead and not anyone else. So it shouldn't only be changed a black person, a Hispanic person, an Asian person, an Indian person etc. it's all of us. Look at movies today. They keep reusing the same old actors. No one else gets a chance. Slowly but surely, one day tho..
I understand what they're trying to convey, but I don't think this is the way to go about it. With these posters we're looking back and see the lack of great black actors (or other colours) in major movies, but by adapting them in this manner is like we have to change the past. We can't change the past, that is what it is. We can, however, learn from the past and change our future. Perhaps the film industry should consider adapting works by Maya Angelou or other iconic writers to have more diversity.
Iv seem plenty of movies with a black person as the major character in it. Im a white person btw.
Actually, in Harry Potter, in the books it never specified Hermione’s race.
So, no one knows what majority and minority means anymore? How "diverse" are Asian movies? Or Spanish movies? Or Tyler Perry movies? Build a bridge, people. I know I'm not the only one who attended an all-white school, so that WAS my reality and social climate. And, muddied Annie and Beaches and Steel Magnolias sucked.
I'm surprised, bc these are wellknown movie posters, which look different than i'm used to... not bc there are too less black major roles
Rewriting books/history in the name of equality is not less shocking than Hollywook making films which take place in Africa, Asia/have mains characters asian, african, latinos... only with white people. Same process
Yet, I understand the idea and the struggle of these people, and I agree with it. It's only the "if you're surprised, it means you don't see enough black people in major roles" who bother me.
Load More Replies...OMG when they cast a black woman as Hermoine in the play I was shocked and kinda annoyed. Hermoine is white in the book and white in ALL of the movies. If it is original or you can make the character black instead of white then DO IT!
There are more white actors simply because there happens to be more whites in the United States, and therefore whites are more likely to appear in auditions. 12.3% of the US is black. This is not discrimination against blacks at all. They are not refusing to give roles to blacks. Also, I heard once that someone was making a Martin Luther King play in which a white guy played MLK. Um....what?? How does that even make sense?? Just keep it real, no matter the race.
Things just need to be kept accurate, especially with historical movies and movies made from books. Roland the gunslinger in the Dark Tower is an example. I obsessively read the books and he is clearly a white, cowboy-style gunslinger. It's just a fact. In the movie, he's black and doesn't even dress correctly.
Load More Replies...First they replace race in movie, second they replace your life.... It is going today every where, blacks,chineses,arabs THERE ARE TO MANY! ALl whites from neanderthals!!!!! We are not hot dna, we are RACE! Do you know how words "race" and "one" realates each other? One - RAZ (russ) - race , this is dna from our beginning! Pure and clean, we mustn't devide our blood with hot dna like a n*****s, chineses, arabs and someone....... We are from water, from life!
To understand what i'am trying to say, you must learn different language, like chineses, or russians or may be something another (not from german branch). All this understanding covered in our WORDS, letters , and numbers! So our race it is beginnigs , which design letter Z. thats why letter z stay in the end of our alphabet (end it is beginning actually). It is pure neanderthal dna, ATLANTS! Z1, |You can find it every where, for instance, look at the rice, look how he look! He relate to the water, he RISE in water..... So it is cold, north dna. But south peoples, it is another sort, our end of life. Chinesees for instance would be number 4, our letter CH (you haven't this letter in alphabet "Ч" yellow colour), this is our "digestive system", this is intestine race!!!! N*****s would be 100% sapiens it is the end - 5, letter "p", "b" (RED colour, infared waves).... Jews would be number 2, and 3 - our chest, letters "L", "R" , and pure jews would be "X (blue, and green colours
Load More Replies...What could be more racist than photoshopping our white people to replace with black people? We are all one and the same, so why would you go and remove people who have worked damn hard to get those roles to replace them with equal people? You are stating that there is a difference between black and white by doing this.
James Bond is a white Englishman. Create your own action hero.
Load More Replies...With original movie work, I kind of agree. But with adaptations of books, I disagree. If the main character in the book is white, it would be silly to make a black person play that character. And vice versa.
Plus, please: Don't ignore historical context. Rose in Titanic was British upper class. I would doubt that in 1912 there was a black British upper class, and even if, they probably would have had a lot of different problems with the snobs in the first class, so it would have been a completely different movie.
Load More Replies...Lol am a woman of colour and I don't see colour. I totally agree with that comment. There are bigger fish to fry!
Load More Replies...Then we should do this for hispanic, latinos, and asian people too... usually, if you're NOT white, you get stuck in the same kind of roles. I bet that when you think of a latino in a movie, you think about the role of an illegal immigrant, the housemaid, the gang member, someone poor, uneducated, someone who doesn't speak English... right?
Actually, I think of Rosario Dawson and Danny Trejo, both of whom have played many different roles, and done so remarkable well!
Load More Replies...This is cultural misappropriation, and Racism, at its most blatant! And it amounts to plagiarism. If there isn't enough black literature to turn into movies, why don't blacks write more? Spike Lee is just one example of success.
No, I'm surprised because the fictional character were not black. Mongolians should do this to all Tyler Perry movie covers. It would make just as much sense. Yeah, you know how those black people have been shut out of the entertainment industry for the last few decades. Just ask Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Octavia Spenser, Idris Elba, Jamie Foxx, Sam Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle, Whoopie Goldberg, Forest Whitiker, Halle Berry, Michael B Jordan, Oprah Winfrey etc etc about how hard it is to get screen time *sigh*. This is about as dumb as when Janet Jackson's album tanked so she blamed racism, then went crying all the way back to her mansion.
That Doctor is AWESOME! I definitely would love her as The Doctor. All of these "alternative posters" are actually quite good, the team behind them cared to "cast" the models so they really fit the characters. Four thumbs up!
Oh my gallifrey I've finally found fellow whovians! AnyWHO, I agree! I think she'd make a great Doctor!
Load More Replies...Silly thing to do. Try putting a white face on the poster for "Ali" or "The Colour Purple" or any Spike Lee Joint. Or is this just racist because the didn't include Asians or Latinos ? Can we please stop making everything into a race-issue ?
The only one that bugged me was Titanic. It's a film based on history and I get the feeling there weren't a lot of colored people on the Titanic... just a feeling.
Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson!!!, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, James Earl Jones, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Michael Clarke Duncan, Djimon Hounsou, Alfre Woodard, Hally Berry... Do i have to contieu?
You can. Those are some good actors and actresses.
Load More Replies...Don't judge me! I looked into the first picture for about a minute trying to figure out which movie/tv show was that... I guess they just wanted to introduce the team... :(
Except for Harry Potter and Titanic, the posters were really nice and I wasn't surprised at all. But maybe for HP and Titanic, the actors' expressions weren't able to invoke the emotions fans would usually feel for those movies which is why I would still prefer the original poster. But I still appreciate the idea of this article. We should be more inclusive of minorities, at least in media since it gets the most attention.
Dear Black People, get your own s**t. Culture appropriating m***a fuckas. Signed - Woke White Folks
Well, I think that this isn't only blacks, it's latinos and asians, and really anyone who is discriminated against. However, at least we can celebrate that we've gotten a lot better at this over the years while we work on getting even better.
Yes and we can even talk about gays getting married now. . .. I am old enough to see there has been progress. Mostly driven by people who just up and work out a way to start advancing the human race. * Encouraging all of you to find your passion / anger, and USE that energy to meet up with like minded people and DO something to help.
Load More Replies...Moving to countries of white people and having problems that most of movies, books and paintings is about white people.
Are they countries of white people, though? Most of these are American, and if you know history.....
Load More Replies...or maybe I'd just be surprised to see a movie about a young first-class travelling black woman from a wealthy family in the early 1900's, considering the general racial injustice in that timeframe
If these are not for commercial purposes, then they should be fine. Also, Mac Hayes, it's not plagiarism because the source material for these were made obvious.
Load More Replies...To be honest, as an Asian I didn't even give a damn f**k in the race of the actor in a movie... If you came out from a movie thinking there isn't enough black people in the casts, you are the one racist here.
The fact they are black people does not surprise me. What surprised me was to see different faces on familiar posters. Put a white guy that's not Daniel Radcliff for Harry Potter and I'd be surprised too. Similarly, put a white guy for Blade or black panther and I'd be surprised ...
Titanic is not a good choice for this given that the male lead and the main supporting actor are both of mediterranean decent - lol - Likewise Harry Potter with its English boarding school setting, upper-class prejudice and themes of racial supremacy is a terrible choice of film to randomly make all the protagonists a racial minority. Yes, I think we probably need more non-white major roles in the media but Castaway, John Wick, The Martian, The Revanent etc are all movies better suited to this sort of project.
If you're black and like Harry Potter, check out 'Rivers of London'....
I'm sorry, but she is way too young to be playing Bridget Jones. And thin.
People of colour, there are bigger fish to fry, this is not important.
If black characters were replaced with white characters there would be outrage, but for some reason it seams perfectly fine when its black people replacing white people.
This is a bit silly because if the person is supposed to be white according to the story line and dates then why change that. I do agree white actors and actresses always get the lead and not anyone else. So it shouldn't only be changed a black person, a Hispanic person, an Asian person, an Indian person etc. it's all of us. Look at movies today. They keep reusing the same old actors. No one else gets a chance. Slowly but surely, one day tho..
I understand what they're trying to convey, but I don't think this is the way to go about it. With these posters we're looking back and see the lack of great black actors (or other colours) in major movies, but by adapting them in this manner is like we have to change the past. We can't change the past, that is what it is. We can, however, learn from the past and change our future. Perhaps the film industry should consider adapting works by Maya Angelou or other iconic writers to have more diversity.
Iv seem plenty of movies with a black person as the major character in it. Im a white person btw.
Actually, in Harry Potter, in the books it never specified Hermione’s race.
So, no one knows what majority and minority means anymore? How "diverse" are Asian movies? Or Spanish movies? Or Tyler Perry movies? Build a bridge, people. I know I'm not the only one who attended an all-white school, so that WAS my reality and social climate. And, muddied Annie and Beaches and Steel Magnolias sucked.
I'm surprised, bc these are wellknown movie posters, which look different than i'm used to... not bc there are too less black major roles
Rewriting books/history in the name of equality is not less shocking than Hollywook making films which take place in Africa, Asia/have mains characters asian, african, latinos... only with white people. Same process
Yet, I understand the idea and the struggle of these people, and I agree with it. It's only the "if you're surprised, it means you don't see enough black people in major roles" who bother me.
Load More Replies...OMG when they cast a black woman as Hermoine in the play I was shocked and kinda annoyed. Hermoine is white in the book and white in ALL of the movies. If it is original or you can make the character black instead of white then DO IT!
There are more white actors simply because there happens to be more whites in the United States, and therefore whites are more likely to appear in auditions. 12.3% of the US is black. This is not discrimination against blacks at all. They are not refusing to give roles to blacks. Also, I heard once that someone was making a Martin Luther King play in which a white guy played MLK. Um....what?? How does that even make sense?? Just keep it real, no matter the race.
Things just need to be kept accurate, especially with historical movies and movies made from books. Roland the gunslinger in the Dark Tower is an example. I obsessively read the books and he is clearly a white, cowboy-style gunslinger. It's just a fact. In the movie, he's black and doesn't even dress correctly.
Load More Replies...First they replace race in movie, second they replace your life.... It is going today every where, blacks,chineses,arabs THERE ARE TO MANY! ALl whites from neanderthals!!!!! We are not hot dna, we are RACE! Do you know how words "race" and "one" realates each other? One - RAZ (russ) - race , this is dna from our beginning! Pure and clean, we mustn't devide our blood with hot dna like a n*****s, chineses, arabs and someone....... We are from water, from life!
To understand what i'am trying to say, you must learn different language, like chineses, or russians or may be something another (not from german branch). All this understanding covered in our WORDS, letters , and numbers! So our race it is beginnigs , which design letter Z. thats why letter z stay in the end of our alphabet (end it is beginning actually). It is pure neanderthal dna, ATLANTS! Z1, |You can find it every where, for instance, look at the rice, look how he look! He relate to the water, he RISE in water..... So it is cold, north dna. But south peoples, it is another sort, our end of life. Chinesees for instance would be number 4, our letter CH (you haven't this letter in alphabet "Ч" yellow colour), this is our "digestive system", this is intestine race!!!! N*****s would be 100% sapiens it is the end - 5, letter "p", "b" (RED colour, infared waves).... Jews would be number 2, and 3 - our chest, letters "L", "R" , and pure jews would be "X (blue, and green colours
Load More Replies...What could be more racist than photoshopping our white people to replace with black people? We are all one and the same, so why would you go and remove people who have worked damn hard to get those roles to replace them with equal people? You are stating that there is a difference between black and white by doing this.
James Bond is a white Englishman. Create your own action hero.
Load More Replies...
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