Ok, I'll admit, I never saw the cartoon. Not all cartoons made it to Trinidad and Tobago when I was younger. However, thanks to satellite dishes and strange t.v connections from Venezuela, I saw the dolls and I wanted them all. Thanks to Youtube I could finally watch the series and I felt that I really missed out. Now the movie is out but it sucked, more on that later. Now on the series itself, starred a young woman named Jerrica Benton who is the owner of Starlight Music and she also has a secret identity known to us as Jem. She is the leader of the band the Holograms and the rival groups are the Misfits and the Stingers (Wikipedia). Overall it was a great show and you can enjoy the cool music, fashion, action and even romance. The dolls were also great and I wanted them all especially Shana. Speaking of Shana, I really liked the fact that were characters of all races such as Benton as the blond, Shana as black, Aja as Asian, Kimber the redhead and Carmen, the Latina. These diverse characters really appealed to girls of all races which is severely lacking today. Which brings me to the issue of the movie which was recently made. It's bad that the movie sucked and totally went in the different direction of the original series. What is really troublesome however is the whitewashing of Shana. This is Shana from the cartoon with full and luxurious purple natural hair;
And this is Shana now;
Now, this whitewashing of black characters is not only lazy but rather insulting to black women everywhere. You mean to tell me that they couldn't find a dark-skinned woman to play the role? Again this goes back to laziness and also using racist tactics in Hollyweird. I have nothing against Aurora but I didn't even know she was black or actually biracial until I saw this. I didn't even know that she is Harold Perrineau's (the guy from Lost) daughter and he penned a lovely letter, defending her from the controversy. I understand that he has to defend his daughter, it's natural, but he should know that colorism is very pervasive in Hollywood but I guess he is the new black and this might not affect him as much. Hopefully, Hollywood directors and producers will be more creative and make their own movies but if they decide to make a movie based on a cartoon, try to stick to the original. The Transformers movie franchise was successful in that regard. Here are some videos which summed up my disappointment in the movie and the casting. I'm going to enjoy my series on Youtube. It's free and I saved my ten dollars in the process.
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