Soon the voices of some characters in The Simpson they could change. Last Friday Fox, the channel responsible for the long-running animated series, announced that from now on the program created by Matt Groening He will stop using white actors to play characters from other ethnicities.
“In the future, The Simpsons will no longer have white actors playing non-white characters,” Fox said in a statement (via TV Line).
This announcement by the television network comes in the context of protests against racism in the United States, which particularly during the last week have led to several revisions to the representation in some television series.
In fact, a couple of days ago, Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell left their respective roles in the animated series. Big Mouth and Central Park arguing that it was inappropriate for them (white women) to play biracial characters. “Black characters in an animated show should be played by black people,” Slate pointed out.
But although this announcement for the future of The Simpson responds to this context, it should also be noted that criticism of the series for using white actors to play non-white characters is not something new either.
During the last years, Apu, the owner of the Mini-Super, has become controversial about a documentary focused on how the characterization of the character would promote racist stereotypes. This gave rise to a whole debate, a criticized episode where the series addressed the issue and eventually, earlier this year, led to Hank Azaria, the white actor who gave voice to the character, will definitely leave the role.
Of course Apu was not the only character from another ethnicity to be played by a white actor. For example, in the original language version of The SimpsonAzaria also played Carl and Dr. Nick, while Harry Shearer voiced Dr. Hibbert and Tress MacNeille was Bernice, Manjula, and Cookie Kwan.
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