Halloween is fast approaching and for many, that means it’s time for a yearly watch of a Tim Burton’s classic — The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, it also comes with dredging up issues with one of the most iconic characters in the movie: Oogie Boogie.
TikToker Bona Bones has over 41.6k followers on the platform and used that reach to discuss how one of the screenwriters for the movie, Caroline Thompson, took issue with Oogie Boogie for several reasons. Bones quoted an interview Thompson did with Insider where she said:
“First of all, he looks like a Klu Klux Klansman. Secondly, ‘Oogie Boogie’ is an old, southern, derogatory phrase for an African-American and I’m from Maryland, which is just on the cusp of the south, so I’m hyper-aware of that and sensitive to it.
I went to Tim. I went to [director] Henry [Selick] and I said we got to change this. Tim Burton said, ‘Oh, stop it, you’re being oversensitive.'”
The video, with over 84.3k likes and over 1600 comments, can be viewed below.
While the internet inappropriately attributes a quote to Burton about black people not fitting his film’s aesthetic from a Washington Post article, his other comments on race and casting have confused people in the past.
“Nowadays, people are talking about it more. Things either call for things or they don’t.
I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just…I grew up watching Blaxploitation movies, right? I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.”
Tim Burton to Bustle
Did you know about these issues with Tim Burton? Will the problematic parts of Oogie Boogie stop you from watching The Nightmare Before Christmas this year? Let us know!
