King Grayskull is now Black... because creativity is dead.

 Remember my recent rant about Too Much Teela in the second trailer of Revelation? Where I posted a pic with Adam, He-Ro, Vikor, and a Black King Grayskull... I didn't comment on the King being black, because I assumed he was still white, but  Very Tanned. Kinda like in Filmation, Adam's fabulous secret powers co.e with Heavy tanning.

But according to a Netflix Employee, Ted Biaselli, King Grayskull was made black because having two white blond guys with the power was less special than having a Black man with the Power. 

You know what? That's not only messed up, but it shows how creatively bankrupt these execs are. The whole point of King Grayskull (character created for the 2002 series) was to have an Ancestor for He-Man that could show the viewer what He-Man could become as he becomes more experienced AND to have a barrier to overcome. According to King Hsss He-Man was no King Grayskull. Had the series gone beyond the truncated second season, He-Man was meant to tackle Skletor, Hsss, and Hordak.

Changing his race dilutes the visual link of ancestry... I'm well aware of "whitening descendants" since I come from generations of mixed race people trying to "whiten the gene pool". Just because it happens in real life, doesn't mean that it should happen in fiction... especially on an established character who even has had a couple of action figure releases.

They could've instead promoted existing black characters like Clamp Champ or Sir-Laser-Lot...

But Mr. Netflix Originals Producer thinks that it's better to take white characters and make them black, than actually USE the black characters and make the audience CARE ABOUT THEM... No one cares about Sir-Laser-Lot, because No one has used him in a way that makes people care about him. 

Of course, some will try to turn this into me being racist... which is impossible, because I'm demanding that they use the Actual Black Characters instead of blackwashing existing characters. (Not to mention that being a mixed race Latino makes me a PoC, which means that I can't be racist, because of the power dynamics...)

When Filmation was made, there were no black characters in the toyline. They made Melaktha. They made people care about Melaktha. Hell, I often campaigned for getting Melaktha in MOTUC. DC Comics made Mendor, a Field Medic, who in the DC storyline ended up being a victim of King Hsss and ended up as a fleshsuit for the Snakemen King, but he WAS a new black character that people liked. In 2002, they made Dekker, a mentor to Duncan and a former MAN-AT-ARMS. They all made new characters that were black... How come this was impossible to Kevin Smith and crew? 

They can't use Melaktha due to Filmation rights, but Dekker, Mendor, Sir-Laser-Lot, and the Mystic Zodak (not to be confused with the more alien Cosmic Zodac) who Neitlich had an actual good idea of making a different character from Cosmic Zodac. Hell, Neitlich made Clamp Champ Duncan's successor... How bad is Kevin Smith's crew when an incompetent writer as Scott Neitlich can be more progressive with Clamp Champ vs. Race bending King Grayskull...

(And yes, I just gave Neitlich some praise... backhanded, but still some praise. I hate having to do that, because it feeds his already massive ego.)

Also, Mr. Biaselli, you suck for fucking up Andra!! By changing a new character into Andra, you revealed your bias. You don't think that a black character can do well on their own, so they need a Whitey Hand-me-down... This is one of the many issues White people don't understand. They think that by "reskinning characters" into different races, they're being diverse. It's quite the opposite. King Grayskull is still a white dude... a black looking white dude, but still white. THAT'S almost as problematic as having Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado type characters, whose whole personalities are "being tokens". 

A walking stereotype is a bad thing, but at least the character is unique... despite it's uniqueness being extremely racist (oftentimes unintended). In the other end of badness we have the reskinned white dude. It basically says that the creatives have ZERO faith in the black character and the only way the black character will work is if he's a "white guy in blackface". The unintended message is: Minorities aren't good enough unless they assimilate whiteness...

Diverse Representation Done Right ADDS CHARACTERS TO THE MYTHOS AND MAKES THE AUDIENCE CARE ENOUGH ABOUT THEM TO WANT THEM TO RETURN IN FUTURE ITERATIONS.

Diverse Representation Done Wrong REPLACES CHARACTERS WITH RESKINNED COPIES OR NEW CHARACTERS DISGUISED AS OLD ONES.

Race Swapping Andra and King Grayskull is Diverse Representation Done Wrong. I don't doubt that Dennis Haysbert and Tiffany Smith witll do a great job, but the actor's job has nothing to do with the Behind the Scenes bullshit... BTW, since Jay Tavare is playing Wun-Dar (the Wonderbread He-Man) is Wun-Dar going to have Native American Elements? (The character literally named after Wonderbread, a pejorative term used to describe white people, since Wonder Bread is White AF... I'm talking about the Actual bread here...) 

While it hasn't reached She-Ra levels of red flags... I'm having a bad feeling about this...

Please don't suck, please don't suck!!