Outrage ensued on Wednesday after Netflix and Seth MacFarlane released the trailer for its upcoming animated reboot of the Good Times series, as many claimed the show portrayed racist stereotypes of black people.
In a post on X, Netflix revealed the official trailer for the show set to premiere April 12. One scene of the video shows a character praying to a "black heavenly father" before going into a montage of criminal activity.
JB Smoove, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jay Pharoah, Slink Johnson, Marsai Martin, and Wanda Sykes star in an irreverent reimagining of the TV classic Good Times. From Ranada Shepard and EPs Stephen Curry, Norman Lear, and Seth MacFarlane. Premiering April 12.
In one part, it shows a young, white girl telling a black man that his neighborhood is "a s**thole" before a narrator says the system "put the guns and drugs on the street" and shows gang violence taking place.
"What about the struggle?" one character said. The other responded, "We're black, it will be here tomorrow."
Then to close out the trailer, it portrays young babies as gangsters, where three of them proceed to shoot at each other to a background track that says "all black, everything black."
Following controversy, a change.org petition was started to call for a boycott of the show. Alistair Fannell, who started the petition, wrote, "The New Good Times animated series on Netflix is a glorified stereotypical show that has damaged the image of the original Good Times family show that started in 1974 through 1979."
"The New Good Times animated series promotes violence, culture destruction of the Black community and alcohol abuse," he noted. "It’s time to put a stop to this nonsense that is portraying Black Americans in a negative light through these shows; could lead to bad outcomes towards our youth potential Police brutalities and an increase of the prison population industry.
One of the comments under the post said the show "glorifies the degenerate, destructive behavior some in our community engage in, and tries to portray this a normal behavior."
Another social media user pointed out, "The goal of the original Good Times show was to disrupt the flow of negative stereotypes about black families." They added, "This remake does the opposite, it promotes and amplifies the most negative stereotypes of black families."
"A drug dealing baby? I don’t mind a story of the ghetto or hood lifestyle, but this is what y’all thought was a ‘good time’?" another user said.
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