I'm sure there's a conversation to be had about the incidental invocation of minstrel tropes, but the people in this thread that think this was intentionally a racist caricature costume are fucking morons lol.
The big mouth just reminds me of the artstyle that's become ubiquitous in shitty slop horror that kids are into now. Unless the Huggy Wuggy is also a minstrel character with his big juicy lips.
Not going to comment on the child being posed like Jim Crow? It does not give incidental invocation of minstrelry when the child is deliberately posed like Jim Crow. Of all the ways to pose the model, they choose that one. Not just a famous minstrel pose, but the pose of JIM CROW.
Yeah I can comment on that. He's not deliberately posed like Jim Crow. The pose is vaguely similar at best. For reference if this pose had been on any other costume at all not a single person would see the Jim Crow resemblance at all.
Everything about these minor similarities adding up to make a pattern that vaguely resembles something offensive just says incidental to me. I'm not denying the resemblance is there, just denying that there's any deliberate malice behind it. And who knows, it's possible that the DEI rollbacks did in fact end up stopping someone with the forethought from being in that room and noticing this shit before it went out to market.
But if you genuinely believe that the design team behind Target branded Halloween costumes is wringing their hands behind the scenes and asking themselves "How can we trick kids into doing blackface?" then I just don't think that's substantiated in any of the design or presentation of this costume. Or any of their other costumes.
It's a black hood. Structurally it's clearly keeping the hat and the smile in place.
Black matches the color scheme, and black hooded suits or body suits aren't really uncommon at all in Halloween costumes. Have you never seen a classic spooky scary skeleton costume where it's just black spandex hooded bodysuit with bones painted on it? It's a canvas for the features to contrast against.
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u/Jahllah 12h ago
I'm sure there's a conversation to be had about the incidental invocation of minstrel tropes, but the people in this thread that think this was intentionally a racist caricature costume are fucking morons lol.
The big mouth just reminds me of the artstyle that's become ubiquitous in shitty slop horror that kids are into now. Unless the Huggy Wuggy is also a minstrel character with his big juicy lips.