Was ANNIHILATION Annihilated At The Box Office By Colorism?

I hear Annihilation was a good flick. But it's getting crushed at the box office. Nobody much is going to see it. I suggest to you the problem may be a combination of bad advertising and reinforcing ugly realities

1) All female leads only draws half the population most of the time, that's why the success of WONDER WOMAN was shocking
2) All female leads only draws half the population most of the time, that's why the success of THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY was shocking
3) All female leads only draws half the black population most of the time, that's one of the reasons GIRLS TRIP was shocking. 
4) I thought it was being advertised for NETFLIX debut for some reason
5) It came out the second week of BLACK PANTHER
6) None of lead actresses are OBVIOUSLY not-white at first glance. And Hollywood should start seeing this as a major advertising problem.

Again, the reason people were surprised by how well THE HUNGER GAMES and WONDER WOMAN did is because boys have been taught to not go see "chick flicks." That is, a lot of times a movie with all female leads has 50% of the population dismissing it. 

There are signs this is getting better. But we have to keep in mind that WONDER WOMAN, in particular, had patriarchal appeal

1. It had an unbelievably skinny, muscle-less actress playing the title role (as compared to a pale black ballerina I could name) 
2. Furthermore, though I enjoyed the movie, WONDER WOMAN was more Wonder Girlish than Wonder Womanish because it was an origin story that followed her out of childhood. 

This kinda means WONDER WOMAN was in her traditional naive, girlish  place in this movie. Men like that. Male movie reviewers viewed that positively.  Reviews are part of advertising. And men went to go see WONDER WOMAN too. 

ANNIHILATION doesn't look like WONDER WOMAN. The women are dressed in functional clothing that covers them head to toe. There's not a hint that any of the women will be girlish. This means men probably aren't going to this movie too much. But black and brown women will if they see black and brown women starring in the movie.

And when I saw the previews, I couldn't tell that anything but white and light chicks was in this movie.  And as it turns out Tessa Thompson was one of them.

ON THE COLORISM TIP

Thompson is usually a good actress. And maybe she's right in proclaiming herself a goddess. I even get vibes that she's a down home black girl too (If Janelle Monae likes her, it's all good right?)

HURRAH FOR TESSA!

SHE'S AWESOME

Even so, five or six decades of light-women representing damn near all of black womanhood outside the occasional slave flick ought to be enough for anybody.

I've followed Halle Berry for most of my adult life because she broke into white Hollywood projects where no black woman had gone before. She broke all kinds of glass ceilings. And I'm sure Vanessa Williams, Thandie Newton, Rosario Dawson, and the light girl actresses that took up all the romantic story lines in COSBY, A DIFFERENT WORLD, BLACKISH and GROWNISH did too. But in a post VIOLA in Shonda's HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER World

and a

post-Ryan Coogler's BLACK PANTHER World

it's time to say Tessa Tyler shaded actresses can represent black women in a movie ONLY IF there is another black woman in the movie that's about 20 shades darker. Woke black women want to see all black women succeed. But a lot of black women, my shade and much-much lighter, are starving to see Black women whom you can see are black instantly without having to look up A) pictures of the actress' parents B) how that actress chooses to identify

FOR EXAMPLE

• Mixed Meghan marrying Prince Harry should not be identified as "black" because she has chosen to identify as bi-racial. Since she knows who she is. That's her choice. 
• Halle Berry and President Barack Obama are black because that's how they choose to identify. 
• And I am black because my parents are black and I choose black, no matter how many "mulattos" are identified in my family tree. (Not that I really "chose" Hypo-descent chose for most of us prior to 21st century.)

That said, black women are starving to see obvious representations of themselves.

And I think the box office performance of BLACK PANTHER, HIDDEN FIGURES, and GIRLS TRIP proves this. This is why I think ANNIHILATION would have gone bust at the box office even if it hadn't come out right after BLACK PANTHER (silly rabbits). In fact, I'm a little worried about how A WRINKLE IN TIME. Except for problem #4, it has all the same problems as ANNIHILATION. It's coming out too close to BLACK PANTHER and all the female leads are very pale except for an elderly fairy played by OPRAH.

updated 2 27 18