HBO Max greened out its first original animated series directed through Blacks, Young Love. Based on the characters from the Oscar-winning short film Hair Love, the 2-D series commissioned for a 12-episode season. Created through director Matthew Cherry, who will remain the showrunner, Hair Love tells the story of a black father stylizing his daughter for the first time.
In Hair Love, a black woman named Zuri joins her father Stephen to take on a memorable occasion: hair. During the seven minutes of execution, the two paintings combined to accomplish this and, in doing so, teach Zuri a vital lesson about the love of the hair in which he was born. Expressed through star Issa Rae, he won the most productive animated short film award at the 2020 Academy. Rewards. Hair Love has been hailed as an Internet favorite, earning more than $280,000 in home capital on the crowdfunding Kickstarter online page and starting a vital discussion about black culture, love and hair representation, especially in animation.
In a statement through Warner Bros. Pictures, Cherry announced, “I’m more than pleased to continue to tell the story of Stephen, Angela and Zuri and to further explore the circle of relative dynamics of relatives from a circle of millennial young black relatives we created.” in our short film Hair Love as an animated series.”
This acquisition comes at a time of diversity in animation. After calls for greater diversity in Hollywood, some advocates have targeted the animation industry. In a 2017 review through the UCLA Center for Academics and Narrators, researchers discovered a disturbing trend in children’s programming. More than 74% of all children’s programming featured white characters. In addition, most systems looking to diversify still had white administrators or creators, representing more than 80% of the industry as a whole.
Impacted by these statistics and other calls for racial equality, several well-known animators and creators are committed to hearing more varied voices in the industry. Jenny Slate, white actress and voice of Missy Foreman-Greenwald of Big Mouth, recently announced that she would no longer be the voice of the mixed-breed character to accommodate the black voices. In her wake, actress Kristen Bell is committed to avoid expressing mixed-race character Molly Tillerman in Apple’s Central Park. While these commitments mark a developmental change in animation, they are not loaded into the canon of varied characters for child-specific programming.
The search for notable black characters on children’s animation television would almost be considered a futile exercise. The separation of adult characters from the children’s animated series especially reduces the diversity of characters. Further afield, recent children’s systems have decisively distorted humans. While this reduces production costs, it reduces the area to brighten the main characters of color. In this area, Young Love will play a vital and exclusive role as an animated series for children with colored characters and directed through color creators, making the acquisition of HBO Max incredibly vital.
For the HBO series Max, Cherry and co-showrunner Carl Jones (The Boondocks) will expand the beloved characters, giving an “honest look” at the life of Zuri, his cat Rocky and his parents Stephen and Angela; as the characters explore their careers, the life circle of their relatives and more. Although the cast has not yet been announced, Sony Pictures and HBO Max “are ahead of presenting this joyful story to the world.”
I am a journalist specializing in virtual culture, television and film generation Z who focuses on the burden and prospective of LGBTQ diversity and inclusion in Hollywood. After graduation
I am a journalist specializing in virtual culture, television and film generation Z who focuses on the burden and prospective of LGBTQ diversity and inclusion in Hollywood. After graduating with a degree in media, culture, arts and film, I began writing and producing about the not-so-hidden prejudices that drive the entertainment industry and the constant protests that replace them. My essays, reports and articles on films have been published in Newsweek, Vox, Refinery29, MEL Magazine, etc. Follow me on Twitter @zoectjones for more articles and information.