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Cheerleader film "Girls United": Gabrielle Union criticizes her own role

2021-09-16T15:45:20.916Z


"I let you down": In a letter to the character she played in the comedy "Girls United", actress Gabrielle Union describes the racist structures of the film industry - and apologizes.


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Actress Gabrielle Union

Photo: Rodin_Eckenroth / FilmMagic

In the genre of cheerleading and mean girl movies of the nineties and early 2000s, "Girls United" occupies a special position, as it combined elements from both into a lavish cheerleading mean girl movie.

The film produced two stars: Kirsten Dunst and Gabrielle Union.

The latter has now spoken in a book about her roles and the history of the making of the film and denounces that her character was treated differently because she was black.

Two cheerleading clubs compete in the film, one group made up of white people and the other group made up of

People of Color

.

Rivals are Torrance, played by Dunst, and Isis, played by Union.

In her now published book "You got anything stronger" Union writes a fictional letter to the character Isis and apologizes to her.

She left her and herself in the lurch because she did not defend herself against racial discrimination.

So, although Isis is one of the main characters, unlike the white characters, she doesn't even have a surname.

In general, Isis was designed completely without a background story, without parents, without its own background.

Already during the casting she would have noticed that the slang that Isis should speak is not realistic.

Statements that she would no longer make today

What bothers her most in retrospect is that Isis has always been seen as the "villain" in history. In the letter to her character, she writes: “I saw a poll on the best movie villains once, and you were there. Why? Because you wanted to hold others accountable in a totally appropriate tone? When people imitate you on me, they are doing it in exaggerated slang, in an aggressive and violent way. "

Union is referring to the most famous scene in the film, in which Isis confronts Torrance for secretly stealing the choreography.

Isis finally lets them get away with the sentence: "Unlike them, we have class".

This is also a statement that she would not make in retrospect.

"I thought giving up meant showing class." Today she wished that she had allowed Isis to be a little angrier.

xvc

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-09-16

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