Wicked is now officially a box office record-breaking success, and you know what that kind of mainstream popularity for a women-led film means: bizarre takes on how Hollywood has gone woke. The latest unhinged rant comes from former Trump advisor Gina Loudon, who accused Wicked of anti-white racism. Offering a demonstration herself, Loudon inaccurately referred to the film’s star, Ariana Grande, as “obviously Hispanic.”
In 2020, Loudon was a member of the Trump campaign’s media advisory board and the co-chair of Women for Trump. These days, she hosts the show Dr. Gina Prime Time on right wing network Real America’s Voice, and on Tuesday’s episode she went after the fantasy film by spinning a fantasy of her own.
What, in her mind, was wrong with the family-friendly film? Her argument rests on the fact that — like the Wizard of Oz — Wicked is an allegory. Particularly, it tells the story of how a nation vilifies a girl for having different colored skin. But in MAGA’s oppressor/oppressed reversed worldview, telling a story about the history of white supremacy somehow makes white people the victims and marginalized people the villains.
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But Loudon’s most outrageous complaint is the casting of Ariana Grande as a blonde white woman.
“I should’ve known they’d try to make it woke in the ways that they could think of,” she said. “Let’s just start with the fact that they have Ariana Grande, who is obviously a Hispanic woman, playing the part of a ditzy, blonde, white really villain, when it comes right down to it, for this particular movie.”
“The racism and the racial appropriation I just thought was offensive, frankly,” she continued. “All white people aren’t dumb and evil, and I just get kind of sick of that storyline.”
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Who says “the boy is mine” has to be about a boy? Certainly not Grande herself.
Clearly, “go woke, go broke” doesn’t apply here.
As a simple Google search will tell anyone, Ariana Grande is Italian-American. Also, Hispanic ethnicity includes white people.
It was almost too much ignorant stupidity for the internet to take.
MAGA going back to old-old racism, calling Italians Hispanics, they gon be calling the Irish black soon
— eri˚❀*·ꕤ. (@eternalcumslime) December 4, 2024
Loudon’s comments amount to much more than a gaffe. The idea that Grande is not white enough has a deep rooted racist history, when European immigrants like Italians and Greeks were excluded from being considered white. MAGA has also spent an entire election cycle (and the better part of a decade) demonizing Hispanic folks.
The fact that Loudon made this assumption evidently based on appearance alone while trying to allege anti-white racism is its own satire. It’s almost like MAGA-pilled folks can’t see what’s right in front of them.
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