Is Fred Armisen being racist when he portrays Obama on SNL? No, and neither is Crystal as Davis. Like someone already said, they’re portraying a person, not a racial stereotype.
I’ll admit to being uncomfortable that SNL didn’t cast a black actor to play Obama and to feeling better about it when someone here told me that Armisen is a mixed-race guy like Obama is - although not because I felt Armisen was doing a blackface character. I acknowledge that that wasn’t really rational in the first place.
Why would it be racist? Crystal’s Jewish himself, isn’t he?
Yes, but he’s got two eyes.
Ahhh…now I [del]see[/del] understand.
The whole thing was so creaky, out of touch and embarrasingly bad that being racist was the least of it’s problems. I think the NY Times called the show an AARP pep rally.
It was Sammy and it was on the cheek, not the mouth.
Sammy Davis Jr. is so far from any black stereotype that I am aware of that I can’t imagine finding a SDJ impression racist.
I can see how it might be awkward if he blacked up to try out his new 50 Cent impression - but Sammy?
Trivia: In an episode of Archie Bunker’s Place Sammy revisited Archie about 10 years after the original episode. That episode ended with
Archie kissing Sammy
Actually, it wasn’t a nadir for gay visibility on TV since there wasn’t regularly featured acknowledged gay characters on TV back then. Soap faced outrage and boycotts for having an out and out (so to speak) gay character on the show. Yes, at first, Jodie Dallas was played as a stereotyped crossdressing transexual, who gave up on that idea when his boyfriend left him, but as the show progressed, Jodie was one of the more likeable and sympathetic characters on the show. If anything, Jodie Dallas made it easier for television to portray gays on TV.
Thank god.
[QUOTE=Two Many Cats]
Yes, at first, Jodie Dallas was played as a stereotyped crossdressing transexual, who gave up on that idea when his boyfriend left him, but as the show progressed, Jodie was one of the more likeable and sympathetic characters on the show.
[/QUOTE]
In the last season he fell in love with a woman. Then he got stuck in “ancient Jewish guy stock character 7” during a past life regression to learn why he was gay to begin with. Admittedly, it was
1- The early 1980s
2- A show that had a (funny) space alien abduction plot
so nadir is probably too strong a word, but I’d give it at best a ‘neutral’ score for gay visibility.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Thank god.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I like NPH but have to admit he’s getting overexposed (must have the same agent as Betty White) and his retro kitschy singing/dancing isn’t all that.
Suit yourself. But that’s sort of like saying you give Jackie Robinson a ‘neutral’ score for breaking the color line in baseball because he wasn’t as good a player as Willie Mays.
(bolding mine)
Which can be quite disconcerting when a former presidential candidatedoes it.
I wonder if younger viewers even knew he was supposed to be Sammy Davis Jr, or that Crystal played this character on SNL 30+ years ago? Also, did anyone else think that Crystal looks like an old woman now?
FWIW I’m in my early 30s, so not all that young, and while I figured out that Billy Crystal was supposed to be Sammy Davis, Jr., I had no idea why he was supposed to be Sammy David, Jr. As best as I can tell from Google, Crystal hadn’t played this character on TV since the mid 1980s, when I was in elementary school and not watching “grown up” comedy shows.
I would guess that few people under 40 got this bit, and now that I know what it was in reference to it still doesn’t seem very funny.
Eh, in context it didn’t make much sense even for those of us who recognized him.
Yeah, the whole thing was this sad, borscht-belt vibe, like when Rich Little hosted the WH correspondents’ dinner the year after Colbert and did a bunch of Jimmy Carter jokes.
favorite tweet from the night was after the actress from The Help won an Oscar: “we’ve come a long way in race relations since Billy Crystal dressed up in blackface earlier in the evening.”
Sammy Davis Jr. was one of Billy’s “regular” characters (especially in his one Saturday Night Live season), so I didn’t see it as a problem - but that was almost 30 years ago (1984-85, I think, because I remember Billy being on the night before the first WrestleMania in early 1985), so some people might not realize this.
The only problem I had with it is, at the end of the bit, Billy “thanked” Sammy (as if it was really him).
I see what you did there, quoting “Kirk Lazarus” from Tropic Thunder. Well played!