I seem to recall hearing Ted Lange (a pretty accomplished actor but sadly mostly remembered as Isaac on The Love Boat) say he wanted to play every Shakespearean lead EXCEPT for Othello.
I’m not sure whether the lampshading of it in the film makes it better or worse (although it’s at least funnier).
Newton Crosby: Where are you from, anyway?
Ben Jabituya: Bakersfield, originally.
Newton Crosby: No, I mean your ancestors.
Ben Jabituya: Oh, them. Pittsburgh.
Note that the two Chinese henchmen in TMM were played by Pat Morita and Jack Soo, both of Japanese descent.
That’s not even the worst of it. While the film ostensibly is about combatting racism, it perpetuates a ridiculous number of racist stereotypes. For example, all the black guys are great at basketball, and everyone assumes that the protagonist will be too. But he isn’t! Because he’s actually white! Hilarious! But all the actual black guys are naturally just dunking away! Because they’re black!
At the end he also punches some other white guys making racist jokes, earning him the “Official Black Head Nod of Approval” from two of the actual black guys there. Who apparently couldn’t just punch the racists themselves but had to wait for the White Savior to come along.
I too am baffled that James Earl Jones took part in this. I’ll assume it paid well.
It’s on my DVD, but thanks to the miracle of chapters, we skip it every year. Even in the context of the movie, where Bing’s obnoxious and conniving “best friends” want to steal away his show partner by any means necessary, it’s painful to watch.
The semi-remake, White Christmas, with Bing and Danny Kaye, thankfully doesn’t have a blackface scene. But it does have a song about how cool mistrel shows were.
Baby steps, I guess.
I cringed when Steve Martin played an Italian in My Blue Heaven when John Travolta alledgedly dropped out of the production.
I laughed when dozens of Japanese actors portrayed an African tribe in, I think, King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Yeah but do all Italians look like Travolta?
In a new film (Digger) Cruise is again going to play an old fat dude. So, since there are plenty of old fat dudes in Hollywood (Bill Shatner?) is that kinda a sort of “Blackface”??
Wasn’t he supposed to be playing an Italian-American, not a native Italian?
He was playing a circus version of Henry Hill, a real life NYC mobster who was 1rst generation half Irish-American and half Italian-American (both of his parents were immigrants).
Or AI playing the role of a real human…
And Tom Cruise is 64 years old. Is that not old enough to play an old dude?
It took quite a bit of work to make him look like he does in the movie. But you do have a point about age.
My favorite is when the Japanese actors (really exchange students) played Indians in Cannibal the Musical by Trey Parker.
There is in fact a LOT of criticism of Hollywood’s tendency to portray canonically fat characters by putting straight-size actors in elaborate prosthetic costumes to look fat, and then talking up their “daring performance” and the physical challenges of wearing a fatsuit, etc. See for example, most recently, Brendan Fraser’s starring role in The Whale.
Or, y’know, Hollywood could just cast a fat actor to play a fat character.
It is often objected, not entirely unreasonably, that there are always going to be way more straight-size actors than fat actors available, because of the influence of societal beauty standards favoring the non-fat in entertainment, and the increased opportunities for non-fat actors to play a wider range of roles. So, the argument goes, putting a non-fat actor in a fatsuit to portray a fat character is a sensible compromise with realism.
Which is of course the exact same argument made in many cases for having non-white characters played by white actors in blackface etc., back in the day. It was simply not conceivable in Hollywood back then that mainstream entertainment would come to include so much racial diversity among characters and actors.
I recently watched a commentary by an Indian American actress talking about the complicated legacy of that character. She’s a millenial so she was not of the generation that would have grown up watching Short Circuit but was aware of it. Her parents who had seen it, were not aware that Fisher Stevens was NOT Indian. They just assumed he had changed his name. And the character is acknowledged as problematic but not outright offensive. Stevens got the role and then it was changed to being an Indian and wanting to do a good job, even got the prodution to pay for him to live in India for a time. And That “Bakersfield” exchange is considered a pretty amazing deflection of trying to “other” the character. He’s dangerously close to a “horny foreigner” territory but apparently that horny guy aspect was always part of the character–it just reads a little different when its a white guy in brown face.
One favourite Bert Kwouk role was Entwistle, who changed his name from Mcintyre so that people wouldn’t think he was Scottish.
“That’s what actors do. They pretend.”
- Ari Gold, Entourage (I’ll spare you the offensive first part of the quote).
If you want to get absurd about it, why should any actor change their appearance at all for any role? You need a weirdly thin guy, hire DJ Qualls instead of letting Christian Bale loose a shit ton of weight.
Don’t allow Charlize Theron or Nicole Kidman to “uglify” themselves for Oscar roles that could have gone to a six.
Like why cast Hailee Steinfeld as a multiracial woman passing as white in Sinners? Except apparently she actually is one IRL (grandfather is Filipino / African American). While not in and of itself super important to the main story, I guess it fed into overall themes of race and identity and how you present yourself to others in society. True whether you’re black, white, or vampire.
Anyhow, “Blackface” or similar racial face is offensive because of the long history of using it to mock other races or exclude them from the industry.
It’s not “oh we can only hire actors who are the exact age / gender / sexuality / ethnicity of the character.”
I agree. So when it is used to mock or insult - it’s wrong. But when it is satire, etc, then- mostly Okay then? Some of the examples here are satirizing the idea of blackface.
Right.
…like which ones?
Well Tropic Thunder obviously. And I would say that example is ok as it specifically portrays an actor earnestly putting on blackface to enhance his performance for a role while being completely tonedeaf to why it’s not Ok. And the other characters treat him appropriately, given the context. And it makes sense in the larger context of making fun of the pretention and hypocrisy of Hollywood in producing the sort of films portrayed within the film.
IOW, it’s only “okay” because it was done brilliantly.
So yeah if it is done to be satirical, it can be okay.