Yes, Burt Kwouk is known to me for playing Kato in the Pink Panther series which seems a little cringeworthy because he is Chinese playing at being a Japanese. It is obviously not to the level of the doing the same for Memoirs of a Geisha where then main character was likely chosen due to name recognition having recently appears in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon rather than choose some unknown Japanese or Japanese-American actress.
Of course probably the most notable one in recent memory is Scarlett Johansson in the Ghost in a Shell live action movie. They don’t even change the character’s name, and yes you can create a android/robot to look however you want, and it is a fictional work so it could be true, but this one was one of the ones that really made it cringe worthy.
This was definitely different than The Edge of Tomorrow which took a Japanese story and remade it, so none of the characters where given Japanese names and just played by non east-asian actors.
To which are you responding? Ghost in the Shell, or Edge of Tomorrow? Ghost in the Shell is purportedly in the same universe/context as the original work, which is why it is a cringeworthy replacement. Edge of Tomorrow, just re-contextualizes an idea, which is why it really is not cringeworthy.
A bit of clarification, that was not me but the historian saying “possible”, in any case, the folks at Britannica noticed that that does not change much about the racism or prejudice coming from slavery or plantation life. As for Song of the South, the problem was what was omitted by the movie, it is context removal in a way that makes the past inequities to be normal or from a happy time.
The fact that the origins of the tales are from Africa does not remove the cringe issues that the movie had/has.
African American folktales are a storytelling tradition that originated among enslaved African Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries. Enslaved people brought a rich oral tradition with them to the New World, and though the stories evolved over time in the Americas, many of their original themes remained.
These folktales served not only to preserve and pass on African culture, but also provided respite from the hardships of slavery and fostered a sense of community. They often took the form of parables that conveyed ideals, morals, and cultural values. Some tales contained coded information or escape plans. Characters and motifs from African stories often were adapted to a New World setting. For example, the African hare became Brer Rabbit, and the African jackal became the American fox.
I didn’t see Soul Man (1986) mentioned yet. There’s just nothing redeemable about that movie. A rich white kid has a dad who won’t pay for his education, so to get financial aid he dies his skin black and wears an Afro.
The most shocking aspect is that the movie includes James Earl Jones.
I was 8 when it came out and I could tell it was just wrong on so many levels even then.
You people seem to think that my saying that the Br’er Rabbit tales being retellings of traditional African folktales somehow says that Song of the South hasn’t got racism problems have to explain how those two things are connected. They’re not.
Well, of course. The nit from me was that I quoted the historian, that was not me, but the most recent point was that besides being a retelling of traditional African folktales, there was a lot of repurposing and retooling (that is part of creating IMHO) of those tales by enslaved people in the Americas.
In any case, I have say here that I appreciate your nits. My criticism is actually for folks out there that do grab well intentioned nitpicks like yours and use it to support their idea that there was no racism in Song of the South.
There’s a wide range between “using blackface to denigrate them” and “we’re using blackface for satire purposes.” And most of the example fall into that range which is basically “we wanted a famous person in this role and most famous people are white, so…”
Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girls is only from 2009 and features quite a few blackface moments that are totally wild. Here is one still or production photo during it:
As it beats working and I still have his biography on my Kindle app. I can confirm that my memory was correct, and Wikipedia is wrong, his mother was from Ukraine not Lithuania
In “You Only Live Twice”, remember that Connery was not playing a Japanese character in the movie, he was playing a British man being disguised as a Japanese man.
Regarding John Wayne, I can think of four westerns he starred in in which his character had an Indian friend:
1963 - McClintock: Michael Pate
1970 - Chisum: Abraham Sofaer
1971 - Big Jake: Bruce Cabot
1973 - Cahill, U. S. Marshal: Neville Brand
None of these four actors claimed Native American ancestry, as far as I know.
I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned Godfrey Cambridge in the 1970 film, Watermelon Man. He portrays a white man (in whiteface) who one day wakes up as black (in natural-face).
The film contrasts activities that in one society are normal, but a parallel society, quite different. One, as white man, is normal – sprinting to catch the bus to work and cutting across lawns for a shortcut. But who, as a black man, is arrested as a suspicious criminal, trespassing for nefarious intent.
That’s kind of the whole point of Hamilton - pretty much all of the actors are POC, and that’s woven deep into the DNA of the show. A „period-correct“ performance of Hamilton with an all-white cast simply is not going to happen.
Ah, I just thought of the Sinbad films. Seventh Voyage, Golden Voyage and Eye of the Tiger. I unabashedly love the first with it’s Harryhausen creations and palace setting in the actual Alhambra. As a kid I also loved the latter two, mostly for the creatures though they weren’t nearly as good as the first.
But Kerwin Matthews and Patrick Wayne (following in his father’s footsteps!) weren’t exactly the most Arabian of leads. Though credit where credit is due I suppose, at least the third had Jordanian-born Nadim Sawalha in a minor supporting role as one of Sindbad’s crew.
