Wasn’t there a joke on Seinfeld where Jerry talked to a woman over the phone who had a Chinese-sounding last name and brought up things during their conversation that would seemingly indicate she had a Chinese-American background, only to find out she was white when he met her?
As did his SNL castmate Darrell Hammond when playing Jesse Jackson:
I mean, it happens. I was watching an episode of Deadwood with a friend which had a minor guest role by the actor Izabella Miko and they asked if I knew her name. I did from supporting roles in a cruddy vampire film and Coyote Ugly (also pretty weak) and after I told them they spent a couple of minutes being confused by her surname. Is she part Japanese? Does she have a Japanese husband?
Nope, she’s Polish and Miko is just a stage shortening for Mikołajczak, which has few too many consonants for your average American to easily process.
This thread seems to have went way off topic on the (I’d argue unrelated) topic of “can actors play anyone but themselves”, which is no way blackface.
That’s a whole other argument, and I do find it’s weird that people who’d argue they have to have a genuine cherokee indian to play that role, but are fine when they do a completely inauthentic cast on something like The personal history of david copperfield and would also absolutely shit themselves on the idea that a gay man is not allowed to play a straight man.
Seeing the name made me think of when I learned Max Factor was not just a brand name, but a person (Maksymilian Faktorowicz). Now I’m wondering how much of his product was used for these Black and Yellowface works.
And to pile another layer of nuance on such distinctions: what do you think about white (Irish- and Jewish-American) actor Keenan Wynn,
playing the racist white Senator Billboard Rawkins in the 1968 Finian’s Rainbow,
who is magically (and temporarily) turned into a Black man by a wish-granting crock of leprechaun gold?
ISTM it would have been kind of impossible to depict any such plot development without putting a white actor in blackface.
No, you just hire a different actor to play the post-wish Senator.
Kinda like there are two actors playing Joe Boyd in Damn Yankees - one pre-devil, one post-devil.
My high school presented Finian’s Rainbow. At the moment the wish took effect there was a puff of smoke and a Black actor replaced the white one.
Thanks @Dr.Winston_OBoogie and @Kent_Clark, that’s actually a much more interesting approach that also gives the second actor in the role a lot of opportunities for clever mimicry of the first one!
Can’t believe no one’s mentioned It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and their “banned episodes” that feature blackface:
Yellowface:
And brownface:
Mike Myers earned many a cringe for his performance as Guru Pitka in The Love Guru, though he at least had the good sense to leave his skin its natural color.
That such a cartoon was made in the Jim Crow 1940’s shouldn’t shock anybody. What is mindblowingly astounding is that cartoons like these were broadcast on afterschool TV to me and my fellow 10-year-olds in the 1970s!
A show about toxic shitty people not understanding basic social norms, and even discuss it, and have scenes such as in the shower where it rubs off.
Are we living in a world there satirising something is now doing the thing? Community did it with “dark elves”, and even that, which is not “black face” as such, has the overreaction assuming it actually is black face.
I agree with your statement about satirizing someone. But those episodes are not normally available on streaming, and that’s why I included them.
Has anyone mentioned Jeanette Goldstein in ALIENS? Her skin looked much lighter in TITANIC.
I can relate to your namesake related discomfort Elmer. Hard to believe they were still willing to use Flip as a character in a Little Nemo movie made in 1989.
I don’t want to seem like I’m defending such an awful movie, but he is playing a white guy. The story is that he was orphaned in India as a child.
Isnt Flip a green skinned frog like person?