I’m failing to see the cringe factor here. It’s a satire about racism, and considering the story, I’m at a loss as to what kind of casting they might have done that wasn’t a person of one race portraying another part of the time.
Was Marie Curie being homely important to the story of her life, her relationship to her husband, and especially her dedication to her science? If not, then what difference did it make (all respect to your mother, of course)? If so, then she might have a good point.
I don’t recall anyone every criticizing RDJ’s playing Kirk Lazarus playing Staff Sergeant Lincoln Osiris. I think mostly because it was played as such a parody of an actor engaging in the practice with such earnestness, having no idea why he was so offensive.
I do recall Ben Stiller getting a lot of crap for his “full retard” portrayal of Tugg Speedman playing Simple Jack.
It’s been awhile since I saw that film and no particular interest in watching it again. But did her ancestry have any particular bearing on the plot whatsoever?
Scarlet Johansson got a lot of crap for her portrayal of Major Motoko Kusanagi in the live action Ghost in the Shell. Although the creator of the original manga even stated there’s no reason a manufactured cyborg living in a made up Asian-themed megalopolis couldn’t have been made to look like Scarlet Johansson.
Not everyone living in an Asian megalopolis looks the same, any more than everybody in New York City looks the same. However, I suspect what is really going on in this case is people are trying to think way too hard about something that even the author said is not in the manga, as opposed to the actual themes of the manga.
It had bearing to her character because like the real life person she was based on she made in central to her character. A person of Asian descent who didn’t look Asian who felt it necessary to point out her background. She was a person in real life that the writer felt was interesting enough to make into a movie character (as he has done his entire career). Maybe it was too fine a needle to thread in a movie, The other choice was to not write the character at all which he probably wishes he did now.
One could make the same argument about the Seoul-dwelling androids Oliver and Claire in the Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending - and yet the producers faced pushback when they cast white actor Andrew Barth Feldman for a short run as Oliver, because the roles had been exclusively played by Asian actors until then.
West Side Story also had the perplexing situation of actual Puerto Rican players in the cast being redundantly brownfaced — because surprise, surprise, many of us are phenotypically “too white”-looking.
But of course that movie has the cringier casting decision, that in a musical where the lead is a Latina, the role went to non-singing Russian-American Natalie Wood.
To be fair, the original Broadway productio starred actress Carol Lawrence as Maria and she was WAY more white bread than Natalie Wood
Similarly, Samuel L. Jackson “blacked up” for his performance as the house slave in Django Unchained.
Was not aware of that! A terrific performance, his…
With the singing dubbed by Marni Nixon.
I feel like the point of a movie starring a plainer Marie Curie would be that anyone can succeed, not just beautiful women.
Of course the real question is: would such a movie succeed? Probably not.
I think the real question is, what story are the movie-makers trying to tell? I haven’t seen that particular movie, or at least I don’t remember having done so, but it is possible that her looks, good or indifferent, are irrelevant to the story.
Yep, green and frog like. First image doesnt come up.
Skimming through this thread to post a specific example, but did anybody mention Gene Wilder in Silverstreak? Now, TBF, he plays someone doing a laughably bad job of pretending to be black to get past law enforcement not a black character, but still pretty cringey to watch now, at least for me.
Recently I watched The Awakening, 1980 mummy horror story with Miriam Margolyes as an Egyptian obstetrician. Not a very good movie, but yeah, her scenes are pretty cringe.
Is it cringey if it’s supposed to be cringey?
Given Richard Pryor’s in character reaction it was, IMHO, supposed to be.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of this one earlier.
In “Uncivil Warbirds” (1946), the Three Stooges play Confederate soliders trying to spy on Union officers. To that end, they employ a variety of guises/disguises, to include all three of them in blackface (and Curly in drag).
Definitely cringeworthy.
But I cut them a little slack because of the memorable line from Moe (“You ejaculated a mouthful!”) and their immortal redition of “Dixie”:
Oh, way down south in New York City
Cotton grows on the trees so pretty
On the trees?
One the trees
In the South?
South Brooklyn
Maybe. I’m laughing too hard, especially when Richard Pryor says “We’ll get past the cops – I just hope we don’t see no Muslims.”
A “yellowface” that gets a lot of flack: British Caucasian actor John Bennett’s portrayal of the Chinese magician Li H’sen Chang in the Doctor Who story “The Talons of Weng-Chiang.” Just about all of the Chinese characters (most of them played by Asians, at least) were Tong henchmen.
At one point Chang, in his stage magician act, has the Doctor volunteer to go inside his “magic cabinet”. When Chang and his assistant are spinning the cabinet around, the Doctor casually saunters out, while the audience laughs. Chang opens the cabinet, finds the Doctor gone, and mutters to the audience: “It appears one of us is yellow.” Oof.
Which had a very different connotation in 1975!
Shakespeare has been mentioned, but specifically, how restricted should any of these roles be? Can a Gentile play Shylock? (Should that play even be performed any more?) Can a non-African play Othello (considering the wide range of what a “Moor” might be). I remember cringing in 1965 at Olivier’s movie version, which was only partly because of the blackface. What about the descendant works, like the opera Otello? Madame Butterfly?
When I was in college they were producing The Importance of Being Earnest, and I was in love with the 1950 recording that included Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell. I really, really wanted to try out for Lady Bracknell myself (I didn’t, just because I didn’t have the chutzpah) but would I have been wrong to do so? Stephen Fry has done so himself in recent years, although I didn’t care for what I saw of it.
I guess my point is, how much do great works/classics get a pass from the odium usually associated with blackface, yellowface and brownface? I don’t think anyone here is prepared to say that these kinds of casting should never, ever be done. I think we should give an Asian woman a chance to play Hamlet, if she wants to and people want to see it, and I think it’s still considered normal and not shocking to cast non-Asian singers as Butterfly.
Where and how do you draw the line?
Or is it like the judge’s definition of obscenity, you know bad racial casting when you see it, even if you can’t articulate it?
