Ok, I’m just posting this to see what others think. A friend and I saw a “Prince of Persia” trailer. So here’s the conversation:
“OK, so Jake Gyllenhaal plays the prince? Is he Persian?”- friend
“Not that I know of, I think he’s Swedish.”-Me
“So, they’re having a white actor play a Middle Eastern character? Is that like having a white actor play a black character? Blackface, I think it was called. And no one seems to have problem with that? Are there no Arab actors in Hollywood?”-friend
“Actually, Persians aren’t Arab.”
etc.
I know it’s based on a video game, but I think you get the gist of it. So, why aren’t white actors prohibited/ barred/ etc from playing other ethnicities like they are from black characters?
It’s nothing at all like blackface. It’d only be similar if they tried to make him look Persian by putting sunless tanning lotion on him to try to make him darker.
Before, when white actors played black characters, they would put on a blackface that insultingly exaggerated black phenotypes. That’s why it was insulting: it was meant to make fun of blacks, just like an actor putting on a big crooked nose to play a Jew.
If a white actor plays a member of an ethnicity in a way that isn’t ridiculing members of that ethnicity, only overly sensitive people will take offense. It’s even possible for a white actor to play a black person, as long as it isn’t done insultingly (e.g.: Robert Downey Junior in Tropic Thunder).
White actors aren’t prohibited from playing black characters. They just aren’t very convincing as black characters.
Persians basically are caucasians, so it’s not that much of a stretch. Asian and Hispanic actors play wide variations of ethnicities all the time. A Brazilian guy played Xerxes (a real Persian King who was not Brazilian) in 300 and nobody cared.
A white person playing a black person isn’t “blackface,” in the offensive meaning of the word.
F’rex, this white actor (Scott Thompson) in a comedy sketch, playing a black man, has dark makeup on, but is not giving what most would call a “blackface” performance. I don’t see this as any different from an actor putting on a wig, bald cap, putty nose, old age makeup, etc.
A white person slapping on shoe polish, with huge white rims around his eyes and lips, and shucking/jiving the way no black person has ever shucked/jived, is “blackface.”
Which sort of performance JG is giving in Prince of Persia, I have no idea.
I don’t think blackface is “prohibited” either. As has been said it’s rarely convincing. (Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder excepted–there’s no race that man can’t convincingly play, IMO!)
Yeah, I figure just ignore the accents. It’s usually got no bearing when it’s a foreign and/or ancient culture.
I thought they did a good job in HBO’s Rome series because they were all speaking in English accents but the upper class ones had the more posh accents as opposed to a more lower class one for the plebs.
It would have been nice if the film makers had made an effort to locate some talent that looked a bit more appropriate to the story, but does anyone really have high expectations from this movie? There is an ancient tradition in Hollywood that Middle-Easterners should only ever be played by white Americans, so you can’t really blame this film for that.
I’ve only seen the trailers, but this movie struck me as being heavily inspired by Assassin’s Creed, another video game. The parcours, the leap of faith, etc.
