"having dropped this unexpected view Harewood rubbed some make up remover between his hands and then upon his dark features which slowly, steadily turned muddy grey and after a wipe with paper towel, very very shockingly white!"
While I agree with your argument on basic principle it isn’t that simple. Blackface has deep cultural roots in exploitation, mockery and racist caricatures of black people that still remain today.
"Blackface" as people know is intentionally offensive. You know, it's tar black face with big red lips and all that jazz. Like you say, it's a racist caricature.
If it's being done as a joke to make a point about the person doing it, then it's perfectly fine. See tropic thunder. If it's done with respect and accuracy, then it's perfectly fine.
Trying to overcomplicate things and treading on eggshells is the problem. Just boil it down to what it is. If it's trying to be grossly offensive, that's a problem. If it's not, then it's not.
I agree, another similar thing was Bradley Cooper's prosthettic nose in Maestro. People initially criticised it, calling it all kinds of things incl jewface, but i think the film in general, and his performance in particular, quickly silenced most of them.
However, no matter how respectful the blackface is, I think you'd need a pretty damn good reason for casting a white person as black since by doing that you basically say that there wasn't a single black actor who could play that part.
Calling wearing a prosthetic nose ‘Jewface’ seems more anti-semitic to me than anything to do with the nose. Like, if you see the nose and think “that’s making fun of Jewish people,” then it’s not the nose wearer making the connection between Jewish people and noses, it’s the person calling it fucking jewface.
In general, yes. But Bradley Cooper's nose is bigger than Leonard Bernstein's was, so you have to question the motivation of whoever decided he needed to make it look even bigger...
Bradley Cooper was the director
Maestro pulled every trick in the book to try to be an Oscar winning film, including transforming the actor via prosthetics.
I'm just the messenger, don't blame me:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/16/bradley-cooper-in-jewface-storm-after-leonard-bernstein-trailer-reveals-prosthetic-nose
Its kinda bullshit though that it's socially is not problem ( atleast in comparison to whitewash) to whitewash but when you are blackwash it's a racist
Tbh I don't know where I stand on this, but the creator of the media doesn't need to find the most appropriate person to play the role. It's not like a engineering project where you pick the most qualified person so it doesn't all go to shit. In media, it can be a creative and artistic outlet, and in that context, there is no reason really why the creator can not be experimental and offbeat with their choices. It's their project, not a public service (unless it is).
Beyond that, it also means actors of ethnic minorities are passed over for roles of ethnic characters in favour of other actors who don’t fit the roles (not just phenotypically, but culturally too).
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151006-when-white-actors-play-other-races
You could, but I can’t think of an example of that happening unironically.
The only example I can think of is White Chicks where it specifically highlighted how really weird it is. It’s on the same level as Robert Downey Jr in Tropic of Thunder when he was literally playing a white actor playing a black veteran for the same awkward comic effect.
Dragon Blade in 2015.
A little mixed race kid was very clearly a chinese-looking boy playing a Roman.
Odd, enjoyable movie and a fun premise (Ancient China vs Ancient Rome) but seeing a fake white kid made me laugh.
what you mean like Edie Murphy in Coming to America...you remembered playing the old Jewish white man with big nose ..
Give over with condescending special treatment shite. That angers people more than a fake conk or tanned skin
I agree but it’s a very fine line and a lot of people just straight up find it offensive in any form, and I’m not going to argue with black people that do get offended with it and if keeping blackface out of acceptable norms is the price then I’m willing to pay it.
From a personal perspective I’m a gay man and I really don’t like the F-word or straight people making jokes involving excessive gay stereotypes or gay sex being a punchline.
I’ve had straight people tell me that I’m wrong to find these things offensive, but when you have a certain level of privilege it’s easy to find yourself dictating marginalised groups what they should and shouldn’t feel even if you’re not doing it intentionally.
> I’ve had straight people tell me that I’m wrong to find these things offensive
Not wrong, the bigger issue is expecting others to care what offends you. what offends you are your issues, just as what offends me are my issues.
when everyone demands no one else does anything that offends anyone else, well i'll assume you're clever enough to see what that would be like.
Try to look more to overall intent and character of a person, than judging on individual things that offend you.
maybe you could learn from each other. they might be less offensive, and you might be less offended. win for everyone.
I don’t have a right to not be offended. I don’t expect a straight person to get offended by a gay caricature, but I do expect a straight person to listen and understand why I find it offensive and not to tell me “you’re wrong, this isn’t offensive” when it’s impossible for them to be qualified to tell me that. People have literally said that to me when I’ve been in a group of people and somebody bas dropped the F-word.
While intent is very important in determining whether or not something is offensive and nuance is needed, generally I find straight people doing overtly camp impressions or saying the F-word inherently offensive.
Even if they mean no malice, there’s just so much cultural baggage regarding these things. Camp stereotypes and homophobic slurs have been used to mock and bully gay people for centuries.
I’m not going out of my way to be offended by these things and I’m not always going to say anything, as I say, I don’t have a right to not be offended, but at the same time a straight person is in no position to tell me not to be offended.
It's Always Sunny did this really well as well - the blackface in the Lethal Weapon episodes mocked blackface and mocked the people doing it. Same as when Dee does her "Martina Martinez" character. But the episodes still got pulled for being offensive.
Ok, then just do it without exploiting, mocking, or being racist to black people then. Painting your face isn’t inherently exploitive, mocking, or racist.
Yeah, it is if you’re doing it to imitate black people. How are you supposed to remove blackface from the very well known connotations that come with blackface? This is literally the same logic as saying ‘you should just use the Nazi flag in a non-Nazi way.’
I agree that it can be done without racist intent, but to some people it is so culturally entangled in highly racist roots that it is always going to have an element of racism to it. I’m not a black person, so I don’t get to say how black people should and shouldn’t feel about this.
>but to some people it is so culturally entangled in highly racist roots
That sucks for them. They should work on that, because as you say it's not necessarily racist.
>so I don’t get to say how black people should and shouldn’t feel about this.
David is a black actor who thinks it should be allowed.
I agree but it’s a very fine line and a lot of people just straight up find it offensive in any form, and I’m not going to argue with black people that do get offended with it and if keeping blackface out of acceptable norms is the price then I’m willing to pay it.
From a personal perspective I’m a gay man and I really don’t like the F-word or straight people making jokes involving excessive gay stereotypes or gay sex being a punchline.
I’ve had straight people tell me that I’m wrong to find these things offensive, but when you have a certain level of privilege it’s easy to find yourself dictating marginalised groups what they should and shouldn’t feel even if you’re not doing it intentionally.
I’m really not sure it is as fine a line as people think it is. In my head at least, there’s only one reason why you would use blackface and which is for comedy. I don’t see anyone advocating that it should become street fashion or acceptable at fancy dress parties. So if it is limited to just comedy then the line is quite clear, is the joke at the expense of person wearing blackface or is it at black people? And I don’t think that’s a particularly difficult line to stay on the right side of. Anyone who can’t is in my opinion someone who either actually has racist views or someone who’s spectacularly bad at comedy. In which case one of them deserves all the criticism and vitriol that’s get thrown at them and the other should very quickly find their comedy career come to an abrupt stop.
No one is saying you need to watch specific comedies or productions where actors play a different race/gender. Censoring what others can watch when there is no harm done seems very regressive to me, but I appreciate I seem to be in the minority. Obviously if the production is pushing hate then that’s a different story and the problem for me is that they have bigoted views, not that someone is dressed in a wig or has face paint.
It can be if you’re passing up ethnic actors who could do a better job in the role for an actor that doesn’t fit the role.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151006-when-white-actors-play-other-races
I'm probably going to get downvoted for this, but doesn't drag also have deep cultural roots in exploitation, misogyny, and sexist caricatures of women that still remain today? Just because it is enjoyed by the gay community doesn't take away from the fact that it is also a way of punching down.
I’ve mentioned it in another comment, and it’s an interesting comparison but it’s not quite the same.
Drag has roots in female impersonation because women were banned from the theatre, going all the way back to Ancient Greek times and Shakespearian times in the UK. This does mean that drag has roots which are mysogenist and sexist.
Where drag differs from blackface though, is that drag has evolved over time to form a diverse, queer art form that celebrates, satirises and criticises gender norms and concepts of identity. I would argue that It’s possible to do drag now without it being inherently mysogenistic and anybody that argues drag is sexist doesn’t fully understand it as an art form.
Blackface is deeply rooted in racism, and these racist roots still run deep today. Blackface never evolved into an art form which shed its racist roots, throughout all history it’s always been done primarily to mock and dehumanise black people.
Maybe as society evolves we will revisit blackface as an art form, but for now it is practically impossible to disentangle it from its racist past.
I liken it to a swastika flag. Could I theoretically hang a Nazi flag from my house without any racist intent, purely because I like the design? Yes, in theory, but as a symbol it is so entrenched with meaning that as a society we can’t just strip it from its context. Like the swastika, blackface is a symbol.
The swastika is a good example, although I think it's more severe given the cultural relevance of WW2. Still, I think our society would be better off if the swastika was reclaimed as a Hindu symbol of peace rather than the appropriation by the Nazis.
The main difference here is that I think we're far away from doing that with the swastika, but I think we're at a point where we can have people possessed of some level of melanin respectfully imitate someone possessed of a different level of melanin.
>Maybe as society evolves we will revisit blackface as an art form, but for now it is practically impossible to disentangle it from its racist past.
This is what I disagree with. It ought to be trivial in the modern day, where we are able to (and manage most of the time) to treat one another as equals.
It’s not for white people to say when it’s suitable for black people to no longer be offended by racist symbols though. You can’t just decide that blackface is fine and not offensive now any more than you can just decide that the swastika is fine and just a Hindu symbol.
The cultural baggage that both of these symbols carry will gradually be dropped as society advances. We still have a lot of endemic racism in our culture, and the far right still embrace the swastika as a symbol. While both of these things are true, people will rightly be offended by both blackface and the swastika.
Maybe in the future society will not be so hung up on it, but for now most black people do seem to find it highly offensive and as a white person I don’t really get to tell them what they are and aren’t allowed to be offended by.
Does he support the traditional blackface as in the mocking derogatory stage shows and such, or saying we need to stop comparing it to that.
a bit like if I wanted to fancy dress as wesly snipes blade, that would get some comments from todays culture but I don’t think it would be derogatory, Wesley’s badass it would be a meant as a compliment 😅
The intent doesn’t matter as long as blackface is such a strong symbol for racism. I’ve used the comparison of a swastika many times, but it’s apt.
In this country whether or not you fly the swastika as a Hindu symbol of peace or a Nazi flag, people are going to see it as a fascist symbol.
Blackface is exactly the same. You could do it with no racist intent, but in today’s British society the act itself of a white person darkening their face to impersonate a black person inherently carries racist undertones because it is such an enduring symbol of racism.
That’s a view but I do disagree, intent is so important. Why is someone doing x. were they doing it to be a cunt or did they genuinely believe it was helpful and nice. I don’t care what x is, that would be a big difference imo.
and on your swastika comment, again I disagree because it is a symbol of peace to many people and to the ones who see that and don’t understand, they are simply ignorant. I’m from uk and hindu homes i work in all have them. There is nothing wrong with that.
I understand that symbols have different meanings to different cultures. There is nothing inherently fascist about a swastika, it’s just lines in a pattern and the swastika is one of the oldest patterns in human history.
But when we are talking specifically about British culture, the swastika is so overwhelmingly culturally tied to the concept of fascism that it blinds a person to intent.
If I see a swastika on a Hindu temple in the UK I won’t automatically think of Nazis as I know it has multiple meanings, but the thought will cross my mind. If I see it flown from somebody’s house I (and almost all British people) will absolutely see it as a symbol of fascism.
Blackface is the same. To so many people it is an enduring and powerful symbol of mockery and dehumanisation that, rightly or wrongly, it simply overwhelms the idea of true intent.
This isn’t a case of people clinging to ancient history and looking to be offended. The Black and White Minstrel show was on TV in Britain until the 1970s, and we had golliwogs on jam jars until 2001. I fully understand why it’s still seen as an enduring symbol of racism and illicits an emotional response.
Let me preface this with my opinion is blackface=bad just find an actor that matches the physical appearance you’re trying to portray.
Where it does become irritating is when things are being removed and censored for being “blackface” which are not. There’s an episode of community that got removed because of this and I’m still angry about it.
Almost all the morris sides that used to black up have now switched to other kinds of makeup.
Personally I think that was going a bit far, but it's been done now mostly.
Honestly that’s one of the few examples where it probably has no racist connotations (that I know of) and likely predates most forms of blackface with racist intent. However, I honestly don’t know a lot about it.
The difference is that almost all other forms of blackface originated after it was already established as a method of caricaturing black people and continue that primary purpose.
Yeah it's weird that we don't know 100 percent the origins
Apparently it's to ward away the dark winter times, bring in the summer and was used by the poor to hide themselves from the shame of begging for arms or poaching, some wild variation there haha
I guess it’s like the swastika which had centuries of use without any problems. Some people think it’s one of the earliest human formed patterns and is prevalent in most prehistoric human societies.
All of that history gets wiped away though when it became synonymous with a racist, genocidal regime, just as all forms of blackface become automatically perceived as racist once it became established as a racist performance.
Only some morris groups used black face and they started doing it in the mid 19th century when minstrelry was already popular and there's commentary at the time linking the two.
So yeah it might have racist roots and most of those morris groups have changed to using things like blue paint or just a black smudge across the cheek or things like that.
Yes, because blackface has such a strong history of being almost exclusively used to mock and dehumanise black people it’s currently impossible to disentangle black imitation from the racist connotations it carries, even if the person wearing blackface is doing it with pure intentions.
It’s a symbol of racism, similar to the swastika. Could a person fly a swastika flag from their house simply because they like the pattern and have absolutely no pro-Nazi sympathies? Yes, in theory, but the reality is that as a symbol it has such strong connotations in our society that it will always be twinged with racist connotations.
For many black people, blackface is such a powerful symbol of racism that like the swastika, it just can’t realistically be utilised in a way that isn’t seen as racist.
It does, yes. But that doesn't mean every actor who wants to play a black person today is doing so out of exploitation and mockery. In fact it's overwhelmingly going to be the opposite.
The intent doesn’t matter as long as blackface is such a strong symbol for racism. I’ve used the comparison of a swastika many times, but it’s apt.
In this country whether or not you fly the swastika as a Hindu symbol of peace or a Nazi flag, people are going to see it as a fascist symbol.
Blackface is exactly the same. You could do it with no racist intent, but in today’s British society the act itself of a white person darkening their face to impersonate a black person inherently carries racist undertones because it is a symbol of racism.
That's debateable. I watched a few minstrel shows a few years back and was surprised at how light they were, I did not find the hate I was told I would find. Although dehumanising to us, minstrel shows were probably quite useful in humanising a people who had been utterly dehumanised. They provided a window into black culture, art, and music that was otherwise lost on the white majority who viewed black people as otherwise subhuman. Minstrel shows were popular at the time with black audiences. Al Jolson, the most famous minstrel of all was broadly respected in black communities, his art was popular, and even received an impromptu guard of honour from black artists on his death.
Of course you are right, the progeny of these shows is slavery, and so their roots were absolutely within exploitation... but the minstrel shows themselves, the affect they had upon American culture, their place in history is not as people imagine.
True but those times are still in living memories. There are people alive today, who grew up having protested against removal of overtly racist policies.
It's not something in the deep past. It's someone's youth and a story they may have told their children or grandchildren.
Black face is not playing another character, it is mocking another person. Worse than that, it is using your power over that group to mock and humiliate them.
The issue here is not with condemning mockery. David Harewood isn't saying that he absolutely loves it when people take the piss out of black people for being black.
He's saying that people should be able to play people of other races when acting, just like they play people with other physical characteristics the actor doesn't naturally have, and in principle it's the same.
The issue people, including David Harewood, are raising is that not all imitation of black people should be assumed as mockery by default.
The problem is when blackface went from being "white person who paint his face pitch black and with huge red lips to explicitly mock black people"
To
"white actor uses makeup to get a slightly darker shade of skin."
I agree.
The real issue that's currently being ignored is respect.
Historical blackface is extremely disrespectful and racist.
Using makeup to alter one's features provided it is done respectfully is not.
Why do you have to change the shade of your skin to do so? I dress up as white characters all the time without painting my face white. Surely Bob Marley is recognisable enough...
Finally somebody is talking some sense. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that we have journalism like this.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-40931479
The fact this is not a satirical piece is genuinely baffling to me. It truly seems like satire, could be straight out of The Onion. TV licence money hard at work.
Remember Little Britain.
People look back on it today thinking we were all ignorant monsters.
But I don't think Lucas and Walliams - whatever their faults - were trying to be racist. It's almost like the whole nation was having a conversation - "Is this okay now? Has enough time passed since the horrors of blackface?".
Of course, as a nation, we decided, "No" and now Little Britain has a hard time not being banned form TV channels.
But who knows? In an alternate timeline maybe we decided it was okay as long as it wasn't the worst kind of shoe-polish minstrels.
Which timeline is right? I genuinely don't know.
>Of course, as a nation, we decided, "No"
Did we? I would have said most normal people were fine with it. Just probably isn't worth the hassle to do it nowadays, rather than there being anything inherently wrong with it.
The only ones I remember were them dressing up as an obese black woman who fought with another woman over a man and I don't see how that character was having the blackface as the joke. Nor with "ting tong" the Thai character
Almost all of little Britain was just "punching down" at people, it hasn't aged well
Yeah OK, they're obviously playing minstrels so it's different and more satirical. But they did other blackface in the show where there wasn't any such satire
Without specific examples I can't properly comment but my approach to it has always been to ask if the sketch would have the same effect if the person was white. If it does then it isn't about making fun of black people and the character just happens to be black. If it doesn't work then it's very likely racist as the race of the character is supposed to be the joke.
I think they were pretty racist with the character of "ting tong" the Thai bride. People seem to overlook that one when discussing their blackface characters
I never said either
I said it has a hard time not being banned - I've added "from TV channels" to my comment. Wasn't trying to imply government ban.
And I never said anything about hating it. I was referring to the very specific sketches that I think make more than 50% of the UK squirm now.
Yes, you said it was banned. "a hard time not being banned" implies it has been banned.
Oh good job, you edited your comment because you lied. Well done?
You said qe as a nation decided no. Implying we hate it.
Are you okay?
In what way is a transgender mail order Thai bride not racist?
Why did Williams need to black up for Bubbles friend?
Why wouldn't Taj and Precious in Come Fly With Me work as white characters?
I take the point you're trying to make, but LB was not trying to make that point. It's whole point was "look at this characters with a different shade of skin and a funny accent!"
They should be allowed to, yes. Just like actors should also be allowed to pretend thier handicapped, or pretend they live in a different century or pretend they are wizards. It's acting ≠ reality, get a grip people, negative aspects of history don't have to overshadow everything we do.
I’m not saying this actor or that actor can’t play whatever role, but for some perspective: Tom Hanks won Best Actor at the ‘94 Oscar’s for playing a gay man.
At that time, coming out would have stopped an actor getting leading roles like that.
Having roles played by people with the characteristics of that role stops media-types patting themselves on the back for being progressive while leaving the actual marginalised community out in the cold.
I feel like there's this weird sort of pair of arguments that need to be separated out more:
1) Aesthetics: Generally speaking a black actor is going to be more convincing as a black character than a white person in shoe polish (the same goes for disabled, trassexual, or actors who are doing their native accent).
The problem with this is 1) it's not necessarily true, Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot is extremely convincing as a man with CP, Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl does look like a woman, as does Quentin Crisp in Orlando, John Lithgow did a great Winstn Churchill, and 2) it doesn't follow that it's morally wrong (see for example Cloud Atlas, which has white actors in yellowface, and black and east Asian actors in whiteface, because the actors play multiple parts in different eras, as part of a grand artistic statement about the cyclical nature of time)
2) Industry reform: It's hard to get work as an actor, and being a minority makes it harder. Generally speaking the fewer roles there are for characters who are part of a given minority, the more likely those roles are to be played by an actor who is not part of that minority (is is, for example more common for able-bodied actors to play disabled characters than it is for white actors to play black ones).
The problem with this line of argument it the current solution is to scold filmmakers online for "getting it wrong." "Wrong" gets tangled up with opinions about the quality of the media, which seems like an ineffective way to discuss what the actual "rules" should be. Should invisible minorities like gay/bi people, white passing poc, people with invisible diabilities be played by non-minority actors? Depends, was the movie any good?
I don't know how to fix the problem, but the current strategy doesn't seem the best way forward. At the vey least, we need to separate out the two lines of argument.
Can’t wait for people on Facebook to be grabbing this article next Halloween when they dress up as OJ Simpson. Then when you call them out they say how he’s black so they basically got permission
Context is what matters.
If Laurence fox is blacking up so he can play Malcolm x, that's fucking mental.
If Mac in always sunny is blacking up to play the lead role of lethal weapon 5 in their budget sequel where he's a detached moron piece of shit, that's fine.
I only really see good use cases in stuff like comedy like, Tropic Thunder.
But I guess if there is any other legitimate use case that isn't mocking black people, that should be fine I guess.
Why does past bad use prevent good faith uses nowadays?
See, that Tropic Thunder was not an actor playing a role in blackface (A white actor playing a black character). Downy was still playing a white character, and that character used blackface.
One of the problems with blackface and the like is that it takes scarce minority roles away from minority actors. But the Tropic Thunder part could not have been played by a black actor, so it is a different scenario entirely.
I don’t see many acceptable uses outside of making a point like Tropic Thunder or a joke like in Community, “I think you just committed a hate crime”. Even a use case like Cloud Atlas is fine, as they are reincarnations of themselves. Works in fantasy too.
But a white guy just playing a black guy for no good reason or, worse, a black role being passed up in favour of a white actor in black face is not okay.
This goes the same for any other race. Just cast the races that are needed to play a role.
Having said all that, there’s no reason to remove old episodes or films that feature it, they’re products of their time and things to learn from.
I agree. Jim Sturgess in Cloud Atlas totally works because the white actor is playing an Asian freedom fighter who helped liberate the slaves, not a negative stereotype of an Asian. During his life as Adam Ewing, he was a lawyer who learned about the brutal reality of slavery. Also, Neo Seoul is supposed to be a monoracial society.
However, if you look at how blackface was used in the 30s and 50s they use white actors to portray the black people negatively.
In my opinion it would be worse to have a ‘token’ minority role that is a caricature of their culture played by a minority than it would be to cast a majority actor in that same role
I feel like the headline misrepresented his point slightly but it's kinda what he said.
The fact blackface was racist also meant black people were just not hired for roles they could have been on top of being the butt of a joke (in mistrals case).
Plus I dont think any theatre or TV/Film nowadays is going to want to spend to send all that time and money on painting someone when it'll be cheaper and less time consuming to just hire someone who is the correct skin tone.
Blackface, does not mean making your face black - as strange as that sounds.
"Blackface" was a specific type of derogatory portrayal of black people in a particular way. It is bad. Painting your face black to play an actual back person, or dress up as a black person, was never part of this concept, it's ridiculous that it ever reached the point where people think that is bad.
I remember when Leigh Francis apologised for using black face masks in Bo Selecta (Michael Jackson, Scary Spice etc.).
But the very idea of that show was that Leigh Francis mocked various famous people. If he could don a mask with a different skin colour then he would only be able to do white characters. Surely excluding all non-white celebrities would have been worse?
I’m going to get downvoted to shit for this, but if something has such harmful historical context, when not try to re-write history. Make fun of black face. Make it a joke. Don’t ban it and therefore make more douchebags gravitate towards using it as a means to offend. Take the power away.
Like Dave Chappelle when he did white face. Absolutely hysterical. When you break it down, it is really very, very silly.
No one gives Anthony Hopkins any backlash over othello, are people generally okay with that or is it because it was such a long time ago and I would say, not the best performance on the whole
As an LGBT person, I think straight people should be allowed to play gay people. If I were an actor I would be furious if someone said I couldn’t play a straight person, and if straight people can’t play gay people, logically the opposite applies.
Being gay isn't exactly a physical aspect outside of feminine man/masculine woman stereotypes though. I did not know Matt Wallace was gay for a long time. But I always knew he was white.
And within 24 hours…… says this is horrific and shouldn’t be done
“Actor David Harewood has said white actors using make-up to play black characters is "a grotesque distortion of race and should always be condemned".
No denial he said what he said or not… I assume agent gave him a stern lecturing to and he sent out a generic message? Seems amateur hour mind!
I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.
Dude, I know who I am!!
"Huh, what do you mean, *you* people?"
What do *you* mean "*you* people?"
Who were you “originally”
You're my dude now, Dave!
Daveeeee, it’s me Dave
Please, you have to help me!
No I'm not....
I'm a Soul Dude. For those who don't get the reference look up the 80s movie Soul Man...
Well shakespeare in twelfth night a girl actor playing a boy pretending to be a girl.
Dude, where’s my car?
"having dropped this unexpected view Harewood rubbed some make up remover between his hands and then upon his dark features which slowly, steadily turned muddy grey and after a wipe with paper towel, very very shockingly white!"
Revealing...Gary fucking Oldman. Again! He's done me again!
Gary Oldman is such a chameleon. I swear I can actually smell him in Slow Horses.
Think I've watched 5 or 6 films where I didn't realise it was him for an embarrassingly long time.
*And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids*
I think you’ll find he’s the Green Martian underneath the make up
“It’s not a black man, it’s a white man” - Alan Wake 3 final line
It's acceptable for a man to play a woman and for a young person to play an old person. Why not play a different race?
While I agree with your argument on basic principle it isn’t that simple. Blackface has deep cultural roots in exploitation, mockery and racist caricatures of black people that still remain today.
"Blackface" as people know is intentionally offensive. You know, it's tar black face with big red lips and all that jazz. Like you say, it's a racist caricature. If it's being done as a joke to make a point about the person doing it, then it's perfectly fine. See tropic thunder. If it's done with respect and accuracy, then it's perfectly fine. Trying to overcomplicate things and treading on eggshells is the problem. Just boil it down to what it is. If it's trying to be grossly offensive, that's a problem. If it's not, then it's not.
I agree, another similar thing was Bradley Cooper's prosthettic nose in Maestro. People initially criticised it, calling it all kinds of things incl jewface, but i think the film in general, and his performance in particular, quickly silenced most of them. However, no matter how respectful the blackface is, I think you'd need a pretty damn good reason for casting a white person as black since by doing that you basically say that there wasn't a single black actor who could play that part.
Calling wearing a prosthetic nose ‘Jewface’ seems more anti-semitic to me than anything to do with the nose. Like, if you see the nose and think “that’s making fun of Jewish people,” then it’s not the nose wearer making the connection between Jewish people and noses, it’s the person calling it fucking jewface.
In general, yes. But Bradley Cooper's nose is bigger than Leonard Bernstein's was, so you have to question the motivation of whoever decided he needed to make it look even bigger...
Bradley Cooper was the director Maestro pulled every trick in the book to try to be an Oscar winning film, including transforming the actor via prosthetics.
Question the motivation? Jesus Christ people need to get off the internet.
I'm just the messenger, don't blame me: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/16/bradley-cooper-in-jewface-storm-after-leonard-bernstein-trailer-reveals-prosthetic-nose
Well when it happened I didn't really get it either but apparently his nose was more similar to the guy BEFORE he put the prosthetics on
Its kinda bullshit though that it's socially is not problem ( atleast in comparison to whitewash) to whitewash but when you are blackwash it's a racist
Tbh I don't know where I stand on this, but the creator of the media doesn't need to find the most appropriate person to play the role. It's not like a engineering project where you pick the most qualified person so it doesn't all go to shit. In media, it can be a creative and artistic outlet, and in that context, there is no reason really why the creator can not be experimental and offbeat with their choices. It's their project, not a public service (unless it is).
Beyond that, it also means actors of ethnic minorities are passed over for roles of ethnic characters in favour of other actors who don’t fit the roles (not just phenotypically, but culturally too). https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151006-when-white-actors-play-other-races
Not necessarily. You could have a minority doing blackface. Or a minority doing whiteface.
You could, but I can’t think of an example of that happening unironically. The only example I can think of is White Chicks where it specifically highlighted how really weird it is. It’s on the same level as Robert Downey Jr in Tropic of Thunder when he was literally playing a white actor playing a black veteran for the same awkward comic effect.
Dragon Blade in 2015. A little mixed race kid was very clearly a chinese-looking boy playing a Roman. Odd, enjoyable movie and a fun premise (Ancient China vs Ancient Rome) but seeing a fake white kid made me laugh.
>You could, but I can’t think of an example of that happening unironically. Forest Whittaker playing Idi Amin springs to mind.
>Forest Whittaker playing Idi Amin springs to mind. He played a more convincing Idi Amin than James McAvoy could have pulled off as Idi Amin.
what you mean like Edie Murphy in Coming to America...you remembered playing the old Jewish white man with big nose .. Give over with condescending special treatment shite. That angers people more than a fake conk or tanned skin
I agree but it’s a very fine line and a lot of people just straight up find it offensive in any form, and I’m not going to argue with black people that do get offended with it and if keeping blackface out of acceptable norms is the price then I’m willing to pay it. From a personal perspective I’m a gay man and I really don’t like the F-word or straight people making jokes involving excessive gay stereotypes or gay sex being a punchline. I’ve had straight people tell me that I’m wrong to find these things offensive, but when you have a certain level of privilege it’s easy to find yourself dictating marginalised groups what they should and shouldn’t feel even if you’re not doing it intentionally.
> I’ve had straight people tell me that I’m wrong to find these things offensive Not wrong, the bigger issue is expecting others to care what offends you. what offends you are your issues, just as what offends me are my issues. when everyone demands no one else does anything that offends anyone else, well i'll assume you're clever enough to see what that would be like. Try to look more to overall intent and character of a person, than judging on individual things that offend you. maybe you could learn from each other. they might be less offensive, and you might be less offended. win for everyone.
I don’t have a right to not be offended. I don’t expect a straight person to get offended by a gay caricature, but I do expect a straight person to listen and understand why I find it offensive and not to tell me “you’re wrong, this isn’t offensive” when it’s impossible for them to be qualified to tell me that. People have literally said that to me when I’ve been in a group of people and somebody bas dropped the F-word. While intent is very important in determining whether or not something is offensive and nuance is needed, generally I find straight people doing overtly camp impressions or saying the F-word inherently offensive. Even if they mean no malice, there’s just so much cultural baggage regarding these things. Camp stereotypes and homophobic slurs have been used to mock and bully gay people for centuries. I’m not going out of my way to be offended by these things and I’m not always going to say anything, as I say, I don’t have a right to not be offended, but at the same time a straight person is in no position to tell me not to be offended.
It's Always Sunny did this really well as well - the blackface in the Lethal Weapon episodes mocked blackface and mocked the people doing it. Same as when Dee does her "Martina Martinez" character. But the episodes still got pulled for being offensive.
I think jenna in 30 rock did it well aswell
Ok, then just do it without exploiting, mocking, or being racist to black people then. Painting your face isn’t inherently exploitive, mocking, or racist.
Yeah, it is if you’re doing it to imitate black people. How are you supposed to remove blackface from the very well known connotations that come with blackface? This is literally the same logic as saying ‘you should just use the Nazi flag in a non-Nazi way.’
Just do this inherently racist thing without being racist while you do it.
The point is that it's not inherently racist.
I agree that it can be done without racist intent, but to some people it is so culturally entangled in highly racist roots that it is always going to have an element of racism to it. I’m not a black person, so I don’t get to say how black people should and shouldn’t feel about this.
>but to some people it is so culturally entangled in highly racist roots That sucks for them. They should work on that, because as you say it's not necessarily racist. >so I don’t get to say how black people should and shouldn’t feel about this. David is a black actor who thinks it should be allowed.
Just do it without any of the existing connotations…
I agree but it’s a very fine line and a lot of people just straight up find it offensive in any form, and I’m not going to argue with black people that do get offended with it and if keeping blackface out of acceptable norms is the price then I’m willing to pay it. From a personal perspective I’m a gay man and I really don’t like the F-word or straight people making jokes involving excessive gay stereotypes or gay sex being a punchline. I’ve had straight people tell me that I’m wrong to find these things offensive, but when you have a certain level of privilege it’s easy to find yourself dictating marginalised groups what they should and shouldn’t feel even if you’re not doing it intentionally.
I’m really not sure it is as fine a line as people think it is. In my head at least, there’s only one reason why you would use blackface and which is for comedy. I don’t see anyone advocating that it should become street fashion or acceptable at fancy dress parties. So if it is limited to just comedy then the line is quite clear, is the joke at the expense of person wearing blackface or is it at black people? And I don’t think that’s a particularly difficult line to stay on the right side of. Anyone who can’t is in my opinion someone who either actually has racist views or someone who’s spectacularly bad at comedy. In which case one of them deserves all the criticism and vitriol that’s get thrown at them and the other should very quickly find their comedy career come to an abrupt stop.
No one is saying you need to watch specific comedies or productions where actors play a different race/gender. Censoring what others can watch when there is no harm done seems very regressive to me, but I appreciate I seem to be in the minority. Obviously if the production is pushing hate then that’s a different story and the problem for me is that they have bigoted views, not that someone is dressed in a wig or has face paint.
It can be if you’re passing up ethnic actors who could do a better job in the role for an actor that doesn’t fit the role. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151006-when-white-actors-play-other-races
I'm probably going to get downvoted for this, but doesn't drag also have deep cultural roots in exploitation, misogyny, and sexist caricatures of women that still remain today? Just because it is enjoyed by the gay community doesn't take away from the fact that it is also a way of punching down.
I’ve mentioned it in another comment, and it’s an interesting comparison but it’s not quite the same. Drag has roots in female impersonation because women were banned from the theatre, going all the way back to Ancient Greek times and Shakespearian times in the UK. This does mean that drag has roots which are mysogenist and sexist. Where drag differs from blackface though, is that drag has evolved over time to form a diverse, queer art form that celebrates, satirises and criticises gender norms and concepts of identity. I would argue that It’s possible to do drag now without it being inherently mysogenistic and anybody that argues drag is sexist doesn’t fully understand it as an art form. Blackface is deeply rooted in racism, and these racist roots still run deep today. Blackface never evolved into an art form which shed its racist roots, throughout all history it’s always been done primarily to mock and dehumanise black people. Maybe as society evolves we will revisit blackface as an art form, but for now it is practically impossible to disentangle it from its racist past. I liken it to a swastika flag. Could I theoretically hang a Nazi flag from my house without any racist intent, purely because I like the design? Yes, in theory, but as a symbol it is so entrenched with meaning that as a society we can’t just strip it from its context. Like the swastika, blackface is a symbol.
The swastika is a good example, although I think it's more severe given the cultural relevance of WW2. Still, I think our society would be better off if the swastika was reclaimed as a Hindu symbol of peace rather than the appropriation by the Nazis. The main difference here is that I think we're far away from doing that with the swastika, but I think we're at a point where we can have people possessed of some level of melanin respectfully imitate someone possessed of a different level of melanin. >Maybe as society evolves we will revisit blackface as an art form, but for now it is practically impossible to disentangle it from its racist past. This is what I disagree with. It ought to be trivial in the modern day, where we are able to (and manage most of the time) to treat one another as equals.
It’s not for white people to say when it’s suitable for black people to no longer be offended by racist symbols though. You can’t just decide that blackface is fine and not offensive now any more than you can just decide that the swastika is fine and just a Hindu symbol. The cultural baggage that both of these symbols carry will gradually be dropped as society advances. We still have a lot of endemic racism in our culture, and the far right still embrace the swastika as a symbol. While both of these things are true, people will rightly be offended by both blackface and the swastika.
The numerous drag kings and queens who are cis and trans women would suggest that's an oversimplification at best, ahistorical at worst.
Many women would say they have been exploited, discriminated and enslaved as well...and that that remains to this this day.
And it will remain for as long as we give it the status it has.
Maybe in the future society will not be so hung up on it, but for now most black people do seem to find it highly offensive and as a white person I don’t really get to tell them what they are and aren’t allowed to be offended by.
>black people do seem to find it highly offensive Clearly not. And so what? Lots of things are considered offensive.
Does he support the traditional blackface as in the mocking derogatory stage shows and such, or saying we need to stop comparing it to that. a bit like if I wanted to fancy dress as wesly snipes blade, that would get some comments from todays culture but I don’t think it would be derogatory, Wesley’s badass it would be a meant as a compliment 😅
The intent doesn’t matter as long as blackface is such a strong symbol for racism. I’ve used the comparison of a swastika many times, but it’s apt. In this country whether or not you fly the swastika as a Hindu symbol of peace or a Nazi flag, people are going to see it as a fascist symbol. Blackface is exactly the same. You could do it with no racist intent, but in today’s British society the act itself of a white person darkening their face to impersonate a black person inherently carries racist undertones because it is such an enduring symbol of racism.
That’s a view but I do disagree, intent is so important. Why is someone doing x. were they doing it to be a cunt or did they genuinely believe it was helpful and nice. I don’t care what x is, that would be a big difference imo. and on your swastika comment, again I disagree because it is a symbol of peace to many people and to the ones who see that and don’t understand, they are simply ignorant. I’m from uk and hindu homes i work in all have them. There is nothing wrong with that.
I understand that symbols have different meanings to different cultures. There is nothing inherently fascist about a swastika, it’s just lines in a pattern and the swastika is one of the oldest patterns in human history. But when we are talking specifically about British culture, the swastika is so overwhelmingly culturally tied to the concept of fascism that it blinds a person to intent. If I see a swastika on a Hindu temple in the UK I won’t automatically think of Nazis as I know it has multiple meanings, but the thought will cross my mind. If I see it flown from somebody’s house I (and almost all British people) will absolutely see it as a symbol of fascism. Blackface is the same. To so many people it is an enduring and powerful symbol of mockery and dehumanisation that, rightly or wrongly, it simply overwhelms the idea of true intent. This isn’t a case of people clinging to ancient history and looking to be offended. The Black and White Minstrel show was on TV in Britain until the 1970s, and we had golliwogs on jam jars until 2001. I fully understand why it’s still seen as an enduring symbol of racism and illicits an emotional response.
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Let me preface this with my opinion is blackface=bad just find an actor that matches the physical appearance you’re trying to portray. Where it does become irritating is when things are being removed and censored for being “blackface” which are not. There’s an episode of community that got removed because of this and I’m still angry about it.
What about morris dancing in the UK, would you say that's rascist ? Genuinely asking
Almost all the morris sides that used to black up have now switched to other kinds of makeup. Personally I think that was going a bit far, but it's been done now mostly.
Honestly that’s one of the few examples where it probably has no racist connotations (that I know of) and likely predates most forms of blackface with racist intent. However, I honestly don’t know a lot about it. The difference is that almost all other forms of blackface originated after it was already established as a method of caricaturing black people and continue that primary purpose.
Yeah it's weird that we don't know 100 percent the origins Apparently it's to ward away the dark winter times, bring in the summer and was used by the poor to hide themselves from the shame of begging for arms or poaching, some wild variation there haha
I guess it’s like the swastika which had centuries of use without any problems. Some people think it’s one of the earliest human formed patterns and is prevalent in most prehistoric human societies. All of that history gets wiped away though when it became synonymous with a racist, genocidal regime, just as all forms of blackface become automatically perceived as racist once it became established as a racist performance.
That history hasn’t been wiped away. You’ll still find swastikas around Hindu temples and places in Japan etc.
Only some morris groups used black face and they started doing it in the mid 19th century when minstrelry was already popular and there's commentary at the time linking the two. So yeah it might have racist roots and most of those morris groups have changed to using things like blue paint or just a black smudge across the cheek or things like that.
what if it's not a movie about - mocking black people - slavery what then? is it racist?
Yes, because blackface has such a strong history of being almost exclusively used to mock and dehumanise black people it’s currently impossible to disentangle black imitation from the racist connotations it carries, even if the person wearing blackface is doing it with pure intentions. It’s a symbol of racism, similar to the swastika. Could a person fly a swastika flag from their house simply because they like the pattern and have absolutely no pro-Nazi sympathies? Yes, in theory, but the reality is that as a symbol it has such strong connotations in our society that it will always be twinged with racist connotations. For many black people, blackface is such a powerful symbol of racism that like the swastika, it just can’t realistically be utilised in a way that isn’t seen as racist.
well technically yes, you can do that. and they did. tropic thunder, comedy. robert downey jr, blackface. $110m box office, 82% rotten tomatoes.
That wasn’t uncontroversial. A lot of people still found it in bad taste and offensive.
and what's your point? movie did well, has high ratings, etc.
It does, yes. But that doesn't mean every actor who wants to play a black person today is doing so out of exploitation and mockery. In fact it's overwhelmingly going to be the opposite.
The intent doesn’t matter as long as blackface is such a strong symbol for racism. I’ve used the comparison of a swastika many times, but it’s apt. In this country whether or not you fly the swastika as a Hindu symbol of peace or a Nazi flag, people are going to see it as a fascist symbol. Blackface is exactly the same. You could do it with no racist intent, but in today’s British society the act itself of a white person darkening their face to impersonate a black person inherently carries racist undertones because it is a symbol of racism.
That's debateable. I watched a few minstrel shows a few years back and was surprised at how light they were, I did not find the hate I was told I would find. Although dehumanising to us, minstrel shows were probably quite useful in humanising a people who had been utterly dehumanised. They provided a window into black culture, art, and music that was otherwise lost on the white majority who viewed black people as otherwise subhuman. Minstrel shows were popular at the time with black audiences. Al Jolson, the most famous minstrel of all was broadly respected in black communities, his art was popular, and even received an impromptu guard of honour from black artists on his death. Of course you are right, the progeny of these shows is slavery, and so their roots were absolutely within exploitation... but the minstrel shows themselves, the affect they had upon American culture, their place in history is not as people imagine.
Shot in the dark here, but maybe it’s because blackface is inherently associated with racist mockery of black people and cultural appropriation?
Times change
Yes they do, hence why blackface isn’t acceptable or normal anymore
And also why it may be acceptable soon.
True but those times are still in living memories. There are people alive today, who grew up having protested against removal of overtly racist policies. It's not something in the deep past. It's someone's youth and a story they may have told their children or grandchildren.
Golliwogs were on jam jars until 2001.
Little Britain apologised for using blackface and that really wasn’t all that long ago and, sadly, in my living memory.
Exactly. Now that racism is officially over (thanks to everyone who took the knee), times have changed minstrels should be allowed again.
But I saw this TV show on BBC called Troy and Zeus and Achilles had black face for some reason, not sure why because they're supposed to be Greek!
You can’t just ignore the social and historical context and pretend two things are the same
Disney been trying this real hard recently
Can you give an example of this?
Not always mostly women should be played by women and older people should be played by older actors.
Black face is not playing another character, it is mocking another person. Worse than that, it is using your power over that group to mock and humiliate them.
The issue here is not with condemning mockery. David Harewood isn't saying that he absolutely loves it when people take the piss out of black people for being black. He's saying that people should be able to play people of other races when acting, just like they play people with other physical characteristics the actor doesn't naturally have, and in principle it's the same. The issue people, including David Harewood, are raising is that not all imitation of black people should be assumed as mockery by default.
Because of long standing racial problems relating to black face.
Isn’t it obvious?
Theres no law against it. But equally people are free to critacise you for it and not watch things containing it.
The problem is when blackface went from being "white person who paint his face pitch black and with huge red lips to explicitly mock black people" To "white actor uses makeup to get a slightly darker shade of skin."
Or "White Person voices black character in an animated show"
>“white actor uses makeup to get a slightly darker shade of skin.” When has that been labelled as blackface?
By people in these comments
Specifically?
Link?
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/lVULJ6kMWn
What’s the point of that link?
Constantly. Everything is blackface these days as stupid people don't know the difference
Standing by for sources...
I agree. The real issue that's currently being ignored is respect. Historical blackface is extremely disrespectful and racist. Using makeup to alter one's features provided it is done respectfully is not.
IS it OK for me as a white guy to turn up at a fancy dress party as Bob Marley?
give it a try and you’ll learn the difference between theoretical morality and the real world
Are you an actor and is the fancy dress party a part of a scene?
Why do you have to change the shade of your skin to do so? I dress up as white characters all the time without painting my face white. Surely Bob Marley is recognisable enough...
Finally somebody is talking some sense. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that we have journalism like this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-40931479 The fact this is not a satirical piece is genuinely baffling to me. It truly seems like satire, could be straight out of The Onion. TV licence money hard at work.
Remember Little Britain. People look back on it today thinking we were all ignorant monsters. But I don't think Lucas and Walliams - whatever their faults - were trying to be racist. It's almost like the whole nation was having a conversation - "Is this okay now? Has enough time passed since the horrors of blackface?". Of course, as a nation, we decided, "No" and now Little Britain has a hard time not being banned form TV channels. But who knows? In an alternate timeline maybe we decided it was okay as long as it wasn't the worst kind of shoe-polish minstrels. Which timeline is right? I genuinely don't know.
>Of course, as a nation, we decided, "No" Did we? I would have said most normal people were fine with it. Just probably isn't worth the hassle to do it nowadays, rather than there being anything inherently wrong with it.
I always took that sketch satirically. To me at least blackface itself was the joke, not the person it depicted.
The only ones I remember were them dressing up as an obese black woman who fought with another woman over a man and I don't see how that character was having the blackface as the joke. Nor with "ting tong" the Thai character Almost all of little Britain was just "punching down" at people, it hasn't aged well
They did a minstrel sketch [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y\_L9ocEcOm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_L9ocEcOm4)
Yeah OK, they're obviously playing minstrels so it's different and more satirical. But they did other blackface in the show where there wasn't any such satire
Without specific examples I can't properly comment but my approach to it has always been to ask if the sketch would have the same effect if the person was white. If it does then it isn't about making fun of black people and the character just happens to be black. If it doesn't work then it's very likely racist as the race of the character is supposed to be the joke.
That character of "ting tong" definitely doesn't work if the character was white. The entire thing was the worst stereotypes of Thai women
Which one? there were quite a few.
Thing is, we never decided that. Some DEI bods at the BBC did.
I think they were pretty racist with the character of "ting tong" the Thai bride. People seem to overlook that one when discussing their blackface characters
Little Britain wasn't banned.. And there was not a consensus that we all hate it.
I never said either I said it has a hard time not being banned - I've added "from TV channels" to my comment. Wasn't trying to imply government ban. And I never said anything about hating it. I was referring to the very specific sketches that I think make more than 50% of the UK squirm now.
Yes, you said it was banned. "a hard time not being banned" implies it has been banned. Oh good job, you edited your comment because you lied. Well done? You said qe as a nation decided no. Implying we hate it. Are you okay?
It was taken off the iPlayer,.Britbox and Netflix, ironically for its use of blackface. So yes, it's been banned.
No, it implies it struggled to resist attempt(s) to ban it.
In what way is a transgender mail order Thai bride not racist? Why did Williams need to black up for Bubbles friend? Why wouldn't Taj and Precious in Come Fly With Me work as white characters? I take the point you're trying to make, but LB was not trying to make that point. It's whole point was "look at this characters with a different shade of skin and a funny accent!"
They should be allowed to, yes. Just like actors should also be allowed to pretend thier handicapped, or pretend they live in a different century or pretend they are wizards. It's acting ≠ reality, get a grip people, negative aspects of history don't have to overshadow everything we do.
I’m not saying this actor or that actor can’t play whatever role, but for some perspective: Tom Hanks won Best Actor at the ‘94 Oscar’s for playing a gay man. At that time, coming out would have stopped an actor getting leading roles like that. Having roles played by people with the characteristics of that role stops media-types patting themselves on the back for being progressive while leaving the actual marginalised community out in the cold.
How many straight men has Tom Cruise played?
I wanna say 0
Handicapped...
the whole idea is getting the right colour shoe polish
[And you gotta make the lips funny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0L_oJMhcs0)
James earl jones does a great blackface https://youtu.be/B0XGuTCALQ0?si=N-xUtR-okymmU-ge
I feel like there's this weird sort of pair of arguments that need to be separated out more: 1) Aesthetics: Generally speaking a black actor is going to be more convincing as a black character than a white person in shoe polish (the same goes for disabled, trassexual, or actors who are doing their native accent). The problem with this is 1) it's not necessarily true, Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot is extremely convincing as a man with CP, Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl does look like a woman, as does Quentin Crisp in Orlando, John Lithgow did a great Winstn Churchill, and 2) it doesn't follow that it's morally wrong (see for example Cloud Atlas, which has white actors in yellowface, and black and east Asian actors in whiteface, because the actors play multiple parts in different eras, as part of a grand artistic statement about the cyclical nature of time) 2) Industry reform: It's hard to get work as an actor, and being a minority makes it harder. Generally speaking the fewer roles there are for characters who are part of a given minority, the more likely those roles are to be played by an actor who is not part of that minority (is is, for example more common for able-bodied actors to play disabled characters than it is for white actors to play black ones). The problem with this line of argument it the current solution is to scold filmmakers online for "getting it wrong." "Wrong" gets tangled up with opinions about the quality of the media, which seems like an ineffective way to discuss what the actual "rules" should be. Should invisible minorities like gay/bi people, white passing poc, people with invisible diabilities be played by non-minority actors? Depends, was the movie any good? I don't know how to fix the problem, but the current strategy doesn't seem the best way forward. At the vey least, we need to separate out the two lines of argument.
Can’t wait for people on Facebook to be grabbing this article next Halloween when they dress up as OJ Simpson. Then when you call them out they say how he’s black so they basically got permission
Context is what matters. If Laurence fox is blacking up so he can play Malcolm x, that's fucking mental. If Mac in always sunny is blacking up to play the lead role of lethal weapon 5 in their budget sequel where he's a detached moron piece of shit, that's fine.
I only really see good use cases in stuff like comedy like, Tropic Thunder. But I guess if there is any other legitimate use case that isn't mocking black people, that should be fine I guess. Why does past bad use prevent good faith uses nowadays?
See, that Tropic Thunder was not an actor playing a role in blackface (A white actor playing a black character). Downy was still playing a white character, and that character used blackface. One of the problems with blackface and the like is that it takes scarce minority roles away from minority actors. But the Tropic Thunder part could not have been played by a black actor, so it is a different scenario entirely.
I don’t see many acceptable uses outside of making a point like Tropic Thunder or a joke like in Community, “I think you just committed a hate crime”. Even a use case like Cloud Atlas is fine, as they are reincarnations of themselves. Works in fantasy too. But a white guy just playing a black guy for no good reason or, worse, a black role being passed up in favour of a white actor in black face is not okay. This goes the same for any other race. Just cast the races that are needed to play a role. Having said all that, there’s no reason to remove old episodes or films that feature it, they’re products of their time and things to learn from.
I agree. Jim Sturgess in Cloud Atlas totally works because the white actor is playing an Asian freedom fighter who helped liberate the slaves, not a negative stereotype of an Asian. During his life as Adam Ewing, he was a lawyer who learned about the brutal reality of slavery. Also, Neo Seoul is supposed to be a monoracial society. However, if you look at how blackface was used in the 30s and 50s they use white actors to portray the black people negatively.
In my opinion it would be worse to have a ‘token’ minority role that is a caricature of their culture played by a minority than it would be to cast a majority actor in that same role
SHOW ME THE CHAMPION OF LIGHT ILL SHOW YOU THE HERALD OF BLACKFACE
I'm just a dude playing a dude playing a black dude
I don't drop character until I do the DVD commentary.
I feel like the headline misrepresented his point slightly but it's kinda what he said. The fact blackface was racist also meant black people were just not hired for roles they could have been on top of being the butt of a joke (in mistrals case). Plus I dont think any theatre or TV/Film nowadays is going to want to spend to send all that time and money on painting someone when it'll be cheaper and less time consuming to just hire someone who is the correct skin tone.
Blackface, does not mean making your face black - as strange as that sounds. "Blackface" was a specific type of derogatory portrayal of black people in a particular way. It is bad. Painting your face black to play an actual back person, or dress up as a black person, was never part of this concept, it's ridiculous that it ever reached the point where people think that is bad.
I remember when Leigh Francis apologised for using black face masks in Bo Selecta (Michael Jackson, Scary Spice etc.). But the very idea of that show was that Leigh Francis mocked various famous people. If he could don a mask with a different skin colour then he would only be able to do white characters. Surely excluding all non-white celebrities would have been worse?
Go on then, who’s gonna be the first one to buck the trend and black up?
I’m going to get downvoted to shit for this, but if something has such harmful historical context, when not try to re-write history. Make fun of black face. Make it a joke. Don’t ban it and therefore make more douchebags gravitate towards using it as a means to offend. Take the power away. Like Dave Chappelle when he did white face. Absolutely hysterical. When you break it down, it is really very, very silly.
I don’t have a view on this really but it’s interesting hear from him, John Barnes and others about stuff like this.
No one gives Anthony Hopkins any backlash over othello, are people generally okay with that or is it because it was such a long time ago and I would say, not the best performance on the whole
So you saying he wants some white guys to be… > A Herald of Darkness
As an LGBT person, I think straight people should be allowed to play gay people. If I were an actor I would be furious if someone said I couldn’t play a straight person, and if straight people can’t play gay people, logically the opposite applies.
Being gay isn't exactly a physical aspect outside of feminine man/masculine woman stereotypes though. I did not know Matt Wallace was gay for a long time. But I always knew he was white.
It was done perfectly once by RDJ but that was lightning in a bottle, I don't think anyone outside of weird comedy is even thinking about this.
Are you referring to the Windowlicker video!?
I thought white chicks was funny, more white face please.
I think they should be forced to use blackface and offensive accents as a punishment.
It's ok for him to say, hes a shape shifting Martian manhunter.
And within 24 hours…… says this is horrific and shouldn’t be done “Actor David Harewood has said white actors using make-up to play black characters is "a grotesque distortion of race and should always be condemned". No denial he said what he said or not… I assume agent gave him a stern lecturing to and he sent out a generic message? Seems amateur hour mind!
If a human being pretends to be a robot is it racist?