I wrote about this previously, but I thought I would revisit the notion of “blackface” in modern film again because the movie, “Tropic Thunder,” starring Robert Downey Jr. is about to be released. You see Downey has ventured into the racially charged territory of blackface, which is a throwback to an old showbiz convention that is no laughing matter in the grand scheme of things.
According to Reuters, Downey said he initially worried that his portrayal of a white actor playing a black man could hurt his career, and he bristled at being given what he thought would be the most controversial role in the film directed by Ben Stiller.
Sadly, so far, “Tropic Thunder,” has generated no backlash against the star of “Iron Man.” I guess the powers, including Rev. Al Sharpton, Warren Ballentine and so on, see nothing wrong with a “blackface” in modern film. Downey told reporters in recent interviews that his role was a satirical send-up of actor narcissism, and different from older uses of blackface that reinforced harmful stereotypes. “It’s entertainment that’s set up by people who are high-minded enough to not be racist or offensive,” he said. In the case of Lazarus, he continues playing the sergeant even after filming stops, and his overzealousness earns him mockery from a real black actor played by Brandon T. Jackson.
Background of Blackface
Blackface is a style of wearing wigs and makeup to caricature slaves or ex-slaves in the 19th and early 20th centuries, dates to the start of the movie industry but has largely stopped except in cases of satire and comedy. In Hollywood, many stars appeared in blackface until it fell out of favor during the 1950s civil rights movement. used to take on the appearance of certain archetypes of American racism, especially those of the happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation or the or the dandified coon.
Comic icons the Marx Brothers put on blackface in the 1937 movie “A Day at the Races,” as did actors Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in the 1941 movie “Babes on Broadway.” A hundred years ago, immigrant audiences from countries such as Italy and Ireland — who often were not considered “white” by native-born Americans — went to blackface shows to laugh at outsiders and feel white, said Mark Golub, an expert on blackface who teaches at Scripps College in California.
But blackface was not only popular with immigrants, it also played into widespread racist sentiments, experts said. “By the supremacy of whiteness, blackness had to, by necessity, be its foil, be its opposite,” said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, in an interview with Reuters.
Final thoughts….
Director Stiller, 42, said he thought about casting a black actor playing a white man for the role, but changed his mind. “A white guy playing this black role to challenge himself the most in a way that’s wrong-headed and going too far, to me that was the funnier idea,” Stiller said. Ben Stiller is a guy I find very funny and I have never felt that he was racist and I still don’t. As far as I am concerned, blackface is still blackface and it is important that we have to stop allowing ourselves to be perceived as clowns to the rest of the world.
Filed under: Ben Stiller, Blackface, Minstrels, Robert Downey Jr.
Black Political Thought 