TROPIC THUNDER: STILLER & ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. MOCK WHITEWASH… BY DOING BLACKFACE?
(Big shouts to Carmen @ Racialicous…)
B. Stiller’s got a new flick Tropic Thunder coming out in a few weeks. It’s one of those spoof-a-genre-thingies. From all accounts the most interesting thing about this Scary Movie meets Platoon is Robert Downey Jr.—in Blackface.
RDJ plays a white actor taking a role originally written for a black actor, who out of “respect” dyes his skin black. How Angelina Jolie/Al Jolson of him.
Now comedy—which this flick is—is usually subjective; but the hollywood shuffle of cultural typecasting and marginalizing actors and stories of color is pretty cut n dry issue. It's there. Been there forever and a day. And still goes on today unless your name is Denzel, Will or Sam Jackson.
So how do you address it, when you choose to address it? With Blackface, of course.
Stiller says that he and Downey always stayed focused on the fact that they were skewering insufferable actors, not African-Americans… 'At the end of the day, it's always about how well you commit to the character,'' Robert Downey says. ''I dove in with both feet. If I didn't feel it was morally sound, or that it would be easily misinterpreted that I'm just C. Thomas Howell in [Soul Man], I would've stayed home.''
Uh, yeah. Sure Ben. And your ejaculate in the hair was about skewering the white-blonde-as-ultimate-Americana-femininity archetype in There’s Something About Mary.
Try again… Bro.
Disclaimer: Ben Stiller = family/industry connects + white hipster narcissism passing for as humor – exceptional talent.
With that said, I always find it curious when powerful white liberals, particularly those in Hollywood are in the position to do more than satirize an injustice, yet simply choose the self-congratulatory option of satire.
The more powerful statement would be for Ben Stiller—one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood—to simply green-light flicks with more diverse casts and storylines. Now that's not as ego-stroking as toe-dipping in the "laughing at how biased 'those white' people are," but it'd probably go much further to solving the actual problem.
I'm no big fan of Sandra Bullock for example, but she fought to get George Lopez's show on ABC as opposed to simply being a smartass liberal pretending to not notice the problem beyond easy punchlines and goofy speeches during award show season.
And hey, I remember Soul Man (and I still say James Earl Jones must've been hard-up for cash.) But unlike Stiller and Down like white-hipster-pioneer Lenny Bruce who was never so arrogant as to pull his curiously-popular “I’m gonna say ‘nigger’ until it loses its meaning” bit in front of black audiences, at least C. Thomas Howell had the authenticity to stay as far away from black neighborhoods as possible, even to this day. Guess Ben and RDJ are betting that today’s black person is “sophisticated enough.”
I've seen Bamboozle. I know Bamboozled... and Ben Stiller's no De la Croix.
Look, maybe I’m juss one of those overly-sensitive negroes that are oh-so-not-in-vogue these days. Maybe we’re at a point—for better or for worse—where everything’s up for grabs, including who gets to make fun of what and who decides what’s offensive.
And just maybe, in these PB ‘n’ J (Praise-Barack Not Jesse) Days, we’re finally evolving to the point where white people can openly and proudly have their say about what’s uncool about how blackness is commoditized and viewed in entertainment and society.
Hey, wait a minute… haven’t they always had—oh nevermind...
Just sit back and enjoy the show—popcorn’s on me.
