Best Actor in Blackface
The outrage over Robert Downey Jr.’s Oscar nod is predictable and misplaced. Give the brother playing the brother his due.
I would classify myself as an intensely proud black man. And I feel completely comfortable saying that Robert Downey Jr. deserves his Oscar nod.
Denying Tropic Thunder’s smart satire simply because the artists involved are white is simplistic and short-sighted. Frankly, I find Tyler Perry’s use of trite black American archetypes equally as problematic as blackface. But Perry is black, and Downey Jr. is white. Well, usually.
I probably should be outraged at the fact Ben Stiller conceived the role, Downey Jr. accepted it and a production company opted to continue the film with such a character in script. But I am not.
There are a few reasons for this. First, I found the role and performance so outlandishly absurd that my black sensitivity button just couldn’t get pushed. I’m much more offended when old women at the grocery store assume I work there. Before the film was released, I was outraged. The idea of such a character offended me because I wasn’t confident such a volatile cultural topic could be satirized well by a couple of white guys. Plain and simple. We’ve all seen it go horribly wrong in the past.
People enjoy laughing at subjects in poor taste. The fine line between satire and offense is found in awareness and responsibility. Al Jolson’s performances lacked this. The same can be said for C. Thomas Howell. Both these blackface performances obviously sprung from this initial thought: “Let’s act like (we wrongly think) black people act. It’ll be a riot!” Neither actor—nor the people supporting their performances—took it any further than that or accepted the responsibility for stepping into the briar patch....
Read entire article at Jonathan Pitts-Wiley in The Root
I would classify myself as an intensely proud black man. And I feel completely comfortable saying that Robert Downey Jr. deserves his Oscar nod.
Denying Tropic Thunder’s smart satire simply because the artists involved are white is simplistic and short-sighted. Frankly, I find Tyler Perry’s use of trite black American archetypes equally as problematic as blackface. But Perry is black, and Downey Jr. is white. Well, usually.
I probably should be outraged at the fact Ben Stiller conceived the role, Downey Jr. accepted it and a production company opted to continue the film with such a character in script. But I am not.
There are a few reasons for this. First, I found the role and performance so outlandishly absurd that my black sensitivity button just couldn’t get pushed. I’m much more offended when old women at the grocery store assume I work there. Before the film was released, I was outraged. The idea of such a character offended me because I wasn’t confident such a volatile cultural topic could be satirized well by a couple of white guys. Plain and simple. We’ve all seen it go horribly wrong in the past.
People enjoy laughing at subjects in poor taste. The fine line between satire and offense is found in awareness and responsibility. Al Jolson’s performances lacked this. The same can be said for C. Thomas Howell. Both these blackface performances obviously sprung from this initial thought: “Let’s act like (we wrongly think) black people act. It’ll be a riot!” Neither actor—nor the people supporting their performances—took it any further than that or accepted the responsibility for stepping into the briar patch....