By casting a white man to play a black man (much like Mickey Rooney playing an Asian man), movies emphasize stereotypes. Sure, they’re just acting, but some characteristics are purposely simplified and reductive. Is it a double standard to let one race make fun of himself, but be insulted if someone else did that? Some saw Tropic Thunder as controversial because of this, but I don’t know if I care enough.It might look extremely racist, but he wasn't casted as one of the 5 main stereotypes of Bogle's study that Hall mentions. I think Robert Downey Jr just proved he was a good actor. What do you think?
Also, French Vogue last month featured white model Lara Stone as black. Shall we excuse this as fashion?
EDIT (11:22 PM)
My friend in Germany just took this photo, of an ad in the Potsdamer Platz U-Bahn. A woman in blackface advertising... Othello? As far as I can find out, the woman is Barbara Schöneberger (she's not even in the production), who's like their version of Paula Abdul...
I think the history of blackface makes it impossible to look at this fashion spread as just fashion.
ReplyDeleteI haven't actually read Othello, but isn't he supposed to be a Moor? If so, this is a great example of Edward Said's discussion on Orientalism and how the West has embraced a "collective notion identifying 'us' Europeans as against all 'those' non-Europeans" (Hall, 261).
ReplyDeleteSo, it doesn't matter whether you're African or an Arab, you're still represented as the mysterious "Other."