The Genre Director - Movie blackface…racism or catalyst for debate?

Robert Downey Jr. and I share one common experience…we have both performed in blackface.

Mr. Downey’s extraordinary performance in TROPIC THUNDER, part Plantation, part Blaxploitation, is the subject of much contentious debate. Is a transracial portrayal legitimate if done just for the sake of humor, or only if it conveys points that can’t otherwise be made? The principle target of Ben Stiller’s movie is Hollywood narcissism, yet it is Downey’s bold embrace of a taboo that everyone will remember.

My performance got into trouble on legal rather than racial grounds. On a late night live-to-air show, with comedy skits bracketing commercial breaks, I appeared in blackface as Matt Black TV critic of the Daily Gutter, until Matt White, TV critic of the Daily Mirror, threatened to sue.

For me, the humor was not racial; it was wordplay, supported by make-up. The fact that its racial insensitivity did not even occur to me, in my ignorance of the context I was invoking, was reflective of white attitudes of the times. This was Australia in 1966, where the British-made Black and White Minstrel Show still aired on the government broadcasting network and would continue to air for years. In Australia’s 1967 movie JOURNEY OUT OF DARKNESS, the two lead characters, both Aboriginal, were played by white Ed Devereaux in blackface and the Pakistani singer Kamahl.

The late Ed Devereaux, a great Australian actor, pictured here on the left, went on to play more than 80 roles in film and television. In the background is Uluru, then called “Ayer’s Rock” by white Australians. It is probably the most sacred site for indigenous Australians. I staged a fight on top of it, flew hanggliders off it, and blew up a car in front of it, when the Northern Territory government controlled the land. It never occurred to me that I might be doing something offensive to another culture. Not then the prevailing wisdom. Uluru has now returned to Aboriginal control. Location permits are in their hands, as they should be.

Fifty years later Australia is a more racially sensitive, multicultural community. (Although there’s still a way to go, after the stubbornness of the Howard years.) I like to think my consciousness has evolved too. Yet, only when I saw Spike Lee’s MALCOLM X, one of the great educative films of the 90’s, did I realize how the word “black” has been used as a pejorative in the English language: black hearted, black sheep, etc. Make a list. How myopic was that?

Perhaps all well-intentioned white people still have a way to go to eliminate blinkered and paternalistic attitudes.

But a sea change is coming, one way or the other, in November. Americans who claim they are color blind will have to look into their hearts and decide where they really stand. In a recent US survey, 10% of respondents admitted they did not feel comfortable voting for a black President. How many others will keep their prejudice to themselves until they are alone in the polling booth is a worrying question, given that the upcoming election is the most important Americans have faced since they elected FDR.

So, in this climate, Ben Stiller’s TROPIC THUNDER is ahead of the curve in using provocative comedy to stimulate timely debate on racial issues. It seems unfair to slam TROPIC THUNDER for blackface, and yet give a pass to the Wayans brothers’ transgender, transracial comedy, WHITE CHICKS. (Made me laugh)

I offer by way of comparison an early example of a white actor in blackface employed for what was intended to be a socially redeeming purpose. Click the poster and you will be linked to 5 extracts from the 1964 movie BLACK LIKE ME, which was based on a true story of a white journalist who posed as black to experience daily prejudice first hand.

While James Whitmore, a marvelous actor with a long career, does his best with the role, the dialogue creaks with earnestness. But it was a brave project in 1964, and an interesting social studies time capsule today.

To me the race issue is simple - and I know I am hardly inventing the wheel here: there is only one race, the human race. In coming centuries, intermarriage will have obliterated racial differences for much of the world. We may chose to find other reasons to mistreat our fellow man, but pigmentation will not be one of them. So the outcome is inevitable; the sooner we all hurry along that path the better.

Tags: Hollywood, Film Blog, Actor, , Movie