Is blackface becoming culturally, if not socially acceptable? Jack Black does it in Be Kind, Rewind, Robert Downey Jr is doing it in Tropic Thunder (see left, centre). Wind back to the 1980s, and Fisher Stevens pretended to be Indian in Short Circuit and its sequel, while C. Thomas Howell posed as a black student in Soul Man in the same year (1986), but there’s been a big, politically correct gap in between. (Some call it the 1990s.) Curiously no one seems to bat an eye, in the Western media, at least, about actors in ‘yellow face’ (the most hideous of which must easily be Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s), or the perma-tanned George Hamilton, or Chantelle Houghton bronzing themselves to within an inch of their lives. Where is the line between tanning and masquerading as a member of another race?
One wonders if, as we now have a black man as the arguable Democrat front runner (after Dennis Haysbert paved the way in 24), and ‘white face’ is not unheard of in black cinema, is ‘blacking up’ as sensitive an issue as it was in the dying days of the Black and White Minstrel Show? Easily the most offensive thing about White Chicks, the most prolific example of whiteface, is the complete absence of humour beyond a one-trick joke in what is ostensibly, a comedy (albeit a Wayans brothers one). But then, as a white correspondent, could I be missing the point? Humour is so subjective, after all. Would black audiences look at this and find it so absurd, it was somehow funny? The image of Robert Downey Jr as a black man prompts a similar reaction with your correspondent – and as long as both sides can have a more or less even crack at the genre, we’re happy.
Some might argue that Jesus was black (Madonna did it in Like A Prayer), in which case, every actor who’s portrayed him since was part of an unwitting white face conspiracy.
Robert Powell, 1972 = white face?
William ‘Willem’ Dafoe, 1988 = white face?
James Caviezel, 2004 = white face?
Add up those three years and divide by three, and the answer is = 1988. Clearly a sign that News Hour are on to something, and that Willem Dafoe may be at the centre of it all. Here is what the Wisconsin-born actor had to say about his performance:
“To this day, I can’t believe I was so brazen to think I could pull off the Jesus role.”
Says it all, really.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 