2006-11-13

Blackface Angelina Jolie: Hollywood Racism

I'm all for race-neutral casting, which would mean Denzel Washington playing George Washington, and Brad Pitt playing George Washington Carver. I do recognize a great deal of progress in Hollywood, as many films now contain black actors playing roles that do not stipulate "black character." But we still too-often have historical accuracy guaranteeing roles for honkey actors to play honkey characters, but then discarding historical accuracy in order to place honkey actors in non-honkey roles.

The most galling example was Passion of the Christ, in which Mel Gibson exhibited great public anguish in achieving every detail of historical accuracy, right down to employing an extinct ancient language... then employed a honkey to play Jesus, a man born to an Ethiopian mother, and whose skin the Gospels describe as the color of brass, with hair like lamb's wool. Then Clint Eastwood banished all black actors from his Iwa Jima invasion, which in reality had about 10% black soldiers. Now we have Angelina Jolie playing Daniel Pearl's wife, who is a "mixed baby" (cracker-negro). I notice that the producers didn't pick a black actor to play Danny; why not? Let's make race-defying casting choices work both ways.

3 comments:

Old Gary said...

Mary, an Ethiopian? I must have an outdated Bible. Where do you get this bit of information?

Nadir said...

I'm curious about the Mary as an Ethiopian thing as well, Paul. What's up with that?

Race neutral casting is one thing. It's not like there is an abundance of good dramatic roles for black female actors. Halle Berry could certainly have pulled off the role as well or better than Angelina with a comparable amount of star power.

The fact is, Brad Pitt's production company is doing the movie. He is simply giving his woman some work.

There is also the racist conspiracy theory that by making white Jew Pearl's wife a white woman, white audiences will be more sympathetic.

Will they broach the subject that Pearl may have been Mossad? That's the real story here.

Paul Hue said...

Mary certainly was no honkey. And the Eithiopians all claim here. I'll add some more info later.