Casting & Race Part 2: Defacing Color
by Guest Contributor J Chang, originally published at INIT_Moving Pictures
I think I overestimated my capacity for brevity and so what was supposed to be a three part series will probably end up spreading out further as I try to unpack and look into the long relationship between race and cinema.
Last time, I established the tension that existed between the actual craft of the actor and the need for verisimilitude in mainstream entertainment cinema. Obviously, this interacts with race in that, while as actors, by craft, should be able to portray characters not their own race, the demands of needing what is seen to match consistently with the reality unfolding on the screen, the actor portraying the role should actually appear to be same race as the character.
While this might seem rather common sense, we find that, in the history of cinema, the actual representation of race in film doesn’t necessarily hold to the demands of cinematic verisimilitude. Ultimately, in film (and later, television history), there is actually a long history of casting of characters of color with white actors and ignoring, eliminating or marginalizing characters of color. The former is a rather extensive topic and so I’ll be focusing on that first.
One of the main mechanics by which (usually) white actors would perform characters of color is using makeup and prosthetics to approximate stereotypical racial characteristics, the most famous applications of which is called blackface. However, as the racial spectrum was rather wide and the ideas of whiteness morphed and changed over time, not only were black characters subject to this process, but characters of any ethnicity not considered white at the time were. Hence, due to the rather broad range of colors used to describe this technique, I’ll be calling it colorface here.
A Little Mixing
Early cinema was actually more of an amusement than actual entertainment, featuring little clips played in black boxes for people to watch. Moving pictures enabled people to see replications of real life, but it wouldn’t necessarily be so real, because a lot of it was set up. In that sense, reality television draws from one of the oldest traditions in cinema history. However, at some point, filmmakers became more ambitious and started recording stories with their movie cameras. These films started quite simply with basic stories like Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1903). However, as filmmakers realized the potential for storytelling in the nascent medium, like the theater before them, they also started looking into other sources for inspiration.
Obviously, being the closest analogue to cinematic presentation, much of what worked for the stage also found its way into the lexicon of filmmaking.
As cinema was birthed in the age of industry and quickly found its calling, the pursuit of the almighty dollar (or nickel, as it would be at the time), many of the places that it looked to for inspiration included what was popular at the time. Two things that were in wide existence in entertainment at the time were minstrel shows and vaudeville, which also often included minstrel shows. These shows are a form of theater and the former, and sometimes the latter, brought forth the use of blackface.
Being popular theatrical traditions, they also found their way into cinema, as vaudeville entertainers found their way onto the screen and enterprising filmmakers adapted the newest rages onto the screen.
All People Appear to Be White People
Still, it remains a logical wonder that white actors almost exclusively got cast as characters of color, if the part was of any considerable relevance. That is, if you consider logically casting without factoring the immense racism present in society. Just as this racism prevalent throughout society prevented people of color from owning land, getting work, marrying who they wanted, or… you know… living at all, it prevented actors of color from working in film. After all, making film costs a lot of money and most people of color didn’t have the means to make them. As (wealthy) white people controlled filmmaking, because they controlled capital, their racism, or at the very least, the overarching racism that they were beholden to, denied actors of color work in film.
But then who would play all those villainous colored people? Need I answer the question?
As white actors took up the work of portraying characters of color, many of them if not most of them probably had little actual meaningful interaction with people of color. Combine that with the prevailing notion that races were actually fundamentally different, these white actors would have to turn to safe places from which to draw their characters, Stanislavsky be damned. And that source would be, of course, minstrel shows and vaudeville, which had a history of portraying black characters, even if it was terribly racist–after all, the racism of yesteryear was actually the common sense of those that perpetuated it. (Although more than a thing or two could be said today about how a slightly more subtle racism still masquerades as common sense today.)
One of the significant problems of colorface at the time, beyond just keeping actors of color out of work, and being a tool of widespread proliferation of racism, was that, because of racism, it also impeded the actor’s craft. Due to the segregated society and the limited meaningful interaction of people between races, people of color were likely mysterious to the white actors, and believing what racism would be telling these actors, they consequently restrained themselves from actually performing anything more than a series of stereotypes. In that sense, people of color watching these films would immediately be able to point out that, “that black person is nothing like an actual black person!” (using the vernacular of the time, of course). Unfortunately, also because of this racism, I’m pretty certain that the vast majority of the audience (likely white), also would not be fazed by these ridiculous portrayals of people of color.
(As an aside, small pockets of cinematic resistance did exist in the US, as the Harlem Renaissance, as well as some resourceful black people, did end up providing a space for a few black films to be made. Also, in other countries, filmmaking did take root and there still are many surviving films featuring non-white people in all sorts of roles.)
The Undying Tradition
Although blackface suffered a tremendous loss in the social upheavals in the mid-1900’s and was significantly reduced, other forms of colorface continued, in addition to blackface to a lesser extent. And we have to look no further than the “Hey Hey It’s Saturday” debacle of just five minutes ago to see that colorface, even if naive, is still alive and well today.
But more obvious cases of colorface are still largely present, even if face paint isn’t a part of the picture. Take, for example, the casting of Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, a French journalist who clearly has some African lineage (amongst other genes), in the adaptation of her memoir, A Mighty Heart or the well mentioned The Last Airbender casting.
I think there are several factors feeding the continued acceptance of colorface. First, I think the audience’s ignorance is playing a big factor here. In some cases, the audience just doesn’t know that the characters are supposed to be characters of color, so when they see a white actor playing a character of color, they just assume that they character is white too. Second, producers often will choose bigger name actors to headline their film because it creates a greater chance at profits and well, there aren’t many A-list actors of color to choose from (which itself proves that societal racism is still very active today)–this also helps ease investors into joining a film. Third, I think that the notion of colorblind casting, from theater, has made its way into film, but in a rather selective form which disregards the abstraction of the theater and often, but not always, to the favor of white actors.
Finally, I think that, for the large part, the mainstream audience has largely bought the Mighty Whitey myth. Part of that also includes this concept that white equals neutral, as opposed to a distinct race, and can consequently fill any role. Which is why I think the public response to characters getting actors of the wrong race cast can often be so minimal. Well, that and the cynic in me screaming that the mainstream audience (as well as the majority of people) tend towards apathy when it comes to more “invisible” issues like systemic racism that don’t obviously impact their daily lives in a tangible way.
However, at least American society has largely come to realize that colorface is racist as we can see from the response to the Australian blackface sketch. Or at least selectively so when the old iconography resurfaces.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that racism hasn’t found a way to get around our consciences yet again. Although colorface is almost on life support, actors of color (and correlatively characters of color, discounting cases of colorface) are still largely underrepresented in mainstream film and television. It turns out that the way around colorface not being acceptable and still getting white actors is to just erase the color and change the characters to white.
Next time, I’ll go into erasing color and possibly also talk about cross-ethnic casting and representation of actors of color.
But, before I go, I do want to mention that colorface isn’t inherently racist. Just as an actor taking on the role of a character that doesn’t look like them isn’t inherently racist. Rather, the history of film, the history of colorface and the continued use of colorface as a tool to (even if not intentionally) limit opportunities for actors of color, are what attaches racism to colorface. Should true society-wide racial justice ever be achieved one day, we might possibly find it more acceptable, since it will be going equally in all directions.
However, colorface is just bad practice when it comes to non-abstract filmmaking and cinematic verisimilitude. And for that, I hope it dies a horrid unmerciful death.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Beth wrote:
I often use The African Company Presents Richard III, by Carlyle Brown, to demonstrate our assumptions about “authenticity”, “expert” and “ownership” of theater spaces. Cinema did a lot to destroy the previous performance spaces and consolidate that cultural power of performance. When you go from having one or two “big names” per town to having ten or twenty in the country, there is no longer the space for multiple spheres of authority.
I think it also says a lot about audience. It is clear that, just as there is the assumption is that White is neutral, there is the assumption that the neutral audience is White. While that was the assumption of minstrel shows, it was not the assumption of all American theater.
There is also something about playing “to type”, where it is much simpler to portray a character who isn’t a full character. Minstrel shows were so type-focused that the audience would know the names of the characters on stage as soon as they started acting; sort of a racist Comedia Del Arte . It’s bad acting, and bad theater, but when those were the characters of color that got translated into film the tradition came with it. In movies, because of the push for verisimilitude, people are always cast to type: leading man, character actor, etc. The complication of those boxes is something the movie industry has actively resisted.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 10:54 am ¶
Elton wrote:
Who is “Hollywood”?
On the last article, I submitted a comment referencing the popular notion that Hollywood is run by Jews and wondering what the author had to say about that, but it didn’t seem to get through for some reason.
Anyway, I’m not trying to insinuate anything in particular, but simply trying to clarify who exactly the faceless, monolithic “Hollywood executives” are and address their various prejudices as belonging to real individuals. Maybe some or many of them are Jewish. What does that say about Jewish American views on race and racism? Maybe some or many of them are white. What does that say about white American views on race and racism?
We commenters on the multifaceted film industry, which is presumably made up of many individuals, tend to refer to Hollywood as a single entity. To what extent is there a lack of diversity among those who have power in Hollywood, what exactly is the common background of the Hollywood powerful, and what in particular is it about that background that seems to result in a certain singular closemindedness or obliviousness about race and racism that has been expressed by so many different filmmakers from so many different studios throughout so many different eras?
In other words, do all different kinds of people come to Hollywood and then get transformed into clones who share an extremely specific image of what “the” black man, black woman, Asian man, Asian woman, Latino man, Latino woman, Indian man, Indian woman, etc. is like, down to hair, clothes, accent, occupation, and diet, or does Hollywood only let in people who already (for some reason) are clones of each other? In any case, who is holding the power, who is giving the orders, and why, again, do they seem to act as a single, faceless, monolithic entity that has one singular particular antiquated worldview of race?
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 11:46 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
Great series!
I’m also stuck in the middle of trying to write a long post series, so I feel your pain about trying to wrap things together more neatly.
However, I’m still going to throw in a suggestion… can you perhaps write something on the history/future of people of color playing white people? Sort of a “Beyond White Chicks” analysis? I think that would be a fascinating counterpoint.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 12:01 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
I have to say I love the inclusion of the Tropic Thunder image as an illustration of this as well — I think that movie did a fine job of showing just how silly the colorface acting can get. (I don’t think anyone could argue that Downey’s character is anything but a buffoon in that sense). And I think it’s important to point out — as you do — the difference between taking on a role that is different and being racist. (Or maybe, in a racist structure?)
cosign with altasien. I think it would be interesting to see how that get handled — I was thinking of recent remakes that used PoC in characters that were written as white, like in Fail Safe, or I am Legend or even Seven Days in May and The Manchurian Candidate.
Other than that — I don’t know that I would have thrown Angelina Jolie’s role in A Mighty Heart in that category. Yes, Mariane Pearl has some African ancestry (among a lot of other things) but I have seen pictures of her and I didn’t think Jolie looked all that different. In fact, I doubt most people would call her anything like “black” at least in the US (unless she mentioned it). Maybe people might think she was Middle Eastern or Jewish.
But that’s nitpicking on that example. (I’d have picked Al Pacino in Scarface, though I am not entirely sure if it fits).
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 1:21 pm ¶
prvlgd cdn wrote:
For the list of black actors playing role originally conceived as white, I believe (this is one of those common knowledge things–so I don’t know if it’s true) Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop was originally written for Sly Stallone.
And the G.I. Joe character known as Ripcord was not black in the original toy or comics, but he is in the current movie, and I don’t believe the character Breaker was originally North African (Moroccan?) either–although it’s up for debate whether these code names actually represent the same characters.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 2:03 pm ¶
inkst wrote:
Colorface… I like that. Yes, Pacino in “Scarface,” Heston as a Mexican in “Touch of Evil,” Alec Guiness as King Feisel (sp?) in “Lawrence of Arabia,” Mickey Rooney “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (wow on that one!), Ashley Judd as a Mexican in “Frida,” and those are just some that come to mind immediately, not to mention being critically acclaimed films.
Just throwing those out there. I love this series too. I really appreciate the analysis!!
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 2:43 pm ¶
Sean wrote:
@ inkst
Don’t forget to add nearly the entire history of Othello portrayals. Can’t have a black actor and a white actress in an interracial relationship… even a tragic, fictional one, you know.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 4:16 pm ¶
refresh_daemon wrote:
@Elton(2):
There is a reason that I tend not to specify “Hollywood” in my posts, precisely because when we say Hollywood, we are speaking of a very large and very broad industrial group. When I’m writing about decision-makers in casting, I speak primarily of directors, producers, and casting directors, who often have the decisive power. One step away from them are investors and audiences, the two sources of money for film production, to which most of the decision-makers are beholden.
Between all that you have agents, managers, actors, publicists and more, which leads to a very large soup of forces leading to casting decisions. Unfortunately, it’s quite the complicated web of interconnections that lead to many casting decisions (for example, some larger agencies package actors, scripts and directors together for a production company to pick up). Consequently, gets difficult to examine individual cases as representative of the collective. However, the collective result, which marginalizes both actors and characters of color is clear.
So, while your question is valid, it’s also much broader than the focus of this series and probably requires a large series in itself to answer.
@Jess(3):
I have to give credit for the “Tropic Thunder” picture to our celebrated editor. I merely supplied the text.
And I agree that perhaps Mariane Pearl wasn’t the best example, just one that I recalled from recent memory. It does raise a question, and one that I’ll be addressing in a later post, but that I’ll throw out here to stimulate dialogue:
How precise do we need the match between the character’s ethnic background and the actor’s ethnic background to match? I agree that Jolie (a white woman) does seem to approximate Pearl (a multiracial woman) convincingly enough for the sake of the film–then, does it matter that they didn’t cast a multi-racial woman? Or perhaps, more specifically, a multi-racial woman of Dutch-Jewish-Afro-Chinese-Cuban descent?
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 4:34 pm ¶
Crys T wrote:
I can’t go with Pacino in Scarface: the character there was supposed to be Cuban, and most of the population who aren’t Afro-Cuban are white.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 6:03 pm ¶
Elton wrote:
Thanks so much for posting my comment and responding to it.
To be sure, it is easy to look at racism in the film industry and, like any complex problem, want to point the finger at a single, specific source. It makes the solution simple: attack “the” source of the problem. Hence (and I hope you don’t mind me saying it again, or think that I necessarily believe it), the popular notion that Jews run Hollywood.
Even in the face of the fact that reality is complicated, and problems have multiple sources, the question remains: To what extent is it true that Jewish Americans, or white Americans, or whomever it is that dominates the film industry, have a specific political origin, mindset, and worldview when it comes to racism?
The “collective result,” as you put it, seems to be a rather unified set of racial prejudices exhibited by “Hollywood” as a unit, not Studio A vs. Studio B vs. Director C vs. Writer D, all with competing, contrasting versions of racial stereotypes.
Now, I’m not trying to start a witchhunt and find someone to blame, but very specific stereotypes must have very specific origins (I assume the “all Asian men know kung fu” stereotype didn’t really exist before Bruce Lee), and to the extent that those in power in Hollywood seem to agree on a certain antiquated racial stereotype playbook, I have to ask whether we can trace this back to a specific origin–supposing that “Hollywood” was started by and continues to be controlled by people who shared a particular background (which some label “the Jews”), to what extent can we examine this background and explain how the racial stereotype playbook was written?
I mean, it doesn’t help much to say that racial stereotypes in film are the result of mainstream audiences and faceless monoliths like “the studio executives”, even if it is in a way true, because movies are obviously works through which a small group of people spread their concepts to huge masses of people. Who can we more easily and effectively study, address, and change–the small group of originators, or the incalculable audiences?
So maybe I’m wrong and the appearance that there is a singular, specific racial stereotype playbook in the film industry crafted by people of a certain background is just an illusion, and it’s just the product of supply and demand between filmmakers and audiences. I’ll gladly abandon that theory if you can tell me what exactly we can do to make things better. I just hope that it’s not small scale, collective action by the masses. I mean, movies that create stereotypes and mold the minds of millions for years and years are created by small groups of people in short amounts of time. So why can’t a few renegades break into the industry and shake things up? Aren’t audiences tired of a few people giving the same point of view again and again? Why does that conformist mindset persist?
Ok, just some thoughts, thanks for reading.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 6:44 pm ¶
Urban Suburbinite wrote:
Re: Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder
True story:
My sister walks in to find my mother watching Tropic Thunder on HBO. My mom (a 55 year old black woman, who must have missed the first 5 minutes of the movie) says to my sister, “that black brother is so funny he should get an award”. After laughing her @$$ off, my sister informed my mother that that was Robert Downey Jr.
My mother did not believe my sister until she showed her the imdb page for Tropic Thunder. I still can’t believe, that my mother bought that.
Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 1:28 am ¶
Jess wrote:
Crys T – yah, I have to say Heston would be a better example (Touch of Evil) and a lot of Jews I know think his Ben Hur role is simply silly, but that doesn’t really fit since you are talking about a movie that doesn’t even try to be realistic.
@refresh_daemon — I don’t think you can match anyone’s ethnic identity precisely. I mean, what the heck would you do, have everybody fill out a complete genealogy? That just strikes me as plain silly. I mean, think of Ray — is Jaime Foxx “black” enough to play Ray Charles? What if Charles had two white ancestors and Jaime had three? What about Lou Diamond Phillips? He would never be able to get a job, since his own background is such a mishmash. Down that road lies madness, methinks.
@Sean — I think you misread a big chunk of the history of Othello — I mean remember, when Shakespeare wrote the thing it wasn’t like there was a giant black population in England, and in fact Desdemona would have been played by a man. (That particular tradition has survived mostly in comedies — note that in many British and Canadian comedy troupes the roles are all taken by men — think The Kids in the Hall or Monty Python).
You could make a better case for that kind of thinking later on — certainly by the 20th century there is no particularly good reason not to have a Moroccan or black dude play Othello. (As I remember most productions do that these days anyway, where that’s possible).
A better example might be a film like Dances With Wolves — Ward Churchill* called it Lawrence of South Dakota and I think that fits — I remember a friend of mine commenting that Kevin Costner’s character had to fall in love with a white woman — “must keep this racially pure, right?” he said.
In fact, there’s a stack of white actors playing Native people. Iron Eyes Cody, anyone?
*I am aware of the baggage — quite apropos — that Churchill can bring to stuff like this, but that doesn’t make much of what he says any less true.
Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 9:38 am ¶
inkst wrote:
Point taken about Pacino in Scarface. Although, as iconic as his “accent” is in it, it’s a little ridiculous. I often take as much issue with terrible, feigned accents as I do with the whole colorface concept. For example, DiCaprio in Blood Diamond. That movie had a TON of stuff wrong with it, and his South African “accent” was seriously laughable.
Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 2:40 pm ¶
refresh_daemon wrote:
@Elton(10):
Based on my experience as a part of “Hollywood”, I think the conspiracy theorists are off. While there are people here that have considerable power, like studio heads (all white, wealthy men) and there is a statistically significant representation of Jews in the industry, no definite like-minded group casts a long enough shadow to call them “the power behind Hollywood”.
Although we can say that Hollywood does have a great influence, as with all producers of art and culture, this is a two-way relationship and much of what is produced by Hollywood exists to cater to the wants of the public. Fast & Furious doesn’t get made because some cabal has an agenda to promote street racing culture; rather, it exists because some people out there with money believes that if they put money into making it, it will draw a large enough mainstream audience to make them rich (or, more likely, richer).
Likewise, I think the racism present in Hollywood productions is more reflective of mainstream discourse on race than any sinister group’s desire to promote propaganda that puts people of color “in their place”.
As such, consider that the various products of Hollywood (which includes the majority of films that get played in the theater) have a rather wide variety of outlooks, even regarding race. Hollywood includes the Spike Lees as well as the Michael Bays. It produced Kung Fu, yes, casting a white actor for a white/Asian character, but it also produced Flower Drum Song with an Asian American cast.
As such, it is not a monolith. Or perhaps, it’s a monolith insofar as America is a monolith. When viewed from the outside, America appears to have a simple hegemony maintaining attitude towards the rest of the world, but when you look more closely, it’s a rather broad interwoven mosaic of confluent and conflicting viewpoints. Yes, there is a dominant cultural viewpoint (the mainstream, consequently reproducing racism embedded in the mainstream), but it still has a lot of space for dissent and voicing this dissent. In that sense, Hollywood is no different.
Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 7:07 pm ¶
PL wrote:
“After all, making film costs a lot of money and most people of color didn’t have the means to make them. As (wealthy) white people controlled filmmaking, because they controlled capital, their racism, or at the very least, the overarching racism that they were beholden to, denied actors of color work in film.”
This is kind of interesting, since Hollywood has a long tradition of Jewish directors and actors, who until the last 50 years, were not considered “white.”
Posted 15 Oct 2009 at 10:01 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@Refresh_daemon (14)
Yes! That is a good way to phrase it.
I hear all the time — “Why doesn’t Hollywood make more movies with PoC directors/actors/viewpoints like mine” on the premise that since one movie that person liked did well, it should therefore happen all the time. But I liken it to the music I like (and nobody else does) — just because I and my friends will like something and buy it doesn’t mean it moves the needle at a shareholders’ meeting.
Basically, “alternative” type films and music get green-lighted when you can say “this is cheap to make and won’t hurt you any, and the upside is good.”
Nobody is going to make a film they think will hurt sales, and that’s the fear that means Michael Bay will always get financed — he’s a guaranteed (insofar as these things are) moneymaker. Spike Lee isn’t but he’s done enough and has enough critical cachet that a studio will take a risk (sometimes).
Someone who is new? Much, much tougher. Someone who brings a hint of ‘controversy’ (and remember, what is controversial to you, me, or people who read here is not going to be the same as the folks who have the money) will also have a tough time, though a studio will drop cash if they think the buzz is worth it.
Posted 16 Oct 2009 at 7:12 am ¶
TeakLipstickFiend wrote:
@inkst – and don’t forget Alec Guiness in “A Passage to India” playing a Brahmin. And this was in 1984!
@ J Chang
“Part of that also includes this concept that white equals neutral, as opposed to a distinct race, and can consequently fill any role.”
This may be off the track here a bit, but I think this neutrality relates to accent and speech as well. For example I think there’s an idea that the “posh” English accent is neutral and any other English accent is “other” or somehow wrong. The same with French: some French look down on the Québecois accent, as though it’s not “real” French.
Posted 17 Oct 2009 at 6:38 am ¶
Jason wrote:
But, before I go, I do want to mention that colorface isn’t inherently racist. Just as an actor taking on the role of a character that doesn’t look like them isn’t inherently racist. Rather, the history of film, the history of colorface and the continued use of colorface as a tool to (even if not intentionally) limit opportunities for actors of color, are what attached racism to colorface. Should true society-wide racial justice ever be achieved one day, we might possibly find it more acceptable, since it will be going equally in all directions.
I disagree with your conclusion here
because the relationship between racism and “colorface” isn’t incidental rather intentional
I feel like it’s not an issue of racism being “attached” to colorface also the issue and problem of “colorface” is more than it just being a tool to limit opportunities for actors of color. Colorface is exploitative and dehumanizing and it is very much tied to the issue of representation and also you are talking about people and cultures being stripped of the right to represent ourselves on our own terms. I don’t buy the idea that colorface going equally in all directions would make it begin it just seems like a colorblind/postracial myth (I say that because it seems like some people already believe that -i.e. poc depicting whites is equivalent to and or the same thing as blackface/colorface) I feel like colorface has a way of assuming or perceiving identities as being interchangeable and reducible to each-other when they are not. So I guess this is just a long winded way of saying that I vote for the second option: that colorface dies a horrid unmerciful death.
Posted 17 Oct 2009 at 12:16 pm ¶
Jason wrote:
that should say *benign* not begin
Posted 17 Oct 2009 at 12:19 pm ¶
refresh_daemon wrote:
@Jason(18):
I see where you’re coming from, but I’m positing the idea that an actor playing a character of a different race isn’t necessarily racist. This is certainly true in abstract spaces, including abstract films, if done with an understanding of the nuances involved.
Also, my statement about “going all directions” requires a just society. That is to say, in a just society, actors would be able to take on roles not of their race and it wouldn’t be racist. I wasn’t saying that “going in all directions” justifies colorface, only that in an already just society, it would be a non-issue. Pragmatically speaking, if anyone talks about how colorface isn’t racist in this world, under the unjust conditions of this world, they would be promoting the postracial/colorblind myth as you stated.
I’m just trying to readdress the understanding that when actors are acting, their own identity should not theoretically matter, only that of the character. And I think that’s where I rub against your statement:
“I feel like colorface has a way of assuming or perceiving identities as being interchangeable and reducible to each-other when they are not.”
As an actor, when acting, the only identity that matters is the character’s identity. As such, there is no actor’s identity in the space of the narrative, because there is no actor. So, we’re not talking about identities being interchanged at all, but merely looking at the single identity of the character. But, this doesn’t work in mainstream film where cinematic verisimilitude is critical–where the visual verisimilitude is important. Nor does it work in our unjust society as actors and characters of color are both marginalized and when many actors bring racial baggage into their performances.
So, effectively, I think we’re on the same page.
Posted 17 Oct 2009 at 2:42 pm ¶