Are Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr white enough to star in a Hollywood biopic of medieval Muslim poet Jalaluddin al-Rumi?

boing
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Al Jolson was a white megastar portraying a sympathetic protagonist in a non-white film role. How is that an _un_fair analogy?

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Probably because of the deeply negative connotations with which blackface and minstrels shows are historically associated
 go figure.

So do I.

Nevertheless, I’d still like to see at least some variety in films, especially if the stories that they are based upon feature locations and characters that are not Eurocentric.

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Yes. It is.

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Yes. It is an intensely, viciously repellent analogy for almost any matter. Insinuating otherwise is false and cheap. (Kind of like posting a GIF of beautiful, disdainful white babe
 as a way of expressing disdain for another poster’s argument. A classy & fine, and irreproachable rhetorical comeback indeed.)

They didn’t cast Al Jolson as a prince of the Dahomey nation, or the Songhai in the 20s did they? There was no recognition of, or respect for the rich history of West Africa in any screenplay from that era. Jolson played a 'sympathetic ’ character who had no glory behind him, one who held no inherent critique of the prevailing, grossly racist paradigms of the era.

That is a bit different from even a feeble effort at a feature-length biopic of Rumi.

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Al Jolson himself was not a bigot (at least by the standards of his time). He was actually quite progressive on race relations, helping introduce white audiences to African-American music and gaining a reputation for fighting anti-black discrimination on Broadway as early as 1911.

The practice of casting white people in black roles was a symptom of bigotry in the entertainment industry, which is why seeing an image of Jolson in blackface is so viciously repellent today.

I think Robert Downey Jr. and Leonardo DiCaprio are probably pretty good guys just like Jolson was. But 100 years from now Hollywood casting practices today will seem just as distasteful as Al Jolson’s blackface routines seem to us now.

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Er
 I wasn’t the person who posted, as you so elegantly put it, “a beautiful disdainful white babe.”

0.o

If you have an issue with that comment, then I suggest taking it up with the member who actually made it.

That said;

Jolson may be an extreme example, but it still demonstrates the historical tendency of the Hollywood industry to whiten/lighten major characters both fictional and historical, even when there ARE big money drawing actors of color available to play those parts.

And just in the interest of keeping the goal posts right where they are, there were very few films that were made in Jolson’s time that featured any people of color as main protagonists and in positive roles.

The few acknowledgments that were made to even the very existence of other cultures were either cursory, as an afterthought, or as “exotic fetishism.”

3-dimensional, fully fleshed out nunanced characters of color were not ‘a thing’ on the Hollywood silver screen, for the longest time.

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“I wasn’t the person who posted, as you so elegantly put it, "a beautiful disdainful white babe.”

Sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest you had done so. I was trying to respond to Brainspore. I would prefer not to respond to the woman who posted that GIF.

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No harm, no foul.
:slight_smile:

Just remember:

(Yes, I communicate in memes too. They have their uses.)

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Rum actually refers to Byzantine (i.e., Roman) Anatolia, which continued to be used as a name for the region (where Rumi lived most of his life) long after Manzikert.

Make it Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and they’ll like it even better. :wink:

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Thank you. I’m glad you beat me to the geography lesson, because I was going to be much more snarky.

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Here’s how I think the casting must have gone:

Casting guy: "Could you tell me the name of the character you’re auditioning for?"
Iranian Actor : "Jalalaladudin al dummy
 shit"
Casting guy: "Next!"
Other casting guy: “None of the actors can even pronounce the dude’s name. Who’s next?”

  • DiCaprio walks in
    DiCaprio : “I’m here to audition for the part of Jalāl ad-DÄ«n Muhammad RĆ«mī”
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Ummmm
not the best comparison because, in The Jazz Singer, Jolson was playing a white man who performed on stage in blackface. It actually would have been inappropriate to cast a black person in the role. Of course, one can always argue that making the film itself was inappropriate


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the character he played in that movie was of a white Jewish man who performed on stage in blackface. His Jewish heritage was a huge part of the plot in the movie. I don’t know if the actor was Jewish, and obviously the whole concept of blackface is offensive to us now, but I don’t think that film provides he example you’re looking for. There are many others that do, obviously.

ETA: much of your point probably applies to his character’s character, but then that’s starting to get a bit meta. Especially if they ever do a remake of that movie someday.

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Muhammed Cangören is an Afghan, just like Rumi. He kind of looks like him too, and oh yeah - he’s a very good actor.

13032-muhammed-cangoren-4.jpg362×600 25 KB

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I was more tempted to apply snark to the “language lesson” whereby Achaemenian Pārsā was found to be Fars originally


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I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove with that bit of fan fic? That Iranians are idiots and DiCaprio is smarter?

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OK, fair point. But Jolson famously did plenty of blackface routines before and after that film.

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He (Asa Yoelson) and many other of the blackface stage actors were Jewish.

So, actually achieving a higher social status through performing the buffoonery of blackface.

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“Well, actually
”