No worries, I’ll just need to borrow one of @Melizmatic’s jinx gifs 
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Here ya go:
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All the wrong.
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(Blackface actor Robert Downey Jr., in his Academy Award nominated performance…)
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I just want to say how goddamned refreshing this story is. It comes out that someone wore blackface, so they step down. Remember when the world used to work like that: an embarrassing/awful thing about a politician comes to light and so they go away?
(It would be far better, of course, to live in a world where this guy didn’t put on black face in the first place.)
Racist politician steps down and I have a new show to watch. This news story is making my day!
I have compared those, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions about the point you were trying to make here. Was I supposed to find one of those things justified and the other unjustified?
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Because if you are a Republican you’ll win. Remember, he was elected and sworn in already. There will definitely be talking heads calling him a coward for quitting just because a photo of him being super racist surfaced. He didn’t even wait for the next poll to determine if it hurt or helped his image with his constituents.
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I read an interesting piece in The Atlantic about how DeSantis is governing with a more centrist tone, even though he ran a very Trump-like campaign. That may help explain why he wants to avoid controversies such as this.
It’s amazing how the GOP defines a new level of human revulsion, almost multiple times daily now.
I have more respect for pile of raw sewage than I do this man or the people who support him
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I’m guessing you completely missed the ironic point that movie was making about blackface and the importance of representation…
Color me shocked.
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Not really. I’ve never actually seen the movie, but realize it is viewed as making an anti-racist point. I also do not mean to compare that to the scumbag who is the target of this post.
I just find it interesting that there are examples of when blackface is viewed as being “OK.” Another example is the Roger Sterling scene in Mad Men.
However, even though Tropic Thunder is only 10 or so years old, I wonder if Downey Jr.'s role would be allowed by a big studio if it was done today.
Yes, in instances where it’s clear that the person who’s wearing blackface is doing so because he’s a fool.
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There is context in all things. If someone is playing a character that wears blackface because the character is a racist or a dyed-in-the-wool idiot then the person playing the character isn’t necessarily doing something racist. Actors who play Nazis in movies might wear swastikas on their arms, but they aren’t Nazis. Actors who dress up in giant mascot costumes to dance with the Wiggles aren’t actually Dorothy the Dinosaur.
Even still, that’s controversial. Generally it’s best to avoid using racism to point out racism. That role was controversial at the time, not just in hindsight. I’m sure there are people who feel it was inappropriate and who were offended by it, and if someone felt that was in this thread I’d listen to them rather than jumping to tell them they were wrong.
But if we’re “just asking questions” about when it is okay to use and not to use blackface, here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t.
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Black person, here;
I can’t speak for all of us, obviously, but I personally wasn’t offended by the inclusion, because the movie made some excellent points about appropriation and representation:
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Well this would be the second thing I might watch on your recommendation today (not that you exactly recommended this, but I’m certainly more interested in seeing it now than I was yesterday).
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You totally should check it out.
It took me years to watch Tropic Thunder, despite repeated recommendations from people whose opinions that I trust; the first time I watched it was late 2017 so it’s still pretty fresh in my mind.
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Right. I think the sensitivity has hit the point where even using it as provocative satire would not be so accepted, especially when there is an element of using it for comedic effect.
Another tidbit of interest, I found this sadly comical (I’m from Philly):
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I think the idea that PC has gone wild is completely overblown. If people are more careful not to be racist, that’s good. If that means we end up missing what would have been a few really funny jokes, it probably also means that we miss out on a thousand garbage racist jokes. 300 hours of video are uploaded to youtube every minute, it’s not like we’re going to run out of things to watch.
I keep saying this in different threads, but the only test that never returns a false positive is a test that never returns a positive. The example you give of people accusing a black man of wearing black face is an example of how people can get things wrong. Another example of how things can go wrong is my entire childhood being full of mildy racist and extremely homophobic jokes in the school yard, in movies and on family sitcoms.
People think we’ve crossed a tipping point where anti-racism has gone too far when we haven’t even met in the middle yet.
And when it comes to politicians, I truly wish any politician would resign over something this stupid/awful/embarrassing. We hold them to a lower standard than we hold gas station employees.
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