Big Dogs Weblog

Give the Brother a Break

by Big Dog on Mar 8, 2008 at 11:25 General

Robert Downey Jr has a role in a new movie entitled Tropic Thunder. According to the Daily Mail, the movie:

The film centres[sic] on a group of pompous actors making the most expensive Vietnam war movie ever made.

Fed up with their self-involved cast, the film’s makers drop them into the jungle to take care of themselves, where they get caught up in a conflict they don’t realise[sic] is real.

However, all is not well in movie land because Downey Jr plays the part of a black man. He wears black make-up and a wig to play the part of a black actor.

Oops, that does not sit well with groups that want to know why a white man is playing a black person. Was there no black man to fill the role? This is over the line and cannot be tolerated.

My question; Who the hell cares? Their profession is acting and their job is to make people believe something that is not true. In this case Downey Jr looks like a black man and therefore he is making people believe something that is not true.

Why are there never concerns when black guys wear white make-up and play white people? Why are there no concerns when a woman plays a man or vice versa? It seems to me that this is much ado about absolutely nothing as is the flap over a white actor on SNL playing the part of Barack Obama, who incidentally is half white.

If this movie used Downey’s character to portray stereotypes of blacks and showed them unfavorably then there might be an issue but still, that issue never arises when people like Eddie Murphy wear white make-up to see how good whites have life. Murphy is a comedian and what he did was funny though it made fun of typical white stereotypes.

I wonder if this will pass without the race baiters making a big deal about it. If there is any way whatsoever that Sharpton and Jackson can play this for face time on some camera, somewhere, we will be in for another diatribe about the racist whites.

BTW, Jack Black is in the movie (just his name is ironic) and his hair is bleached blond. Should we protest that a blond actor was not found to play the part?

Tags: black, downey jr, movie, race, white