We have a thread on Films Dealing with Racism, but I couldn't find anything it that thread, or any seperate thread that deals with performances that may be considered racist in their depiction.

There has been a big bruhaha building in my old hometown of Sacramento over the decision to show Breakfast at Tiffany's at the local "Movies on the Green" summer film festival. An Asian American group protested the inclusion of this film because of the performance by Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, Holly Golightly's upstairs neighbor. For those who haven't seen the film, Rooney's portrayal is way over the top - a bucktoothed, coke bottle glasses wearing, pidgin-English speaking Japanese man, that seems to be the embodiment of all the propaganda films and posters of World War II, plus throw in any other Asian stereotypes from history going back to 19th century when many Chinese emigrated here to work on the railroads (I'm writing this quickly, and trying not to be offensive myself - I may have to do some editing when I have a little extra time on my hands).

I've seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, and can't say that I am a fan of the film (I think Alan is another who has some feelings about this movie). The showing I saw was preceded with a speech that referenced Rooney's performance. I admit that when he first came onscreen I laughed, but that laughter was not because he was funny in any way, rather I was laughing over the fact that there was a time when this type of performance was deemed acceptable.

But looking back on the history of movies, is it now considered inherently racist if a person of one race portrays a person of another race. For example, is Charlton Heston's work in Touch of Evil looked down upon by Mexican Americans because Heston is white?

What other examples are there that are as blatant as Rooney's?

BTW, the city council of Sacramento decided to pull Breakfast at Tiffany's, and replaced it with Ratatouile.

Story here.

I would regard Akim Tamiroff's performance in Touch of Evil as more problematic than Heston's.

Lou Diamond Phillips' turn as a Navajo in Young Guns (or was it Young Guns II?) was regarded as a howler by anyone who grew up in or near Navajo country -- but more because it tried so hard not to be racist that it deprived the character of any traits one might recognize as Native American at all, let alone specifically Navajo.

Pretty much any portrayal of an African-American, Native American or Mexican prior to 1960 will draw primarily on stereotypes.

I've not heard any brouhaha over Heston's performance in Touch of Evil, partially because he was an honorable, if flawed, central figure. The same could not be said over Rooney's performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is played purely for comic effect. I believe Katharine Hepburn drew howls of laughter in Dragon Seed. John Wayne, too, for another film.

Then again, Alec Guiness and Ben Kingsley drew raves for their performances in A Passage to India and Gandhi (altho I'm not sure if Kingsley counts). Linda Hunt playing a boy won her an Oscar. And the most darning case I can think of, Bing Crosby going blackface in Holiday Inn... works as a great performance, which also happened to advance the storyline, but I think it's a mixed bag from how African Americans took to it.

Funny this is all coming out while Tropic Thunder is in theaters, in which Downey,Jr's character undergoes a skin-darkening procedure to pass off as black... I haven't heard any protests to this film from the NAACP.

I think the central questions are obvious--does the actor have an affection for the character he's playing? Does the actor avoid stereotypes, or if they introduce stereotypes, do so for an intelligent reason? Does the illusion work? Is there a positive understanding of the bottom line? Had the casting couch found a better candidate (in the same race), would the joke (if the performance was comic-based) work?

I actually hadn't read anything about Heston's performance, but wondered if there are folks that look back at it today as a form of "blackface", albeit not of the type that sets about to ridicule. Orson Welles comes to mind with his terrific portrayal of Othello. On the other hand, a performance such as Paul Newman's as Juan Carrasco in the Rashomon remake The Outrage, seems to be hell bent on stereotyping its character.

The John Wayne film you refer to may have been The Conqueror, in which he plays Ghengis Khan.



I'm going to have to do some research, but I think both Alec Guiness and Anthony Quinn received some backlash from critics for their performances in Lawrence of Arabia. Although, these were from critics who reviewed the film in the late 80's, when the restored version was playing in theatres.



Having not yet seen Tropic Thunder, would the joke still have worked had, say, Eddie Murphy been cast in the Robert Downey Jr. role, and played "white face" for the early parts of the film?

Alec Guinness's portrayal of Fagin in David Lean's adaptation of Oliver Twist (1948) is pretty weird to watch these days, thanks to the exaggerated make-up and the Jewish caricature it represents. Guinness's portrayal of Fagin is certainly far more cringe-inducing than his portrayals of an Arab chieftain in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and an Indian wise old man in A Passage to India (1984), both of which were also directed by Lean. But I can accept all of these performances, to some degree, as being in keeping with the theatrical standards of their times.

Lawrence of Arabia is an interesting case, in that the film casts a range of ethnicities in the key Arab roles: British (Guinness), Mexican-Irish (Anthony Quinn) and, yes, an actual Arab, namely an Egyptian (Omar Sharif) -- although this last actor was born to a Christian family, rather than the majority Muslim religion, and he was hired as a last-minute replacement for a French actor who had to bail out of the film for some reason or other, if memory serves. (Hmmm, Wikipedia says Sharif's father was Syrian, which I'm pretty sure is Arabic -- what with all that "United Arab Republic" stuff going on between Syria and Egypt in the late '50s -- whereas his mother was Lebanese, and apparently Christians in Lebanon tend to emphasize the non-Arab aspects of their nation's history. So whether his mother was Arabic or not, I could not say, but I'd wager his father was. Anyway.)

Interestingly, David Lean went on to cast Sharif as a European -- specifically, a Russian -- in Doctor Zhivago (1965). So it's not like he was always giving ethnic parts to white actors, or ghettoizing ethnic actors in ethnic roles. I think it may be fair to say that he was colour-blind, to a degree. He just happened to be a British director working with primarily British actors on basically British productions, so of course he tended to cast British actors in some of the non-British roles. But he occasionally went in the other direction, too. (Not that Yuri Zhivago was British. But European, yes.)

What about non-white actors playing people of their own race in an offensive manner. I know, for example, some people have concerns over 1936's "Green Pastures", and I guess , even today, people playing Arab terrorists?

Matt

Spike Lee's film Bamboozled received a lot of criticism with it's use of black actors in blackface. From Roger Ebert's review in 2000...

I'd consider Fisher Stevens portrayal of Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit racially insensitive.

And I'd say Yul Brynner's King of Siam is pretty ugly as well. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the textbook imperialism of the entire story, but still, he's Russian/Swiss and playing a far eastern monarch as a boorish buffoon.

I feel that the portrayals of Canadians by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas in "The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew" were grossly offensive, and this fact is not mitigated by the fact that the two perpetrators were Canadians, nor that they did the roles in whiteface.

I'm a Canadian, and I don't drink beers. All that much.

Well, I think that probably wraps up this conversation. Administrators, you may want to consider closing this thread, as I do not believe there will be another post of such insight into this particular discussion. That is unless Ron would like to name some of the beers he doen't drink "all that much", especially the brand he was imbibing while making the above post.