"Tropic Thunder" America's No#1 Minstrel Show for 3 weeks straight!

[Pragmatic]

"In Tropic Thunder, minstrelsy is a curiosity, not a flash point -- precisely because the man in black is so cool. ..."





Why Robert Downey Jr. Can Get Away with Blackface
Buzz up!Because Downey's the only actor good enough -- and crazy enough -- to pull off a minstrel show in the comedy Tropic Thunder.

By Stephen Garrett

Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder - Robert Downey Jr. in Blackface - Tropic Thunder Review - Esquire




Robert Downey Jr.’s chocolate complexion, kinky short hair, and “hot damn!” cadence in the Vietnam satire Tropic Thunder is blood kin to the shoe-polish-stained cheeks, Brillo-pad pompadours, and declarative “yessum, massa!” of yore. Honky is still playing Negro. But once the lights dim, it’s hard to tell what’s more shocking: that Robert Downey Jr. is in blackface or that after about two minutes, you stop thinking about it.

Hollywood hasn’t manufactured this kind of wide-release minstrelsy since that nice Jewish boy Gene Wilder delivered his hilariously inept and subversive strut with Richard Pryor in Silver Streak in 1976. (Unless you count the times African-Americans wore it themselves, like Spike Lee’s black-blackface diatribe against nappy-headed racism in 2000’s Bamboozled, or the Wayans brothers’ creepy paleface cross-dressing in 2004’s White Chicks.) Time was, blackface was as common as Uncle Tom servants and jim crow laws. Even the transition from silent film to talkies wore its racism as a badge of honor, with 1927’s The Jazz Singer best known for Al Jolson’s ebony visage belting out “My Mammy.” The most lily-white stars in Hollywood’s firmament -- including Judy Garland and Bing Crosby -- were only too happy to rub on that inky greasepaint and shake their jazz hands while smiling with those big painted lips.


And once you were bedecked in bigotry, there were two options: ham it up like Stepin Fetchit (Amos ‘n’ Andy‘s white creators Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, for example) or just wear the outfit but act the way you always do (Al, Bing, and Judy).

Downey mixes both, playing up stereotypes by declaring his love of crawfish and collard greens, but pulling back enough so it’s not a shrill caricature *Ed note A caricature is either a portrait that exaggerates or distorts or can be insulting or complimentary; the essence is to a create person or thing as to easily identifiy the visual likeness, or in literature, a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.[1] end note>

. (Helping him to balance that act is black stand-up comic Brandon T. Jackson as a rapper-turned-actor who keeps busting Downey’s chops about the mahogany charade, which gives him even more license to black it up.)

YouTube - Jay Baruchel Brandon T. Jackson...

*Ed.note

How does Downey pull it off? Singular talent. The Oscar-nominated actor has spent his career perfecting humor and pathos in equal measure. Which means that when, in Tropic Thunder, he plays a dead-serious Australian Method actor who insists on taking a role originally written for a black man, what ends up parodied is the self-seriousness of Method acting and the Vietnam-movie trope of the chitlins-chewing Negro grunt. Blackface isn’t the subject; it’s the vessel.

And it doesn’t hurt that he’s in a damned funny film. Writer-director Ben Stiller uses the conceit of three self-centered actors making a Vietnam drama in Southeast Asia as his starting point for moviemaking mockery. And Tropic Thunder (August 15) is relentlessly, mercilessly, brutally hilarious.

Still, what major movie star wants to risk offending anyone -- especially a star who just rocketed into the blockbuster-franchise stratosphere with Iron Man? “If Downey thinks something is going to be offensive, it’s going to tempt him to do it,” says James Toback, who has directed three movies starring Downey, including Black and White, in which he cast the actor as a bisexual documentarian who makes a pass at an unsuspecting Mike Tyson (and almost gets pummeled).

Downey may be fearless, but he’s also shrewd enough to know the difference between being racist and telling a joke about racism .

*End note>>> Cause he's white

In Tropic Thunder, minstrelsy is a curiosity, not a flash point -- precisely because the man in black is so cool.

Principles before personality

Peace

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[Im The Truth]

#1 Minstrel Show!!!!

[Fenix]

I really don't understand how he's getting away with this. I don't know why I'm always so shocked by these antics. Someone actually tried to justify it to me by saying it's okay because it's written into a script!

[Walk Wit Me]

I thought the movie was funny though

:/

[Blackmind]

my wife and I refused to see it.

[Pragmatic]

If I went and watched it, I would laugh too I'm only human... for I wouldn't be consciously objecting.




..."Hey it ain't America's relentlessly, mercilessly, and brutally hilarious No# 1 Minstrel show in America 3 weeks straight for nutin'..."


Peace


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[Blackmind]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

If I went and watched it, I would laugh too I'm only human... for I wouldn't be consciously objecting.

Another one of the reasons why I wouldn't watch it. I'd feel dirty. I know myself and I am a laughaholic. I didn't like how this was the selling point of the movie. Everytime I turned around, someone was like "Robert Downey Junior gonna play a black guy, it's gonna be funny as hell." Then I heard people were protesting about the movie, I was like here we go, I cut on the t.v. to see what the word was it was a bunch of white people on t.v. mad because they were using the word retard in the movie.

[Pragmatic]

..."Show me the race or the nation without a flag, and I will show you a race of people without any pride. Aye! In song and mimicry they have said, "Every race has a flag but the coon." How true! Aye! But that was said of us four years ago. They can't say it now.... Marcus Garvey


Wapedia - Wiki: Coon song

Coon songs, ironically, contributed to the development and acceptance of authentic African American music. Elements from coon songs were incorporated into turn-of-the-century African American folk songs, as was revealed by Howard W. Odum's 1906-1908 ethnomusicology fieldwork. Similarly, coon songs lyrics influenced the vocabulary of the blues, culminating with Bessie Smith's singing in the 1920s.

Black songwriters and performers who participated in the creation of coon songs profited commercially, enabling them to go on to develop a new type of African American musical theater based at least in part on African American traditions. Coon songs also contributed to the mainstream acceptance of ragtime music, paving the way for the acceptance of other African American music. Ernest Hogan, when discussing his "All Coons Look Alike to Me" shortly before his death, commented: Ernest Hogan, when discussing his "All Coons Look Alike to Me" shortly before his death, commented:

“ (That) song caused a lot of trouble in and out of show business, but it was also good for show business because at the time money was short in all walks of life. With the publication of that song, a new musical rhythm was given to the people. Its popularity grew and it sold like wildfire... That one song opened the way for a lot of colored and white songwriters. Finding the rhythm so great, they stuck to it ... and now you get hit songs without the word 'coon.' ... [Ragtime music] would have been lost to the world if I had not put it on paper."


Wapedia - Wiki: Coon song.


Peace

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[QueenWarriorNefertari]

I'm thinking its all satire like Spike Lee's 'Bamboozled' was meant to be.

Now, yall do know he's playing a Hollywood actor in the film right? He's not simply playing a role in Blackface. He's playing an actor who plays a part in Blackface in a Hollywood movie. I'm thinking its a satire of a bigger statement.

I'm thinking his representation in this movie was meant to be a slant against Hollywood as they're more likely to put any other nationality (not only whitefolk) in Blackface before uplifting an Afrikan actor or actress in a lead role. Except in clear displays of gross stereotypes, hyper-sexuality and other types of buffoonery.

I ain't seeing this one either, but thats out of non-interest.

[ALEGBA'S FRIEND]

Its funny to see old cokehead downey jr playing a "brotha"

in this stupid film. I'm sure he needed a few boxes of

cake mix to snort up his ugly dick shaped nose before

he began his "oscar worthy" performance.

The old drug addict should be locked up the dopehead

that he is. But because he's "white" and made a few movies

he can snort an entire shipment of cocaine and walk

around high and mighty making fun of other people.

Normally if you are black or a minority

( minority being a word these self-proclaimed superiors

use to make the rest of us feel small and unimportant)

you would do dozens of years or even life in prison

for ingesting that pancake mix into your system!!

Cocaine is a bitch isn't it?

[SoularFlarez]

already numb to it.... how many tv shows/movies look like Amos n' Andy anyway ??