I'm trying not to be Oscar obsessed but the more I think about it the more I'm baffled/angry about Robert Downey Jr's nomination for his performance in Tropic Thunder, a role that comprises exactly one (admittedly well-played) half-clever joke, mostly at the expense of the Academy. It's distressing to think of the level of not-addressing-the-problem indicated by giving a goddamn statue to a goddamn white dude. I thought RDjr was very funny/satirical/clever/interesting/etc in that movie, don't get me wrong. I just think it's lame to honor gimmicky crap, but it's beyond bizarre to do so when the gimmick in question is blackface. BLACKFACE. Somebody explain to me again how this is about racism and therefore not...racism.
13 comments:
Don't worry-- they'll give the oscar to Heath Ledger. If they don't then people will riot in the streets...
The whole joke in Tropic Thunder is that the academy was would give an oscar to a white man playing a black man any day of the week.
Which now is just true. So the joke is...well, a lot less funny.
Also, am I the only one who doesn't want Heath Ledger to get the oscar simply because I don't want to watch any more gushing about The Dark Night?
When are the oscars and when are we baking?
Wow, I don't want to seem Neanderthal, but I've got to disagree. The satire to me is (like you said) on Hollywood's love of gimmicks, and on its self-congratulation hiding structural racism ("we've given the statue to Denzel and Halle and Forest and Jamie, racism solved!" even if this Kirk Lazarus has taken a plum job from an African-American actor).
But I don't think RD's performance was gimmicky, which to me means a catalog of tics and mannerisms. Frankly it was my favorite performance of the year (as I recall I walked out of the theater repeating "Robert Downey Jr. is a goddamn virtuoso!"). He was funny in a way that nominees rarely are (what was the last funny performance to win? Kevin Kline's?).
And the inherent racism of blackface is, I think, undercut in TT by 1) the metafictional layering, 2) the illusionistic semi-realism, as opposed to the googly-eyed "Oh Lawdy"-ism of traditional minstrelsy, and 3) the constant confrontation and questioning, specifically by Alpa Chino.
In other words, I think Stiller et al knew the dangers of comic blackface, and consciously structured the story and character to undermine it. The anti-Semitism in Tom Cruise's Les Grossman, however, slipped by their radar I think...
...which is to say, RDjr rubbed the Academy's faces in their own horseshit for two hours, but was so good they had to nominate him anyway. Unless they were too stupid to get the joke, which is entirely possible.
Also, funny winning performances since Kline: Arkin, Wiest, Sorvino. Still.
But...but...I don't know. I totally agree with 1). I'm not sure about 2) - when he accidentally quotes the Jeffersons theme song, isn't that precisely the "oh lawdy" of the 21st century? (except in as much as the movie is aware it's doing that, but that's part 1 of your argument)
I sort of agree with 3), but I'm just not sure it's enough. I'm not even offended by the Kirk Lazarus character or by the movie's use/lampooning of a black-face-like gimmick (and to point it out, I didn't say the *performance* was gimmicky). I liked the performance a lot - I probably even used the phrase "goddamn virtuoso" myself.
But there is something so distasteful about actually giving the nomination to a white dude playing a black dude (especially in a year when there are no non-white-dudes nominated in either of the acting categories, not to mention directing).
I want to not be on the PC-ranting side of this argument, so please keep fighting about it. I'd love to be convinced - I'd love to feel good about a comic performance getting an Oscar. And again I don't think the movie is racist. But I'm afraid that RDjr's nomination proves me wrong somehow.
(Also, it's probably time for me to stop claiming that I totally don't care about the Oscars, eh?
Since the movie isn't racist, and the performance isn't racist, and even the character of Lazarus isn't really racist (just naive enough not to realize what he's doing, which is a kind of racism I suppose, but probably the most forgivable kind): then the nomination is racist? Okay, I can maybe buy that.
This is all very interesting; sorry for dumping all over the post. What do you think about the nominations of Felicity Huffman for Transamerica vs. John Lithgow for Garp (other than the fact that Lithgow is carved entirely from ham), both for playing MTF trans? Or those of Hoffman (Tootsie) and Lemmon (SLIH)? Or most interestingly Linda Hunt's win? I don't have an argument to make about these, and of course gender isn't race. But I'm intrigued that all these roles/performances can exist on a continuum from simple crossdressing to genuine drag, while race is so resistant.
Hey! Remember when Halle Berry won the Oscar for Monster's Ball and the next year Nicole Kidman won for The Hours and then the next year Charlize Theron won for Monster and it seemed like the only way a pretty girl could get an Oscar was if she played an ugly girl?
I'm not sure I have a point here. I'm not even sure which female actresses have won the Lead Actress category in the last few years. I guess I don't really care about the Oscars. Like really don't care. Not in the way that Lydia doesn't care.
I guess how I feel is kinda the same about Anna's last comment and the trans/drag stuff. Like, Felicity Huffman is a good actress and so is Halle Berry, and whoever else. But there are SO MANY good actors who aren't super famous and so can't get work, even though they might be MUCH BETTER suited than Nicole Kidman to play Virginia Woolf (with or without a completely ridiculous fake nose). This goes double for gender-bendy roles. I would love to pay money to go see a movie with a real transperson playing a transperson, even if that actor wasn't already famous.
I like what I think Lydia said and Michael restated - that possibly the performance isn't racist, but the nomination is. It's only on a gut level, but part of me thinks this is right. I have no clear reasoning whatsoever for this except that I buy Michael's claim that the film is self-aware enough that I want to give it the benefit of the doubt. The academy, on the other hand, I do not give the benefit of anything to.
I now have no idea what my opinion is. Maybe I should rewatch TT *and* read all the satellite media about RDjr's nomination? I feel sort of panicky.
Having still not seen Tropic Thunder, I can't really comment on the issues very directly, but I do have a couple of thoughts on traditional blackface, that I think are relevant.
First, blackface was (often) funny. Look, most of us here like to watch old movies, and we pretend that some bits we genuinely like, and some other bits we like ironically. But surely the truth is, at least partly, that blackface scenes are fun and funny for the same reasons they were 80 years ago--it's fun to watch people pretend to be what they aren't. It's aged, but I don't think the humor value is all that different from what you get from movies of that period generally. Thinking that it's "wrong" doesn't (and shouldn't) invalidate that, because funny and inappropriate aren't opposed. Certainly, in any event, people at the time thought they were funny, and done in good humor. I guess my first point here is that RDjr's performance being genuinely funny (especially to the contemporary audience that we currently are) really doesn't distinguish it from traditional blackface.
The other thing that, if true, doesn't distinguish it from traditional blackface is an attempt at realism. I think our impression that traditional blackface was so grossly unrealistic is a result of time shifting our idea of what black people are actually like, and bringing us farther away from a rich stage tradition of caricature and stereotype of all kinds. But wasn't blackface largely an attempt at realistically portraying black culture, in the context of idiosyncratic artistic traditions? I may be wrong about this.
I'm not saying that TT is or isn't racist, or that (more relevantly) RDjr does or doesn't deserve an Oscar--I really don't know. But I do think we're doing a disservice to blackface (yeep!) when we simplify it down to racist mockery, and ignore the genuine attempt to portray inclusively and realistically the kinds of people that 19th century artists saw their world as including. And I think that simplification may incline us to amplify the differences between that attempt, and RDjr's recent blackface performance.
I'm not, I hope it's obvious, defending blackface! Blackface is a bad thing, and should be done away with. It's just that TT seems (from here!) to be nothing other than a pretty good job at traditional blackface.
A lot of what Dave says here makes sense, some so much so that I'm inclined to say that there's one thing that seems to me to distinguish RDjr's performance from blackface. I think Dave's right--blackface was always an attempt to represent the african american community accurately. That's precisely what makes it so offensive. It believes it's accurate.
This is the distinction that I find compelling: I don't think RDjr's performance was written to be accurate. From the script I'd say it's aware it's an inaccurate portrayal--right? Alpa Chino's commentary seems to point that out repeatedly, especially as his character arc has him evolving out of those stereotypes (put on to sell an image) and into a more reasonable character.
So, I now think that the humor doesn't distinguish the performance from traditional blackface, but the relationship to realism (or lack thereof) does. This is why I want to argue that the performance and the nomination are distinct. The performance tries to point out its own inaccuracies. I.e. not racist. But the nomination is different. I have no way of knowing that he wasn't nominated because everyone thought he was so accurate.
When do we bring 30 Rock into the discussion? Or is that a separate post?
All I know is I'm gonna be so pissed if Heath Ledger wins for a whiteface role.
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