{"id":44,"date":"2008-03-08T22:28:21","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T06:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=44"},"modified":"2009-09-22T22:30:22","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T06:30:22","slug":"actors-in-make-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Actors in Make-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/pages\/live\/articles\/showbiz\/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=528496&amp;in_page_id=1773\">Controversy has erupted over Robert Downey jr having been cast in the r\u00f4le of a black character in <cite>Tropic Thunder<\/cite>.<\/a>  By co\u00efncidence, over the last couple of days I have been watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0023238\/\"><cite>The Most Dangerous Game<\/cite> (1932)<\/a> in bits and pieces.  The co\u00efncidence is in that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0425903\/\">Noble Johnson<\/a>, an African-American, played a Caucasian in that earlier film.<\/p> <p>I don't think that we should give much of a d_mn about blacks playing whites or <span style=\"font-style: italic\">vice versa<\/span>.  It should be no more than a mild curiosity.<\/p> <p>On the other hand, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0942385\/\"><cite>Tropic Thunder<\/cite><\/a> stars Ben Stiller, and the fact that he still has a career in movies certainly <em>does<\/em> offend me.<\/p> <p>Addendum (09 Mar): I am now told, distinct from the report of <cite>the Daily Mail<\/cite>, that Downey plays a white actor playing a black character. (So the r\u00f4le would be somewhat more like that of the main character in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0091991\/\"><cite>Soul Man<\/cite> (1986)<\/a>.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Controversy has erupted over Robert Downey jr having been cast in the r\u00f4le of a black character in Tropic Thunder. By co\u00efncidence, over the last couple of days I have been watching The Most Dangerous Game (1932) in bits and pieces. The co\u00efncidence is in that Noble Johnson, an African-American, played a Caucasian in that [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,6,4],"tags":[170,87,54,56,89],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-commentary","category-public","tag-cinema","tag-ethnicity","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}