Ben Stiller defends Robert Downey Jr. blackface in ‘Tropic Thunder’
- Thread starter Goldie
- Start date
I'm gonna skip Semantic Wednesday this week fam.
No this isn't semantics if you read lonious post and still disagree
You clearly have a different definition based on your understanding of it so I'm asking you to share so we can try to see if we can bridge that gap
Old Man Cain
OG
closes thing was Eddie Murphy playing the jewish barber from Coming Back to America or whatever the fuck the name of the movie is.
And tbh that character migth've been considered Italian more so than Jew
So what I thought which is why you ignoring context in which it was done as it was perfectly described by lonious
So.... What did you think of this scene?
I initially no signed it but I wanna rewatch some scenes before I make a final decision
The Lonious Monk
Celestial Souljah
Ok, that's the definition. The problem with your stance (from my perspective) is that you're not acknowledging why it was seen as highly offensive. The reason was because in those minstrel shows, the white people were imitating the appearance of a black person specifically so they could make fun of black people. When people typically talk about blackface, they are usually thinking specifically about the minstrel shows. RDJ's Tropic Thunder was a subversion of that. It was done to show how absurd the concept of black face is. This is basically the equivalent of black people getting mad at white people for using the N word in their attempt to explain to other white people how terrible the N word is.
What did you think of sheen imitating "black dialect/speak"
rip.dilla
Active Member
They trick yall. Made you think it was some deep teaching moment so a white dude can do blackface and act like a buffoon.
Mocking the way we talk and act. I didn't find it funny then, still don't find it funny now.
At first I shot him bail cuz he's half black. But after thinking about it....
If he was always front line on social matters then the blackface would make sense, but the fact that he's never stood on any black matter in the decade and a half he's been famous, it didn't come from a genuine place imo.
The Lonious Monk
Celestial Souljah
There's no trick. The character wasn't mocking black people. He was genuinely trying to act like a black person, and the movie painted him as an idiot for what he was doing.
You seem to be against a white person being involved in any kind of portrayal of a black person. That's fine, but its still disingenuous to say that RDJ was mocking the way we talked and act in that movie. That's not what he was doing.
If you lead with this, then I don't respond the way I do
I figured this what it was but I was trying to get you to just say this
What I meant by that is I have 0 tolerance for blackface.
As do I but where we differ is I don't consider what RDJ did as that
Outside of minstrel shows, imo, this is more in alignment with how you feel