Las Vegas Weekly

What’s in a skin color?

Downey, Schneider, Jolie and the perils of ethnic impersonation in movies

Jerry Miller

Last week’s release of the big-budget comedy Tropic Thunder was greeted with protests from several advocacy organizations representing a certain minority group, people who objected to the way that group was portrayed in the film. Yet Robert Downey Jr.’s performance in blackface for nearly the entire movie wasn’t the subject of a single protest; instead, groups including the Special Olympics asserted that Ben Stiller’s performance as an actor who takes on an over-the-top role as a mentally handicapped boy was offensive to people with mental disabilities.

Both performances are delivered in the same spirit—as satires on actors who take themselves and the roles they play too seriously, and who exhibit insensitivity to minority groups in the process. Tropic Thunder makes fun of neither African-Americans nor the mentally handicapped; if anything, it’s the Screen Actors Guild that should be protesting, since the movie relentlessly skewers actors as self-centered and clueless. So why is it that one actor is celebrated for his clever meta-performance, while another is attacked for denigrating a whole group of people? The line between respect and offense in cases like these is razor-thin, and it’s not always easy to see where it should be drawn.

Comedy, it seems, is far more likely to get a free pass, Tropic Thunder’s troubles notwithstanding. There was no outcry earlier this year when Rob Schneider darkened his skin and put on a wig and fake mustache to play a Middle Eastern terrorist in the Adam Sandler film You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. Schneider is expected to be crass and puerile in pretty much everything he does, and he plays only a supporting role in the movie. But watching him perform alongside actors of actual Middle Eastern descent is especially painful, and highlights his absurd (and unconvincing) effort to fit into the movie’s generally fairly smart take on relations between Jews and Arabs.

Blackface of course has a long history in the minstrel shows that continued through the first half of the 20th century, but nowadays no one would even consider a true blackface performance even in the broadest of comedies; only something like Downey’s self-aware satire can pass muster. Other ethnic groups aren’t nearly so lucky, though: Schneider has also offered up crude stereotypes of Polynesians and Chinese people, among others, in various other Sandler projects, generally without protest from their respective communities.

What one might call “yellowface,” going back to Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed performance as a Japanese landlord in 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is still seemingly tolerated and even encouraged. Eddie Murphy probably wouldn’t find straightforward blackface very funny, but he had no problem playing a horribly exaggerated stereotype of an old Asian man, complete with extensive prosthetic makeup, in last year’s Norbit.

People who take offense at these sorts of portrayals are often accused of lacking a sense of humor, regardless of how insulting and mean-spirited the performances may actually be (it probably doesn’t need to be said that Rob Schneider is no Robert Downey Jr.). Criticism of dramatic roles can’t be deflected that way, which is probably one reason it’s far less common to see actors altering their ethnicity for serious parts. The most prominent recent example is Angelina Jolie in last year’s A Mighty Heart, in which she played Mariane Pearl, wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

In order to play Pearl, who is of mixed ethnic heritage, Jolie darkened her skin and wore a wig of black, kinky hair. The transformation was subtle enough not to be distracting, and Pearl herself endorsed Jolie in the role, but it did raise objections from some critics, and highlighted the question of how far it’s necessary to go for verisimilitude in a film like this. In a way, Jolie is the real-life version of Downey’s Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder, who decides to change his appearance when he learns that the character he’s playing was black in real life. It’s not as if viewers of A Mighty Heart don’t realize that it’s Jolie playing the part; the makeup and hair changes certainly don’t render her unrecognizable. Then why bother with them at all?

Well, because it’s a sign of seriousness; that’s why Kirk Lazarus does it, and that’s why other overzealous actors pack on pounds, or lose weight, or cut off all their hair, or wear fake noses—to show their dedication to their craft, and to win awards. When these efforts don’t cross ethnic lines, we tend to respect them, and to reward them with Oscars. Nicole Kidman’s enhanced proboscis in The Hours helped show that she wasn’t all about movie-star glam, and won her a Best Actress Oscar. There was a lot of talk about Jolie getting a nomination for A Mighty Heart, but it never happened. No one can say for certain why, but unease about her brownface performance is a likely contributing factor.

Robert Downey Jr., on the other hand, could be an outside candidate for an Oscar nod for his work in Tropic Thunder. By calling attention to the fakery of his transformation, by not entirely disappearing into the role, he makes the ruse acceptable, inoffensive, even clever. He’s just serious enough to show that he’s not being insensitive, but not so serious as to seem oblivious to the absurdity of what he’s doing. He’s figured out how to walk that line perfectly.