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"the Comedian" - where's the outrage? If you’re overly sensitive, or can’t deal with sarcasm, maybe skip this post. Maybe skip my entire blog.  For those of you who might not be aware, Zoe Saldana “tearfully apologized” recently for playing the role of Nina Simone in a movie. She feels regret because she is technically not black, yet she chose to play the role of a black person. I don’t see the problem; she is an actor and they are to be someone they are not. Apparently it’s okay to pretend to be a “kind” of person but not a race. In other words, you can pretend to be a singer even though you aren’t one, but to pretend to be a black singer is offensive when you are not in fact black. That has to be the answer, because I just got done watching a movie called “the Comedian” which is about a comedian, yet the role of said comedian was played by an actor, not an actual comedian. See, to me, this is just as disingenuous as playing a different race, or even a different gender - that is to say; I really could care less on a personal level, but if you’re going to start making people feel guilty for pretending to be people they are not, you better go all the way, or shut your mouth. The lament is always how there are plenty of ______ actors who could have taken roles written for ______’s, where the _______ is a race. A recent example is one I am unfamiliar with, but apparently Ben Affleck cast himself in the role of a Hispanic person, yet he himself is not even remotely Hispanic. Do I personally care? Not one little bit. There have historically been many white actors and actresses that have taken on roles of other races, so this is nothing new. What I wonder, is why there aren’t a bunch of comedians expressing outrage that “one of their own” didn’t land the role of comedian in a movie about a comedian? Robert De Niro was the actor who portrayed the comic in this movie, so shouldn’t he be tearfully apologizing for taking a role that wasn’t written for him? Harry Shearer, the man who up until recently was doing the voice of black doctor Julius Hibbert on the Simpsons, but is a caucasian himself, had the guts to say that he didn’t feel the decision to replace him with a voice actor that is the same race as the race of the cartoon character he was voicing is a good decision. He pointed out, quite correctly, that people like him are to pretend to be other people. It’s his job to act (he’s an actor) like someone else, and that shouldn’t exclude race. In fact, if a person can pull it off convincingly, that seems quite a feat, like they are actually good at their profession. "People from all backgrounds should be represented in the writing and producing ends of the business so they help decide what stories to tell and with what knowledge," Shearer said. "The job is playing someone not." But since it’s so offensive for one race to portray another, I wonder why Will Smith isn’t tearfully apologizing for taking the role of the lead character in “I am Legend”? After all, the the movie was based off of, which was written in 1954, didn’t have a black main character. Yet Will Smith was cast and nobody seems to be remotely bothered by that. I know I don’t give a damn - it’s a great movie and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. None of this is important to , actually, and the only time I’m going to spend on it is here, basically mocking it. People can be pissed off that a straight man landed the role of a trans person in a Hollywood film (Jared Leto in Dallas Buyer’s Club) but all I see are overly sensitive people with way too much time on their hands, just aching to find something to be upset about. There are so many truly horrible things in this world to get angry over that this sort of thing seems worthy of at least a little derision. |
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