| Mickey Rooney is the most racist version of yellowface... | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 01:13 am EST 02/15/21 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 01:08 am EST 02/15/21 | |
| In reply to: Even as a rebuke, your comment is thuddingly obvious and predictable. - portenopete 12:55 am EST 02/14/21 | |
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| ...but the others are still yellowface, including Brynner. Before you react negatively, I think we can value his performance while acknowledging that it is yellowface. I don't think we have to dismiss him to acknowledge that it was racist. That doesn't mean it was malicious; racism exists whether or not there is negative intent (as in the hateful Mickey Rooney performance), because there is negative impact. In this case, there is negative impact on the audience that is deprived of seeing a Southeast Asian/Thai actor on screen; there is negative impact on the Southeast Asian/Thai actor who might have a lucrative career from being cast in a race-specific part, since he is not getting cast otherwise; and there is negative impact in presenting a story about a specific culture of people with a handful of brown actors of different ethnicities, a casting choice that extends past Brynner, in a show that purports to tell the story of that culture. Those are all very easy to recognize damages of the film's racist casting choices. Does that ruin the movie? It may for some people. For others, it won't. This can be a tough thing for some folks to understand, but racism and inappropriateness don't live in a good/bad binary. Many people like to think that racism only exists when we act in ways that are hateful and harmful, but that's not true. Racism exists in the ways that we perpetuate racist ideology and white supremacy, and it is often so ingrained into people that they aren't even aware they're doing it. As a society, we have all been conditioned to be accept the racism all around us, and in us. Racism is the air we breathe, which I mean as a metaphor but also quite literally, as the U.S. apportions cleaner air to dominantly white communities. We do it all the time, without knowing it. Racism is so much a part of our lives that I fully participated in a conversation using the one-drop rule to determine if Brynner was Asian without even realizing how gross and racist that was until hours later. That's wrong on multiple levels, and that's the racist culture that I was brought up in. It's insidious. So of course "The King and I" is a racist film, because it was made by a racist society. It's also pretty great. Yul Brynner was wrong to do it, and he's awesome in it. One doesn't discredit the other. The important thing is that we keep the harm done in the past, rather than the present. Using the one-drop rule, yelling at PoC on-line, and defending the racist choices of the past are all ways that we perpetuate harm, rather than learning from it and letting it go. |
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| Previous: | Even as a rebuke, your comment is thuddingly obvious and predictable. - portenopete 12:55 am EST 02/14/21 |
| Next: | re: Mickey Rooney is the most racist version of yellowface... - BroadwayTonyJ 08:41 pm EST 02/16/21 |
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