The movie is especially interesting for this course because Robert Downey Jr. plays a present-day Australian actor who undergoes a procedure to darken his skin in order to more authentically portray an African-American solider in Vietnam. I found his performance more clever than offensive, because it is satirizing Hollywood and representations of black "authenticity," rather than mocking African-American people. Other critics have described the film at the more direct descendant of blackface minstrelsy. Check out this Salon.com article and the reader's comments. This Slate video also several clips of blackface performances in other films:
2 comments:
I went to see tropic thunder with my sister and it was a really cool experience because our fellow movie- goers were majority african american.
My sister and I both watched and waited for reactions, and the top reaction was laughter.
I laughed a couple of times. I could see the humor in robert downey jr's character... a parody of a method actor... yet it has been 3 weeks and I have yet to make sense of it. I really don't know what to say overall. I may need to see it a couple of times more.
Also- my sister said Robert Downey Jr would make a really hot black man... so there's that.
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