comic-on-comic da vinci pileup
Comic Victor Varnado, who has, to much acclaim, performed at my show at Pete's (along with, oh, I don't know, some major Hollywood movies, but it's really my show at Pete's that counts), almost got the role of Silas, the evil albino monk, in The Da Vinci Code.Then, comic Susie Felber, who has also, to much acclaim, performed at Pete's while wearing fantastic legwarmers, interviewed him about it.
Hilarity ensues.
posted by JenIsFamous at 6/01/2006 11:58:00 AM
2 Comments:
Excuse me, but, um, how many roles played by albinos can one think of off the top of his or her head? Not to demean the complaint of the albinos here, but don’t you imagine that there have been more black “gang bangers”, Boriqua "hos", Italian “goobahs”, and Jewish “shysters” depicted on the silver screen, than there have been albino ANYTHINGS? Yes, yes, I understand that an albino person might be concerned that, given the relative scarcity of roles depicting albinism, one would not wish to reinforce a negative stereotype. But y’know what? If I were Irish and you wanted me to play an alcoholic cop. . .I’d take the goddamn role if I needed the money. Period. There, I said it.
Even more objectionable, I think, than any perpetuation of stereotypes, is this politically correct bullshit that says that you or I MUST be standard-bearers for our respective races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, etc. Says who? It’s called ACTING, okay? Learn to differentiate it from reality, those of you who go on and on about the way the Jews who control Hollywood and the media and the government and. . .learn to differentiate fantasy from reality, those of you who go on and on about the perpetuation of stereotypes. Here in the real world, acting is an extremely competitive field which tends to offer its rewards disproportionately and to only the extremely talented (if not lucky).
Not every actor is Tom Hanks, sure. A two-time Academy Award winner, Mr. Hanks is no longer a beggar who cannot afford to be a chooser. Also true. But try to bear in mind that Mr. Hanks won his consecutive Oscars for having portrayed a homosexual and a developmentally disabled man, respectively. Okay? Don’t talk to him about starring in films that perpetuate a negative stereotype. WHAT stereotype? An albino appeared as the villain in TWO films? That’s hardly a statistically relevant sampling, is it? Guess what? Long before he started played against type in such fare as, um, "The Shipping News", Kevin Spacey portrayed sociopaths in both 1998's highly successful "The Usual Suspects" AND "Seven"--the fucker!--thus setting the cause of caucasians back to the time of, I dunno, the Mayflower by perpetuating that tired cliche of the insouciant WASP with the receding hairline who seems to pop up as the detached, calculating killer in everything these days.
Now, let’s think about this for a second, shall we? On second thought, maybe actor Tom Hanks should be ashamed of himself for perpetuating that hackneyed shibboleth of the homosexual corporate attorney who has a Latin boyfriend and hires an African-American man to represent him in a lawsuit for wrongful termination of employment that he brings against the law firm where he worked. (The law firm in "Philadelphia" contains not a single overtly Jewish lawyer, you say? Yeah, what else is new? That’s like telling me that you saw a film about a hospital in which there wasn’t a single Jewish doctor. Well, of course there wasn’t. How many Jewish DOCTORS do you know, huh? C'mon.)
Goddamnit, I fucking hate how members of certain groups seem always to be depicted the same way by Hollywood. Take homosexuals, to whom I alluded and to name but one much-maligned group, for example. Either they are smart, Ivy-educated men with good jobs who, when they’re not soul-kissing Antonio Banderas, are off hiring black lawyers. . .OR they’re successful, intellectual men of letters transplanted into the heartland of America, where they research the murder of a family of Kansas farmers and then go on to invent a whole literary genre and pen the most successful non-fiction best-seller of all time and. . . OR—you guessed it!—they’re just a couple of cowpokes cornholing each other in a tent on a Wyoming mountain. Duh! (Jesus, could we be MORE obvious, Hollywood? Why not just have them break out into song and dance while wrangling chinchillas, or something? Like we haven’t seen enough gay Marlboro men over the years in American film, right?)
Sheesh!
Thanks for the shout out JD!
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home