“Blackface Before Blackface Was(n’t) Cool”

Two liberal darlings who performed in blackface: Silverman & Kimmel

(plus Jimmy Fallon, whatever his politics are)

Not mentioned: Ted Danson.

And let us not forget that Eddie Murphy and the Wayans Brothers have performed in whiteface.

You won’t hear me lecture about political correctness, because I am intentionally incorrect, thus establishing my foothold on the moral low ground, but we all should recognize that a society’s ethics and mores change. There are a lot of jokes that people made in affectionate fun in the 60s and 70s that are not considered appropriate now. There are jokes I wrote in my blogs in the 90s that make me cringe now.

5 thoughts on ““Blackface Before Blackface Was(n’t) Cool”

  1. I think it’s fairly obvious NBC was looking for an excuse to get rid of Megyn Kelly and she provided them with this one.

    This blackface stuff aside, Megyn Kelly has a long history of making idiotic comments and asking idiotic questions long before she was hired by NBC. The question I think it raises is who at NBC thought she was a good hire? (and for around $23 million a year.)

    I think this raises two points:
    1.the inordinate lengths the major media outlets go to to appease Republicans. To be sure, Kelly was a Republican who opposed Trump, but the major media outlets seem obsessed with the handful of ‘never Trump Republicans’ such as Megyn Kelly.

    The number of times journalists from the major media outlets have gone to places like West Virginia or rural Pennsylvania to hear from these mostly Republican voters. For virtually all of 2017, it seemed the media pundits were expressing angst over whether the Democrats could appeal to rural and small town voters or not. Only in the last few months have these slow witted pundits come to realize the obvious: for the Democrats to re-take the U.S House, they need to win suburban districts, and how they do in rural and small town districts really won’t make much difference.

    In regards to journalism itself, imagine if NBC had chosen to hire an on-air personality for say $3 million, while using the remaining $20 million to hire say, 200 real behind the scenes journalists and research staff instead of hiring Megyn Kelly.

  2. If the quote in that article was the extent of her endorsing blackface, I think firing Megyn Kelly was a ridiculous over reaction. But those are the times we live in. Saying there is nothing wrong with a white person dressing as a black character for Halloween is at the worst an ignorant opinion. It does not make her a racist.

    It was less than 10 years ago that Fred Armisen was portraying President Obama on SNL. Does it make any conceivable difference that he used “honeyface” to darken his skin and not the kind of makeup Billy Crystal used to portray Sammy Davis Jr.? I mean obviously the kind of blackface used in minstrel shows is out of bounds. A comedian darkening his skin to impersonate an African-American public figure is different, especially when that impersonation is not for the purpose of mocking the public figure specifically or African Americans generally. I think intent really should matter in these situations.

    My primary care doctor is Asian. He said something to me (a couple of years ago I think) about hearing that the Big Bang Theory had dressed characters in yellowface. At first I pictured the canary yellow equivalent of blackface. Then I thought of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (a truly cringeworthy performance). But it turned out that characters had been wearing kimonos while watching a Japanese movie marathon. My doctor hadn’t seen it, only heard it was supposed to be offensive. I don’t think he would have been offended if he saw the actual scene. I don’t think anyone should be offended. There is a huge difference between mocking a culture and honoring it.

    Then again, I may be one of the worst cultural appropriators. I am of Irish descent (plus a bit of German, but no Italian), yet I spent nearly a decade of my life (through high school, college, and into law school) making pizza for a living.

  3. Regardless of whether it is or is not ‘cool’ these days to perform in blackface for whatever reason, it is a moot point about those that did it in the past, unless you have the key to the Time Machine and can go back and ‘correct’ those politically incorrect (by 21st Century standards) idiots who did it in the 30’s and 40’s.

    We have become more ‘enlightened’ these days but the fact is it happened back then. And to those who believe we have an obligation to change the past to fit our present … Get over yourself and move on.

  4. One issue: that’s not blackface.

    Now, I have no idea what Kelly was advocating, or what people are upset about these days, but blackface is a very specific inherently racist thing. You’re putting on makeup and a costume to parody black people in the exact method of minstrel shows and the like. Exaggerated Step’n Fetchit types.

    Simply appearing as a black person in legit makeup? That’s another thing entirely.

    1. Language is fluid and the definition has expanded.

      As some wag or another remarked (I forget who), “Octavia Spencer’s win shows just how far we’ve come since Billy Crystal performed in Blackface.” (It was a joke. They happened in the same show.) The Hollywood Reporter headlined it, “Billy Crystal’s Oscar Blackface,” and The Guardian wrote, “As if it wasn’t bad enough seeing a white man donning blackface in the 21st century, the montage rammed the point home by cutting to scenes from The Help.” Crystal was specifically impersonating Sammy Davis, Jr., and did so affectionately, and quite accurately.

      It is not new to use the term in that way. The distinguished Laurence Olivier was excoriated by the NY Times way back in 1965 with the words, “He plays Othello in blackface.” That was intended to be realistic make-up in his portrayal of a complex Shakespearean character.

      Having noted that, I’ll add that Silverman and Danson did use old-time traditional blackface for comedy . (Granted, Silverman was demonstrating why it was wrong.)

      As to the larger issues: Should black people lampoon white stereotypes by appearing in whiteface? Should white people ever make up as a black person? My verdict would be “No, avoid that shit. Find another way to do it.”

      Perhaps I would have said something different in the past. I once acted as a black person in a TV sketch. We were taping for an airing the following day, and the black actor who was supposed to play the part had to back out at the last minute, so I blacked up as realistically as I could and did it. It was a VERY sympathetic performance, in fact excessively so – the joke was that a black boxer, wearing an expensive suit, was educated at Cambridge and loved pre-Renaissance madrigal music (I mimicked William F Buckley, Jr.), while his white opponent (also played by me as my recurring punch-drunk character, Sugar Ray Milland) couldn’t form a sentence more complicated than “The kitty says meow.” I thought it was OK at the time, but if I had to do that again, I would not. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even do that sketch with a black actor today, because it kinda-sorta implied that black people are the opposite of that character. Times change, and we try change with them to become better people.

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