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Robert Downey, Jr. dons blackface to star in new Ben Stiller movie

March 7th, 2008 by Scott Marks

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Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr. and Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder

No, that’s not Richard Roundtree standing between Jack Black and Ben Stiller, it’s none other than Caucasian Oscar nominee Robert Downey, Jr.!

Underneath the Afro wig and layers of Max Factor Tan No. 1, the 42-year-old actor is virtually unrecognizable.

London’s Daily Mail reports the plot of the film “centers on a group of pompous actors making the most expensive Vietnam war movie ever made. Fed up with their self-involved cast, the film’s makers drop them into the jungle to take care of themselves, where they get caught up in a conflict they don’t realise is real.”

In an interview with US Magazine Downey, Jr. said, “If it’s done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago. If you don’t do it right, we’re going to hell.” If it’s done wrong, we’re looking at another Soul Man.

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C. Thomas Howell

The showbiz blog Just Jared was outraged: “I’m not black and I find it offensive; are there not any talented enough black actors out in the world that they feel the need to hire a white guy to do a black guy?”

Where was the indignation when Eddie Murphy or The Wayans Brothers “white up” or is that seen as reparations for all of the times Hollywood actors slapped burnt cork on their faces to play demeaning stereotypes?

Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Kevin Wilmott’s C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America appeared to have sounded the death knell for Hollywood’s heinous old saw with their definitive vivisections of movie stereotyping. Leave it to nebbish Ben Stiller to revive minstrel show aesthetics.

And what about Jack Black hitting the peroxide bottle or Hollywood allowing Stiller to once again assume the director’s chair after the disastrous Zoolander? Surely I can’t be the only one offended by those crimes against cinema.

Artistic experiment or a cheap device to drum up word of mouth to get butts in seats? We’ll find out when the Tropic Thunder opens on August 15.

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