Pics of Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone

[alphanguy74]

Carl, What I mean by "White girls dipped in chocolate" is Hollywood's recent trend to choose and push black actresses that have a more anglicized body and features.

[Wales2004]

I've read the musings of people who say when a particular actress with "slimmer" or "smaller" facial features is chosen that this is because she has "European" features as opposed to "African" features. It's either sad or extremely funny. People have the need to come up with explanations for everything including why black Americans are more athletic and fast (slavery) and why there are light skinned black Americans and why some have "European" features (rape during slavery).

What's baffling is that there are people who believe that all life began in Africa so where did the Europeans come from....Africans?

Are the Somalians and Ethiopians victims of rape too since they have "small" features and are Africans? What about the bushmen?

Who went across Africa and looked at all the natives and decided that they all had a single skin tone and single facial features or Europe for that matter?

Wow.....

[VirginiaHamilton]

Precisely, which is why the standards that should be set for a subject of this caliber (whether it was big budget or indie) are set low enough so that the newest token is automatically granted a role that she is ill-suited for.

For the record, I'm not naive enough to demand that Zoe step down from this role so that things'll be A-OK again (especially since the casting directors'll probably replace her with the likes of Paula Patton). From her standpoint, I understand why she jumped at the chance to accept the role (even if she hadn't the foggiest clue who Ms. Simone was), as it'd garner her awards buzz that would elevate her even further up the Hollywood ladder (a la Halle Berry).

I begrudge her for being willfully ignorant about the state of Blacktresses in Hollywood while reaping the benefits of the being the latest token Negress - an attitude that transcends whatever issues that one may have with her ethnic background, as it showcases that she most likely has zero clue on how to tap into the essence of the woman that she is portraying.

[SFK]

But won't you accept that in more than a few cases, sadly, this is reason enough? Hollywood hasn't been exactly generous to dark-skinned black actresses. But yes indeed, a million other factors are involved in an actor's success or lack thereof: talent, charisma, luck, connections, politics... just being "the right fit", et cetera.

To be clear, I have a problem with it when it conflicts with the intent of the piece. You can't do Othello treating the fact that he's a Moor as irrelevant. It's key to the plot. No white actor will ever play that part without darkening himself up. You don't do A Raisin in the Sun with a cast of very fair-skinned blacks who could pass for white. Again, point of the piece lost. In the case of Take Me Out, the playwright has constructed Darren as a physical metaphor, a visual embodiment of the best of both cultures and a symbol of their history with the sport of baseball (how we now live in a world where there isn't a need for a Negro League, a world where little white boys can look up to black baseball heros, and so on). Still present is the lack of gay acceptance in the world of sports, and the writer is commenting on how this too can be defeated someday... by being both biracial and gay, Darren represents how far we've come and how far we have yet to go. This element is lost when (willfully or by default) the role is cast with someone who doesn't possess that "straight down the middle" biracial look. One can argue about how important that really is to the audience, but nevertheless, it was the original intent of the playwright.

It's not about me needing to see biracial people who look like myself or who fit some idea of what biracial people "should" look like. It's me being a little perturbed when a creative team ignores elements of a piece that were obviously important to the piece's creator. Otherwise he/she wouldn't have included them.

* * *

You mentioned twins being born, one black, one white, which made me think of The Jeffersons! They did a great episode when they first introduced the Willises' son Allan. He was lighter than Jenny (who several fans already felt looked more black than biracial) and ran off to Europe where he passed for white which kicked up a lot of strong emotions upon his return. Allan was played by an olive skinned Jewish actor who looked rather latino/Italian, passably half black/half white. They then recast him with Jay Hammer from Guiding Light, and that's when a lot of people found the premise a little ridiculous, even insulting. I'm sure they meant no harm, but the show sort of perpetuated this idea that biracial children were born either black or white, which was the punchline of quite a few George Jefferson jokes. And here Roxie Roker (Helen Willis) had her biracial son, a young Lenny Kravitz on set with her. At any rate, they went all out with the white/black Allan/Jenny thing, turning the Willis children into this sort of running sight gag. I need to rewatch those episodes and see how I feel about them as an adult.

[marceline]

And yet ALL of those things can come back to skin tone. I challenge anyone to tell me that Zoe Saldana has more talent or charisma than Viola Davis. I remember Viola's interview on NPR where she said that "I've played more drug addicts than I can count." I'm willing to be that she's played more drug addicts than Saldana, Paula Patton and Halle Berry combined. If we look at her contemporaries, then I bet she's played more drug addicts than Lonette McKee or even Lynn Whitfield. Is that because she's just so damn good at playing drug addicts?

OMG I remember that! The first guy had this crazy jew fro so it was easier for me to see him as biracial but I remember when I saw Jay Hammer in the role after I'd become familiar with him on Guiding Light. I thought I was having a stroke! LOL!

Hammer is one of the actors I would very much like to talk to if I were to do an oral history of soaps. I'd love to get his perspective.

[Wales2004]

Sure it may happen at times, but I wouldn't go to that well often. It would be easy for me to say that Hollywood doesn't consider a talented actress like Viola Davis pretty and too dark, but if I were able to poll all the black people in this country would I get a majority to say she was pretty? I don't know. Black filmmakers can be just as discriminatory when it comes to standards of beauty and I'm not inclined to blame their discriminatory ways on Hollywood because I can see the women chosen by men like Quincy Jones, Russell Simmons, various athletes and actors.

And at the end of the day, Viola Davis has probably had more roles than some of those "prettier" actresses and some of the younger ones as well. I'm sure there are plenty of complaints to go around.

There are days when it seems like the Australians, English and Irish have taken away a lot of the major film roles and there are probably actors who complain about that whether it's true or not, because it's a tough business.

I get what you're saying. Maybe this is the flip side. There were people who complained about Idris Elba being in Thor and there are probably people who will be angry upon hearing that he is being considered for the role of James Bond. I've read comments that there should be a white John Shaft, if he is cast as Bond. Then there were the nasty ignorant people who were upset at seeing Dayo Okeniyi and Amandla Stenberg in Hunger Games. They specifically took issue with the character AS played being cast with a black girl (some in a lot less kind terms).

That might not have been the best show for that topic but it is a reality. The Human Stain dealt with the topic though I don't the movie adaptation worked that well. Wentworth Miller must have seemed ideal, as far as his background but that role was too much for him. Gary Sinise was wrong for his role. Anthony Hopkins did his best.

There's a mini doc online about a couple of English twins and how the "white" one struggled more with teasing and bullying over his skin tone.