Tuesday, March 31, 2009

 

Satirical or Discriminatory?



After watching the clip of Bamboozled in class, I thought of the film, Tropic Thunder. In this movie, Robert Downey Jr. plays Kirk Lazarus, an Oscar-winning actor who is cast to play Sgt. Osiris—a character that was originally written as black. Rather than recasting the role, Lazarus decides to dye his skin and play Sgt. Osiris. Many critics reacted negatively to Downey’s “blackface”, positing that it was racist. In addition, disability groups were outraged by the film's repeated use of the term “retarded” to refer to a character, Simple Jack, with a mental disability.

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