Angelina Jolie insults blacks by donning blackface to play black woman in new movie!
I suspect many people assume that Angelina Jolie (the UN Ambassador of Goodwill and Mummy to adopted African and Asian babies) and Brad Pitt (the conscientious movie star who wants to rebuild an eco-friendly New Orleans and Daddy to Angelina’s white biological baby) would be loath to perpetuate, let alone profit from, vintage racial typecasting. Yet that is precisely what these putative celebrity do-gooders are doing.
Perhaps you recall media coverage of the desperate pleas pregnant Mariane Pearl (left) made in 2002 for the Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan who kidnapped her husband (right), Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, to spare his life. And how the kidnappers not only ignored her pleas but actually published his beheading on the Internet.
Naturally, at the time, the entire world grieved with and for Mrs Pearl and her unborn child. But now comes the inevitable movie version of her tragedy, based on her bestselling book, A Mighty Heart, which details her life from the moment she learned of her husband’s kidnapping to the birth of their son. Fair enough; but here’s the problem:
Mrs Pearl is Dutch-Caribbean and of mixed race – a woman Americans would readily classify as black. Yet, after buying the rights to dramatize her story, Pitt had no compunctions about aping director D.W. Griffith who was condemned throughout the 20th Century as a racist for painting blackface on white actors to play villains in his controversial 1915 film of Birth of a Nation. After all, before their infamous divorce rendered the blonde Jennifer Anniston suddenly unsuitable for the part, Pitt was perfectly prepared to paint her in blackface to play Mrs Pearl in this movie.
Perhaps you recall media coverage of the desperate pleas pregnant Mariane Pearl (left) made in 2002 for the Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan who kidnapped her husband (right), Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, to spare his life. And how the kidnappers not only ignored her pleas but actually published his beheading on the Internet.Naturally, at the time, the entire world grieved with and for Mrs Pearl and her unborn child. But now comes the inevitable movie version of her tragedy, based on her bestselling book, A Mighty Heart, which details her life from the moment she learned of her husband’s kidnapping to the birth of their son. Fair enough; but here’s the problem:
Mrs Pearl is Dutch-Caribbean and of mixed race – a woman Americans would readily classify as black. Yet, after buying the rights to dramatize her story, Pitt had no compunctions about aping director D.W. Griffith who was condemned throughout the 20th Century as a racist for painting blackface on white actors to play villains in his controversial 1915 film of Birth of a Nation. After all, before their infamous divorce rendered the blonde Jennifer Anniston suddenly unsuitable for the part, Pitt was perfectly prepared to paint her in blackface to play Mrs Pearl in this movie.
But one might’ve thought that, if not Pitt, surely the other woman he left his wife for, the aforementioned Jolie, would have taken this opportunity to shun the nepotistic and racially insensitive decision to cast Pitt's white lover in this high-profile role. Unfortunately, as readily as Pitt and Jolie set up home with her kids as their new happy family, they evidently made a seamless transition from Anniston to Jolie in the movie role of Mrs Pearl.
Never mind that this couple are so keen to show that they are mindful of not only the plight but also the pride of black people (from America to Africa) that they traveled all the way to Namibia for the birth of their child, which I commented on with prescient cynicism in this article here entitled To Jolie and Pitt - a child is born...to save Namibia? Because I think even a drunk Mel Gibson would have had second thoughts about casting Jolie in blackface for this role; notwithstanding her naturally afro-centric full lips. After all, were Halle Berry (here), Thandie Newton (here) and other brilliant actresses who share Mrs Pearl’s mixed race unavailable?Frankly, I think both Pitt and Jolie should be ashamed for casting her in this role. And I hope this movie is met with appropriate disapproval at the box office.
NOTE: Alas, despite this racial insult, I've read only one reference to it in newspapers (in London's Daily Mail) and heard no mention of it whatsoever on TV. In fact, virtually all media outlets are reporting ad nauseam on the spectacle of Pitt and Jolie’s bodyguard nearly beheading a paparrazo with his bare hands for taking a picture of them. Meanwhile, news and tabloid reporters seem completely oblivious to the farce of Jolie parading around the movie set – on location in India - in her unseemly, though admittedly pretty, blackface....
A Mighty Heart, Daniel Pearl, Mariane Pearl, Angelina Jolie
posted by ALH ipinions at 10/11/2006 06:54:00 AM
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1 Comments:
There is no denying Ms. Jolie has certain features indicative of a black background, and no doubt she would qualify under Louisiana's 1/16th rule, if one were to do a comprehensive DNA test on her (suggest her mother, Marcheline Bertand was, technically, a black woman). But the point is moot. If a black woman were to play the part, would whites have the right to say something like "Hale Berry inslults whites by donning whiteface to lay white woman in new movie!" Or are you one of these people who use the term 'light skinned black' which makes absolutely no snese whatsoever. I suggest you ask the woman whose life Ms. Jolie is portraying what she thinks. I know you won't like the answer, therefore would never ask it. You know...races were created by man's own ignorant idea that staying with people who you look like makes all 'nice nice.' Now...you know, and I know that's not true, but that's not neither here nor there. People like you just want to create some dirty laundry on this woman who's only crime is trying to do some good in the world for someone other than herself and does not have an insulting, nor prejudice bone in her body, for the purpose of promoting your career/agenda. Shame on you and all racist such as yourself.
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