Racism Around the World

It's interesting how we always seem to think that the issue of 'blackface' in films is purely a Western problem and, indeed, specifically one of English-speaking cinema.  While watching King Kong vs Godzilla the other day, (not the recent CGI-fest, but the proper 1962 one where the man in the monkey suit squares off against the man in the lizard suit and wreck a series of meticulously constructed miniature landscapes), I was reminded that it is something that crosses cultural barriers.  It was quite startling to see that, during the scenes on Kong's island, the 'natives' are actually blacked up Japanese actors.  By 1962, of course, this sort of 'blacking up' to depict non-white characters had long been abandoned in Western cinema, (although it was still the norm to see white actors in 'Yellow Face' portraying Chinese or Japanese characters).  Perhaps it was all a 'homage' on the part of the Japanese filmmakers to the era in which the original King Kong was made (although there, the 'natives' were played by black actors).  Then again, perhaps their excuse was that there simply weren't enough black actors available in Japan for these scenes.  Whatever, it makes for a jarring moment.  But, as I keep saying: the past plays to different rules and it is pointless getting too upset about this sort of thing - just take solace in the fact that it, hopefully, shows that we've progressed sufficiently that this sort of stuff clearly looks and feels wrong.

But simply because something was a convention 'back then', doesn't mean that we can, or should, accept it unquestioningly.  The use of 'blackface' historically is deeply rooted in racism - on the one hand it reflected the attitude that non-white people were simply incapable of doing anything as 'sophisticated' as acting, on the other it was designed to reinforce the idea that they were simpletons by presenting them as idiotic caricatures.  Not that it got much better when Hollywood started using real black actors for these roles - just look at the way they are usually cast as a bumbling simplistic comic relief, always acting as a subordinate to the main white leads, (it was as if slavery had never ended). Black leading actors like Paul Robeson were very much the exception.  Not that the use of 'blackface' confined to Hollywood - you can find examples of it in British films well into the seventies, with white actors regularly playing Indians and Pakistanis.  I've also seen French films with blacked up white actors from this era, not to mention Paul Naschy blacking up as an Indian in Vengeance of the Zombies, or Bud Spencer donning turban and boot polish to disguise himself as an Indian in Charleston.  Italian cinema actually has quite a history of blackface - as late as the early eighties there was at least one Bud Spencer/Terence Hill comedy that featured Sal Borghese in black face as a comedic 'native'.  Even when they weren't using black face, many Italian exploitation films included highly racist portrayals of non-white and non-European peoples.  In particular the cannibal movies, which, despite employing indigenous peoples to portray their 'savage' tribes, like to give the impression that such peoples are exclusively flesh-hungry, head hunting barbarians hell-bent on raping, dismembering and eating every white woman they encounter.  It really is quite depressing how universal racist stereotypes seem to be in the supposedly developed world.