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When Robert Downey Jr put on dark even off for celluloid comedy Tropic Thunder, the actor ventured into the racially charged territory of blackface�- an old showbiz convention that is no laughing matter.
Downey said he initially apprehensive that his portrayal of a gabardine actor playing a black man could hurt his career, and he barbellate at organism given what he idea would be the most controversial use in the film directed by Ben Stiller.
But so far, Tropic Thunder, which opens future week in New Zealand, has generated no repercussion against the 43-year-old asterisk of Iron Man.
Hollywood's history with blackface, a manner of wearing wigs and makeup to caricature slaves or ex-slaves in the 19th and early 20th centuries, dates to the start of the moving-picture show industry just has mostly stopped take out in cases of caustic remark and comedy.
Downey told reporters in late interviews that his theatrical role was a satirical sendup of worker narcissism, and different from older uses of blackface that strengthened harmful stereotypes.
"It's entertainment that's set up by people who are high-minded sufficiency to non be racist or offensive," he said.
"The whole film is based on the idea that what we (actors) do at some level is offensive and who we are, at some layer, is vile and pathetic, which is the accuracy and non the sojourner Truth. But the part of it that is the truth, is entertaining."
Downey portrays an Australian actor named Kirk Lazarus who is playing a black u. S. Army sergeant in a war movie being filmed in the jungle.
When one of the characters is kidnapped by dose dealers, his buddies must rescue him by playacting, in real life, the way their characters were acting in the movie.
In the case of Lazarus, he continues playing the sergeant even after cinematography stops, and his overzealousness earns him mockery from a real black actor played by Brandon T Jackson.
LONG HISTORY
In Hollywood, many stars appeared in blackface until it fell out of favor during the 1950s civil rights movement.
Comic icons the Marx Brothers put on blackface in the 1937 movie A Day at the Races, as did actors Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in the 1941 moving picture Babes on Broadway.
A 100 years agone, immigrant audiences from countries such as Italy and Ireland - who oft were not considered "white" by native-born Americans - went to blackface shows to gag at outsiders and feel white, said Mark Golub, an expert on blackface who teaches at Scripps College in California.
But blackface was not only popular with immigrants, it too played into widespread anti-Semite sentiments, experts said.
"By the supremacy of whiteness, black had to, by necessary, be its foil, be its paired," said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Najee Ali, president of the Los Angeles-based polite rights chemical group Project Islamic HOPE, said he saw Tropic Thunder in a screening and that Downey avoided being offensive by rising above buffoonery.
But Ali, who is black, aforesaid he worries it could lead to more offensive portrayals.
"Blackface is still blackface, and I think it's important that we have to halt allowing ourselves to be perceived as clowns to the pillow of the world," he said.
Director Stiller, 42, said he idea about casting a black actor playing a white man for the persona, but changed his mind.
"A white guy playing this black role to challenge himself the most in a way that's wrongheaded and passing too far, to me that was the funnier idea," Stiller said.