Conseula Francis, a professor of African-American Studies at CofC and host of the blog AfroGeek, tells me that LA Times contributor Peter Rainer was right on the money this weekend when he analyzed Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of a white Australian obsessed with black American culture in the new Ben Stiller movie Tropic Thunder.
This guy got it exactly right. Here’s the best paragraph:
Whereas blackface once expressed the most cringe-worthy aspects of white racism, here it reveals the opposite — Lazarus’ makeover shows up the arrant silliness of white fantasies of “blackness.” The soldier he plays, Lincoln Osiris, is a patchwork derived not from life but from show business, from blaxploitation films and “Benson” and “The Jeffersons.” He’s the freak who results when whites attempt to forge a black identity from the spare parts of pop culture.
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