Hollywood shufflin’
9th January 2017 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
We heard it loud and clear when Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton criticized San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for taking a stand against police brutality and excessive force.
We listened with incredulity when New Orleans-born rapper Lil’ Wayne said that there’s no racism in America and we shook out heads when Hollywood actress Vivica Fox said that fellow thespian Will Smith told her that in order to have longevity in the filmmaking industry, she needed to “be colorless.”
We even somehow managed to keep it together when Chicago rapper Kanye West boasted about not reading books and said that he didn’t vote in November’s presidential election, but if, he would have voted he would have cast a ballot for President-elect Donald Trump.
Misguided and boneheaded remarks by African-American athletes, celebrities and entertainers are nothing new.
But now we hear about acclaimed actor Denzel Washington’s comments that suggest the shade of a Black actor’s skin doesn’t matter as much as that actor or actress’ acting ability.
More than three decades into his career on the silver screen, Washington, who is currently co-starring in the film Fences with Viola Davis, had this to say in a BET interview about Davis’ role in the film adaptation of the critically acclaimed Broadway play by the late August Wilson, “One of the best roles for a woman of any color in the last, in a good good while or at least any movie that I’ve been in, a dark-skinned woman has in this film.”
“The easiest thing to do is to blame someone else, the system,” Washington told BET. “Yeah, there’s a possibility, maybe, that you’re not good enough, but it’s easy to say it’s someone else’s fault. But there’s a possibility that you’re not ready and you can still blame it on someone else instead of getting ready.”
I immediately thought of Denzel Washington’s riveting performance in the film Glory in which he played the rebellious slave Trip. Clearly, there are no signs of Trip in the psyche of Washington today. Instead, he sounded more like the bespectacled free man of color who fought for the Union Army that Trip called “Snowflake” in the film because the dark-skinned brother was articulate and could read and write.
I also thought of the Robert Townsend film Hollywood Shuffle during which a number of Black actors and actresses became upset with Townsend’s character after he refuses to shuck and jive for the camera at the request of a white movie director hell-bent on creating a Blaxploitation film.
“You’re messing it up for the rest of us,” one of the actors tells Townsend’s character.
In Denzel Washington’s mind, actors and actresses of color who speak out against colorism and racial stereotyping are also messing it up for the well-behaved Negroes who have managed to carve out a life for themselves in the film industry.
I had to remind myself last week that there is no reason to believe that Washington is a conscious Black man, just as there is no reason to expect a media mogul worth more than $500 million to maintain her sense of reality or her rhythm or to believe that a brilliant neurosurgeon would have the common sense that God gave a billy goat.
There is also no reason to be surprised when someone who makes a living pretending to be other people in movies turns out to be pretentious and delusional in his or her own life.
It just doesn’t work that way.
Again, many of us who seek to reconnect with the customs, values and traditions of our Beloved Ancestors understand that there are three “Cs” that constitute Blackness: Color, culture and consciousness.
Somewhere along the way, Denzel Washington has lost his African mind, if he ever actually had possession of it.
He may have simply been hit with a full-blown case of “bourgie fever.” If that’s the case, somebody needs to buy that brother a compass and copies of The Isis Papers, Stolen Legacy and The Black Man of the Nile and His Family.
Washington’s latest comments are particularly puzzling considering some advice he doled out to his daughter about the obstacles she will face as a woman of color in Hollywood.
“You’re Black, you’re a woman, and you’re dark-skinned at that. So you have to be a triple/quadruple threat…You gotta learn how to act,” Washington said.
Fortunately, for us and herself, Viola Davis appears to know exactly who and whose she is.
In a 2015 interview, Davis told The Wrap that “the paper-bag test is still very much alive and kicking” in Hollywood.
“And in the history of television and even in film, I’ve never seen a character like Annalise Keating played by someone who looks like me,” Davis added.
“I encourage you to search your memory and think of anyone who’s done this. It just hasn’t happened. I hear these stories from friends of mine who are dark-skin actresses who are always being seen as crack addicts and prostitutes.”
Those of us who idolize and admire actors and actresses would be well advised to recognize and understand that those who portray commendable characters on the silver screen do not necessarily possess character, integrity, authenticity or intelligence in their real lives.
Washington’s comments are still disappointing but one of my colleagues put it all into perspective when he asked me last week, “At what point in a successful career do you disconnect from your Blackness, your cultural sensibilities and your sense of self?”
‘Nuff said.
This article originally published in the January 9, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
