Oh please. First Gwyenth Paltrow, and now Kate Moss.

What’s up with this resurgence in blackface? And what makes anyone think that it’s a good idea to put a white women in blackface on the cover of The Africa Issue? What? You couldn’t find an actual African woman for the cover? Is this supposed to be some sort of postmodern statement that I don’t get?

Y’know, I may be on to something there. Postmodernism and the Cult of Irony^TM have made it too easy for too many people to get away with too much foul shit (I’m talking to you, Quentin Tarantino, among others). I may have to work up a post on the subject.

Props to Mixed Media Watch for the heads up.

Read commentary from Tomi Ajayi at The Guardian. An excerpt:

What exactly is this picture of Moss-as-African-woman supposed to portray? I suppose it is meant to be subversive, but what does it say about race today when a quality newspaper decides that its readers will only relate to Africa through a blacked-up white model rather than a real-life black woman? What does it say about the fight against HIV/Aids if that is the only way to make us care? And, as a black woman (born that way), what does this trick say about me?

The phenomenon of white entertainers putting boot polish on their faces to “look black” is nothing new, but like Jim Davidson and mother-in-law gags, it was supposed to be something that was banished to the underground eschelons of the entertainment circuit.

And yet it’s back. From Bo’ Selecta!, whose grotesque imitations of Michael Jackson and Mel B (always wearing leopardskin to signify her wildness) to Big Brother’s Glyn blacking up, to Samantha Fox dressed up as an Asian woman, to white actors pretending to be black to play Othello. But the most high-profile example is Little Britain, the hugely popular comedy series that has won two Baftas, and its sketch featuring the white actor David Walliams playing Desiree, an overweight black woman with a love of the sauna. She is fat and has that weird wiry hair and funny skin colour.

When Mark Lawson questioned Walliams and comedy partner Matt Lucas about the issue on his Radio 4 programme Front Row, they said it was acceptable because the conceit of the show is that they play all the characters, no matter who they are: they play women even though they are not women, and they play black characters even though they are not black. But given that they have made room for Rob Brydon, I am not sure the other argument works. So even if we give Lucas and Walliams the benefit of the doubt and assume they were trying to even up the racial balance of the show, why didn’t they go the whole hog and employ a black actor instead ?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 by Thin Black Duke and is filed under Racism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.