This was on Saturday Night Live last night, and it’s pretty relevant to some things we’ve discussed on this website. I need say no more; have a gander:
h/t: Greg Mayer
Saturday Night Live mocks Twitter mobs
March 10, 2019 • 3:15 pm
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In my country we are excluded by the uploader, nice guy!
Video not available in my zone.
In my zone it is pretty funny. 😉
This is what satire should do.
Good to see Idris Elba breaking out his Stringer Bell voice again.
Ask yourself, where do tribes of people learn this game, that is really not a game it is an actual belief system. I am leaning that AI is a technology for behavior implemented by internet platforms. It is designed to take over activities that define us. I think it already does in many areas.
I very rarely find SNL funny these days (or for the last, oh, maybe 20 or so years), but this was a killer:
“Isn’t that what acting is about? You know, becoming someone you’re not?”
“Not anymore, no. Now it’s about becoming yourself, but with a different haircut.”
That’s pretty brilliant.
The Kaitlyn Jenner biopic one also made me laugh out loud.
Although, I must say that they’re wrong about Elba not being able to play Sammy Davis Jr. because he’s Jewish. I’ve noticed just about anyone is allowed to play a Jewish person, even if the role has one foot in caricature (usually it’s an agent/manager or something).
Italians and Jews are fungible in Hollywood. Witness De Niro in Once Upon a Time in America or Turturro in Miller’s Crossing or as Barton Fink — or Harvey Keitel playing eye-tie in Mean Streets.
I’m sure we could come up with dozens of other examples if we put our minds to it.
As usual, Jews are left out of the “intersectional” movement. Anyone can play a Jew, even though Jews are almost exclusively ethnically Jewish, even if not religiously so.
You’re right, Italians are too, but I think that goes for any ethnicity now considered “white,” since intersectionality considers “white” to be a single group with “no culture.” Anyone can play an Irish person (even a gypsy! Think Brad Pitt in Snatch), or Italian (Brando), or Russian (Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises), etc.
Pitt played Irish in Devil’s Own, too — a real, right-off-the-Northern-sod gun-running IRA Irishman.
Well, the Jews have been around so much geographically (there are even black Jews, I understand), and not only is Jewish an ethnicity, it’s also a religion and anyone can become a (religious) jew if they want (have I got that right?).
So saying someone can’t play a Jew because they’re Italian or Russian or whatever would make no sense. The only recognisable Jews would be caricatures (which could be quite offensive depending on circumstances).
As you note, ‘white’ is almost interchangeable. In real practical terms, appearance doesn’t really correlate with nationality – absent accents and costume, how would you tell a Frenchman from an Englishman from a Norwegian from a Russian?
In the unreal atmosphere of the Twittersphere, of course, ‘white’ is at the bottom of the victim-cred tree, so as you say nobody cares who plays a ‘white’ man.
cr
Well, first, I don’t agree with the intersectional crowd. The only place I draw the line is at huge disparities, like a white person playing a black person (or vice versa!). So, I’m just playing by their rules in all of this.
Second, Jews are very much an ethnic group. Despite coming from all over the world, the Jewish diaspora tended to remain clustered wherever groups of Jews ended up and they very rarely married or had children outside their group, so there hasn’t been nearly as much ethnic mixing over the millennia as there has with other ethnic groups. This is why, for example, Ashkenazi Jews still tend to have specific genetic markers, to the point where they (and only a handful of other completely unrelated groups) are at risk for something like Tay-Sachs Disease. You can also see the lack of genetic mixing in the unusually high IQ among Ashkenazi Jews.
Third, many — perhaps most — Jews do have a look that is recognizably Jewish to people who have enough exposure to Jews. I’m a non-Arab Jew, but most people still know I’m ethnically Jewish when they meet me. Between my hair, facial structure, etc., I just “look Jewish,” and have been told that too many times to count. Many people have successfully guessed that I’m Jewish without knowing anything about me, and I don’t even look that Jewish. I’m about a plain Jewish as you can get.
Fourth, I guess it’s technically true that anyone can become a Jew religiously, but it’s very rare that people convert to the religion, and it’s also not easy. It takes some time, and even a Reform Rabbi will make you take educational courses on Torah and Jewish history, and ensure multiple times that you really do want to become Jewish before he will allow you to convert. And even that conversion likely won’t be recognized by Conservative, Orthodox, and Hassidic sects (AKA all the stricter sects). Jews don’t proselytize and make it pretty tough to convert to Judaism.
Okay, I stand corrected. Obviously, you know much better than me. (No, I meant that sincerely, no sarcasm intended)
cr
Haha my intention wasn’t to sound as if I was chiding you. I figured you were genuinely asking and I was genuinely happy to give you the answers.
I think it has something to do with numbering the responses. When one says, “first…” it sounds similar to saying, “well, first of all…” A lot of chiding remarks start that way.
Yeah, I tend to know a lot about Jewish stuff, having gone through eight terrible years of Hebrew school. And when I finally got kicked out, it turned out my parents just sent me there because it was much better than the local public school, and my inability to return prompted them to move somewhere much nicer (and somewhere the public school was not only good, but had a top-ranked hockey team for me to play on). I guess being a little brat pays off sometimes!
BJ, no offence taken. I wasn’t actually asking for information because it didn’t occur to me that my initial impression was in error. However, obviously it was. Thankyou for correcting me in a civilised and diplomatic manner.
Re the last anecdote, I have noticed that bad behaviour *sometimes* pays off. Or as one GI said as the punchline of a joke I’ve forgotten, “Sir, sometimes forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission.”
cr
A Frenchman would stab you in the back and weep tears of regret whilst doing so. A Norwegian would explain the rational reasons for his action. A Russian wouldn’t know why. An Englishman would say knife, what knife?
Btw I am an Englishman abroad, so no regrets.
😎
cr
There would be two Frenchmen: one would stab you in the back and then say he was fighting the people who weren’t stabbing you in the back the whole time and ask how you could ever suggest otherwise, and the other Frenchman would try to fight him off 😛
The Sorrow and the Pity
Or Joe Mantegna in Liberty Heights.
We could do this forever, but, since you brought up Joe Mantegna, don’t forget him playing a Jewish detective in Mamet’s Homicide.
Melanie Griffith went undercover as an Orthodox Jew in A Stranger Among Us, and Rachel McAdams played one in Disobedience.
Not exactly casting to type, you ask me.
Melanie Griffith going undercover as an Orthodox Jew is like Scarlett Johansson going undercover as a Roman legate.
Although, with the right hair and clothes, I have to say she didn’t do a bad job (Ms. Griffith, that is)! Hollywood makeup can do wonders.
There are several movies in which the main characters were orthodox or Hasidic Jews, in which non-Jewish actors were cast in them. Some that come to mind are Renee Zelwegger and Christopher Eccleston in ‘A Price Above Rubies’; Eccleston even recited Hebrew blessings with the proper Yiddische accent! As others have mentioned above, the recent movie ‘Disobedience’, about three Hasidic Jews in London, starred Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola, and Rachel Weisz, only one of whom is Jewish.
About 20 years ago, Isabella Rossellini played a Hasidic woman in the film ‘Left Luggage’, and was very believable.
I think that as long as the film writers and producers are familiar with Hasidic culture, they can successfully cast an actor who is not Jewish, as long as that individual is capable.
“I think that as long as the film writers and producers are familiar with Hasidic culture, they can successfully cast an actor who is not Jewish, as long as that individual is capable.”
I agree. I just find it interesting that, as usual, the intersectional “woke” blah blah blah crowd doesn’t care about their rules when it comes to Jews.
Hell, I get a kick out of actors playing other ethnicities (within reason, not John Wayne as Genghis Khan, or Mickey Rooney as I.Y. Yunioshi) — and consider it one way for an actor to demonstrate his or her chops.
Agree completely. And it also allows for those wonderfully awful performances where they end up failing on every level, which can be just as satisfying for entirely different reasons.
And sometimes it’s a tightrope walk between soaring success and abject failure — James Franco’s turn as The Disaster Artist comes to mind (although no one seems to have any clue what that guy’s ethnicity actually is). 🙂
Yul Brenner did a pretty good job as the king of Siam. At least above the eyebrows. In Spartacus, Tony Curtis looked almost Brooklyn/Mediterranean as Antoninus the Roman emperor. Makeup is so miraculous. Unfortunately it’s hard to get darkening around the eyes to have A and B Hollywood stars made up as ethnics.
Tony Curtis — birth name “Bernie Schwartz.”
I could tell by his accent in every scene. “I’m tdony. Deyu goes my hoowus. My doowag’s name is Bowzu. We live in Brwookyn.
About the worst casting I’ve ever seen was Anthony Quinn as an eskimo (oops! inuit).
But “You’ll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn.”–Bob Dylan
This site is currently working for me:
https://www.proxysite.com/youtube/
Enter the complete Youtube URL in the field.
Worked for me. Thanks!
cr
for me too! Thanks!!!
It’s similar to cultural appropriation: you can borrow from above, but not from below. Similarly, you can portray someone of a class with higher privilege, but not lower. So Will Smith, he’s not dark enough (because darker skin is seen as a disadvantage). A darker man playing a black with lighter skin would have caused no problem.
Hamilton worked because it followed this rule. A remake of Roots with an all-white cast wouldn’t be acceptable. And so on…
Not available here. 🙁
I haven’t liked much SNL since the good old days but that was pretty good. Humor like this has the best chance at suppressing these nasty attitudes. Unfortunately, it probably went right over the heads of the woken.
Made me smile.
This whole ‘ethnically correct’ thing is absurd. It’s an actor’s job to portray somebody they’re not. If their face fits (with or without makeup) then what does it matter where they’re from?
When Renaissance Pictures were making ‘Hercules’ and ‘Xena’ and other TV shows in west Auckland, New Zealand, the same pool of extras and stunties played everything from ancient Britons to Norsemen, Romans, Greeks, Israelites, Arabs, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Mongolians, Chinese and Japanese. These extras were in fact all white NZ European, NZ Maori and Pacific Islanders, made up to suit.
(Oddly enough, all those nationalities depicted spoke English. Nobody ever remarked on how incongruous that was.)
If anyone had insisted on ‘ethnically correct’ casting it would have sunk the series. Where do you find 50 Greek or Mongolian or Egyptian extras in New Zealand? Renpics would have had to pack up and shut down and several hundred actors and technicians, many of them Polynesian, would have been out of a job.
But of course [sarcasm ON], that would have been quite all right since Renpics had no business culturally appropriating other cultures, even those of 2000 years ago.
cr
Well described. But, times change. Now we are in the era of let’s be all huffy about that. Now, I think there is an element of valid criticism in the woke movement. Yes, we want authenticity and cultural respect. But, no, we shouldn’t carry this to extremes. Those who do, of course, are on an ego trip. When will we begin to strike a balance?
I agree it’s about balance. And I generally support authenticity – which means, all things being equal, if a Mongolian is played by a real Mongolian so much the better.
But things frequently aren’t equal. For example the only Mongolian actor available may be just a terrible actor, while a Korean in makeup can do a much better job**. In which case I know which way I’d go.
**Nationalities chosen at random for illustrative purposes.
Of course, the fact that all dialog is going to be in English-with-a-funny-accent usually blows the lid off ‘authenticity’ right from the start.
Apropos of the current debate, Renpics also used ‘color-blind’ casting on occasion, a number of episode supporting leads were African-American despite their characters being ancient Greek or similar. I suppose that wouldn’t be permitted these days either.
cr
Ever notice how space aliens from all over the galaxy always speak perfect English ?
Yes but they have communicators/babelfish/Tardis/translator microbes.
cr
Apparently I am geographically challenged.
Also if this works WordPress does not recognize my regular email.
It’s kind of sad that this is what passes for edgy comedy these days but compared to typical SNL drivel that was damn near relevant. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of a trend that will lead to something that’s actually funny. They even worked a Michael Jackson joke in there.
It took me a moment to realise that was Idris Elba, (the hair really threw me), but I’m glad I did, because it made the last one even funnier
(I think he’s too old to be Bond now)
The left satirizing its own–very hopeful!
While comedians like those on SNL are probably lefties, they are totally against the SJWs on college campuses. Comedy often pokes fun at some segment of society so comedians get taken down big time on campus. Many comedians refuse to perform at colleges for this reason.