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From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:
Who’s Afraid of Whom?
by Steve Sailer
May 24, 2017Increasingly, social-grievance jihadis are getting themselves worked up over casting decisions in movies, TV shows, plays, and even operas, labeling anything they disapprove of as “whitewashing.”
Granted, the number of beneficiaries of disputes over which celebrities will get which roles is miniscule. But the various contradictory controversies, when considered together, are revealing for what they show about the unprincipled nature of contemporary moral crises.
In the past, acting was less concerned with issues of identity-politics authenticity, or even all that much with authenticity at all. Performing was basically conceived of as Let’s Pretend for grown-ups. Who was putting on the show was less important than how much showbiz professionalism they put into it.
The most admired actor of the mid-20th century, Lord Laurence Olivier, was famous for insisting that what he was doing was just playacting.
Therefore, … in the 1960s, his somewhat childlike delight in dressing up crashed into the new civil rights seriousness when he released his controversial movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello in the U.S. Here’s Sir Larry ecstatically explaining how he got into blackface for Othello:
Black all over my body, Max Factor 2880, then a lighter brown, then Negro Number 2, a stronger brown. Brown on black to give a rich mahogany. Then the great trick: that glorious half yard of chiffon with which I polished myself all over until I shone…The lips blueberry, the tight curled wig, the white of the eyes, whiter than ever, and the black, black sheen that covered my flesh and bones, glistening in the dressing room lights.
Okay!
Read the whole thing there.
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In the movie Camp (about a musical theater summer camp), two black kids complain to the director about the lack of authentically black roles and how ridiculous they feel.
The pained director replies that there’s nothing he can do because “it’s color-blind casting”
The camera pans to the black children in full costume and wigs: “It’s Fiddler on the Roof!”
No doubt the crusade will also insist that virtually all murderers and drug dealers be played by black actors.
1960s and the called the black paint negro?
Kiwi boot polish
Dam Dusters
I mean, Spanish speakers called the black paint negro, of course.
I want to know if there have been any surveys conducted if this attracts new fans, shows like Star Trek have been pushing for black characters since the start, has this made Star Trek popular with blacks though ?
Charlton Heston could have played Chuck Berry in a movie.
Usually TV shows try to show how racist and close minded people were in the past and explain that this is the reason there were no minorities in the London of the past.
It recalls the German exchange student in that AmRen anonymous confession: he showed a black class slides of his home and they all insisted that he was deliberately hiding the black people. Well, there's plenty of blacks all over Germany now, only thing left is to "correct" the history.
?
A while back I saw a clip from a Japanese TV news broadcast where the pundits were talking about a neighborhood in Tokyo where there were a lot of Koreans living and seeming shocked by the fact that there were now actually several shops that catered to mainly to Koreans. They were shocked in the same way that whites would be in the US, in the 1950’s, when a few blacks moved into the neighborhood.
In 1997 (I think) the Folger Shakespeare Theater in DC did a race-reversed Othello with Patrick Stewart in the lead role and the rest of the cast being black. I don’t recall anybody griping about that at the time, though they might today.
It was kind of a gimmick, but hey it was Patrick Stewart on stage, so it kind of worked.
The anti-White nonsense ends when the globalized central banks’ ability to conjure up cash ends. To save Western civilization or European Christendom or the White race or whatever you want to call it, it will be necessary to allow a complete and total economic collapse.
The globalized central banks are involved in the greatest inter-generational ripoff scam of all time. That is why we find negative interest rates and zero interest rates and asset purchases and quantitative easing and money printing and all the rest. Debt created and sustained by the monetary extremism of central banks has been used to buy off the greedy dolts born before 1965. Mass immigration is only tolerated because of the greedy scum who are bought off by the machinations of the globalized central banks.
The greedy scum born before 1965 will deserve the curses of those who come after. They stood by and did nothing while their nations were turned into third world hellholes.
That's not to say the origin is always with the banksters nor that all the support stems from central banks, but it seems to be the secret ingredient that turns garden variety stupidity and petty criminality into potent, massive, world-wrecking catastrophe.
https://www.thessgac.org/polygenic-conference
Last week’s USC polygenetic social science seminar. I have only got through the first two sessions. Pure iSteve candy. Watch the tapdancing during the comments when a woman started to discuss the implications of the data for genes and educational attainment. Also discussed vaguely is one of the million n polygenetic study of IQ out there.
In today’s taxonomy, North Africans are classified as white. If you’re seeking authenticity in casting, only Mediterranean whites should play Othello, absolutely not sub-Saharan Africans.
The dream cast would be a black as The Moor and a Jew as Iago, though the latter casting might raise some eyebrows with the Anti-Defamation League.
Elizabethan Englishmen referred to Europeans with dark hair and swarthy complexions as "the black" and a mercenary general working in Italy would probably be, like, Tunisian.Replies: @The Man From K Street
“…Jane Austen’s era, London is portrayed as having as many Pakistanis and Nigerians as it does today…”
They’re going to ruin “Dunkirk”, aren’t they? Clint, please say no.
According to Reddit, Salman Abedi’s act of civil disobedience was prompted by his justifiable fury at Sir Larry’s decidedly unwoked portrayal of the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah) in the film Khartoum; 4chan claims Sir Sean Connery’s Raisuli in The Wind and the Lion was the actual culprit.
I have not seen Lord Olivier in “Othello”, but the other night I watched, with much joy, the cinematic classic, “Lawrence of Arabia.” It is truly one of the best movies of all time. However, some major casting appropriation with Sir Alex Guinness, as Prince Feisal, Anthony Quinn, as Auda Abu Tayi and Jose’ Ferrer as Turkish Bey. The problem is they were all outstanding which throws some shade on claims of cultural theft. Omar Sharif was probably the only near Arab among the stars. The hawk beak nose that the make up department hung on Quinn is worthy of a present day protest.
Anyway, the it appears the real Auda abu Tayi had a pretty spectacular beak, so I suppose David Lean felt the need to put a fake one on Quinn.
http://tinyurl.com/lk4m4yn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auda_Abu_TayiReplies: @Buffalo Joe
That funny way of taking that Olivier had was copied by a lot of actors, especially Anthony Hopkins, and it was detectable in Richard Dimbleby’s narration of the coronation of the Queen too.
Maybe Olivier thought he could black up and look like a negro because he had bought into the idea that the only difference between races is skin color. That catch phrase must have already existed in the 60s, particularly in actor-y circles.
Anyway Shakespeare and his audience probably didn't think of Moors as Negroes (Sub-Saharan Africans). They probably thought of Othello as a dark North African Caucasian - like Nasser or Sadat. At least that's my recollection from my Shakespeare classes in the sixties at George Mason. Maybe they dare not teach it that way today.Replies: @Senator Brundlefly
Sounds like Sir Richard Burton preparing for his journey to Mecca.
The masked mob at Middlebury adopted the wrong tactic. Instead of wearing masks, they should have worn the same facial makeup as Sir Laurence Olivier in the photo above. That way they strike a blow for both speaker suppression and racial diversity. Win-win!
The British Empire knew how to deal with Muslims:
A part of the difference in the opera world and its commitment to race neutral casting is in the motivations of the actors/singers. The broad variety of voice types makes racially accurate casting in opera less important for black singers.
Even among tenors, a black lyric tenor or Mozart style tenor has no personal benefit from reserving Othello for black singers, as it isn’t suited to their voice type. For example, one of the best current tenors specializing in bel canto Rossini operas is black (Lawrence Brownlee), but he is never going to be cast as Othello as his voice is not right for the role.
In addition, since opera singers want to develop a portfolio of roles that suits their voice, and have that portfolio evolve as their voice changes over their career, they really value the maximum flexibility that race neutral casting provides.
Also, as Steve notes, the suspension of disbelief in having opera singers who are 45 year old men playing young lovers and rather plump women playing damsels in distress sets the tone for the culture as a whole.
That nose nearly ruined the movie for me. I guess that they didn’t think Anthony Quinn was ethic enough looking, but Obi-wan was.
The left’s vehement reaction against Tarzan is always edifying. Africa is off the table for white protagonists created by whites. Do not hold your breadth for a new Hollywood adaptation of a riproaring adventure like Allen Quartermain.
Another rule: any white hero who had a nonwhite sidekick must be made into an idiot, even if the sidekick originally saved the hero countless times. (Lone Ranger, Green Hornet)
B. D. Wong, who is Chinese, had no qualms about playing a Tibetan in Seven Years in Tibet.
The Met production of Samson and Delilah in late 90s had Jews as all white and Philistines as all black. Still available on DVD
I’m always a little puzzled when people assert that Shakespearean descriptors like “blackamoore” must refer specifically to sub-Saharan West Africans.
Elizabethan Englishmen referred to Europeans with dark hair and swarthy complexions as “the black” and a mercenary general working in Italy would probably be, like, Tunisian.
An interesting example of the ethnic issue was the character of Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek. In 1967 he was played by the white but non-Anglo Ricardo Montalban. The character as written suggested a Sikh or generally South Asian ethnicity and was said to be a tyrannical ruler of India. Thus Montalban had quite the tan applied to make him seem more the part.
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/7/72/Khan_Noonien_Singh%2C_2267.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090604045431&path-prefix=en
By 1982 when the film ‘The Wrath of Khan’ was made, it really wouldn’t do to have him look like that. Now no mention of his full name was made, he’s simply referred to as Khan, his ethnic identity was left murky, with Montalban speaking in a slight Cuban accent and his cohort looking pretty Northern European.
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/e/eb/Khan_2285.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160522145506
This all got even more confusing when they brought back the character for the film Star Trek Into Darkness, where the inept and truly stupid (I’m seriously, they’re amazingly stupid, that they are childhood friends of Abrams is all that got them their gigs) writers Kurtzman and Orci faced a dilemma. With most people not remembering his first appearance or Indian origins, how do they cast the character? Do they get an Indian actor? Do they just get somebody who looks like Ricardo Montalban and not mention his full name? (Probably the best way to go)
Nope! They got Benedict Cumberbatch and mention his whole name just to confuse things even more. I thought this was weird (Particularly the way Cumberbatch acts is totally different to the point of it not being possible to see him as the same character.) and investigated. Turns out the moron writers actually did it because he didn’t want to ‘demonise a person of color’ by making the only non-white character a villain. (It’s actually weird just how white the new Star Trek films are, even weirder given it’s Star Trek, the current year and JJ ‘Sea of white people!’ Abrams was the director and producer.)
So instead they got the product of selective breeding and genetic engineering to generate a superior man when starting with an Indian to turn out a tall, blue-eyed Englishman. Unfortunate implications indeed! It’s made worse with Khan in this film being almost god-like with nothing beyond his intellect and strength. The original Khan was smarter but not hugely, being most dangerous from his will to conquer and dominate from his sense of innate superiority. This interesting nuance was lost in the new film.
They forgot that Uhura and Sulu weren't white?Replies: @Altai
Revenge. This time..........it's personal. Yeah, never seen that before.
Revenge has got to be about the laziest device employed by modern screen-writers. To say nothing of the fact that Star Trek, as originally envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, was not normally about heroes and villains, as Abrams has lazily made it. It wasn't supposed to just be a shoot-em-up space opera. Mind you, all the original Star Trek movies were pretty lousy, compared to the series. But the Abrams movies are really a big steaming pile. And that guy they got for Kirk plays him as a completely useless douchebag. I heard that in the last movie (never saw it) he blew the Enterprise up in the first ten minutes.Replies: @Stan Adams
Speaking of Shakespeare, I wonder how long the Bard has in the modern world. I read a few plays of his for the first time recently and it kinda surprises me Shakespeare hasn’t been given the shaft yet. Disguised Rosalind talking to Orlando, Silvius, and Phoebe in As You Like It sounds like a 17th century Chateau Heartiste. All of his comedies I read seem to have a pretty cynical view of women and constantly joke about men getting cuckolded (“growing horns” as they put it). Falstaff casually drops phrases to the effect of “I swear what I said was correct or else I’m a Hebrew Jew.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undiscovered
Viewers delighted by gay scenes in Russell T Davies version of A Midsummer Night's Dream
The refusal to “demonize people of color” has been extraordinarily annoying to me, because I’ve been hoping to see a Fu Manchu-like character for awhile. The notion of creating a meaningful villain from a different culture and ethnicity seems to be lost from Hollywood now. I’ve often felt it reflects a particular cultural blindness.
The SJWs don’t really have any use for real Chinese, Arabs or anyone else, they just want multiracial props.
Because this is not about helping nonwhites, this is about attacking whites, and because nouveau riche and recently-arrived East Asians often probably do not want to see themselves as distinct.Replies: @Altai, @syonredux
Fans have already turned Shylock into a hero of Jewish justice, more or less. No, as long as people want to dress up in tights and grapple with difficult language, the Bard will live.
Shakespeare will fade out only in pace with the fade-out of Western Civilization. A good story illustrating this point is “The Undiscovered” by William Sanders. The wikipedia gloss on it is here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undiscovered
Another rule: any white hero who had a nonwhite sidekick must be made into an idiot, even if the sidekick originally saved the hero countless times. (Lone Ranger, Green Hornet)Replies: @Charles Pewitt
Two beautiful Irish ladies played Jane in Tarzan movies. Weismuller played Tarzan. The Irish, Germans and Southerners didn’t do so well when they went up against perfidious Albion. Saw a clip of recent Tarzan movie, the Australian Scotttish lady playing Jane was fine, but the best role was the electronic ape. Middle-aged, balding ape as the leader of the ape tribe who clobbers Tarzan.
Yeah, but that means no jobs for POC actors…..Hence, the current revolution in thinking, which demands that early 19th century London resemble its millennial counterpart….
The barefaced cheek of it is breathtaking.
Shakespeare can be adjusted to fit the current year:
Viewers delighted by gay scenes in Russell T Davies version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The globalized central banks are involved in the greatest inter-generational ripoff scam of all time. That is why we find negative interest rates and zero interest rates and asset purchases and quantitative easing and money printing and all the rest. Debt created and sustained by the monetary extremism of central banks has been used to buy off the greedy dolts born before 1965. Mass immigration is only tolerated because of the greedy scum who are bought off by the machinations of the globalized central banks.
The greedy scum born before 1965 will deserve the curses of those who come after. They stood by and did nothing while their nations were turned into third world hellholes.Replies: @BB753, @Buffalo Joe, @Almost Missouri, @The True and Original David, @Olorin
Maybe calling anybody born before 1965 “greedy scum” won’t make you popular around here. Even our gentle host was born before 1965. (Disclaimer: I was born after 1965 but I disagree with you).
It was kind of a gimmick, but hey it was Patrick Stewart on stage, so it kind of worked.Replies: @syonredux
The photo negative Othello. I think that current year critics would be OK with it. Remember, making everybody else in the play Black means more roles/paychecks for Black actors.Plus, that means that a Black actor gets to play Iago*, one of the juiciest roles in Shakespeare.
* As many critics have observed, the play is incorrectly titled; it should be named Iago, after its real star.
Steve you are right about certain aspects of race and opera but sadly, wrong about others.
I have sung about thirty opera roles on stage. I even had my own opera company for a while. You mention Bizet’s Carmen and Mozart’s The Magic Flute and The Abduction From the Seraglio. I’ve sung in all of those. I’m sung a few things in blackface.
More importantly I studied voice in Washington DC where at the time there were only two first rate voice teachers – and both were black. The Wilkerson studio, where I studied, was about half black at that time. Wilkerson claimed that Leontyne Price was his former student (but maybe not). She did come around occasionally.
The point that I am leading up to is that – there are few blacks in opera. The real story is the Asians. My doctor is Korean and named Kim. I asked last year if he realized that three of the best operatic tenors in the world are Korean and all are named Kim. He told me no, and that Kim was a very common name in Korea. I told him that actually there are at least two other really exceptional Korean tenors also named Kim.
This is new. A few years ago all the Korean opera singers seemed to be baritones and they all sang “Largo Al Fectotum” on YouTube.
Proportionally there are few black singers – especially black male singers. You can find a few but in fifty years of auditioning I’ve seen very damn few show up. The black male fundamental speech frequency is maybe a quarter octave below that of white’s. That’s why so many black actor’s have built their careers on their voices ( James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Dennis Haysbert).
But I sang the bass part in our studio’s concert of Negro Spirituals at the African Episcopal Zion Church because there were no black basses who were much good. I was the only white face on stage or in the audience. Black men just aren’t very interested in anything remotely like classical music.
A few years ago SF opera did a series of “Boheme’s”. They had four or five different casts who rotated. You couldn’t do that with “Porgy and Bess”. There simply aren’t enough adequate black singers.
Someone will probably refute my analysis by invoking Lawrence Brownlee. He’s good but he’s almost the only one. Tarver is probably the only other black tenor working today on major stages.
There is no racial prejudice against blacks in American opera and hasn’t been for decades. The prejudice is against Orientals. Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans are crazy about Western opera and have been since the fifties. They have now developed their own singers and many of them are world class.
Love this sentence
Olivier worked hard to lower his voice. He was a natural tenor but affected a baritonal timbre for the part. There is film of this somewhere.
Anyway Shakespeare and his audience probably didn’t think of Moors as Negroes (Sub-Saharan Africans). They probably thought of Othello as a dark North African Caucasian – like Nasser or Sadat. At least that’s my recollection from my Shakespeare classes in the sixties at George Mason. Maybe they dare not teach it that way today.
Anyway Shakespeare and his audience probably didn't think of Moors as Negroes (Sub-Saharan Africans). They probably thought of Othello as a dark North African Caucasian - like Nasser or Sadat. At least that's my recollection from my Shakespeare classes in the sixties at George Mason. Maybe they dare not teach it that way today.Replies: @Senator Brundlefly
Iago refers to Othello at one point as “thick lips.” Iago also says “a black ram is tupping your white ewe” to Othello’s unwilling father in law.
Olivier had previously considered himself unsuited to the role because of his voice: he felt the role was written for a throaty baritone--this too may have been for "enlightened" reasons having to do with vocal style associated with Paul Robeson; but lines like "It is the cause, O my soul" really do need to be summoned from the rumbling depths of the vocal range.
As Pat Boyle notes, Olivier worked with a vocal coach to unlock the potential of the lower registers of his voice. I vaguely recall a Dick Cavett interview where he talked about it.
In any case, it's yet another example of how the "PC" of yesterday has become today's shameful taboo. Olivier gives an astonishing performance--wild and histrionic, quite unlike his restrained performances elsewhere. He plays Othello as a "real" African, which for all I know was shocking and politically thrilling in the 1960s. Viewing the film version in the 1990s, I remember thinking his acting was unintentionally comic and dated. By today's "standards" it's a hate crime.
I saw Othello at the Arena Stage in Washington DC shortly after college. They had Brock Peters, the Hollywood movie star, play Othello. He of course is a full sub-Saharan African who does not look remotely like a North African moor. As it happened he was terrible. He had the wrong voice for live theater. He was sonorous but had poor diction. Most of the audience seemed to think it was a comedy and laughed at inappropriate places. Peters responded by trying to overact. It degenerated into a shambles.
In the theater a low male voice still needs to have an 'edge' - a crisp resonance that allows the consonants to be clearly heard. Black males have deep sonorous voices. They do well in movies or TV but often are less successful on stage or in opera.
Recently I heard a Henry IV at a local theater in northern California with a black Falstaff. I missed most of his lines. The white actors were easy to hear. He also was thin. They seemed to be trying to make some political point but having an incomprehensible black Falstaff ruined the show.
In the opera Otello by Verdi or the earlier Otello by Rossini there have never been an black singers of the title role of note. Most Italian tenors avoid Otello (Verdi version) because it is too heavy. It requires a dramatic tenor voice. There have been no black dramatic tenors in the last two centuries. The Rossini version takes less shear power but is very difficult because it is so florid. Jose Carreras has recorded it but it is too florid for Pavarotti and probably too high for Domingo. Chris Merritt (a white tenor) has been the last famous tenor to be able to sing this role successfully. When Steve speculates about black opera singers - he is probably wrong.Replies: @kaganovitch
This is not true (or not true any more), there is a very well and widely documented push to show black people as historically universally normative. You can see samples at Red Ice’s YouTube channel.
It recalls the German exchange student in that AmRen anonymous confession: he showed a black class slides of his home and they all insisted that he was deliberately hiding the black people. Well, there’s plenty of blacks all over Germany now, only thing left is to “correct” the history.
The people born before 1965 would have been financially wiped out if the Federal Reserve Bank had not engaged in monetary extremism after the global financial implosion of 2007-2008. The people born before 1965 were the ones who just elected open borders banker boy Macron in France. My point is that the people born before 1965 have been bought off with debt created by the Fed and that is why they allowed nation-wrecking mass immigration.
I read Othello about 15 years ago and looked carefully for textual evidence whether he is supposed to be North African or West African. I came up with an 80-20 balance toward black rather than olive.
Who was he Shaka Zulu?Replies: @Senator Brundlefly, @Steve Sailer
Homos shouldn’t play straights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=930BhfJxFxU
Charlie Chan and Mr Moto were both reliably popular while they ran in theaters, and popular among whites because they were a sort of quasi-white or alternative rather than simply inferior, and then they both dropped off the face of the Earth. How do comic book franchises get reboots so close to each other but nobody wants to try a thoroughly updated Chinese American family man who solves mysteries when he’s not reading the Five Classics?
Because this is not about helping nonwhites, this is about attacking whites, and because nouveau riche and recently-arrived East Asians often probably do not want to see themselves as distinct.
Because this is not about helping nonwhites, this is about attacking whites, and because nouveau riche and recently-arrived East Asians often probably do not want to see themselves as distinct.Replies: @Altai, @syonredux
My favourite example was Sweden during the last few years. It didn’t seem to matter that so many of those walking in were clearly not Arab let alone Syrian, but cramming all the asylum centres and reducing per capita resources for them didn’t seem a concern, the men walking in weren’t Swedish and that was all that mattered.
Kiwi boot polish
Dam DustersReplies: @Father O'Hara, @Buffalo Joe, @Glaivester
Negro no. 2? I thought that was the Secret Service name for Sasha Obama.
Kiwi boot polish
Dam DustersReplies: @Father O'Hara, @Buffalo Joe, @Glaivester
Hippo, Crayola Crayons now calls the stick we knew as “Flesh”, Peach. They don’t offer a Negro Brown or Black yet.
Because this is not about helping nonwhites, this is about attacking whites, and because nouveau riche and recently-arrived East Asians often probably do not want to see themselves as distinct.Replies: @Altai, @syonredux
Lucy Liu used to talk about doing an updated version of Charlie Chan (“Lucy Liu as Charlene “Charlie” Chan”), but it never got off the ground. Instead, she ended up playing a distaff, Chinese-American version of Dr Watson on Elementary
Neutral. Don’t know about Star Trek, but too many blacks and their antics are making NFL football unwatchable.
Yeah, the text clearly indicates that we are supposed to see him as Black.
A while back I saw a clip from a Japanese TV news broadcast where the pundits were talking about a neighborhood in Tokyo where there were a lot of Koreans living and seeming shocked by the fact that there were now actually several shops that catered to mainly to Koreans. They were shocked in the same way that whites would be in the US, in the 1950's, when a few blacks moved into the neighborhood.Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Mike, I am shocked that Koreans would move to Japan. It has to be based solely on economics. The Japanese in WWII carried out a near genocidal war on Koreans and used them for medical experiments and as the camp vagina, “Comfort Girls.” I am not sure but I think that hundreds of surviving Comfort Girls are still waiting for an apology and reparations.
Japanese imperial policy in Korea was assimilationist, not genocidal.
Unfortunately for them, the Comfort Women are out of luck, because ROK and Japan normalized relationship under Park Chung-Hee in 1965. In return for settling all colonial claims, the Japanese provided know-how and funds necessary to build a large-scale steel industry in South Korea, which in turn powered much of the later heavy industrialization and economic development.
Finally, because of the "Hallyu" - the Korean Wave - of cultural exports (dramas and music) from South Korea to Japan, South Korean performers are extremely popular in Japan.Replies: @Buffalo Joe
I hadn't known that the women were paid, grossing, according to this report 1,500 yen a month. At the beginning of WW2, one yen was worth about 30 cents US, so they were making about $500, about half of which they were able to pocket.
Some extracts:The interrogations show the average Korean "comfort girl" to be about twenty-five years old, uneducated, childish, and selfish. She is not pretty either by Japanese or Caucasian standards. She is inclined to be egotistical and likes to talk about herself.They lived in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places. This was especially true of their second year in Burma. They lived well because their food and material was not heavily rationed and they had plenty of money with which to purchase desired articles. They were able to buy cloth, shoes, cigarettes, and cosmetics to supplement the many gifts given to them by soldiers who had received "comfort bags" from home.While in Burma they amused themselves by participating in sports events with both officers and men, and attended picnics, entertainments, and social dinners. They had a phonograph and in the towns they were allowed to go shopping.Report No. 49: Japanese Prisoners of War
Interrogation on ProstitutionAs a contrast, here's the pay chart for US Navy WAVES in World War II. Maybe they should demand reparations! (^_^)
http://i.imgur.com/ATXpaok.jpgReplies: @Buffalo Joe
If I’m not mistaken, Olivier’s makeup for the role was a break from the convention (of what vintage I don’t know) of playing Othello in a lighter shade of brown. He wanted to emphasize Othello’s blackness, and did so precisely as a bow to the enlightened opinion of the day. He felt the former convention was a theatrical and political cop-out.
Olivier had previously considered himself unsuited to the role because of his voice: he felt the role was written for a throaty baritone–this too may have been for “enlightened” reasons having to do with vocal style associated with Paul Robeson; but lines like “It is the cause, O my soul” really do need to be summoned from the rumbling depths of the vocal range.
As Pat Boyle notes, Olivier worked with a vocal coach to unlock the potential of the lower registers of his voice. I vaguely recall a Dick Cavett interview where he talked about it.
In any case, it’s yet another example of how the “PC” of yesterday has become today’s shameful taboo. Olivier gives an astonishing performance–wild and histrionic, quite unlike his restrained performances elsewhere. He plays Othello as a “real” African, which for all I know was shocking and politically thrilling in the 1960s. Viewing the film version in the 1990s, I remember thinking his acting was unintentionally comic and dated. By today’s “standards” it’s a hate crime.
The globalized central banks are involved in the greatest inter-generational ripoff scam of all time. That is why we find negative interest rates and zero interest rates and asset purchases and quantitative easing and money printing and all the rest. Debt created and sustained by the monetary extremism of central banks has been used to buy off the greedy dolts born before 1965. Mass immigration is only tolerated because of the greedy scum who are bought off by the machinations of the globalized central banks.
The greedy scum born before 1965 will deserve the curses of those who come after. They stood by and did nothing while their nations were turned into third world hellholes.Replies: @BB753, @Buffalo Joe, @Almost Missouri, @The True and Original David, @Olorin
Charles, I usually like your comments, but I was born in 1946. Are you laying this at my feet?
I think in decades and generations, and it is clear that the type of demographic transformation underway will cause civil wars. Others are starting to see it too. Enoch Powell saw it, why didn't they act? I think the globalized central banks bought off the natural instinct of some Americans, mostly those born before 1965.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @unpc downunder
Simple solution: since Moors are a combination of Arab and Berber, stop portraying Othello as a Negro.
Great essay. Everyone is too polite to ask it seems, but did your column in Taki’s permanently go from weekly to bi-weekly (and an even more impertinent question- at whose insistence)? Oh well, a near-decade run of weekly, sterling Steve Sailer essays is more than mere mortals should hope for…
As horrific a tragedy as removing Nick from the portfolio of good roles available to actors of color is, I think if Mr. Ablee’s gay, rough-trade, Drei Reicheshen reverie from beyond-the-grave were to become a casualty, I think that would be worse.
No, I just asked for a couple of weeks off from column-writing to concentrate my efforts on a big family-related project. Writing a lengthy column for Taki's at the beginning of the week tends to tire me out for the rest of the week, and I've needed a lot of energy for some other stuff.
Jeff, nicely stated. That was quite the beak. Years ago, while on a trip to the middle east with my wife,I mentioned that the best I could do in a big nose contest was second place. They do have some notable snozes over there.
The globalized central banks are involved in the greatest inter-generational ripoff scam of all time. That is why we find negative interest rates and zero interest rates and asset purchases and quantitative easing and money printing and all the rest. Debt created and sustained by the monetary extremism of central banks has been used to buy off the greedy dolts born before 1965. Mass immigration is only tolerated because of the greedy scum who are bought off by the machinations of the globalized central banks.
The greedy scum born before 1965 will deserve the curses of those who come after. They stood by and did nothing while their nations were turned into third world hellholes.Replies: @BB753, @Buffalo Joe, @Almost Missouri, @The True and Original David, @Olorin
Irrespective of birthdates, I agree with the first part of this comment. For any given political insanity, social ill, corrupt oligarchy or mass moral defecation, 99% of the time you can trace the supports back to the central banks’ magical money machines.
That’s not to say the origin is always with the banksters nor that all the support stems from central banks, but it seems to be the secret ingredient that turns garden variety stupidity and petty criminality into potent, massive, world-wrecking catastrophe.
No, I am not laying the mass immigration invasion currently destroying the United States at anyone’s feet. I am saying that the baby boomer generation as a whole did not do anything to stop the obvious destruction of mass immigration. My opinion is that the financialization(debt tricks) written about by Kevin Phillips was deliberately used to buy off a generation or two of Americans while the 1965 Immigration Act was doing its damage.
I think in decades and generations, and it is clear that the type of demographic transformation underway will cause civil wars. Others are starting to see it too. Enoch Powell saw it, why didn’t they act? I think the globalized central banks bought off the natural instinct of some Americans, mostly those born before 1965.
Everyone is too polite to ask it seems, but did your column in Taki’s permanently go from weekly to bi-weekly (and an even more impertinent question- at whose insistence)?
No, I just asked for a couple of weeks off from column-writing to concentrate my efforts on a big family-related project. Writing a lengthy column for Taki’s at the beginning of the week tends to tire me out for the rest of the week, and I’ve needed a lot of energy for some other stuff.
Charles, Sorry, but I found the new rendition of Tarzan unwatchable. The thought that an attractive, refined lady would want to mate with Tarzan, scraggly hair and doubtful hygiene is a stretch. All I could think of as Tarzan and Jane head off for a romantic, jungle interlude, was his gorilla pals signing for him to turn Jane around and do it, well, Gorilla style. As an aside, is there any role that Samuel L. Jackson will turn down?
Pat, as an Italian American who can barely sing Happy Birthday, I salute you. I always thought the best thing to be was a soccer player for Inter-Milan who could sing like Pavarotti.
I don’t think Moors were black, were they? More middle-eastern.
I thought we established that Benched Kneeler was a North African identifying as black?
Charlie Chan was cool. It’s a testament to our accelerated aping of corporate manners that racial flavor is a disqualifying mark for any non-black cultural product, to be bleached out with extreme prejudice; except any black character has to be made a preposterous caricature of blackness because that’s what black audiences demand as a show of public solidarity (I just watched Sir Ridley Scott’s Prometheus yesterday in which Idris Elba plays a supporting technician character as futuristic Shaft/Slaughter type).
For an example of Olivierian diction at its most Oliviery, see “The Devil’s Disciple” with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas (adapted from the Shaw play).
I do blame folks born before ’65 for voting in the inundation. This is because they were old enough to be exposed to NBC/CBS newsreels of firehoses a go go and professionally-attired black bourgeois activists getting thumped by paunchy white Southern deputies chewing on thistle stems; thus baptizing the viewers into the Civilrights religion. Now Civilrights has been extended to every poor schlub on the Earth. The northern CA Central Valley is presently full of grifter Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, etc. thanks to this Civilrights doomsday weapon, and I know from interacting with them in the course of their scams and prevarications that they all consider themselves to be aggrieved Selma Negroes on the inside. Thanks, Baby Boomers.
That must be quite an opera!
I saw DD as a teen, thought it was too over the top at the time, have looked for it since and never found it. Very unique movie.
https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Disciple-Burt-Lancaster/dp/B014LHPGYM
Black actors “whitening up” has been going on at the English National Theatre for some time now:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/5132689/Black-actors-white-up-at-the-National-Theatre.html
If you watch any of the NTLive broadcasts that the National Theatre puts out, you’ll see that they are obsessed with casting as many blacks as they can (not so many “asians”, though). It’s hard to find a NT production that’s free of blacks, even if it’s a Shakespeare history or some other play where blacks are clearly historically inappropriate. I remember watching the NTLive broadcast of one of the Henry IV plays – part II, I think – and the affirmative action was really glaring. One of Hal’s brothers was cast as black, and every time he’d open his mouth one was struck by the decline in the quality of the verse declamation relative to the previous speaker.
The obsession with casting blacks may have something to do with both political pressure and “activism”, a.k.a. whining:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/08/arts-council-england-make-progress-diversity-funding-axed-bazalgette
https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2015/adrian-lester-lambasts-embarrassing-lack-diversity-theatre/
Elizabethan Englishmen referred to Europeans with dark hair and swarthy complexions as "the black" and a mercenary general working in Italy would probably be, like, Tunisian.Replies: @The Man From K Street
Oh, we’ve been through this before. Othello was *black* in the same sense he would be in 2017. Not southern Italian. And not Berber or Arab.
People who argue otherwise often forget that Shakespeare wrote another “Moor” character–Aaron in Titus Andronicus. And the physical description of Aaron in the play–frizzy hair, enormous purple lips, etc–leave no room for doubt that for Shakespeare, “Moor” meant sub-Saharan African.
This is remarkably similar to the story of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado". There were few Japanese in England and then a delegation came to London and sparked a lot of popular interest in Japan.
I don't really know the race of Othello but since he is a fictional character not a real person, this dispute will likely never be resolved.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @syonredux
Lord Laurence Olivier
He did a pretty good job as an ordinary and casual Nazi in Marathon Man, which is quite a feat considering that by some estimations there were no ordinary and casual Nazis.
Amazon carries it
This is not a new dispute. Scholars have been arguing about how black Othello was for decades. When I was in school the balance of the expert opinion was toward a dark skinned Caucasian. More recently Othello seems to have been swept up in the ‘Black Pride’ movement.
I saw Othello at the Arena Stage in Washington DC shortly after college. They had Brock Peters, the Hollywood movie star, play Othello. He of course is a full sub-Saharan African who does not look remotely like a North African moor. As it happened he was terrible. He had the wrong voice for live theater. He was sonorous but had poor diction. Most of the audience seemed to think it was a comedy and laughed at inappropriate places. Peters responded by trying to overact. It degenerated into a shambles.
In the theater a low male voice still needs to have an ‘edge’ – a crisp resonance that allows the consonants to be clearly heard. Black males have deep sonorous voices. They do well in movies or TV but often are less successful on stage or in opera.
Recently I heard a Henry IV at a local theater in northern California with a black Falstaff. I missed most of his lines. The white actors were easy to hear. He also was thin. They seemed to be trying to make some political point but having an incomprehensible black Falstaff ruined the show.
In the opera Otello by Verdi or the earlier Otello by Rossini there have never been an black singers of the title role of note. Most Italian tenors avoid Otello (Verdi version) because it is too heavy. It requires a dramatic tenor voice. There have been no black dramatic tenors in the last two centuries. The Rossini version takes less shear power but is very difficult because it is so florid. Jose Carreras has recorded it but it is too florid for Pavarotti and probably too high for Domingo. Chris Merritt (a white tenor) has been the last famous tenor to be able to sing this role successfully. When Steve speculates about black opera singers – he is probably wrong.
That's very interesting- according to Wiki his background was actually in musical theater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_PetersReplies: @Pat Boyle
Lol. Lots of Fu Manchu movies have been produced, but I’m pretty sure he has never been played by an Asian actor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Manchu#Film
Kiwi boot polish
Dam DustersReplies: @Father O'Hara, @Buffalo Joe, @Glaivester
No, that would be stupid. They called the brown paint negro.
I mean, Spanish speakers called the black paint negro, of course.
I think you got it wrong. I suppose I could full out my reference materials but it seems preposterous that Elizabethan audiences would have accepted a West African as a General in a Venetian fleet. Where would he have come from? There were many examples of Northern Africans in high military posts at the beginning of the seventeenth century but no real West Africans.
Who was he Shaka Zulu?
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my traveler’s history."Though, on the other hand, Iago refers to Othello as a "Barbary horse" and the Berbers weren't black (?). Just cursively looking over wikipedia it does say that Berbers were slave traders though and, taken with the "thick lips" comment, I take it to mean he was a sub-Saharan African that was enslaved. That's just my reading though, you sound like you have more than just the text to go off of so I wouldn't be shocked if I was wrong.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Or he could be an olive-skinned Caucasian from a North African or Middle Eastern country. But he's a Christian, so that is a little complicated.
Turns out the moron writers actually did it because he didn’t want to ‘demonise a person of color’ by making the only non-white character a villain.
They forgot that Uhura and Sulu weren’t white?
Dr Who seems to be trying to have it both ways – reminding us that things were bad for black folks before the current year. But then implying that Britain has always been multiracial..
The barefaced cheek of it is breathtaking.
It’s lonely out in space .
I just realised – Dr Who whom was my line!
That’s OK Steve. 😉
Whoopi Goldberg was cast as Guinan on TNG after she went to the producers and asked for a part on the show. She’d been a big Star Trek fan as a kid. Her young self was very impressed by the fact that there was a black woman on the show who wasn’t playing a maid.
I’m just catching up on Blake’s 7 for the first time in 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake%27s_7
It isn’t til the 17th episode that we see a few brown faces.
That’s sixteen 50 minute episodes without a single black/brown face.
No gays, lesbians or trannies either. While butt-kicking babes are kept well within tolerances.
I saw a French production of Hamlet with a multiethnic cast, a coffee-colored East Indian negro as Claudius/King Hamlet, a beautiful Punjabi as Ophelia, a White woman as Gertrude, and a mulatto as the Dane. It was well-done and experimental, so with few props. Clearly, some point was trying to be made. But Shakespeare’s quality obscured whatever fashionable gobbledygook the producers were aiming at.
Sometimes I wonder if the eventual Muslim conquerors of Europe will retcon the bard as one of their own, maybe renamed Sheikh Sapir or Bar-Da-Avon or something. With a few judicious edits, Romeo and Juliet could be a PSA for the benefits of harems, purda, and arranged marriages.
Do you mean an aboriginal tribal type or perhaps an Andamanese?
http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/9/9/3/8/8/5/i/1/0/3/p-large/IMG_1180.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fgg7f28wIy4/VIxWVsUGZCI/AAAAAAAAB0k/aqPA1yD3Mr0/s1600/29q1ddu.jpg
I'd be very surprised if someone from one of these groups had made it all the way to France to act in a production of Hamlet. Perhaps just a dark-skinned Sri Lankan Dravidian Tamil?
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sri-lankan-tamil-women-and-children-seek-refuge-in-news-photo/72120003?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect#sri-lankan-tamil-women-and-children-seek-refuge-in-polonnaruwasome-picture-id72120003
I watched Lawrence of Arabia again the other night, too, and have watched it several times previously. Until reading your comment, I had completely overlooked the fake nose, though I’m pretty familiar with two other Anthony Quinn movies, also— The Guns of Navarone and Zorba the Greek.
Anyway, the it appears the real Auda abu Tayi had a pretty spectacular beak, so I suppose David Lean felt the need to put a fake one on Quinn.
http://tinyurl.com/lk4m4yn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auda_Abu_Tayi
Sometimes I wonder if the eventual Muslim conquerors of Europe will retcon the bard as one of their own, maybe renamed Sheikh Sapir or Bar-Da-Avon or something. With a few judicious edits, Romeo and Juliet could be a PSA for the benefits of harems, purda, and arranged marriages.Replies: @PiltdownMan
What is an “East Indian negro?”
Do you mean an aboriginal tribal type or perhaps an Andamanese?
I’d be very surprised if someone from one of these groups had made it all the way to France to act in a production of Hamlet. Perhaps just a dark-skinned Sri Lankan Dravidian Tamil?
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sri-lankan-tamil-women-and-children-seek-refuge-in-news-photo/72120003?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect#sri-lankan-tamil-women-and-children-seek-refuge-in-polonnaruwasome-picture-id72120003
Who was he Shaka Zulu?Replies: @Senator Brundlefly, @Steve Sailer
Wasn’t that kinda the point? I mean, the play doesn’t shy away from showing the precarious social position he is in because of his race. Indeed the insecurity he feels because of it is likely why he falls for Iago’s lies so easily. Desdemona fell in love with him because of the fantastic stories of his military career and it seems like its the only reason he is in that position. The Duke of Venice even implies he would be ok with Othello marrying his daughter because of Othello’s career. As for where he came from and got his skills, I think its supposed be be an ambiguous exotic fantasy place, like where the Anthropophagi, head in chest people, and cannibals live from his stories. Or you can kinda read between the line that he was enslaved especially here: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/othello/page_38.html
“Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my traveler’s history.”
Though, on the other hand, Iago refers to Othello as a “Barbary horse” and the Berbers weren’t black (?). Just cursively looking over wikipedia it does say that Berbers were slave traders though and, taken with the “thick lips” comment, I take it to mean he was a sub-Saharan African that was enslaved. That’s just my reading though, you sound like you have more than just the text to go off of so I wouldn’t be shocked if I was wrong.
That's OK Steve. ;-)Replies: @Steve Sailer
Thanks.
Who was he Shaka Zulu?Replies: @Senator Brundlefly, @Steve Sailer
My guess would be that Othello would be the mulatto son of a Portuguese or Spanish adventurer. There were a few mulatto generals in European history, such as Dumas’s father and Pushkin’s great-grandfather.
Or he could be an olive-skinned Caucasian from a North African or Middle Eastern country. But he’s a Christian, so that is a little complicated.
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my traveler’s history."Though, on the other hand, Iago refers to Othello as a "Barbary horse" and the Berbers weren't black (?). Just cursively looking over wikipedia it does say that Berbers were slave traders though and, taken with the "thick lips" comment, I take it to mean he was a sub-Saharan African that was enslaved. That's just my reading though, you sound like you have more than just the text to go off of so I wouldn't be shocked if I was wrong.Replies: @Steve Sailer
When I read Othello, I think I noticed 10 references that seemed to be about where he was from or what his race was, and I counted them as 8 for sub-Saharan/black and 2 for North African/Caucasian.
My impression is that Shakespeare wasn’t terribly good at geography. Presumably he lived not too far from the docks on the Thames, so he saw people from abroad. He was the kind of man about town minor celebrity who probably would have been invited to meet travelers. But there doesn’t seem to be any evidence he ever left England, and he seems to be less interested in geography than in other subjects.
Cf the much discussed seacoast of Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter%27s_Tale#The_seacoast_of_Bohemia
Japan imported Koreans as laborer during WW2. Many were never repatriated, resulting in relatively large minority communities. Many have adopted Japanese pseudonyms and go around incognito but live in their own enclaves. Korean elementary schools receive financial support from North Korea, and many Koreans are supposedly wealthy from involvement in semi-ethical businesses like pachinko. Personally, I think Japan should force them all to either return to Korea or give up their Korean sub cultural practices, but it make an international scene, I suppose.
The Japanese occupation of Korea was not exactly benevolent, but it did do much to build modern infrastructure previously lacking in the latter. Also, as with Nazi-occupied France, Japanese-occupied Korea had A LOT of collaborators, including, famously, President Park Chung-Hee, often touted as the father of South Korean industrialization, who served as a military officer in Manchuria.
Japanese imperial policy in Korea was assimilationist, not genocidal.
Unfortunately for them, the Comfort Women are out of luck, because ROK and Japan normalized relationship under Park Chung-Hee in 1965. In return for settling all colonial claims, the Japanese provided know-how and funds necessary to build a large-scale steel industry in South Korea, which in turn powered much of the later heavy industrialization and economic development.
Finally, because of the “Hallyu” – the Korean Wave – of cultural exports (dramas and music) from South Korea to Japan, South Korean performers are extremely popular in Japan.
There was a time when John Wayne playing Genghis Khan was shrugged off by East Asians (or even welcomed – “Hey, they are making a movie about an Oriental conqueror!”). But now we have Asian SJWs going insane over “whitewashing Asian roles.”
Now, given that there are many actors of Asian background today, it is quite odd to use non-Asians to play Asians, if nothing else but for the sake of realism, but, really, it’s not a big deal. They are just movies. It’s not like there aren’t imports from Asia if one were starved for movies with all-Asian casts.
People today just seem out to be outraged, just to be outraged. Sheesh.
A US Army Psychological Warfare Team interviewed some of these comfort women at the end of the war. Their report is pretty interesting.
I hadn’t known that the women were paid, grossing, according to this report 1,500 yen a month. At the beginning of WW2, one yen was worth about 30 cents US, so they were making about $500, about half of which they were able to pocket.
Some extracts:
The interrogations show the average Korean “comfort girl” to be about twenty-five years old, uneducated, childish, and selfish. She is not pretty either by Japanese or Caucasian standards. She is inclined to be egotistical and likes to talk about herself.
They lived in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places. This was especially true of their second year in Burma. They lived well because their food and material was not heavily rationed and they had plenty of money with which to purchase desired articles. They were able to buy cloth, shoes, cigarettes, and cosmetics to supplement the many gifts given to them by soldiers who had received “comfort bags” from home.
While in Burma they amused themselves by participating in sports events with both officers and men, and attended picnics, entertainments, and social dinners. They had a phonograph and in the towns they were allowed to go shopping.
Report No. 49: Japanese Prisoners of War
Interrogation on Prostitution
As a contrast, here’s the pay chart for US Navy WAVES in World War II. Maybe they should demand reparations! (^_^)
🙂
An old story about Olivier goes that on the set of Marathon Man, he had heard that Dustin Hoffman had stayed up for three days to prepare for a scene in which Hoffman’s character had likewise stayed up for three days, to which Olivier replied “Why don’t you just try acting?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Man_(film)#.22Why_don.27t_you_just_try_acting.3F.22
I saw Othello at the Arena Stage in Washington DC shortly after college. They had Brock Peters, the Hollywood movie star, play Othello. He of course is a full sub-Saharan African who does not look remotely like a North African moor. As it happened he was terrible. He had the wrong voice for live theater. He was sonorous but had poor diction. Most of the audience seemed to think it was a comedy and laughed at inappropriate places. Peters responded by trying to overact. It degenerated into a shambles.
In the theater a low male voice still needs to have an 'edge' - a crisp resonance that allows the consonants to be clearly heard. Black males have deep sonorous voices. They do well in movies or TV but often are less successful on stage or in opera.
Recently I heard a Henry IV at a local theater in northern California with a black Falstaff. I missed most of his lines. The white actors were easy to hear. He also was thin. They seemed to be trying to make some political point but having an incomprehensible black Falstaff ruined the show.
In the opera Otello by Verdi or the earlier Otello by Rossini there have never been an black singers of the title role of note. Most Italian tenors avoid Otello (Verdi version) because it is too heavy. It requires a dramatic tenor voice. There have been no black dramatic tenors in the last two centuries. The Rossini version takes less shear power but is very difficult because it is so florid. Jose Carreras has recorded it but it is too florid for Pavarotti and probably too high for Domingo. Chris Merritt (a white tenor) has been the last famous tenor to be able to sing this role successfully. When Steve speculates about black opera singers - he is probably wrong.Replies: @kaganovitch
“I saw Othello at the Arena Stage in Washington DC shortly after college. They had Brock Peters, the Hollywood movie star, play Othello. He of course is a full sub-Saharan African who does not look remotely like a North African moor. As it happened he was terrible. He had the wrong voice for live theater. He was sonorous but had poor diction. ”
That’s very interesting- according to Wiki his background was actually in musical theater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_Peters
Good black pop singers like Nat King Cole sing forward - on the lips so to speak. Brock Peters on the other hand swallows his sound. On a set with microphones he wouldn't need to worry about enunciation and intelligibility, but on a bare stage he has the wrong kind of vocal production.
Singers have all sorts of terms for this sort of thing. Some will call it 'head voice'. Others speak of 'placement' . Many singers have goofy ideas about voice but all understand this elementary concept.
They forgot that Uhura and Sulu weren't white?Replies: @Altai
They don’t tend to get much screen time as in the original films. (Though Uhura gets more focus as Spocks girlfriend) It’s a problem in all the Star Trek films. Having a large cast makes sense in a TV show, but inevitably a film will only focus on the core characters leaving the others to just tend to be there or be annoying as the script writers come up with things for them to do for it’s own sake.
This is clearly demonstrated in the original version of "The Magnificent Seven". Maybe four of them have enough screen time to make an impact but Brad Dexter and James Coburn only have a few moments in which to establish their Magnificence.
Now, given that there are many actors of Asian background today, it is quite odd to use non-Asians to play Asians, if nothing else but for the sake of realism, but, really, it's not a big deal. They are just movies. It's not like there aren't imports from Asia if one were starved for movies with all-Asian casts.
People today just seem out to be outraged, just to be outraged. Sheesh.Replies: @Desiderius, @Johann Ricke
When they’re afraid to be outraged over the outrageous, that will happen.
They also made Khan’s motive – wait for it now – revenge! Which was totally different than the motive of the villain in the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie, which was – you won’t believe this – revenge! But in the third movie, they changed it up a bit by presenting a villain whose motive was – can you imagine this – revenge!
Revenge. This time……….it’s personal. Yeah, never seen that before.
Revenge has got to be about the laziest device employed by modern screen-writers. To say nothing of the fact that Star Trek, as originally envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, was not normally about heroes and villains, as Abrams has lazily made it. It wasn’t supposed to just be a shoot-em-up space opera. Mind you, all the original Star Trek movies were pretty lousy, compared to the series. But the Abrams movies are really a big steaming pile. And that guy they got for Kirk plays him as a completely useless douchebag. I heard that in the last movie (never saw it) he blew the Enterprise up in the first ten minutes.
Pauline Kael had a great line in her review about how the actors' expressions never quite matched up with the special effects they were supposedly looking at. (There are whole reels of the film in which the crew members do little but stand agape at the psychedelic imagery unfolding on the viewscreen.)
Chris Pine, the faux-Kirk of the Abrams Drekverse, lent his (questionable) vocal talents to a Robot Chicken skit with Patrick Stewart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ApQrbhQp8
There was a funny TNG Recut episode on YouTube showing the various TV crews' reactions to the first Abrams movie. I can't find it.
Looks like I need to check into Charlie Chan.
Good observation. A typical feature film only has space for about three or four characters. The others are just ‘furniture’ in the wonderfully evocative term from ‘Soylent Green’.
This is clearly demonstrated in the original version of “The Magnificent Seven”. Maybe four of them have enough screen time to make an impact but Brad Dexter and James Coburn only have a few moments in which to establish their Magnificence.
As I allude in another comment, that research should be cross-referenced with textual evidence from Shakespeare’s “other” Moor, Aaron from Titus Andronicus. Once one does that I think you get to 95-5 black versus olive.
That's very interesting- according to Wiki his background was actually in musical theater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_PetersReplies: @Pat Boyle
I studied voice with a black teacher and in a largely black voice studio. The blacks were well aware that they had to be careful to enunciate speech by singing ‘forward’. This is a common term among voice students. Lower male voices often have a tendency to speak and sing from the ‘back’. This emphasizes the lower darker vocal colors but hurts intelligibility. Most baritones and basses have to trained out of this habit to prepare for the live stage.
Good black pop singers like Nat King Cole sing forward – on the lips so to speak. Brock Peters on the other hand swallows his sound. On a set with microphones he wouldn’t need to worry about enunciation and intelligibility, but on a bare stage he has the wrong kind of vocal production.
Singers have all sorts of terms for this sort of thing. Some will call it ‘head voice’. Others speak of ‘placement’ . Many singers have goofy ideas about voice but all understand this elementary concept.
I think in decades and generations, and it is clear that the type of demographic transformation underway will cause civil wars. Others are starting to see it too. Enoch Powell saw it, why didn't they act? I think the globalized central banks bought off the natural instinct of some Americans, mostly those born before 1965.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @unpc downunder
Charles, In 1965 I was 19 years old and one year out of High School, two years after JFK was assassinated and in the middle of the Viet Nam War. I truly doubt that any of my contemporaries were concerned with the Immigration Act of 1965. I share your present concerns but in reality, in an age before today’s instant mass media, I blame a press that did little to actually inform the public. Otherwise we’re good buddy.
Stan, I grabbed a couple of National Geographic magazines from the free rack at our local library. The February 2017 issue featured, on two facing pages, a photo of Whoopi and a small head shot of Neil Tyson Degrasse. He was answering questions from Whoopi because, she was on Star Trek and he knew the answers to her questions about asteroids and comets. I tore out the two pages and left them on the rack.
Anyway, the it appears the real Auda abu Tayi had a pretty spectacular beak, so I suppose David Lean felt the need to put a fake one on Quinn.
http://tinyurl.com/lk4m4yn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auda_Abu_TayiReplies: @Buffalo Joe
Pilt, Thank you for your replay and the links. It was and is an outstanding cast of characters, well scripted and a cinematic classic. The theme, overture, is haunting and the movie features not one female role. I actually saw a lot of beaks like that in the middle east.
Chris, please clarify one statement, financial support from North, not South Korea?
Japanese imperial policy in Korea was assimilationist, not genocidal.
Unfortunately for them, the Comfort Women are out of luck, because ROK and Japan normalized relationship under Park Chung-Hee in 1965. In return for settling all colonial claims, the Japanese provided know-how and funds necessary to build a large-scale steel industry in South Korea, which in turn powered much of the later heavy industrialization and economic development.
Finally, because of the "Hallyu" - the Korean Wave - of cultural exports (dramas and music) from South Korea to Japan, South Korean performers are extremely popular in Japan.Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Twink, Thank you for your excellent and informative reply. I will say it again, too bad they don’t serve drinks here at iSteve’s, I would buy you one.
I hadn't known that the women were paid, grossing, according to this report 1,500 yen a month. At the beginning of WW2, one yen was worth about 30 cents US, so they were making about $500, about half of which they were able to pocket.
Some extracts:The interrogations show the average Korean "comfort girl" to be about twenty-five years old, uneducated, childish, and selfish. She is not pretty either by Japanese or Caucasian standards. She is inclined to be egotistical and likes to talk about herself.They lived in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places. This was especially true of their second year in Burma. They lived well because their food and material was not heavily rationed and they had plenty of money with which to purchase desired articles. They were able to buy cloth, shoes, cigarettes, and cosmetics to supplement the many gifts given to them by soldiers who had received "comfort bags" from home.While in Burma they amused themselves by participating in sports events with both officers and men, and attended picnics, entertainments, and social dinners. They had a phonograph and in the towns they were allowed to go shopping.Report No. 49: Japanese Prisoners of War
Interrogation on ProstitutionAs a contrast, here's the pay chart for US Navy WAVES in World War II. Maybe they should demand reparations! (^_^)
http://i.imgur.com/ATXpaok.jpgReplies: @Buffalo Joe
Whoever, thank you for the great reply and American slaves in the South were happy with their one pair of shoes each year and whiskey at Christmas ( “Bullwhip Days”, an oral history of slavery.”) I am not arguing with you, but finding these women to be content is suspect. Owe you a drink too.
But it seems that they were actually sold by their families into indentured servitude, and when they paid off this debt they were free to go home. And in the meantime, they were not chained to their beds in bordellos, but got to go out and about and enjoy life. They also seem to have earned pretty good money.
Incidentally, I was struck by the cattiness of the remark in the report that I quoted, saying that the women loved to talk about themselves. My first reaction to that was, well, you are interrogating them, asking them to talk about themselves, and when they do, you get snarky!
The other thought that came to me is that these were people like those Linh Dinh interviews, those who no one ever notices or pays attention to, and when someone finally does, they just erupt with all their suppressed thoughts and opinions. I'd love to read the raw interviews the report draws on.
Oh, thanks for the drink, Buff! I'll have me a sassyparilla, heavy on the sassy. (•̀ᴗ•́)Replies: @Buffalo Joe
It’s probably comforting for you to be so sure. But the race of Othello is still in doubt. He is called a Moor and in Elizabethan England they didn’t see many sub-Saharan blacks. They did see Moors. An ambassador from Morocco had visited London and the Queen and Moors were widely discussed. His portrait is in Wikipedia. He is clearly a Caucasian. He is held by some scholars to have been the model for Otello.
This is remarkably similar to the story of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado”. There were few Japanese in England and then a delegation came to London and sparked a lot of popular interest in Japan.
I don’t really know the race of Othello but since he is a fictional character not a real person, this dispute will likely never be resolved.
This is remarkably similar to the story of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado". There were few Japanese in England and then a delegation came to London and sparked a lot of popular interest in Japan.
I don't really know the race of Othello but since he is a fictional character not a real person, this dispute will likely never be resolved.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @syonredux
I think that SS most likely captured that Shakesphere wasn’t nailing himself down hard on the specific ethnicity of the character. I’ve used to write myself and being vague and loose, even to myself, isn’t unheard of. Its not usually the most interesting part of the character to write about or think about usually, its more interesting to consider how it interacts in the events of the novel on how others perceive him, and it might have been at the time being a generic dark-skinned being was enough for it to be the exotic “Other” to build the play around.
This is remarkably similar to the story of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado". There were few Japanese in England and then a delegation came to London and sparked a lot of popular interest in Japan.
I don't really know the race of Othello but since he is a fictional character not a real person, this dispute will likely never be resolved.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @syonredux
Which would make them all the more exotic and fascinating. Cf the lines from The Tempest:
And, as Winthrop Jordan notes in White Over Black, Anglos have long had a perverse interest in the physiognomy of Blacks:
Yeah, North, although I don’t know to what extent. That’s the word on the street.
I did not mean to imply that I thought they were content with their situation. There’s no way I could know that. But I had thought that when they were described as sex “slaves” that they actually were, you know, like slaves or something.
But it seems that they were actually sold by their families into indentured servitude, and when they paid off this debt they were free to go home. And in the meantime, they were not chained to their beds in bordellos, but got to go out and about and enjoy life. They also seem to have earned pretty good money.
Incidentally, I was struck by the cattiness of the remark in the report that I quoted, saying that the women loved to talk about themselves. My first reaction to that was, well, you are interrogating them, asking them to talk about themselves, and when they do, you get snarky!
The other thought that came to me is that these were people like those Linh Dinh interviews, those who no one ever notices or pays attention to, and when someone finally does, they just erupt with all their suppressed thoughts and opinions. I’d love to read the raw interviews the report draws on.
Oh, thanks for the drink, Buff! I’ll have me a sassyparilla, heavy on the sassy. (•̀ᴗ•́)
Can you describe the unique sub-practices of Japanese Koreans? Is there a large Chinese community in Japan as well?
Shakespeare himself might simply have been accommodating his play to his company’s presumably unsophisticated makeup capabilities: “We’re just going to rub Burbage’s face and hands with charcoal, soI shouldn’t get too ambitious about who he’s supposed to look like.”
The globalized central banks are involved in the greatest inter-generational ripoff scam of all time. That is why we find negative interest rates and zero interest rates and asset purchases and quantitative easing and money printing and all the rest. Debt created and sustained by the monetary extremism of central banks has been used to buy off the greedy dolts born before 1965. Mass immigration is only tolerated because of the greedy scum who are bought off by the machinations of the globalized central banks.
The greedy scum born before 1965 will deserve the curses of those who come after. They stood by and did nothing while their nations were turned into third world hellholes.Replies: @BB753, @Buffalo Joe, @Almost Missouri, @The True and Original David, @Olorin
The recent book A Generation of Sociopaths by Bruce Cannon Gibney bears out your point about Boomers as a group.
As I mentioned above, their own separate school system. Language. Names. Literal ghettos in some places. I think they may have dual passports too (don’t quote me). Don’t know about Chinese.
On the other hand, the larger masses of Koreans who were born in Japan, did not speak Korean, and were otherwise completely and ordinarily Japanese in all but ancestry were denied naturalization and were forced to report to the authorities periodically to be finger-printed. Suffice to say, this policy was a constant point of friction with both Koreas. There was also enormous social stigma attached to Korean ancestry among the general public - many people required ancestry information from their prospective marriage partners to prove they had no Korean blood (rather tragi-comedic given that their revered and worshiped imperial family - the highest of high in the Japanese social hierarchy - descended from Koreans as did a significant number of high nobility).
During this time, a minority of Koreans in Japan, but still a sizable fraction, became radicalized and supported, and was supported in turn, by the North Korean government. These were the people who ran their own schools, lived in a segregated manner, and otherwise became an occasionally troublesome minority group. Some repatriated to North Korea and then became disillusioned, but were unable to return.
South Korea also supported its co-ethnics, but only to a very limited extent. Nonetheless there were rival groups and organizations of Koreans in Japan. This eventually subsided as it became clear that North Korea was not exactly a workers' paradise and as the South Korean dictatorships transformed into a democratic and economic powerhouse. Eventually the Japanese, under constant pressure from both outside and within began to allow full naturalization and voluntary assimilation of Koreans in Japan. The official statistics in Japan state that the minority population of Koreans is today miniscule. In reality, the percentage is likely to be much, much higher.
Othello did have a “sooty bosom.”
A terrific name for a Japanese violin, harp, piano, and piccolo quartet that covers ’70s Philly soul hits several octaves higher than originally sung.
2880 Hz is somewhere between F and F#, three (four?) octaves above middle C.
Russell Thompkins, Jr.’s, low range IOW.
The globalized central banks are involved in the greatest inter-generational ripoff scam of all time. That is why we find negative interest rates and zero interest rates and asset purchases and quantitative easing and money printing and all the rest. Debt created and sustained by the monetary extremism of central banks has been used to buy off the greedy dolts born before 1965. Mass immigration is only tolerated because of the greedy scum who are bought off by the machinations of the globalized central banks.
The greedy scum born before 1965 will deserve the curses of those who come after. They stood by and did nothing while their nations were turned into third world hellholes.Replies: @BB753, @Buffalo Joe, @Almost Missouri, @The True and Original David, @Olorin
A lie.
No, it should be cross-referenced with how early modern Brits described non-Anglos in general.
However, in this case, I think most of the textual evidence tilts toward Othello being West African. The biggest piece of evidence against that conclusion, as the other commenter points out, is that we have no reason to think that early modern English playwrights or audiences had any reason at all to cast a black African in a role like Othello’s.
I think of it in terms of Shakespeare the master showman: Who is more entertaining: North Africans or West Africans?
But it seems that they were actually sold by their families into indentured servitude, and when they paid off this debt they were free to go home. And in the meantime, they were not chained to their beds in bordellos, but got to go out and about and enjoy life. They also seem to have earned pretty good money.
Incidentally, I was struck by the cattiness of the remark in the report that I quoted, saying that the women loved to talk about themselves. My first reaction to that was, well, you are interrogating them, asking them to talk about themselves, and when they do, you get snarky!
The other thought that came to me is that these were people like those Linh Dinh interviews, those who no one ever notices or pays attention to, and when someone finally does, they just erupt with all their suppressed thoughts and opinions. I'd love to read the raw interviews the report draws on.
Oh, thanks for the drink, Buff! I'll have me a sassyparilla, heavy on the sassy. (•̀ᴗ•́)Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Whoever, Now I owe you a refill. Thank you again. By the way, find or buy a copy of “Bullwhip Days”, it is a collection of interviews with former slaves, some comments by the slaves are, to say the least, startling. Not to say that they enjoyed being slaves, but that they missed the structure and security of living on a plantation. Are you one of the few female commenters here? The trigger word was sassy.
The modern text I read plays out of said The Tempest was some sort of commentary on colonialism in the age of discovery (Caliban and Ariel being the poor oppressed natives). I thought that was b.s. Cultural Marxist revisionism, but I overlooked that quote about the dead Indian. I always thought the play was more about how God (Prospero) is a playwright who has to cruelly manipulate the world to get desired results (the forgiveness of the people who betrayed him, hence their baptism in the sea). That quote gets me thinking though.
Not a great fan of Shakespeare but for what it’s worth, there were decorative items featuring very dark faced men and women and these were called “Blackamoors”. The skin coloration is usually black and the garb what I would call Arabian. Typically these decorations were wall hangings, a full face or face in profile, or a lamp base, etc. I garbage picked two wall hanging faces after an auction when no when bid on them. Two weeks later I sold them for $25 each at the flea market.
Which forms a more potent visual contrast, a White woman with an olive-hued North African? Or a White woman with a coal-black African? The answer seems pretty clear.
Aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Great_Kant%C5%8D_earthquake#Postquake_violence
Revenge. This time..........it's personal. Yeah, never seen that before.
Revenge has got to be about the laziest device employed by modern screen-writers. To say nothing of the fact that Star Trek, as originally envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, was not normally about heroes and villains, as Abrams has lazily made it. It wasn't supposed to just be a shoot-em-up space opera. Mind you, all the original Star Trek movies were pretty lousy, compared to the series. But the Abrams movies are really a big steaming pile. And that guy they got for Kirk plays him as a completely useless douchebag. I heard that in the last movie (never saw it) he blew the Enterprise up in the first ten minutes.Replies: @Stan Adams
The first movie, the only one over which Roddenberry had any real authority, was widely derided as tedious and ponderous.
Pauline Kael had a great line in her review about how the actors’ expressions never quite matched up with the special effects they were supposedly looking at. (There are whole reels of the film in which the crew members do little but stand agape at the psychedelic imagery unfolding on the viewscreen.)
Chris Pine, the faux-Kirk of the Abrams Drekverse, lent his (questionable) vocal talents to a Robot Chicken skit with Patrick Stewart:
There was a funny TNG Recut episode on YouTube showing the various TV crews’ reactions to the first Abrams movie. I can’t find it.
There’s definitely some truth to the colonial reading of The Tempest, it’s just that SJWs overdo it.
I think in decades and generations, and it is clear that the type of demographic transformation underway will cause civil wars. Others are starting to see it too. Enoch Powell saw it, why didn't they act? I think the globalized central banks bought off the natural instinct of some Americans, mostly those born before 1965.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @unpc downunder
The shift to open borders was also influenced by US foreign policy, and still is today.
A lot of US elites are still stuck in Cold War-era thinking. Lets in lots of non-whites and lower trade barriers to let the developing world know how amazing free market US capitalism is and stop them turning to communism (or in today’s world nationalism or theocratic populism)
The alt right isn’t really connecting the dots on trade, immigration and foreign policy – and needs to if it is to attract more funding.
I found Bullwhip Days available to borrow on Unz.org. Thanks for the recommendation!
Now, given that there are many actors of Asian background today, it is quite odd to use non-Asians to play Asians, if nothing else but for the sake of realism, but, really, it's not a big deal. They are just movies. It's not like there aren't imports from Asia if one were starved for movies with all-Asian casts.
People today just seem out to be outraged, just to be outraged. Sheesh.Replies: @Desiderius, @Johann Ricke
It’s a case of money talks – casting, like other production decisions, is done for monetary reasons. If an Asian actor can pack ’em in, they’ll cast that actor. Given that in Hollywood, every production is a leap in the dark, in the sense that the producers don’t know with a high degree of accuracy, before they make the investment, whether a given production will make money, why risk it on a lead without a good box office track record? And the reality is that – for whatever reason – Asian actors haven’t really been a box office draw. That may change, but producers have to deal with current audience tastes, not future ones.
I agree. I found this show unwatchable, due to the obvious closetedness of the male lead:
Great Moments in Interracial Casting
John Wayne:
Whoopi Goldberg:
Marlon Brando:
Katharine Hepburn:
.jpg)
For many decades, the Japanese government and society pursued a dual-track policy toward ethnic Koreans in Japan. On the one hand, successful athletes, performers, and business figures of Korean background were heavily strong-armed to assimilate – adopting Japanese names, only speaking Japanese in public, and otherwise obliterating any sense that they were ethnically Korean. Those who refused often suffered discrimination and loss of professional standing – sometimes even the ability to earn a living.
On the other hand, the larger masses of Koreans who were born in Japan, did not speak Korean, and were otherwise completely and ordinarily Japanese in all but ancestry were denied naturalization and were forced to report to the authorities periodically to be finger-printed. Suffice to say, this policy was a constant point of friction with both Koreas. There was also enormous social stigma attached to Korean ancestry among the general public – many people required ancestry information from their prospective marriage partners to prove they had no Korean blood (rather tragi-comedic given that their revered and worshiped imperial family – the highest of high in the Japanese social hierarchy – descended from Koreans as did a significant number of high nobility).
During this time, a minority of Koreans in Japan, but still a sizable fraction, became radicalized and supported, and was supported in turn, by the North Korean government. These were the people who ran their own schools, lived in a segregated manner, and otherwise became an occasionally troublesome minority group. Some repatriated to North Korea and then became disillusioned, but were unable to return.
South Korea also supported its co-ethnics, but only to a very limited extent. Nonetheless there were rival groups and organizations of Koreans in Japan. This eventually subsided as it became clear that North Korea was not exactly a workers’ paradise and as the South Korean dictatorships transformed into a democratic and economic powerhouse. Eventually the Japanese, under constant pressure from both outside and within began to allow full naturalization and voluntary assimilation of Koreans in Japan. The official statistics in Japan state that the minority population of Koreans is today miniscule. In reality, the percentage is likely to be much, much higher.
I appreciate the sentiment.
First, “a false rumor” of looting. Then they tell of Korean terrorists conducting assassinations recently. Reports of looting by Koreans were “fake news” just like current perception of muslim violence is “fake news”.
Whoever, Glad you found “Bullwhip Days”, a great read and I often page through it just to get a historical sense of slavery, from slaves. You will probably want to own a copy. Thank you for the reply.
I just saw an advertisement for a new show on ABC.
It’s a period piece based on Romeo and Juliet. But with lots of black people. It debuted on Memorial Day and bombed, apparently.
In addition to out of place diversity, I’ve also noticed that in more recently produced period pieces that they like to insert gay and lesbian scenes, interracial sex, oral and anal sex, BDSM, etc. They try to create the impression that all the poz they are currently promoting has always been commonplace.