Rodney Franklin Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil Robert John Connor Tiffany Jones David Koté Robin Griffieth Norwood Hobbs Tuesday Teachable Moment on Racism in Art Dear Confused Caucasian: Yes, Ms. Confused, Annie is black because of something called creative license. In this instance, the studio cast Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and Academy Award nominee Quevanzhane Wallis because they are two of the top performers in their craft and as for Foxx, he remains one of the biggest box office draws around. But to peer even deeper Ms. Confused, both Annie and Daddy Warbucks are fictional characters; Hollywood has always taken creative license and cast caucasians in biopics and stories about real life non-caucasians. To clear up your bamboozlement Ms. Confused, you do know that the real Jesus Christ, the one born in Judea over two millenia ago, did not look anything like Willem Defoe or Jim Caveziel, dont you? Similarly, the real Moses did not look anything like Charlton Heston or Christian Bale and Egyptian King Ramses looked nothing like Yul Brynner or Joel Edgerton. If you paid any attention in school you might know that Queen Cleopatra did not look like Liz Taylor or Angelina Jolie---but I doubt that you were taught that Cleopatras Greek blood did not mitigate her Afro-Semitic blood no more than Barack Obamas caucasian blood mitigates his African blood. But yet and still Ms. Confused, after over a century of filmmaking, such has not stopped Hollywood studio execs from casting caucasians in these roles because hey, their ultimate goal is to generate profits, not provide a lesson in historical accuracy. But even more crucially, since many of your ilk who have tweeted similar sentiments love to stand by the Im not racist demurrer, consider this----get over it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people of color appearing in fictional or non-fictional roles traditionally claimed by whites. In theatres across America in non-white communities, since the end of slavery, black thespians and dancers performed as leading figures in plays from European writers ranging from Aristophanes and Homer in antiquity, all the way through William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe to more recent writers like Eugene Oneill and George Bernard Shaw. Indeed, the first time I heard The sun will come out tomorrow was when my own talented sister Traci Hobbs was singing it around our house when we were kids in Maryland in the run up to her school play performance of Annie. A few weeks ago, I was proud to watch my own budding ballerina daughter appear as one of a handful of black performers in The Nutcracker with the World Ballet. But to my surprise and pleasure, Lil Hobbs served as the black attendant to, guess what, a black prima performing as THE Sugar Plum fairy. You see Ms. Confused, where is it written that my child or others cannot aspire to become THE Sugar Plum fairy simply because Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky, composer of The Nutcracker, was white? That is as asinine as saying that white actors cannot play the Three Musketeers or the Count of Monte Cristo because Alexandre Dumas, the famed writer of these two classics, was black. So yes, Annie is black---but she can be Latino, Asian or any other color, too, because of creative license in this age that, what do the optimists keep calling it, this post racial era, where a child or actor can be anything or anyone that they are given license to become. Respectfully straightening out all confusion, Ol Hobbs
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 23:54:15 +0000
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