Today, on TCM, The Year of Living Dangerously plays as a part of TCM’s annual 31 Days of Oscar. For that movie, Linda Hunt won Best Supporting Actress. It was a significant win. Why? Because Linda Hunt won for playing a man, to be specific, a Chinese-Australian man, none of which she is. The question is, why couldn’t they have just cast a Chinese-Australian man for the role instead of an American woman? And did Hunt win the Oscar for the insight her performance provided into the character or because she was a woman playing a man? Roger Ebert wrote (read his full review here), “”Billy Kwan is played, astonishingly, by a woman — Linda Hunt, a New York stage actress who enters the role so fully that it never occurs to us that she is not a man. This is what great acting is, a magical transformation of one person into another” So, does the fact that we are fooled into thinking it’s a man mean it’s a great performance (if we are, in fact, fooled into thinking it’s a man)? Does it matter that I have never, ever been able to see anything but a woman when I watch the movie? And when does an actor playing a role go too far, surpassing the delicate boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable?
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Back in Hollywood’s early days, these questions never arose. Most early one reelers making use of black characters used white actors in black face. In the infamous Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray the evil and conniving characters of Silas Lynch (George Siegmann) and Gus (Walter Long), because, one would assume, he could not find a self-respecting black actor who would take the part. One would be wrong. Griffith, nor any other white director of the time, had any intention of using a black actor for a major role, hence the blackface. While black characters remained marginal, at best, in movies throughout Hollywood’s classic era, and in subservient roles, it quickly became déclassé to have them portrayed by anyone but a black actor, which was, I suppose, a step up, given the racist trappings of the day. Even the notorious Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show, voiced by white actors, had to give way to black actors for the television debut.
But this had been covered before and the racism seems obvious. That is, it’s not just the fact that, in Amos ‘n’ Andy, white men were portraying black men but that white men were portraying offensive caricatures of black men. Linda Hunt, in The Year of Living Dangerously, was not portraying an offensive caricature of a small Chinese man. Neither were Katherine Hepburn or Walter Huston doing so in Dragonseed. Or Paul Muni and Luis Rainer in The Good Earth. Or Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of the August Moon. But they were playing distinctly against racial type when there were plenty of Chinese actors around that could have easily played the roles more convincingly, despite the talents of those listed above. The uneasy question is, would Anna May Wong have been better in the role of O-Lan than Luis Rainer just because she was Chinese? The answer depends on your take. One camp might argue that a performance is a performance and Rainer was a better actress than Wong and, thus, better for the part. The other might say that if Wong already fit the role ethnically and didn’t have to deal with the extra step of first trying to convince the audience she was Chinese, that that alone would make her performance better, whatever the difference in talents between the two. Put me in that second camp. I find it ridiculous to cast anyone against their ethnic type because they first have to convince me that they are the ethnic type they are playing. If they can’t, no matter how good an actor they are, the rest of their performance fails. Marlon Brando is very good in Viva Zapata as Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata but his performance fails for me miserably because, despite his great gifts as an actor, he never once convinces me he is Mexican. He’s Brando in makeup.
Up to now, we’ve stayed with ethnic portrayals of the sincere variety, like The Good Earth and Viva Zapata. Other performances, like Mickey Rooney’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, are roles that are offensive as written. In other words, like Amos ‘n’ Andy on television still being offensive, even with black actors, it wouldn’t matter who was playing the role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Whether a Japanese actor or Mickey Rooney, the role’s offensive, period. It was these offensive as written roles, from Stepin’ Fetchit to Mr. Yunioshi, that were the first to go while the sincere portrayals lived on, even white playing black.
Othello is perhaps the all-time example of an “acceptable” blackface role, although now I can’t imagine a white actor doing it. If a black actor portrays MacBeth, he portrays MacBeth as a black man, not in whiteface as a white man. If you want MacBeth to be white, just hire a white actor. In Othello, however, white actors are cast and put in blackface, quite a different thing altogether. Let’s go back to the MacBeth example.
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MacBeth is a Scottish general, then Thane, then King but can be portrayed however the director sees fit. Shakespeare’s works have often been broadly interpreted and the fact that Shakespeare uses historical figures matters not when adapting Shakespeare because, historical or not, the stories are fictitious accounts. So it’s okay to switch the race of MacBeth or any other character. What would seem odd would be to decide to make MacBeth black and then hire a white actor in blackface for the part. Still, if you want to make MacBeth black, best to make the whole cast black, as Orson Welles did in the 1930′s. It seems to confuse or bother people more when a fictitious character’s race is changed while another’s is not. Had Welles cast a black man in the role of MacBeth while casting a white woman as Lady MacBeth and casting actors with a variety of ethnicities in the other roles, I assume his venture would not have proved so successful. Even today, switching the race of a fictional character causes outbursts ranging from dismay to anger (particularly, for whatever reason, in comic book adaptations).
And yet, this all seems too elementary. What about one nationality or gender or sexual orientation portraying another. Should this matter? Should an American, like Meryl Streep, play an Australian? Should British actress Vivien Leigh play a Southern Belle? Should actors play only their own nationality? How about gender orientation? Should a gay actor play a straight character? Should a straight character play a gay character? Presumably, both gay and bisexual actors have won Oscars for playing straight characters. We know Charles Laughton was, according to his own wife, Elsa Lanchester, bisexual and surely there are others. We know straight actors like William Hurt and Tom Hanks have won for playing gay characters. Should gay actors have been cast? Should only a straight actor play Henry VIII?
The subject is upon us once again in full force thanks to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Jared Leto for Dallas Buyer’s Club. Leto plays a transgendered woman and the question is, given that there are transgendered actresses available, why not actually cast one instead of Leto? It’s a good question and, like my examples above (from The Good Earth to Viva Zapata), I’m inclined to think it would make for a better performance. But isn’t acting about playing what you’re not? Let’s look at the second line of that Ebert quote again, “This is what great acting is, a magical transformation of one person into another.” Every word of that is true. So why, when applied to race, ethnicity or gender orientation, does it feel so wrong? Maybe because it feels like we’re not actually judging the performance on its merits at all. Are we crediting Leto, or Hunt, with a great performance that isn’t really there because they’re playing something they’re not? If a transgendered actress had played the same role as Leto, would the performance have gone unnoticed because the part wasn’t as extraordinary as previously thought, it was merely given more weight by the stunt or gimmick of having Leto play something he’s clearly not? As for Linda Hunt, to be brutally honest, I find her an excellent actress but I find nothing remarkable about her very good performance in The Year of Living Dangerously. If the exact same performance had been given by a Chinese male in the role, I think it would have gone largely unrecognized. I believe Hunt won the Oscar because she was a woman playing a man, not because her performance as the character was all that compelling.
Which leaves me where I started. Whether or not she was good or great, should she have been cast in the first place? I don’t have the answer but I can’t stop myself from asking the question.