Word Of The Year: Racism

I guess the word of the year is ''Racism''. It's spit out left and right by - probably - well-meaning folks, whose good intentions are only matched by their ability to get offended by the most minute details.

Today's scandal comes courtesy of Disney's blockbuster The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp as Tonto, with Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger) almost looking like a sidekick in the previews. Seems people are mad about Depp's ''redface'', others about his Pirates Of The Caribbean over-acting schtick taking over his career, while some gather from looking at production stills that having his character be in tune with the mystical takes away any and all of the existing peoples' achievements. Although Comanche Chairman (an elected official) Wallace Coffey disagrees with the latter point:

“I think it was a very realistic portrayal of a Native American. It’s got drama and it’s got a lot of comedy; it fits right in with Comanche culture because we are well known as a humorous people,” he says. “In some instances [at screenings], it was only the Comanches that laughed, because we could relate to it.” Coffey adds that he was pleased by the spiritual elements of the Tonto character, as an accurate enough nod to the relationship between a Native American of that time period and the environment in which he lived.

But since when have White people considered Indians' opinions?

Where do I stand?

Absolutely nowhere on this side of the issue.

As a film graduate, I've admired Depp's 1990s output, preferred his dramatic roles (Blow, Public Enemies, Nick Of Time, Sleepy Hollow, From Hell, Ed Wood) to the comedic (the Pirates franchise, Edward Scissorhands), and feel he may have been at his best playing Hunter S. Thompson in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas and The Rum Diaries. But this film looks like a complete piece of shit from start to finish, perhaps a tad higher on the quality scale than the 1999 Will Smith vehicle Wild Wild West, but probably not by much. I won't see it until I accidentally  stumble upon it, or if I'm dragged to it by someone whose company I enjoy enough to risk wasting 2 hours of my life smelling.

And I want to reserve judgement until I see it, because I'm not an idiot or an asshole.

I also want to give Depp - who claims to have ''Cherokee or Creek'' ancestry - the benefit of the doubt because he has, in the past - most notably in Dead Man - played in films in which the Aboriginals played important, smart roles.

I also want to point out that if they had used a Native American to play the part, Disney probably would never have funded it, Gore Verbinski wouldn't have directed it, and it just wouldn't be a blockbuster if it had been made at all. And it's a slippery slope. I get that ''blackface in America'' is a no-no for obvious reasons, and that similar situations will likely make many uncomfortable; Depp, in this case, never takes off the war paint he's sporting, probably because he doesn't want to have to be justifying anything else. But if we always have to pick people based on their nationality, then Americans shouldn't play Brits (as Madonna seemed to do for a decade even in her public life), Irish (see Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own), Rohms (Pitt in Snatch), Africans (Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamonds), and Canadians shouldn't play Americans (Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Jay Baruschel). And it could be high time Germans stop playing Russians (I'm looking at you, Jürgen Prochnow).

While we're at it, we should be writing better parts for Black actors (more Spike Lee/Hughes Brothers, less Tyler Perry/first-to-die-in-scary-film parts), Asians (less kung-fu or nerdy types, more regular people) and Arabic (they're not all terrorists or the twist at the end where they end up not being the terrorist - they can also play normal people). As a matter of  fact, so many Arabs are refusing to take on terrorist roles that Hollywood has resorted to using actors of Mexican heritage to play those parts... is that ''brownface''?

Saturday Night Live had two instances fairly recently... one was Fred Armisen playing Barrack Obama - he's already of an ambiguous tone that he can play any race and is also great at stereotyping accents, for better or worse - and could easily pass as mulatto, so I guess they just tanned his face with some make-up; then there was Bill Hader, playing Al Pacino playing Conrad Murray on trial, even going as far as asking the sitting judge if ''it's ok'' (he nods 'yes'). I never thought I'd see the day, but there it was. Twice.

And on the other hand, you have comedians whose whole fucking routine is playing the race card - I don't mean Chris Rock talking about the Black experience, but more the likes of Russell Peters and Sugar Sammy who, because they are of Indian (you know, from India) descent, they think they're allowed to bash/make fun of/poorly imitate every race on the planet, as long as they kind of make fun of themselves as well on the way. And Sugar Sammy adds the double-whammy of living in Québec, so he can call French-speaking Quebecers racists for trying to protect their culture, because as an Indian/English minority in a French province of 7 million people, he doesn't see the need to protect it from its immediate neighbours - the 30-million-strong English Canadians and 350-million-strong Americans - and overlords, the British.

But that's a whole other debate.

So... uh... Johnny Depp as Tonto. How a bad idea from the start can only get worse...

Tyler Bozak's Blackface

The internets are going nuts about the Toronto Maple Leafs' Tyler Bozak's Halloween costume, which is supposed to be Michael Jackson:

They cry ''racism'' about the blackface. I won't get into - for the hundredth time - how, in Canada, we don't share that history. Instead, I'll just point out that for a rich hockey player, the suit sucks, and he looks a lot less like Wacko Jacko than he does his cousin, Rockwell:

How This Isn't Racism - A Short History Lesson

Jesus fucking Christ. Another case of mistaken-history/meaning gone awry.

Sure, historically, the American minstrel shows have pretty much tarnished 'blackface' forever by depicting African-Americans as lazy, stupid, ignorant and party-heavy, from the 1830s until the 1910s in public performances, pehaps until the 1950s in some informal, unprofessional gatherings (high schools, local Southern theaters).

But, first and foremost, actual minstrels were bards who just sang songs in medieval Europe. From the fifth century (year 400) on. Halfway between Shakespeare and buskers.

More importantly, though, Canada has never dealt with the U.S.-type of racism, segregation and, by the board, U.S.-type minstrel shows. Québec even less.

For roughly 300 years, French and English people invaded North America and had disputes over territories. Both white peoples. In 1763, France decided to let their North American colonies rot and fend for themselves, perhaps even die and by 1867 Canada was born, consisting of four provinces, including the pretty much exclusively French (and Aboriginals) Québec.

From the very beginning but even more so from 1867 onwards, Québec politics have involved the discussion of whether it should secede from Canada, largely for language and culture issues, but perhaps more importantly from being a dominion of the United Kingdom - an independence the United States declared in 1776 (which the U.K. accepted in 1883). To this day, Canada still isn't sovereign, as can be attested by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent decision to render the military back to its ''Royal'' affiliations and denominations.

For more than a century, Québec politicians - with decades-long help from the Catholic Church - have been more involved with trying to keep their culture alive than anything else, so any issue with ''foreigners'' has never been about a colour conflict but more about a language one; black people in Québec were never seen as a threat if they could speak French: they were allies. It is for that reason that Québec immigration, for years, targeted Haitians, Russians, Arabs, Western Europeans: they spoke a variant of French as a first or second language and could be integrated into the society almost immediately, making more of ''us'' against less of ''them''.

Over time, even anglophone Quebecers' views on progressive subjects such as Human Rights (here perceived more as Womens' and Gays' rights than separated by skin colour), war, social security and welfare, have come to closely resemble that of their francophone brethren/neighbours.

So when Anthony Morgan-types - 25-year olds who are more aware of U.S. culture than their place of residence's - take their Blackberries out to take a tribute to a great champion (in this case Usain Bolt, but it also happened last year for new hockey hero P.K. Subban, arguably the most-liked player on the Montréal Canadiens) and twist it to make it look like a whole school is guilty of mass racism, I can't help but elevate my voice in anger. And sadness.

Because where do you draw the line? Sporting the Jamaican sprint team's colours is ok, a wig would be alright, but no face paint? But you can paint your face in an Indian head and go see the Atlanta Braves (or Cleveland Indians, or Chicago Blackhawks, or Washington Redskins for that matter) because those are the team's colours? It's still face paint, usually involves the 'redding' of the skin, harks back to the quasi-extinction of an entire race of people by colonialists? Why is one considered ''cheering for'' but the other one is ''making fun of'', in this fucking day and age, more than 100 years after the fact, A FACT THAT DOESN'T EVEN GO ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE TRADITION OF SHOWS IT ''REPRESENTS'' in the collective minds of a few?

They were disguised as Bolt; when you wear a Jason or a Freddy mask for Halloween, you don't disrespect the character, people likely wouldn't recognize it if you didn't. Same goes for this JOYOUS fucking occasion of tribute and fun.

Anthony Morgan: learn your fucking history. Jesus was black, so was Cleopatra. And never were any races collectively abused in this province be it by the system, the laws, or major entertainment networks.

And Brandon Sun: you call yourself a newspaper? Shame on you for printing the story in a way that makes a whole school - the most respected of its kind in Canada - and, by affiliation, the 7 million people of the province of which these are the future elite, look like a KKK rally of retards. Then you wonder why we want out of your country. That belongs to another country's queen.