Mrs. Pearl is Afro-Cuban and Dutch, raised in France.

@3: Mmm-kay. I was trying to get the important parts of that across, but maybe I should have gone with Cuban-French?

I will point out—and I recognize this is very abstract and I'm now contradicting myself—that if there's any persistent historical stereotype of black women, it's that they make good substitute mothers.

/fake outrage at acting (had to get in on that action)

i'm not sure, again, why these responses are so deranged, or why there is such an effort to paint annie's post as vitriolic or over the top when it's clearly very measured.

the doesn't post draw any conclusions about blackface or racism or even how casting should work. she poses a question about how a certain mode of achieving "character" has evolved in this medium and culture over time.

her suggestions about an answer are tentative and very limited. mostly, annie encourages viewers of art to consider the question. instead of consideration it's back to this weird, reflexive denial of anything ever being amiss.

nothing to consider here, everything is fine, how dare you ask. it's a puzzlingly strident intellectual conservativism among people who are otherwise inclined to see themselves as something else.

p.s. if you think that jolie was cast only because she is a "friend", you are very short sighted. i'm sure marianne pearl has other friends; even if friendship is the reason, she certainly chose the friend who would get her movie seen. it's a reasonable choice. [though i personally think pearl is an attention seeker par excellance, it's still a reasonable choice.]

it's also a choice that had to be made by more people than marianne pearl. if she said that i was her friend and she wanted me to play the part, i don't think she would have gotten her wish, for a long, long list of reasons (like i look funny and can't act). so she might have been pearl's choice, but the decision was made by far more people than her, producers, directors, and movie-goers (and the people who interpret movie goers' wants.)

But yes, it was a measured post about blackface and how it has changed as means of deploying and reading character in american-ish film.

Where do you see any kind of call to arms? Suggested boycotting? Any screed against Jolie? Did she insist it was racist and couldn't be read any other way? No to all of those.

But thank you for doing your part to prove the point that most responses attempt to shut down discussion and as in your case by amplifying contentions that do no exist, usually in an unintelligent way.

has anyone read "the argument culture"? worth trying, it's been 10 years since i read it, but it's worth it.

Posts @14 and @16 being particular examples of this.