Now that the HE wokerati have properly condemned Laurence Olivier, Pauline Kael and Richard Dreyfuss to an eternity of excruciating pain for directing, acting in or speaking positively about Oliver’s Othello, it’s time to address Paul Newman‘s performance in Martin Ritt‘s The Outrage (’64).
The trailer speaks for…makes that chokes on itself. Newman’s Mexican character, Juan Carrasco (whose last name should have been changed to Tabasco), is nothing short of breathtaking — a greasy-haired, makeup-covered, gravely-voiced rapist from the ninth circle of Anglo casting hell.
The film, based on Akira Kurosawa‘s Rashomon (’50), was a stinker, but that doesn’t make Newman’s performance any less criminal. HE is proposing that Newman be permanently cancelled in absentia…his reputation needs to be tarnished from here to eternity. For his lack of sensitivity and all the pain that he’s caused, Newman needs to be forgotten entirely, I mean…his name should be wiped clean from the pages of film history. Somebody needs to immediately inform Ethan Hawke, and if he squawks, cancel him too.
Ritt needs to be cancelled also; ditto any critics who gave a good review to The Outrage. Lash and then hang ’em all.
HE nominates Jeremy Fassler and Eric M. Byrne to co-chair the board of inquiry into all major white guy casting crimes of the last 85 to 90 years.
It goes without saying that Orson Welles‘ Othello (also black-faced in his 1951 film version) needs extreme condemnation. Ditto Marlon Brando for playing Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata (’52) and Sakini, an Okinawan translator, in Teahouse of the August Moon (’56). Ditto Sean Connery for playing a Moroccan bandit-warrior in The Wind and the Lion (’75) and a Saudi Arabian character, Khalil Abdul Muhsen, in Richard Sarafian‘s The Next Man (’76). Ditto Alec Guinness for his dark-skinned ethnic performances in Lawrence of Arabia and A Passage to India. Ditto Fisher Stevens for playing an Indian engineer, Ben Jabituya, in Short Circuit (’86). Ditto white-assed Willem Dafoe for playing the Hebrew-born Jesus in Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (’88). Ditto Al Pacino for playing a Puerto Rican in Carlito’s Way. Ditto Angelina Jolie for playing an Afro-Cuban woman in A Mighty Heart (’07). Ditto Johnny Depp for playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger (’13). The list goes on and on.