I’ve been reading about the new movie Wanted with Morgan Freeman, Common, and Angelina Jolie, but I confess I had no idea what it was about. I figured I would wait for the trailer. To my immense surprise, I find out that the movie is based on a comic book series by a guy named Mark Millar, and Angelina Jolie will be playing a Catwoman-esque character named Fox.
This was all well and good until some comic book-obsessed bloggers realized out that Fox was a black woman in the original comics. Now she’s Angelina Jolie. Well, she famously that there was a shortage of roles for people of color, but said that her portrayal of Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart was not a good example of the problem. And now? I’m fully aware that this sort of thing is often done in film adaptations of comic books. But Angie again? I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to notice a pattern here.
[AfroGeek via Racialicious]
Weird. Popular film critic Anderson Jones suffered a major heart attack right before a promotional screening of A Mighty Heart in LA. The former E! critic, who has been struggling with health issues recently, was just 38.
I really don’t care what Mariane Pearl wanted. Okay, that sounded like a harsh thing to say about a victim of tragedy. Let me back track a bit. Of course I care about the plight of Mariane Pearl — the horrible death of her journalist husband, Daniel, at the hands of Islamic militants — and I admire the courage it took to write her book, A Mighty Heart, which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie turned into a movie that premiered yesterday at Cannes. But the caring? It only goes so far.
Everyone wants to use the fact that Mariane Pearl, a biracial woman, suggested that Angelina Jolie play her in the movie as an excuse for one of our biggest white movie stars to parade around in glorified black face and a kinky wig in a major motion picture. In the year 2007! It’s an excuse that doesn’t fly with me. So, I repeat. I don’t care what Mariane Pearl wanted — there is no way I will ever, ever, ever go see a movie in which a woman who looks like this:
plays a woman who looks like this:
.
In terms of racial fairness, I expect little from Hollywood. Still, when talented black and biracial actresses are forced to play the wife, the sexual vixen, or the ghetto buffoon because there are no real roles written for them, it kills me that a woman who counts herself as worldly as Angelina Jolie does has the gall to take a meaty part out from under them. Just because a trip to the tanning salon and a bad wig allowed Jolie to slightly resemble the woman she was playing, it’s not right. This is an issue that goes way beyond the physical, but, in Hollywood, narcissism trumps common sense and decency at every turn.
If she ever decides to be an actress when she grows up, little Zahara Jolie-Pitt better watch her back. Her mom might steal all her parts.
