SwingTime Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There was a bit of a shocker included in the Oscar nominations this year -- Robert Downey Jr. receiving a nod for his part in Tropic Thunder. It's a double whammy -- one of those rare nominations in the comedy category (a farce no less!), and a role that's almost 100% blackface. Unsurprisingly, the role created unrest, as well as a lot of discussion revolving around Hollywood's treatment of race on and off the screen.

Like it or not, race jumping is pretty much intrinsically linked to Hollywood -- all the way back to the first silent films. Over the years, it's morphed from minstrels to mainstream icons, critical darlings, and races of all sorts. Katharine Hepburn went Chinese for Dragon Seed. Charlton Heston went a rather ridiculous brownface for Touch of Evil. These days, that's not quite so kosher, but instances do pop up, both on the big screen (keep reading) and small screen (Saturday Night Live, for one).

But to try and delve into all race portrayals for a list of seven is just silly, so I'm focusing on blackface. And since the Academy Awards are almost upon us, this is blackface at the Oscars (save for one relevant film in recent history that should be mentioned, but didn't get Academy love). Read on, and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments.

Note: Blackface is used in the broader sense, and not just to define minstrel performances.

When new people float into my life, with the intention of being my friend or (god forbid) my boyfriend, there are certain paces I tend to put them through. There are pre-requistes; there are cultural requirements. At some point, I sit all new people down and I make sure they watch one of the nine films made at RKO during the 1930s starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

These are films that you can either sit through or you can't. You either loathe, or appreciate and even have a soft spot for the hokey humor; these dance numbers are either the sexiest things you've ever seen, or ... they're just not. But ultimately, it's an ideology thing. Throughout their ten films together, Fred and Ginger essentially tell the same utopian love story, one that repeatedly flounts the institution of marriage, whilst suggesting that the implicit sexual content of dance is a more potent form of infidelity than explicit sexual activity.

You're not going to go wrong with any of the films in the just-released Astaire & Rogers Collection (well, it should be said that The Barkleys of Broadway, Fred and Ginger's reunion after ten years apart, is clearly lacking when seen alongside the earlier works), and the special features – from scholarly commentaries to animated shorts – are ample and appreciated. But there's one masterpiece in this collection: everything that's valuable about the partnership between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers never seems more clear than in George Stevens' Swing Time.