Black/Brown Facing

With the current Canadian PM now in trouble after 20 year old pictures emerged of him ‘brown faced’ I wonder if there ought to be a ‘time limit’ for ‘faux pas’ or should something that you did decades ago stain your character for life?

I wonder in that case, has the BBC wiped the tapes of The B & W Minstrel Show ?
What was once considered the norm, is now seen as un-pc…rightly so in many cases, no doubt.

I think that these things should be judged by the standards of their time - not the standards of today.

That said blackface was not very PC, even in 2001.

I saw this today… and sighed a sigh… :roll_eyes::thinking:

Long ago, a friend would host a Fancy Dress party, every year, to celebrate his birthday. It was innocent fun.

Some of the costumes were deliberately “outrageously funny” like the Pantomime Dame… and others were carefully put together to represent someone from the past/present/future… :thinking:

OH once went as a “belly dancer” - he wore a long dark wig and makeup, in order to look less " pale-faced " and more like a dusky, exotic-beauty “from another land”. (he did look good :wink:)

How would he be judged today, I wonder ??

Apparently he was 29 so it was for me irresponsable and thoughtless. but he’s apologised so the matter is closed imo.

Would people be happy for him to be their PM?

anyone but the cretin we currently have… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Well he has been for four years…

And is now campaigning for re-election.

I don’t think his past will change much, if the electorate are happy with his performance.

Interesting to hear the comments of folk on the streets…

As one lady said… “he was probably just being Aladdin”

Even the lady who said she was “very disappointed” ( in him black-facing) ended up … “I am also asking myself… who is trying to make political mileage out of this… mmm…” :thinking:

It’s amazing how this type of thing always comes to light at election time…

In 1970 I had two ‘acting’ parts: one as a Chinese laundry-man (called Hoo Sit) in the Christmas pantomime ‘Aladdin’ staged at the Little Theatre, Mufulira, Zambia.

The other was a non-speaking part as a deaf-mute piano-tuner in the 1954 Julian Slade/Dorothy Reynolds musical ‘Salad Days’, which ran for 2,283 performances in London’s West End, to full houses.

By contemporary standards I should be cursed and reviled for each, if not tarred and feathered or worse. But I gave of my naive Thespian best to both performances, and je ne regrette rien.

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He’s coming up for election so this is nothing but an attempt to make political mileage over a harmless faux-pas. It may backfire big time because even the stupidist voter can see the reason for all the publicity and be suitably afronted at the idea that their opinions are being so obviously manipulated. If I remember correctly, wasn’t Cameron accused of sticking his dick in a pigs head when in Uni ? Noone cared. End of story.

I’ve just looked up Disney’s Aladdin and he looks a bit brown.
Picture books of my childhood showed Aladdin as a bit brown.
In my mind’s eye Aladdin is a bit brown because of where the story was originally told.
Justin Trudeau dressed as Aladdin and tried to be authentic. A pasty faced Aladdin doesn’t work.

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Interesting to see all the virtue- signalling about black- or brown-face from people who insist drag be respected as an art form.

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