What if Michelle Pfeiffer had played Patience in Catwoman, would that have made the movie better?
Hell no, it wasn't a black woman that ruined Catwoman... it was the complete disregaud of the fact Selina Kyle = Catwoman. Ignoring the comics and everything previously cat woman (including both the black Eartha Kitt and
white Julie Newmar). Kitt and Newmar were catwoman -- I don't know who Halle was playing.
As for a black Dorthy in a major motion picture, IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE PEOPLE. Have we all forgotten there was a black Dorthy before, with a black wiz, a black everybody else in OZ. It was called THE WIZ.
Race would matter in a film specifically about American Slavery or in a film about a war specifically between two contries with distinct "race groups". So no, a white man could not play a slave in a movie like Roots, the characters race matters in a movie where race-related tensions are a theme. I mean we all know the actress playing the wicked witch of the west is white, but seeing as her skin is painted GREEN if a black actress played her in say a film version of "Wicked" what would it matter?
Arguably there are movies where a "black" version was created intentionally. There's a version of Disney's Polly (Pollyanna) with a white actress and another with a black acress (titled simply "Polly"). There's the original cinematic "Wizard of Oz" and the revamped "Wiz" (Black cast). While "The Wiz" and "Polly" can honestly be called "black" versions of movies with previously white cast, I think the "muppet wizard of OZ" is a case of color-blind casting with an available pop star (like that god awful version of Cinderella with Brandy). Was Brandy cast as Cinderella because she was Black, no it's because she was a name that could bring in an audience. Same here. Being a Pop Star proably had a lot more to do with Ashanti getting the role than her being black.
I have no doubt the orignal author, without even thoughts of race, imagined a white Dorthy but seeing as he didn't have a Pig as his witch of the (north, south, east, west) and his Toto was a dog not a Prawn? We can't exactly hold the Muppet Wizard of Oz to even holding up to the standards of what species the characters were. In the original book Dorthy was a human girl, in the movie she was a human girl. That's more than you can say about a lot of other characters in the Muppet Oz.
Rhonda Weasley
http://www.myspace.com/silentbard
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