To Be Young, Gifted, and... Brown; or, Blackening Zoe

 (From the 'Y'all Should Be 'Shamed' Dept.)

It has been brought back to my attention, rather against my will (damn you, Facebook), that Zoe Saldana has been tapped to play Nina Simone in a forthcoming biopic. It had to be brought back to my attention because I had successfully put it out of my mind. On learning of this some time ago, I had instantly decided that it was a casting disaster of Nick Nolte-as-Thomas-Jefferson proportions. It suggested to me that the film, like most films, was more about getting cash than about inventively exploring the world of meanings that it meant to invade.

What brought the matter back to my attention, and proved my initial response right, was a social media firestorm over pictures like this:

That's not a production still from a Star Wars set, where the intergalactically exotic extras are waiting to play lively at the Cantina. That's Zoe Saldana, late of 'Star Trek' and 'Colombiana' and various other excuses to watch her run around in skimpy outfits. More to the point, that's Zoe Saldana with her skin artificially darkened and her features artificially altered so that she looks more like Nina Simone. I hardly know where to begin, except to say that this is surely the latest nail in the coffin of vulgar postracialism.

Maybe this is the place to begin: One might think that Saldana 'blacking up' doesn't matter, that we change the way our actors look all the time. It's part of the illusion of film. We make young people look old, we make old people look young, we make Jim Carrey look like the Grinch, we turn normal sized people into Hobbits. And we make light people look dark. Now that we're post-racial, this shouldn't be a big deal. And we might be even more accepting of this if it pushes the creative enterprise in the direction of greater realism. After all: Here's Ms. Simone:

And here's Ms. Saldana:

Surely we have to do something to make one of these things more like the other. So (this first thought continues), what's wrong with altering Ms. Saldana's appearance to make her more closely resemble Ms. Simone? If Robert DeNiro can gain a zillion pounds for 'Raging Bull,' then how is this any different?

Here's how: Grinches and Hobbits are not - in the real world, anyway - racial populations. And Jake LaMotta didn't belong to a racial population that was specifically, explicitly, and aggressively targeted for the way its members looked. (Yes, Italian identity has a complicated racial history. But it was a history as a white race, even if only, for a time, as a probationary white race.) To be black in places like the US has, for a very long time, involved having one's life chances indexed to the way one looks in  quite particular and far-reaching ways. It has involved navigating a world that has for centuries endorsed and accepted the thought that, as Joe Lowry often puts it, white is right and black should get back - a world, I should add, that remains shaped by that thought, even if in the indirect (but still striking) ways that we need the voluminous research on implicit bias to reveal to us.

That is: black bodies are still a problem in US/western/north Atlantic cultures. They are not the only problem bodies - ask anyone who looks South Asian, or Arab, or Latino. But they are still a problem. The election of Barack Obama makes people forget this, but should actually prove the point. Does anyone think he would have won the presidency if he looked like Alan Keyes? And does anyone think the strange pockets of resistance to Mrs. Obama are unrelated to the cognitive dissonance that comes with thinking of someone who looks like that as our First Lady? (If you do think that, then congratulations: you've won an autographed copy of Rep. Sensenbrenner's cover of 'Baby Got Back.')

But that's all pretty abstract. Let me operationalize it.

The mainstream film industry routinely whitens black people when it inserts them into its narratives. Sometimes it whitens individuals, by having white actors play actual black people (think of Angelina Jolie in "A Mighty Heart"), or by buffing dark-skinned black people to a high shine by portraying them with lighter-complected actors (like with Saldana). But most of the time it whitens the whole race by skewing its casting decisions toward light-skinned or visibly mixed actors. This dynamic is especially pertinent to the paths that women take through the film industry. (Quick, name five reliably bankable young or youngish black actresses. In that crowd of Paula Pattons and Taraji Hensons and Thandi Newtons, how many dark-skinned women did you get? Apart from Viola Davis?)

There are perfectly straightforward movie-industry reasons for this. Making a film "too black' - even today, as hiphop culture bestrides the earth - threatens its marketability across populations, which is to say that the mythical middle American may be less likely to fork over half the rent for tickets. And among the ways a film can be too black is by casting people who look too black in it. (There are other ways, like not casting enough white people in it. Even if it's an historical film that's not really about white people. Like the Haitian Revolution film that Danny Glover kept taking to potential producers only to have them keep asking where the white heroes were. That one still gets me.)

There's more: Saldana is a big star, and attaching a big star to a project makes it more likely to get made, and more likely to make money after it's made. And most movies are about making money.

I get all that. I don't think the decision to cast Saldana is irrational. It's just unfortunate, and troubling. Let me count the ways.

1. Ok, it might be a little irrational, if only in the way that the complex enterprises we call films are often irrational. Different people want different things in these enterprises and sometimes the wants conflict. Like this (or so I imagine, not knowing the pre-history of this production): the producers want famed hottie Zoe Saldana attached to their project. So they get her, confident she'll put fannies in the seats. Ms. Saldana wants to prove her cred as an actor, so she goes for a DeNiro-style transformation, which seems to give attractive women like Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman a leg - or in Kidman's case, a nose - up in the award races. But here's the irrational part: part of the point of casting Zoe Saldana is that she looks like Zoe Saldana, her many other talents notwithstanding (I actually think she's an ok actor). Why cast her and then have her look like someone else? (Unless you're counting on the ensuing controversy to drive sales, a thought that's too cynical even for me.)

2. Nina Simone is worth making a film about in part because of her politics (which, apparently, will play little role in this film, sadly). And her politics was connected to a politics of the black body - of its public uses and meanings. She knew better than anyone about the problematization of black bodies, and about the attendant need to celebrate them in ways that contested the ambient anti-black racism of mainstream culture and commonsense bodily aesthetics. That's why her career took her from this:

To this:

The fact that the filmmakers felt the need to do something to Ms. Saldana, to make her look something like Ms. Simone, suggests that they are at least minimally sensitive to this dimension of their subject. It is exceedingly odd, and unfortunate, that they couldn't translate this sensitivity into more creative casting.

3. The casting and darkening of Ms. Saldana is unfortunate not just because it represents a missed opportunity, but because it reinforces an unethical form of anti-black restraint of trade. The film industry capitulates to the problematization of black bodies in its casting decisions, preferring whites to blacks where it can, and light-skinned blacks to darker-skinned ones where it can. This artificially limits opportunities for black actors in a film industry that (again, in part for market reasons) is already less than hospitable to black folks. Nia Long has spoken eloquently about her realization early on in her career that she could not ever have the career arc or command the salaries of people like Julia Roberts. Spike Lee - Spike freaking Lee, for goodness' sake - has to troll festivals in search of distributors for his work (unsuccessfully, as often as not). In a business climate like that, imposing complexional limitations on actors adds insult to injury. Or injury to injury.

4. Worse than this racist restraint of the actor's trade is the reinforcement of an anti-black or colorist bodily aesthetic. Casting a light-skinned woman as Nina Simone continues a long tradition of inviting the world to think (in a complicated sense of 'think' that encompasses the psychology literature on implicit bias) that black people count as publicly presentable only if they can pass the brown bag or blue vein test.

I want to be clear about who's not the villain in this story. I don't mean to suggest that it's easy for light-skinned actors, or that they are somehow culpable for this. There is an ethical one-and-many/collective action problem lurking here, not unlike the one that faced black actors in the bad old days. I'm not taking a stand right now on the question of whether Saldana is a latter-day Bert Williams, invited to choose career success and blacking up over obscurity and race pride. I'm not even saying that this is the right way to frame the question. I'm just saying that as hard as it is for black actors of any complexion, it's especially hard for the darker ones. I'm saying that this special burden has a great deal to do with the ongoing workings and widespread acceptance of an anti-black bodily aesthetic, one that saturates everything from job interviews to police traffic stops. And I'm saying that this special burden, with its distinctive history and context, seems particularly galling when it intersects with the story of someone like Ms. Simone.

Among the many things that make Nina Simone Nina Simone - her voice, her virtuosity, her drive, her personal and ethical voyage - one of the most interesting is the expansiveness of her politics. The inimitable Mark Anthony Neal has written beautifully about the connections between her art and her politics, drawing on people like Patricia Hill Collins along the way. With that in the background, I'll just add that Ms. Simone was one of a great many black performers and public figures, stretching far back in time, who adorned, styled, and presented their bodies in ways calculated to attack colorist and anti-black biases. This was part of who she was, and part - though just a part, to be sure - of what made her interesting. A film about Ms. Simone that can't connect with that aspect of its subject is like an Abe Lincoln film - if we could have only one - not about the war between the states but about vampires. (Oh, wait.)