Sunday, October 14, 2018
Oh look, another racist “you’re not black enough” casting controversy!
(Here was a previous one…)
Dwayne Johnson, the action hero known as The Rock, announced last week that he’ll be producing and starring in the film “John Henry and the Statesmen” about the black folk hero who died after defeating a steam-driven machine that supposedly would lay track faster than human beings could. Johnson, one of the top drawing box-office stars in 2017 and 2016, said John Henry was one of his “childhood heroes." and that his father, former pro wrestler Rocky Johnson, used to sing “Big John." to him before he put him to sleep as a kid.
Well, I don’t understand the “Big John” reference at all. The Jimmy Dean hit (yes, the sausage guy) was about a mine worker who dies saving his colleagues in a cave-in, and there was nothing in the song suggesting he was black, just BIG, like Dwayne Johnson. Here’s the song…
But I digress…
Critics are saying that The Rock, who is certainly big enough to play John Henry, isn’t black enough for the part (he’s half black, half Samoan). One wrote on social media, “John Henry was a very dark skin man & yes that matters.."
Psst! John Henry had no skin at all: he was a fictional character. If a black actor can play James Bond, and Morgan Freeman can play the the Arab horse-breeder in “Ben-Hur” (not to mention somehow showing up in “Robin Hood” and playing God) and Will Smith can play Jim West in “The Wild,Wild, West,” and Lin Manuel Miranda can play Alexander Hamilton, and a black actor—named Joshua Henry, ironically— can play white carnival barker Billy Bigelow in “Carousel” on Broadway—and they all can and should—then Dwayne Johnson can certainly play John Henry. He could also play Big Bad John.
And social justice warriors wonder why political correctness is unpopular…
Heeeeere’s John Henry
…as sung by the great Burl Ives!