Posted on 05/16/2006 2:54:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The notion of Christ as a family man is not the only raw nerve "The Da Vinci Code" has touched. Albinos are bothered that one of their own has yet again been depicted as a villain.
Dan Brown's best seller begins its worldwide debut Wednesday with Tom Hanks as the cryptologist pursuing a 2,000-year-old mystery that could reveal Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that the Vatican covered it up.
Among his co-stars is Paul Bettany, the British actor playing monk- assassin Silas, an albino with red eyes who carries out a series of bloody murders to secure the secret of the Holy Grail, a trove of lost Christian documents that could prove Jesus had wed.
Critics cite a long list of albinos cast as heavies by Hollywood: The dreadlocked twins in "The Matrix Reloaded," a powder-haired hit man in the Chevy Chase-Goldie Hawn crime romp "Foul Play," the pasty zombies in "The Omega Man," a sadistic killer in "Cold Mountain," even the wicked executioner in the fairy-tale comedy "The Princess Bride."
Michael McGowan, an albino who heads the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, said "The Da Vinci Code" will be the 68th movie since 1960 to feature an evil albino.
"Silas is just the latest in a long string," McGowan said. "The problem is there has been no balance. There are no realistic, sympathetic or heroic characters with albinism that you can find in movies or popular culture."
People with albinism have little or no pigmentation in their skin, eyes and hair.
McGowan said his group asked "Da Vinci Code" director Ron Howard's production outfit, Imagine Entertainment, not to bleach Silas' hair or make his eyes red, but "that fell on deaf ears."
When offered the role, Bettany initially thought mainly of the makeup challenge, saying past attempts to lighten non-albino actors' pigmentation had not looked realistic.
Bettany said he looked at Silas not as an evil albino but as a man damaged by his harsh upbringing. In the book, Silas was an abused child who wound up on the streets, was scorned as an outcast, turned to violence and landed in prison.
"I thought, this man's a psychopath, and he's not a psychopath because he's an albino," Bettany said. "He's an amalgamation of everything that sort of happened to him in his life. How his father treated him and the things he saw his father do to his mother, and he happens to be preternaturally gifted at hurting people. ...
"I think it's no more a comment on albinos than it is on monks, and no more a comment on monks than it is on people who wear sandals," Bettany said.
Many readers found Silas a tragic character despite his misdeeds, viewing him more as a lost sheep than a villain.
McGowan said his group plans no boycotts or picketing. Instead, the group aims to use the movie's popularity to raise awareness about the realities of albinism. He said he enjoyed most of the book and plans to see the movie.
"We understand that millions read it and when they go to the movie, they're going to want to see the albino monk-assassin," McGowan said. "It's the cumulative effect of having one evil albino character after another that was disturbing to me."
hehe :)
The Victim Brigade never ends.
Just when you thought you'd heard everything.....
Well, if the Post-Apocalyptic Plague Mutant Anti-Defamation League (PAPMADL) didn't have a problem with it...
That movie rocks. I'd be proud to be a pasty zombie trying to put the hurt on Charlton!
>>Michael McGowan, an albino who heads the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, said "The Da Vinci Code" will be the 68th movie since 1960 to feature an evil albino.<<
I wonder how many with corrupt cops?
Politically correct albinos.
You can't have a villian unless it's a normal white man. No minorities, no women, no homosexual men. Villians in a movie must be Nazis or white supremacists or other politically incorrect types.
These guys can't even have a proper villian, how can this movie be any good?
Well they just need to get in line behind the people who need mechanical breathing assistance and have a complaint against George Lucas and the whole Darth Vader thing.
Does anybody remember the Albino in "Gods Little Acre"?
"Silas is just the latest in a long string," McGowan said. "The problem is there has been no balance. There are no realistic, sympathetic or heroic characters with albinism that you can find in movies or popular culture."
To Kill a Mockingbird
not sure ,but the flying monkey community was pissed.
Funny, I read Clancy's Sum of all Fears and was planning to see the movie about the Mideastern Islamic terrorists who set off a nuke at the Super Bowl, and to my surprise, they morphed into Midwestern Christian terrorists.
We wouldn't want to offend real terrorists, I guess, but to hell with the pigment challenged.
How right you are.
Allure of light skin begets a dark cost: Asian women scarred by unsafe bleaching agents
"Whiter skin is being aggressively marketed across Asia. Vast selections of skin-whitening creams on supermarket and pharmacy shelves testify to an industry that has flourished over the past decade. In Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, four of every 10 women use whitening creams, a survey by Synovate, a market research company, found.
The skin-whitening craze is not just for the face. It includes creams that whiten darker patches of skin in armpits and "pink nipple" lotions that bleach brown pigment."
Source:http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/14574234.htm
Or perhaps with Dr Hemlock's boss, Dragon.
"Powder" is a movie with a sympathetic (but strange) albino.
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