To recap: This month, we have already debated a wide range of casting ethics controversies…

• The political correctness insanity of a black actress being accused of using “blackface” for darkening her skin and using a prosthetic nose to better resemble the real person she is portraying…

• The absurdity of a film being criticized because it cast non-Afghan actors as Afgans.

• The condemnation of casting non-Hispanic actors as Hispanic characters and Historical figures.

The position of Ethics Alarms is identical in all three controversies. The only consideration in casting a role should be the director’s artistic assessment of who will do the best job meeting the artistic and commercial demands of that role, under the constraints of the project, which can include budget, locale and workplace conditions. Ethnicity, race and off-screen appearance should be secondary, and better still, irrelevant. Efforts to substitute political, diversity or affirmative action goals  for artistic ones undermine the integrity of the work, and are unfair to the audience as well as the work itself. Make-up is a tool of the performing arts, and is unrelated to blackface, which was a convention designed to denigrate African Americans. Confounding make-up used to allow a performer to play a character of a different ethnicity, race or skin shade with minstrelsy and blackface is intellectually dishonest or ignorant.

Now comes a new issue in this spectrum: the use of white, male stunt performers to substitute for black or female stars.

This article, in The Telegraph,  begins with the assumption that the practice is inherently unethical:

“For decades, white stunt performers would paint their faces and bodies black to double for black stars. Similarly, it was not uncommon for stuntmen to put on heels and wigs to double for women. This was not happening in a vacuum: all the while, black and female stunt performers were pressing for recognition and the right to work in the jobs for which they were best suited….There is an understanding within the studios that such incidents don’t look good and need to be kept hush-hush.”

If, as the article and the Hollywood activists it interviews assert, the practice of “blacking up” white stunt performers is designed to exclude qualified black stunt performers from working, then of course it is unethical. Given the close-knit stunt performer community, described as a white, male, “old boys network” in the essay, this is certainly possible, even likely. Nevertheless, the assertion that there is anything intrinsically unethical, unfair or wrong with using a disguised white stunt performer to substitute for a black star, a male stunt performer to substitute for a female star, or any other variation imaginable is, as with the Hispanic and Afghan complaints, based on non-existent ethical principles.

The only legitimate considerations in stunt work is how well  the stunt double can do the desired scene, and whether they be made to resemble the actors involved. Race? Ethnicity? Gender? Skin color? Facial hair? Age? All of these and more are simply a matter of practicalities, and discrimination should have nothing to do with how the stunt is handled. In stunt work, shots are typically taken from a distance, or featuring rapid movement, or even digitally altered later.  If a film can find a single stunt performer whose size and build allow him or he,  with a change of costume, make-up and hairstyle, to stand in for every star in a film who has a dangerous scene, there is nothing wrong with allowing that stunt performer to do so. Men can effectively stand in for women. Whites can convincingly step in for blacks. The issue and only issue is whether they can do the stunt. What the article calls “blacking up” and compares to blackface is in fact benign and pragmatic, and no different from placing a stent performer in the same costume as the star.

There is an ethics problem, though. What if men and whites have an inherent advantage as stunt performers? It is easier to black up than to white up, presumably, and and the right size man can be more easily disguised as a woman than the other way around. Yet gender and racial differences are not unethical, not is acknowledging them and acting accordingly.

How do you distinguish convenience from discrimination or racism, however? One black stunt man tells the author, Hoartia Harrod, “Believe when I say race plays a major part, because why hire blacks when you can paint your own boys down to emulate us and give them the work while we starve.”

Writes Harrod,

“For decades, white stunt performers would paint their faces and bodies black to double for black stars. Similarly, it was not uncommon for stuntmen to put on heels and wigs to double for women. This was not happening in a vacuum: all the while, black and female stunt performers were pressing for recognition and the right to work in the jobs for which they were best suited.”

Wait: why are they “best suited” for those jobs, if all it takes is a wig or make-up to eliminate that advantage? “Best suited” means the unalterable characteristics and abilities necessary to do the stunt and appear to be the star. In “Jurassic Park,” a famous stunt involving a juvenile female actress was accomplished by using an adult female stunt performer and digitally superimposing the actresses face over the older woman’s. Would a teenaged girl be “best suited” for the stunt, instead of the older pro? Not really.

The Screen Actors Guild has a guideline designed to spread the stunt work around, and make it easier for minority and female stunt performers, stating that the “stunt coordinator shall endeavor to cast qualified persons of the same sex and/or race involved.” That’s a legitimate policy decision, but it should be understood that this is unrelated to the quality of the film or the integrity of the stunt work….or ethics.

Using white stunt performers for black stars is unethical and discriminatory if a black stunt performer could do a better job that would improve the quality of the product, or if the choice is intended to exclude minority professionals. Using race or gender as a criteria for hiring when race or gender is irrelevant to the final product is itself discriminatory. Unfortunately, this leaves white and male stunt coordinators with an inherently advantage because of their versatility.

That condition, and its results, are in the “life is unfair” category.  A film maker taking advantage of it, however, is not being unfair, or unethical, even if it creates a hardship for non-white, non-male stunt performers. The stunt coordinator may choose to hire three stunt performers for his black, white and female stars when one could do the stunts of all three, but he is not ethically obligated to do so.

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Facts: The Telegraph