March 10, 2017
Brandon Tensley wrote for CNN about Samuel L. Jackson’s critique of Get Out:
It seems like everyone is talking about Jordan Peele's hit film "Get Out" -- including Samuel L. Jackson, who wonders: What might movies featuring British black actors who must navigate American racism be like if these movies were, instead, to star their American counterparts?
Or in Jackson's words, speaking to a New York radio station: "I tend to wonder what that movie would have been with an American brother who really feels that," he said. "Daniel [Kaluuya, who stars in "Get Out" as an African-American photographer] grew up in a country where they've been interracial dating for 100 years. What would a brother from America have made of that role? Some things are universal but [not everything is]."
Jackson has a point. The histories of race in America and in Britain are not the same, and so the context for an actor's portrayal of an African-American's experience -- even fictional -- will not be interchangeable.