Rufus Hound has been accused of ‘yellow face’ racism after images of him as villain Abanzar in a new production of Aladdin were released.
Promotional images ahead of Peterborough’s New Theatre’s December pantomime showed the star wearing heavy eyeliner – prompting outrage from his fans.
The 42-year-old comedian – who found himself at the centre of a race row last year after old tweets resurfaced – has been accused of wearing ‘racist make-up’.
Oh, fer gawd’s sake. Here we go again. Some moron on Twitter sees an opportunity and takes it. These people are not representative of the greater population and their stupid opinions have no value. But…
Responding in a string of Twitter messages, the Rufus said: ‘Hello. Some days you just feel sad, y’know? Like even though there are plenty of good things, the bad things just feel a bit too heavy.
‘Problem is, there’s a lot of heavy s**t. The slide into fascism, the planet burning, love not winning in the end. Y’know. F**k I feel sad.’
He went on: ‘Let me please say to anyone who has seen the poster for the Panto I’m doing in Peterborough this Christmas…
‘I dressed myself and was handed eyeliner to put on, as the final image needed to look forebodingly down. I just tried to make my eyes as menacing as possible.
‘At no point did I think it was yellowface or anything near, as the character of Abanazar isn’t Asian origin at all. I swear – that’s why it never crossed my mind.
‘Seeing it now, I get it. I see that, with white actors having so often used eyeshape as a racist dogwhistle, the image resonates with racism for many.’
Okay, this is like a diver bleeding in a shark infested sea. They smell the blood and come in for the kill. Once you acknowledge their idiotic point, once you give them an inch, once you apologise, they come back for more. They will never be satisfied. If you must react to these idiots, you only need two words.
I have no idea who Rufus Hound is but I imagine his grovelling is down to him wishing to continue in his career and hoping the sjw will allow him to do that, even though it will be with conditions they set down. Laurence Fox stood by his ideals and, even though he is a very good actor, any such career has now been destroyed through woke motivated cancelling. I agree that only when every person, whether in show business or some other occupation, stands up and tells these clowns to ‘f*ck off’ as the Tory politician allegedly did recently, will they crawl back under the stones they crept out of. Sadly, I can’t see that happening any time soon, because reasons.
“white actors having so often used eyeshape as a racist dogwhistle”
What the… ?
If it had been any other actor doing the same, especially a Laurence Fox, then Hound would have been leading the pack and torn them apart. No explanations accepted.
So while the general point stands, that none of this hounding should happen at all, there is a truck load of poetic justice in this woke piece of nastiness being consumed by his own brand of bile.
I have played Abanaza in panto too. It went very well indeed. A great part. I usually played the dame, but I just had to do Abanaza.