The mainstream goes multicolored

In movies and on TV, white is black. And black is now white.

Black actor Ving Rhames, in a revival of the 1970s TV detective series “Kojak” on the USA Network, has the role once played by the Greek American actor Telly Savalas. And in film, white actor Ashton Kutcher is reprising the part of the fiance played by Sidney Poitier in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” The remake is called “Guess Who.”

The pattern extends to Broadway, with James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams about to open in a revival of “On Golden Pond” in roles played on film by Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, while Denzel Washington portrays Brutus just down the street at the Belasco Theater in “Julius Caesar.”

“It’s a big change, African American actors taking on these roles in major film and TV productions,” said Jannette Dates, dean of the Howard University School of Communications and coauthor of “Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media.” “Hollywood has decided that they are going to get with the tide of what is happening in the country. In fact, we’ve got a multicultural country. It is really here. And so finally, ... Hollywood is willing to accept that reality.”

Nothing makes that statement more clearly than updating classics by reversing racial roles. Take the feature-film adaptation of the landmark TV series “The Honeymooners,” now in production with Cedric the Entertainer in the role of Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and Mike Epps as the hapless Ed Norton (Art Carney).

“Whether you are talking about the role reversals in film, television or theater, they are all part of an attempt by producers to connect with the changing demographics of a more and more multicultural America,” said Emerson L. Coleman, a vice president for the Hearst-Argyle television and radio stations and a pioneering producer of black-themed programming. “The old distinctions of black and white are breaking down.”

Oscar-winning performances by blacks have been the catalyst for this on-screen race reversal, Dates said. In 2002 “you had Halle Berry and Denzel Washington. And then, this year again, it was an extraordinary year for African Americans,” with Jamie Foxx winning as best actor for “Ray” and Morgan Freeman winning as best supporting actor in “Million Dollar Baby.”

It’s been an extraordinary few years at the box office too. “Ray” earned $90 million in 2004, and Washington’s 2002 “Training Day” topped $100 million. Nothing drives a trend like money, and if there’s enough of it, the business story becomes a cultural one.

That is the kind of change noticed by Joy Lusco Kecken, a black filmmaker and a writer on HBO’s Peabody Award-winning drama “The Wire.”

“Something is shifting,” Kecken said. “It really struck me as I watched the Oscars, but it goes back to the advent of hip-hop, which has been with us [nearly three decades] now.”

Kecken said hip-hop has influenced a generation of young whites to embrace its multicultural sensibility, and that youth demographic is one Hollywood is desperate to reach.

“Hip-hop has made its mark on mainstream culture. And as a result, at least in the entertainment industry, black people ... can come into your home now, win all these Oscars and have these roles that aren’t necessarily only for black men. I think black culture has really slipped into the mainstream.”

Ernest Thompson, author of “On Golden Pond,” bears witness to the change. He remembers moving to Westminster, Md., in 1962 at age 12 and being shocked to realize there was a “coloreds only” balcony in the Carroll Theater.

Now an all-black production of his hit play is in previews and expected to be one of the hottest tickets on Broadway. “Maybe the culture is finally ready to grow up a little bit,” he said.

According to Thompson, who is white, his play was a hit in Japan last year with an Asian cast. Why wouldn’t it work with a black cast?

Thompson acknowledged that an all-black cast brings different resonance to the show. The patriarch, Norman Thayer Jr. (played on Broadway by Jones), is a bigot who says he likes New England “because there are no Jews in the state of Maine, no Negroes and no Puerto Ricans.”

“When James Earl signed on to play that role, I assumed we’d be cutting those lines,” Thompson said. “But he wanted to leave them in. He said, ‘Do you think there’s no prejudice in the black community?’ ”

Thompson sees this more open casting as another in a series of incremental shifts, finally reaching critical mass: “It’s just evolution. I don’t think it’s a trend or a fad. It’s time.... It’s like knocking down the color barrier in sports, which happened when I was a kid.”

Blacks were seen in prime time from the earliest days of network television, as long as they knew their place: in minor or often demeaning roles such as Ethel Waters as a maid in ABC’s “Beulah” (1950-52). Diahann Carroll broke that barrier in 1968 when she became the first black woman to star in her own network series, NBC’s “Julia.” Her character was a nurse, but the network would not allow her to have a romantic relationship.

Bill Cosby opened another door by taking on the role of the upper-middle-class dad in the NBC sitcom “The Cosby Show” in 1984 and proving not only that a black father could know best but that his show could become No. 1 in the ratings.

As for the movies, hip-hop star Ice Cube sums up the progress blacks have made in American movies. Black director John Singleton used Ice Cube for his gangsta-rap associations when he cast him in the 1991 film “Boyz N the Hood,” a critical and financial hit that helped reestablish “urban cinema.”

But as an actor and a producer, Ice Cube soon went beyond that stereotype, creating franchises such as the “Friday” and “Barbershop” films that celebrated, respectively, porch-front humor and neighborhood connections. Both films -- and their sequels -- were big crossover hits.

Onstage, racial role flipping has been at play in a limited way for decades. In 1990, for example, Michael Kahn, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, staged an “Othello” with a racially mixed cast featuring Andre Braugher, who is black, as Iago.

“When you sit around and try to think of a white actor who could play Kojak,” Kahn said, “you don’t come up with anyone who could do as well as Ving Rhames.”