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Chiwetel Ejiofor could get an Oscar this year for playing a slave.

Do you honestly not see the difference between Chiwetel Ejiofor being in a movie depicting slavery in a historical context and Virgil being Ted Dibiase's little black manservant?  Virgil was basically there just to be a racial caricature who sold himself out to The Million Dollar Man.  Seriously, that shit would not fly these days, I don't know how they got away with it then.

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You said, "name another industry where even suggesting that shit wouldn't get you an ass whooping or a lawsuit?"

And acting would be one.

There are actors who would balk at playing a slave, but i doubt the creators of this movie or Steven Spielberg, who made Amistad, would not annass whipping or sued.

Did Mike Jones wrestle with his conscience to play a slave/uncle tom/steppin fetchit character, because pro wrestlers were not seen in 1986 as actors?

Would, for example, someone in NXT like Consequences Creed, in 2013, balk at playing a Virgil-type character ?

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Chiwetel Ejiofor could get an Oscar this year for playing a slave.

 

Every time I see that name I'm reminded of Jerry Seinfeld's routine about the cab driver.

 

Which was funny for me because the name of the cab driver is my real name.  And I've never heard my name anywhere else, except for the play I was named after.

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Know your audience rears its head again. Eddie Murphy was at the peak of his mainstream appeal when they brought in Virgil. It was anachronistic garbage then too but it got over.  Heyyy Tyrone Green is printing money now, what's the exact opposite??

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Who the fuck was Virgil before he was Virgil? And knowing him now, all he was thinking was i'm about to get this money!"

Maybe we were raised differently, but there isn't enough money in this world for you to come up to me and say, "We are going to make you this white dude's slave" and me to agree to that bullshit.  And more to my point, name another industry where even suggesting that shit wouldn't get you an ass whooping or a lawsuit?
Sure. I probably wouldn't do it, but if I was a mediocre ass wrestler & that was my only way to get a WWF check & with the promise of turning face against one of the top heels, I'm wiping shoes, snatching basketballs & punting babies until I punch MDM in the face for his bullshit.
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Don't get me wrong, I get why it was done and can kind of understand why Virgil and Kamala did it.  I'm just saying that it would be thought of as horribly offensive in just about every other walk of life.  I see acting as being a little different because movies and television generally have a historical context that wrestling lacks.  Movies with slavery are set in the 1800s where there was a such thing as slavery, Virgil was running around doing Ted Dibiase's bidding in 1989.  Don't tell me he was Ted Dibiase's bodyguard, if you couldn't see what was going on it's because you weren't paying attention.  At the time it was almost exclusively a pro wrestling phenomenon to have basically every racial minority to be some sort of stereotypical caricature.  With that said, that Kamala story was hilarious.

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He was clearly his bodyguard. He interfered in his matches, he attacked Dibiase's enemies.Oh and he was announced as his bodyguard before every Dibiase match.They even did an angle where Dibiase tried to buy a slave. He states plainly that a slave is the only thing he does not possess and tries to buy Hercules from Bobby Heenan. 

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He's an African American who wore a bow tie, never spoke, tended to stay in the background, stooged and played the role as a whipping boy, carried out orders given to him, and did anything embarrassing or humiliating commanded to him by a white guy named the fucking Million Dollar Man whose catch phrase was "Everyone has a price." How the fuck was Virgil not a slave?

 

EDIT: Editing to add that even as a child, the Virgil character reminded me of the movie "The Toy." 

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I will never forget this.  I went to a house show in 1988 or 1989 at MSG.  We were sitting near the entrance aisle, close enough where if you yelled loud enough the wrestlers could hear you.  Ted Dibiase had a match, maybe against Dusty?  Anyway.  He takes a powder and has Virgil do something like shine his boots or rub his back.  This older black woman stands up and screams "Hey Virgil...........you ain't nothing but a house nigger".  10 year old me was completely shocked.  I had never heard a real person use that word in public.  She then explained why she though this about Virgil to the crowd sitting around her.  Still one of my most vivid childhood memories.  I can still remember what she looked like, and the look on Virgil's face.  

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I will never forget this.  I went to a house show in 1988 or 1989 at MSG.  We were sitting near the entrance aisle, close enough where if you yelled loud enough the wrestlers could hear you.  Ted Dibiase had a match, maybe against Dusty?  Anyway.  He takes a powder and has Virgil do something like shine his boots or rub his back.  This older black woman stands up and screams "Hey Virgil...........you ain't nothing but a house nigger".  10 year old me was completely shocked.  I had never heard a real person use that word in public.  She then explained why she though this about Virgil to the crowd sitting around her.  Still one of my most vivid childhood memories.  I can still remember what she looked like, and the look on Virgil's face.  

 

Boy, the 80s were great!

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He's an African American who wore a bow tie, never spoke, tended to stay in the background, stooged and played the role as a whipping boy, carried out orders given to him, and did anything embarrassing or humiliating commanded to him by a white guy named the fucking Million Dollar Man whose catch phrase was "Everyone has a price." How the fuck was Virgil not a slave?

 

EDIT: Editing to add that even as a child, the Virgil character reminded me of the movie "The Toy." 

Because he was not. He was never once called a slave. They even did an angle where he tried to buy a slave and he stressed it was the one thing he did not possess. Virgil was a paid employee. His primary job was to protect Dibiase. As time went on, Dibiase became more abusive and Virgil turned on him.FYI: A lot of bodyguards tend to wear ties. 

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He's an African American who wore a bow tie, never spoke, tended to stay in the background, stooged and played the role as a whipping boy, carried out orders given to him, and did anything embarrassing or humiliating commanded to him by a white guy named the fucking Million Dollar Man whose catch phrase was "Everyone has a price." How the fuck was Virgil not a slave? EDIT: Editing to add that even as a child, the Virgil character reminded me of the movie "The Toy."

Because he was not. He was never once called a slave. They even did an angle where he tried to buy a slave and he stressed it was the one thing he did not possess. Virgil was a paid employee. His primary job was to protect Dibiase. As time went on, Dibiase became more abusive and Virgil turned on him.FYI: A lot of bodyguards tend to wear ties.
Ex. Meng in the Stud Stable.
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Who the fuck was Virgil before he was Virgil? And knowing him now, all he was thinking was i'm about to get this money!"

Maybe we were raised differently, but there isn't enough money in this world for you to come up to me and say, "We are going to make you this white dude's slave" and me to agree to that bullshit.  And more to my point, name another industry where even suggesting that shit wouldn't get you an ass whooping or a lawsuit?

 

There's always work at the post office.

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Yeah, slaves weren't paid. Virgil was a paid employee who took a lot of shit because he probably needed the money. If you remove the racial component (which I understand is very hard to do in these cases) it's not that different from JBL/Shawn, Big Show/McMahons etc. In fact, it was when Ted *began* to treat Virgil as a servant that he rose up.

 

The Kamala gimmick is racist, but so is like every savage gimmick ever. Shit, Umaga was a racist gimmick too. The Usos and Big 'Kish have been like the only Samoans to be portrayed somewhat well in WWE.

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Yeah, slaves weren't paid. Virgil was a paid employee who took a lot of shit because he probably needed the money. If you remove the racial component (which I understand is very hard to do in these cases) it's not that different from JBL/Shawn, Big Show/McMahons etc. In fact, it was when Ted *began* to treat Virgil as a servant that he rose up.

 

The Kamala gimmick is racist, but so is like every savage gimmick ever. Shit, Umaga was a racist gimmick too. The Usos and Big 'Kish have been like the only Samoans to be portrayed somewhat well in WWE.

...the Rock?

 

This is more to my point I've been watching wrestling as long as I can remember, and as a black kid I think I was am extra sensitive to some of the more racist elements of what I was watching.  I think Ron Simmons is the first black guy I remember being treated like a person in wrestling.  Whether or not Virgil was an actual slave is irrelevant to me, because it was basically another example of a black guy being treated like less than a human being.  I'm still trying to figure out if I found Koko B. Ware offensive or his fashion sense offensive, but it was one of the two.

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Yeah, slaves weren't paid. Virgil was a paid employee who took a lot of shit because he probably needed the money. If you remove the racial component (which I understand is very hard to do in these cases) it's not that different from JBL/Shawn, Big Show/McMahons etc. In fact, it was when Ted *began* to treat Virgil as a servant that he rose up.

 

The Kamala gimmick is racist, but so is like every savage gimmick ever. Shit, Umaga was a racist gimmick too. The Usos and Big 'Kish have been like the only Samoans to be portrayed somewhat well in WWE.

I would rather be a bad ass like Umaga than a lame hip hop Samoan. 

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