http://www.gosperats.com/ This shit is hilarious. I mean, if you know me you know I like Japanese culture, but these people sometimes get a little ahead of themselves in their attempts to live in the future, apparently a future where blackface is cool. These guys above basically believe you can't be in a soul band without being black, apparently it's fine if your speaking Japanese or english with thick Japanese accents, but you gotta be black. The funny thing is the group seems to be doing this as some type of tribute action to soul music and its African American roots, is this ok then?
The Radar piece I posted below (scanned from the mag; sorry Radar but I looked on your site and couldn't find this anywhere to link to it) has...I don't know what going on in it, but that girl in the lower left corner looks like Jughead from the old archie comics. The thing is backface wouldn't be so offensive if the actions that invariably follow it were not idiotic and ridiculous. Actors use make-up to portray themselves differently in order to create a mood for the audience. In that movie Soul Man from the 80's the make-up was used to set a situation and was not seen as terrible because the character was not using it to degrade the entire African American race. Just the same I can't automatically say that these Gyaru girls are guilty of anything really (although the whole contrast between the bronze and white is kind of weird and ghostly), but why even go there?
