| Wednesday, February 16, 2005 |
01:44 - Baldy Babies
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Okay, so what is it with casting directors' handling of bald characters in movies and TV? Specifically, why is it that whenever we see a "younger" version of some well-known bald character, the "younger" version is bald too—and yet usually looks nothing like the older version?
I noticed this in the latest Star Trek movie, where the villain is supposed to be a younger genetic clone of Picard—which the audience is supposed to buy despite the fact that the guy looks, acts, and sounds nothing like Patrick Stewart. The only thing the two characters have remotely in common is that they're both bald—the villain's hair having been obviously shaved, as though that makes the audience look past his big puffy lips and his narrow pointy jaw and his high-pitched mellifluous voice that all add up to about the least "Picard" character ever.
I mean, couldn't they have found some actor who had a little more in common with a younger Patrick Stewart? They could have left his hair on, and I'd still have bought it, provided the mannerisms were there, like in that one Q episode with the Academy flashback. Baldness alone does not a character make.
And then there's Smallville, in ads for which I've noticed that the teenage version of Lex Luthor is intended to be recognizable as Lex Luthor because... he's bald. I've only caught glimpses of him, but it looks like the same weird impulse at work: never mind casting an actor who actually embodies the character we're looking for; just get someone and shave his head! instant Lex Luthor!
I don't know what my point is with this. It just bugs me.
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Brian Tiemann
