“Pulling A Halle Berry” (noun/verb)= when a talented African-American actress is ignored for years by the Academy until she finally agrees to act in a sexually-degrading scene

The lovely Kerry Washington will be appearing in the movie Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino and set to be released this year. Kerry will be playing the part of “Broomhilda,”a slave woman who was spirited away from her husband–also a slave–and sold to a cruel slave master.

From what I’m hearing about this movie, it will either be a cult classic or a complete fiasco. In some reports I read Kerry Washington’s role described as a “leading role” while in other descriptions it says she just has a part in the movie, with no indication that she is a central protagonist. Over at the IMBD site, Ms. Washington is listed as part of the “credited cast” but not as a “star”.

The script was reviewed over at Shadow and Act before the movie was made. Reading this description of the “acting” that Ms. Washington will be doing, I started getting a bit nervous:

There are some 4 or 5 scenes in which the she’s, shall we say, “exposed”… i.e. naked; and they felt gratuitous to me; 2 in which she’s raped by white men. When we first meet her, she’s on the auction block and asked to bare her breasts to potential buyers; later, she’s chased through a hotel, through hallways, and lobbies, etc, by a slave master, completely naked, after being woken up from sleep, with a whip across her naked body; and still later, she’s locked up naked in a steel box as punishment for trying to run away.

It’s possible that the script was altered and Kerry’s role will be more than just that of a damsel in distress, a black woman who gets raped by the white man and saved by the black man. I say it’s possible, but considering how Hollywood loves to stereotype black women…