Shia LaBeouf Under Fire For Brownfacing In New Movie

Shia LaBeouf may have risen to fame in Disney Channel’s Even Stevens before becoming one of the most promising actors of his generation thanks to a string of hits like Holes, I, Robot, Eagle Eye, Disturbia, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the first three Transformers movies, but it wasn’t long before he took a turn down a troubled path that saw him quickly fall out of favor with Hollywood, leading to him walking away from blockbuster filmmaking and focusing more on indies.

There’s no denying that LaBeouf’s behavior is often more than a little eccentric, but with the right material he can still be an incredibly magnetic and enjoyable screen presence. He’s well known for fully throwing himself into his characters and his next role looks to be no different in that regard, with the actor already turning heads for his appearance in David Ayer’s The Tax Collector, for which he got a real life tattoo that covers his entire chest.

But where Shia LaBeouf goes, controversy usually follows and already, there are detractors now accusing him of ‘brownfacing.’ For those unfamiliar, the term is “a variant of blackface involving ethnic impersonation of people with brown skin including Latin people, South Asians, Middle-Easterners and North Africans.” And with The Tax Collector, the Transformers star is seemingly appropriating a Latino personality, even coming under fire for his “cholo” (a derogatory word used to describe someone of Mexican descent) accent.

#brownfacing 2020 style https://t.co/WL98fxP5iP

— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) July 2, 2020

Tell all the kids how you’re Hollywood’s top cholo auteur, and your pretzel reasons Shia Lebeouf is sort of kind of playing a weird movie cholo in a cop movie and how all of this isn’t really #brownfacing https://t.co/wD6DOC1vUr

— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) July 2, 2020

Oh hey, another movie w/ Latinos and Blacks in glorified gang culture on steroids that reinforces stereotypes & fears for white folks & promotes the cop mentality that “it’s a battlefield out there.” Sigh…..Hollywood, come on. We don’t need this right now. https://t.co/NDk83cql0c

— Memo Torres 🌮 (@el_tragon_de_LA) July 2, 2020

Ayer has already responded to some of the criticism and below, you can see what he’s had to say so far:

Really important answer – Shia is playing a whiteboy who grew up in the hood. This is a Jewish dude playing a white character. Also the only white dude in the movie 💁‍♂️ https://t.co/PS6foJwQXV

— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) July 1, 2020

https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/1278419916547166209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1278419916547166209%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fterrycarter%2Fshia-labeouf-the-tax-collector-brownface

You just told them. It ain’t a cop movie. And Shia is playing something very specific. Not brown face. https://t.co/MZMugrPu9r

— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) July 2, 2020

All fair points by Ayer, but no doubt, The Tax Collector will continue to inspire controversy and discussion in the lead up to its release on August 7th. If nothing else, though, it’ll certainly offer up another interesting, committed performance from Shia LaBeouf.