Back in the seventies, I took an acting class, and a makeup artist explained to us that the incredibly lifelike latex masks seen on Mission Impossible were physically impossible. These masks were so effective that you could look exactly like a given individual, and no one would spot the difference.
In one episode in 1970, the late Greg Morris, who was black, had a white mask, because he was infiltrating a white-ruled African country.
Producers would want this makeup artist to make these for theatrical productions, and he had to explain that they didn’t exist.On TV, the impostor would start to peel off the latex, and you'd cut away, and you'd see another face underneath, and it would be, in fact, a different actor.
Well, technology marches, and now they exist. We had a letter a while back about a white guy named Conrad Zdzierak, [z-jair-jack ]a Polish immigrant, who was accused of committing armed robbery while wearing a latex mask with African-American features. There was some question about whether, in addition to being a serious crime that could kill someone and send you to prison for life, this was also racist.
Here’s a new one:
A young Asian male has been intercepted by authorities in Vancouver after boarding a flight from Hong Kong disguised as an elderly white man, officials say.
Canada Border Services Agency officers boarded the Air Canada plane after it landed Oct. 29 and took the man into custody, the agency said in a statement issued by its Pacific region.
The alert did not specify where the flight landed, but Air Canada officials have confirmed to CBC News that it was Vancouver.
The man quickly made a claim for refugee protection after his arrest, the agency said.
Air Canada security alerted the CBSA during the 12-hour flight about a passenger who "was observed at the beginning of the flight to be an elderly Caucasian male who appeared to have young-looking hands," the agency statement said.
"During the flight, the subject attended the washroom and emerged an Asian male that appeared to be in his early 20s."
I think the fun part is "The man quickly made a claim for refugee protection after his arrest," but Canadian officials are wondering how someone got on the plane in Hong Kong wearing a latex mask and without a passport.
They would have a lot of nerve complaining about this, though, when they consider that Canada has been allowing people to board planes wearing niqabs, i.e. Islamic ninja masks.
