Tropic Thunder: Offensive or No?

[frameofmind6]

Yesterday, my mom forwarded me an email asking that I participate in a boycott of the movie Tropic Thunder, based on the fact that it contains disparaging remarks about the mentally disabled -- specifically, several uses of the word "retard" or "retarded," as well as a character who is an actor who plays a mentally disabled person in a film within the film called "Simple Jack." Now, my brother has Prader-Willi Syndrome, and my mother is very involved with the PWSA (I'm guessing that's where this email came from), so obviously I'm neither tolerant of nor an advocate of throwing around offensive terms and using people with disabilities as the butt of a bunch of dumb jokes -- but even as I read this email, I found myself becoming more and more skeptical. The thing is, context is key. I don't approve of humor that is truly offensive and ignorant, but I'm also wary of becoming so overly-sensitive to particular words that we come to overlook the context and fixate upon the words themselves. An ordinary, well-adjusted adult calling another ordinary, well-adjusted adult "retarded" is offensive. A character who is clearly ignorant and meant to be disliked calling a character who is mature and well-adjusted "retarded" is farcical commentary -- and it makes the ignorant character look bad, not the other way around. In this situation, the use of the term serves to expose such remarks as offensive and uncalled for, rather than to be offensive and uncalled for in its own right. Truthfully, based on this email I read, the main question I had when I got to the end was whether the person who wrote it had actually seen the movie, or just heard through the grapevine that these words were used -- because there was virtually no attempt to discuss the tone or context surrounding the remarks, and without that, the information is useless. (On a side note, considering that the person who wrote the email got the movie's title wrong -- he/she called it Tropical Thunder instead of Tropic Thunder -- I'm guessing he/she hadn't seen the movie... *grin*)

Anyway, I decided to put it out of my mind for the time being -- but just now, I saw a promo for the news that mentioned this possible boycott of Tropic Thunder, and it brought it back to the surface. I figured if the thing had gotten enough exposure to have made the news, there must be some commentary on it out there somewhere -- possibly something that would give a little more information on the other side of the story. Frankly, although I wouldn't say I'm a Ben Stiller fan (except in Keeping the Faith... *grin*), I respect his work, and don't think of him as someone who would intentionally perpetuate ignorance in this way. His movies are sometimes disgusting, usually ridiculous, and almost always exaggeratedly farcical, but they're not usually downright offensive. Here's a clip from an article I found on the subject:

While not denying that ridicule exists in the film, Wheeler, Shriver and the rest of the protesters miss the point of who is being made fun of, Stiller told MTV News.

"It's sort of edgy territory, but we felt that as long as the focus was on the actors who were trying to do something to be taken seriously that's going too far or wrong, that was where the humor would come from," Stiller insisted. "[The joke is on] actors reaching for roles in terms of hopefully winning awards."

"Some people have taken this as making fun of handicapped people, but we're really trying to make fun of the actors who use this material as fodder for acclaim," co-writer Etan Cohen echoed to MTV. "The last thing you want is for people to think you're making fun of the victims in this who are having their lives turned into fodder for people to win Oscars."

The joke, then, is really on people like Dustin Hoffman ("Rain Man"), Sean Penn, ("I Am Sam") and Tom Hanks ("Forrest Gump"), actors who do more harm than good by denying the painful realities of the illness and instead paint their characters as too sunny or bright, Cohen said.

"Movies about the mentally retarded is something we talked about for a long time. My grandfather was adopted by a mentally retarded man, a man who shouldn't have been allowed to adopt a kid," Cohen revealed. "When he saw 'Forrest Gump,' you never saw a guy angrier than him. It was not such a picnic to be raised by that guy."

(Full Article)

Now, of course, I haven't seen the movie myself, so I can't say for sure one way or the other whether it seems like this was really the intent of the film, or whether they're just covering their asses -- but given what I knew of the film from the commercials, this is pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I first read that email. Bottom line, these characters are not smart, self-aware people -- they are morons who are so out of touch with reality that they are capable of being captured and tortured by guerillas without realizing that they are no longer on a movie set being filmed. Do these sound like the kind of people you would expect to say intelligent and socially-conscious things? Do they sound like the kind of people that any resonably intelligent person would look to as a role model for appropriate behavior? I don't think so.

It's like the whole "video games make people shoot up high schools" thing. If people are already stupid and ignorant enough to mistake the characters in this movie for role models, it really doesn't matter what they say or don't say in the movie -- those idiots will find a way to make fun of people who are different from them with or without the help of Hollywood. For that matter, look at that controversy over the cover of The New Yorker a few weeks ago, where the Obamas were depicted as cartoon terrorists. It was so obviously a joke in their favor -- a joke pointing out the ridiculousness of the various outlandish things their opposition have implied about them -- and yet all the news coverage seemed to suggest that it was offensive to them. I heard about it through AOL and various news reports and things first (just snippets here and there), and they all made it sound so dire -- but every time I saw the cover itself, I couldn't help thinking, "But...doesn't it look more like a spoof? Am I completely missing something here...?" It wasn't until I saw "The Daily Show" that night that I was vindicated. They did a whole "on the street" segment where they tried to convince people that the New Yorker cover was anti-Obama, while the real news coverage implying that Barack might have had Muslim schooling was actually pro-Obama spoof. And people bought it. Context, people -- context is key...

(*sigh*)

I probably will not see this movie. Not because I'm going to boycott it (frankly, I think taking a stand like that on so little information would be an act of ignorance in itself), but because I'll probably just never get around to it. If I do end up seeing it, I'll look carefully at the context, and I'll make up my own mind about what is being said -- and if I think it's offensive, I'll say so. But I will give sufficient context to make my case, if I do.

Political correctness is such a sinkhole. Obviously it's not nice to say things that offend people, especially with regard to things they can't change, like their skin color, disabilities, or sexuality -- but there is such a thing as being too sensitive, too paranoid. If we become afraid of words themselves, we're creating our own demons, giving them power over us that they shouldn't have.

Voldemort. Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort... (*grin*)

Comments

[knittingknots.livejournal.com]

Political correctness is such a sinkhole --- well said.

Reductio ad absurdum after awhile.

[frameofmind6.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Nice to know I'm not alone in this... (*grin*)

[patchcat.livejournal.com]

Words only have the power that we choose to give them. It's like the debate down here about the word "nigger." There was actually a church group who decided that, yes that was a terrible word; and historically it had done a lot of damage to the black community. But they decided that it would no longer have any power over them, that it was just a word, not a reflection of who they were. It was a very enlightened moment.

I saw that news story about that movie and thought it was a load of crap. It's pretty obvious from the previews that it's supposed to be satirical and to be taken at all seriously. Honestly, I think part of the problem is that this country has gotten so stupid that they can't tell the difference between satire -- which takes a certain amount of intelligence to understand -- and truly offensive material. I mean, come on! That offensive jackass Cable Guy is perfectly okay, but a satirical commentary on Hollywood isn't? Am I the only one who sees the idiocy in that?

[frameofmind6.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I mean, frankly I (as a white, northern, upper-middle-class, suburban female) am not exactly in a position to make a ruling on the offensiveness of the "n" word, so I generally avoid it altogether just to be safe -- but I've always felt that it would do our society a lot more good to accept its horrible past and ambiguous present and move on than to continue to navigate the complicated unspoken rules about who can say it and who can't (and in what context). It's certainly not something that should be thrown around carelessly, but for people to be so afraid of uttering it that it can't even be written in textbooks or spoken in history classes (even in the context of explaining what it means and why it's so horrible) is just ridiculous. How can we learn from history (and thus avoid repeating it) if we're too afraid to face even its vocabulary?

I couldn't agree more -- this country's ability to understand satire is in serious trouble, and that's a scary thing. Personally, I've always considered humorism and satire one of the best modes of commentary, of keeping life in perspective. If you take everything at face value without thinking, you miss the point -- and in the long term, you become much easier to manipulate...

(And I can't stand Larry the Cable Guy. Every time I catch a glimpse of him on TV, a little part of me dies inside... *grin*)

[kawaii-chica.livejournal.com]

I saw the film, and yes, they do use the word retard, but like Ben Stiller and Cohen said in their interviews- they used the satire of the "simple jack" film to make fun of movies about mentally disabled people- not the people themselves.

I completely agree with you about being afraid of using words. They can only do as much damage as we choose to allow them to. Political correctness is taken too far too often.

[frameofmind6.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, that's what I figured. Honestly, I sorta want to see it myself now. Partly because of the "Simple Jack" thing, but also because Ben Stiller was on The Daily Show the other day, and Jon Stewart was raving about the film (and not in the "promoting the guest like a nice little host" sort of way -- it sounded genuine). I'd follow Jon Stewart just about anywhere... (*grin*)