Entertainment Weekly's "Tropic Thunder" coverDisability advocates have been successful in at least getting the "R-word" issue about the film "Tropic Thunder" onto the media's radar if this August 10 LA Times article is any example:
His turn in the Farrelly brothers' "There's Something About Mary" propelled Stiller into comedy's major league, and he started working on the "Tropic Thunder" script with Justin Theroux (and later, Etan Cohen). "We knew what the first act was. But what do they do when they're out there in the jungle?" Stiller said. Chief among the film's vivid characters is Kirk Lazarus, a quintessential Method actor and multiple Oscar winner who undergoes a "controversial" skin-darkening treatment to portray an African American sergeant. Approached for the part, Downey blanched at performing in blackface and speaking in an exaggerated Ebonics patois.
"I first got mad," Downey said. "He's going to call me up and say, 'I want to do a great big movie with you, but I want you to have the highest risk factor. And I want to maybe put you up to ridicule and have people, like, hate you for what you should have . . . known was wrong to do.' "
Stiller ultimately persuaded him to do it but admitted worrying that people won't get the joke. "It's such a touchy area, " he said. "It had to be clear: What we are satirizing is the character and his loss of identity. So we have a black actor there" -- Brandon T. Jackson, who plays the braggadocios rapper-actor Alpa Chino in -- "calling [Lazarus] on every moment to be perfectly clear about our point of view. We never wanted it to be OK."
Similarly, a subplot involving "Simple Jack" (another film set within "Tropic Thunder's" bizarro Hollywood universe) treads shaky comedic ground, lampooning such genre standard bearers as "Rain Man" and Sean Penn in "I Am Sam." Stiller's Tugg breaks action-hero type to play a "mentally impaired farmhand" -- a wild-eyed, bucktoothed simpleton who is repeatedly referred to as a "retard" in "Tropic Thunder" -- with hopes of winning an Academy Award."I've never played a mentally impaired character," said Stiller. "But I put myself out there. I've had flops. There is stuff I do that could easily become parody too. Again, it always comes back to what we are satirizing: the actors and the Hollywood system. What do you do to be taken seriously? How far do you go?"
Anticipating precisely the counterpoint Stiller presents, Patricia E. Bauer, who blogs about disabilities issues, wrote of the film: "For the 14.3 million Americans with cognitive disabilities and their families, such arguments may be problematic. These people share a history of segregation and exclusion, and report that what many call the 'R-word' reinforces negative social attitudes just as racial, ethnic and sexually oriented slurs do." (Bauer also said that disability rights advocates will discuss their concerns with DreamWorks executives this week.)
This LA Times story must have been held because disability advocates met with Dreamworks execs LAST week and were promised a screening before the Aug. 13 release, which was supposed to take place as early as August 8 but apparently was bumped to August 11. Although Dreamworks has pulled some of the film's materials using the "R-word" available on the Internet and in satirical movie posters, it seems clear at this late date, little can or will be done about the use of the "R-word" in the movie.
The film is also getting lots of hype in the entertainment media and made the cover of August 15 Entertainment Weekly (see above), which made no mention of the R-word controversy.
I hope "Tropic Thunder" suffers the fate of Mike Meyers' "The Love Guru," which had tasteless jokes about little people, and bombed at the box office earlier this summer.
