THE MEDIA ISSUE: VOLUME 27, ISSUE 45
AMERICAN MINSTRELISM
by Malik Isasis
Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder has come under heavy criticism from various groups on its perceived insensitivity toward the mentally challenged. This particular displaced criticism is focused on the usage of the word retarded, which is used repeatedly by Ben Stiller’s action-hero character, Tugg Speedman, whose decided to make a “serious” turn in acting by portraying a mentally challenged character named, Simple Jack. The film’s critics have missed the mark.
Subtly may not be Ben Stiller’s strong suite, but broad comedy with a heavy helping of humiliation, and a dash of emasculation is where he shines. Stiller takes the Simple Jack character to an absurd level, but it’s not to poke fun at the mentally challenged, rather it’s to satirize the actors who portray them. Tropic Thunder is a send up, a well-done—if not occasionally, overdone satire of the over-indulgence and self-importance of Hollywood producers, actors, their handlers, entourages, and the people who love them. It is a brutal commentary on the vapidness, dick measuring, over-budgeted film projects that produces more of the same; read Pauline Kael’s essay, Why Are Films Bad?
Black Face
Ben Stiller and his writing partners’ have also come under some criticism on race. Robert Downey Jr. plays an Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, who portrays one of two African-American soldiers, Sgt. Osiris. If the name Osiris sounds familiar it’s because it was one of dozens of Ol’ Dirty Bastards’ of Wu Tang Clan, monikers. The social commentary this film makes about race is as poignant an observation in a Hollywood film since Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000). The scathing critique on race is tucked into comedy to make it go down smoother, but it is no less as effective as Lee’s Bamboozled, which mainstream audiences were ready to hate.
For most of the film, the Sgt. Osiris character is the only character walking around with his eyes open about what is really going on. He is the consciousness of the film.
Hollywood is replete with minstrel performances by white actors that dates back to one of the so-called greatest films, Birth of a Nation. African and Asian Americans were the biggest targets by Hollywood, propagating some of the most insidious stereotypes of the early twentieth century. The Black Mammy, the over sexualized Big Black Buck, the Buck-toothed Oriental servant, and other yellow peril hysteria that persists today (just watch Lou Dobbs discuss China).
Just recently in film history, Angelina Jolie blackened up for her role as Mariane Pearl in a Mighty Heart. Marissa Tomei browned up to play a latina in The Perez Family. Not a peep from the media. I think this was the point Stiller was making. Actors are applauded for putting on fat suits to portray overweight people, or dark make-up to portray an ethnic group.
Stiller’s critique of the history of Hollywood to cast white actors to portray people of color and receive accolades for such brave performances is spot on and some of the most poignant in a major Hollywood film since Spike Lee’s 2000 Bamboozled.
Like Lee, Stiller takes on the corporate rappers who between the colorful adjectives pussy, nigger, bitch, bitch-ass niggers have absolutely nothing to say, but have become pitchmen for products. See for yourself:
The film's only true African American is a rapper called Alpa Chino, played by Brandon T. Jackson, who in between hawking his energy drink Booty Sweat and candy bars Bust-A-Nut Bar, is trying to build an acting career. Stiller has captured the sad state of rap and the corporate rappers who have an inexplicable obsession with Al Pacino and the film Scareface.
Tropic Thunder at times is brilliant, and at others, it folds onto itself to contradict the stereotypes it is trying to critique. For instance, the Alpa Chino character is mostly a foil for Downey’s character. This was a $90 million dollar film, and in showing the foibles of over budgeted action Hollywood films, the film at times became a parody of itself using the same over-the-top explosions.
To criticize the film on its merit is fair, but to criticize the film without having seen it, or because it is trying to say something about how the mentally challenged and people of color are exploited by Hollywood is foolish.
The true perpetrators of the daily minstrel shows are the media, who on a daily basis, show Arabs and Muslims as inhumane monsters, Mexicans as job-stealing, disease-carrying peasants, and African-Americans as brutal, oversexed, and unAmerican. These are the images and parodies that are being fed to the American populace and the world on a daily basis from outlets like CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC.
Grade: B
AMERICAN MINSTRELISM
by Malik Isasis
Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder has come under heavy criticism from various groups on its perceived insensitivity toward the mentally challenged. This particular displaced criticism is focused on the usage of the word retarded, which is used repeatedly by Ben Stiller’s action-hero character, Tugg Speedman, whose decided to make a “serious” turn in acting by portraying a mentally challenged character named, Simple Jack. The film’s critics have missed the mark.
Subtly may not be Ben Stiller’s strong suite, but broad comedy with a heavy helping of humiliation, and a dash of emasculation is where he shines. Stiller takes the Simple Jack character to an absurd level, but it’s not to poke fun at the mentally challenged, rather it’s to satirize the actors who portray them. Tropic Thunder is a send up, a well-done—if not occasionally, overdone satire of the over-indulgence and self-importance of Hollywood producers, actors, their handlers, entourages, and the people who love them. It is a brutal commentary on the vapidness, dick measuring, over-budgeted film projects that produces more of the same; read Pauline Kael’s essay, Why Are Films Bad?
Black Face
Ben Stiller and his writing partners’ have also come under some criticism on race. Robert Downey Jr. plays an Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, who portrays one of two African-American soldiers, Sgt. Osiris. If the name Osiris sounds familiar it’s because it was one of dozens of Ol’ Dirty Bastards’ of Wu Tang Clan, monikers. The social commentary this film makes about race is as poignant an observation in a Hollywood film since Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000). The scathing critique on race is tucked into comedy to make it go down smoother, but it is no less as effective as Lee’s Bamboozled, which mainstream audiences were ready to hate.
For most of the film, the Sgt. Osiris character is the only character walking around with his eyes open about what is really going on. He is the consciousness of the film.
Hollywood is replete with minstrel performances by white actors that dates back to one of the so-called greatest films, Birth of a Nation. African and Asian Americans were the biggest targets by Hollywood, propagating some of the most insidious stereotypes of the early twentieth century. The Black Mammy, the over sexualized Big Black Buck, the Buck-toothed Oriental servant, and other yellow peril hysteria that persists today (just watch Lou Dobbs discuss China).
Just recently in film history, Angelina Jolie blackened up for her role as Mariane Pearl in a Mighty Heart. Marissa Tomei browned up to play a latina in The Perez Family. Not a peep from the media. I think this was the point Stiller was making. Actors are applauded for putting on fat suits to portray overweight people, or dark make-up to portray an ethnic group.
Stiller’s critique of the history of Hollywood to cast white actors to portray people of color and receive accolades for such brave performances is spot on and some of the most poignant in a major Hollywood film since Spike Lee’s 2000 Bamboozled.
Like Lee, Stiller takes on the corporate rappers who between the colorful adjectives pussy, nigger, bitch, bitch-ass niggers have absolutely nothing to say, but have become pitchmen for products. See for yourself:
The film's only true African American is a rapper called Alpa Chino, played by Brandon T. Jackson, who in between hawking his energy drink Booty Sweat and candy bars Bust-A-Nut Bar, is trying to build an acting career. Stiller has captured the sad state of rap and the corporate rappers who have an inexplicable obsession with Al Pacino and the film Scareface.
Tropic Thunder at times is brilliant, and at others, it folds onto itself to contradict the stereotypes it is trying to critique. For instance, the Alpa Chino character is mostly a foil for Downey’s character. This was a $90 million dollar film, and in showing the foibles of over budgeted action Hollywood films, the film at times became a parody of itself using the same over-the-top explosions.
To criticize the film on its merit is fair, but to criticize the film without having seen it, or because it is trying to say something about how the mentally challenged and people of color are exploited by Hollywood is foolish.
The true perpetrators of the daily minstrel shows are the media, who on a daily basis, show Arabs and Muslims as inhumane monsters, Mexicans as job-stealing, disease-carrying peasants, and African-Americans as brutal, oversexed, and unAmerican. These are the images and parodies that are being fed to the American populace and the world on a daily basis from outlets like CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC.
Grade: B
posted by Malik Isasis at
1:50 PM
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