What ‘Tropic Thunder’ Thinks Is Funny

By Timothy Shriver
Monday, August 11, 2008; A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/10/AR2008081001869.html

I’ve been told to keep my sense of humor about the film “Tropic Thunder,” which opens this week. Despite my requests, I have not been given the chance to see the movie. But I’ve seen previews, read about it and read excerpts of the script. By all accounts, it is an unchecked assault on the humanity of people with intellectual disabilities — an affront to dignity, hope and respect.

Consider this exchange:

Ben Stiller’s character: “There were times when I was doing Jack when I actually felt retarded. Like really retarded.”

Robert Downey Jr.’s character: “Oh yeah. Damn.”

Stiller: “In a weird way, I had to sort of just free myself up to believe that it was okay to be stupid or dumb.”

Downey: “To be a moron.”

Stiller: “Yeah.”

At another point, about acting like a person with intellectual disabilities, they say:

Stiller: “It’s what we do, right?”

Downey: “Everybody knows you never do a full retard.”

Stiller: “What do you mean?”

Downey: “Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, ‘Rain Man,’ look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks to your cards. Autistic, sure. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, ‘Forrest Gump.’ Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain’t retarded. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard.”

I worked with the Farrelly brothers on a film on this topic. I know about edgy comedy. I’m also told that movies are equal-opportunity offenders.

So here’s an equal-opportunity response to the equal-opportunity offenders:

People with intellectual disabilities are routinely abused, neglected, insulted, institutionalized and even killed around the world. Their parents are told to give up, that their children are worthless. Schools turn them away. Doctors refuse to treat them. Employers won’t hire them. None of this is funny.

For centuries, they have been the exception to the most basic spiritual principle: that we are each equal in spirit, capable of reflecting the goodness of the divine, carriers of love. But not people with intellectual disabilities. What’s a word commonly applied to them? Hopeless.

Let’s consider where we are in 2008. Our politics are about overcoming division, our social movements are about ending intolerance, our great philanthropists promote ending poverty and disease among the world’s poor. Are people with intellectual disabilities included in the mainstream of these movements? For the most part, no.

Why? Because they’re different. Their joy doesn’t fit on magazine covers. Their spirituality doesn’t come in self-help television. Their kind of wealth doesn’t command political attention. (The best of the spirit never does.)

Sadly, they’re such an easy target that many people don’t realize whom they are making fun of when they use the word “retard.” Most people just think it’s funny. “Stupid, idiot, moron, retard.” Ha, ha, ha.

I know: I could be too sensitive. But I was taught that mean isn’t funny. And I’ve been to institutions where people with intellectual disabilities are tied to beds or lie on concrete floors, forgotten. I’ve heard doctors say they won’t treat them. I know Gallup found that more than 60 percent of Americans don’t want a person with an intellectual disability at their child’s school.

I’ve talked to people with intellectual disabilities who cry over being insulted on a bus. I’ve received too many e-mails from people who are devastated not by their child’s disability but by the terror of being laughed at, excluded and economically devastated.

It wasn’t funny when Hollywood humiliated African Americans for a generation. It’s never funny when good and decent human beings are humiliated. In fact, it is dangerous and disgusting.

This film is all that and more. DreamWorks went so far as to create a mini-version of Simple Jack and posted it online. The studio has since pulled it down, realizing it had gone too far, even in an age of edgy, R-rated comedies.

So, enough. Stop the hurtful jokes. Talk to your children about language that is bullying and mean. Ask your friends, your educators, your religious leaders to help us to end the stubborn myth that people with intellectual disabilities are hopeless. Ask Hollywood to get on the right side of dignity.

I hope others will join me in shutting this movie out of our lives and our pocketbooks. We don’t live in times when labeling and humiliating others is funny. And we should send that message far and wide.

The writer is chairman of Special Olympics and a columnist for washingtonpost.com’s On Faith discussion site.

From USA Today:

An estimated 200 demonstrators, some in wheelchairs, picketed Monday night’s premiere of Tropic Thunder to protest the movie’s use of the word “retard” and what they consider its offensive portrayal of people with intellectual disabilities. ………..

“Our message is pretty clear: We need people with intellectual disabilities portrayed with humanity and dignity,” said Tim Shriver, chairman and CEO of the Special Olympics. “We don’t think it’s fair that this population is singled out.”

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-08-12-tropic-protests_N.htm

More on Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder: ‘Once upon a time … There was a retard’ from:
http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/08/01/once-upon-a-time/

It’s just good clean fun, the studio might say, pointing out that the movie also pokes fun at racial stereotypes. It’s a sendup of old Hollywood films that trotted out able-bodied actors in disability drag, like Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump,” Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” and Sean Penn in “I am Sam.” Stiller isn’t laughing at people with intellectual disabilities, I can imagine his publicist saying. He’s laughing at the way Hollywood portrays them.

But for the estimated 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 surely as racial, ethnic and sexually oriented slurs do.

Peter V. Berns, executive director of The Arc of the United States, said yesterday that the organization would reach out to the studio in an effort to screen the film. The 140,000-member organization represents people with intellectual and developmental disabilities across the country, and its mission includes promoting and protecting their civil rights.

“What we are seeing already is a cause of great concern,” he said. “People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have had a lot of pejorative labels assigned to them over the years. I’d like to think that we as a society are getting past that, but we are seeing one after the other examples that this is not the case.”

Sorry, Mr. Stiller and DreamWorks (distributor of “Tropic Thunder”), but that’s too much. It’s offensive. You’ve crossed the line, you’ve hit the wall.

http://www.silive.com/entertainment/tvfilm/index.ssf/2008/08/thats_just_crude.html

ASK AMY

Friday, June 27, 2008; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062701252_pf.html

DEAR AMY: My family is not sure what to say to people who routinely use the word “retard” or “retarded” to mean someone or something is stupid. The term is offensive and ignorant, especially to those who have family members, friends or other people they care about with Down syndrome.

My children frequently come across other children using this term and, worse, it’s often the parents who are teaching them this through their own misuse of the word. At times my children will tell their friends that we don’t say that in our home and that we prefer that they don’t either. But how do we handle it when we hear it come from the mouths of adults?

We have a family member with Down syndrome who happens to be the greatest blessing and is by no means “stupid.” If people think in terms of replacing “retarded” with any other term such as those based on ethnicity, sex, body size, race, etc., they may view using the term differently. — Stumped for what to say in Illinois

DEAR STUMPED: I have noticed an uptick in the use of this word lately — which is thrown about, usually jokingly — and which I agree is insensitive and offensive. I trace some of this back to a “Saturday Night Live” skit that seemed to put this word back in play after a period of dormancy.

You don’t have to have a family member with Down syndrome to ban the use of this offensive word in your home, and you shouldn’t have to explain the context when telling people that you find this word objectionable.

I like what your children say when other kids use this word, and think you could take a cue from them when dealing with adults. You can say, “I really object to the use of that word and I wish you wouldn’t say it in front of me.”

N.C. Autistic Boy, Mom Kicked Off American Eagle Plane
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,371601,00.html

A 2 1/2-year-old autistic North Carolina boy and his mother were kicked off an American Eagle flight taxiing to a Raleigh-Durham Airport Monday after the crew deemed the child “uncontrollable,” WTVD reported.

“If they just would have been a little more understanding I think that none of this would have been a problem,” the boy’s mother, Janice Farrell, told the station, adding that the flight attendant made things worse.

“She kept coming over and tugging his seatbelt to make it tighter, ‘This has to stay tight.’ And then he was wiggling around and trying to get out of his seatbelt. And she kept coming over and reprimanding him and yelling at him.”

Farrell said she was doing everything to keep her son calm, but after one of the pilots came back to the cabin and gave her and her son, Jarrett, a stern warning, the situation got worst.

“The pilot made an announcement that there was a woman and her child on the plane and the child is uncontrollable,” as he was turning the plane around, Farrell said.

A representative for American Airlines, the parent company of American Eagle, apologized to Farrell when she called, but a spokesman for the company told WTVD a different story.

He said Farrell was not “complying with FAA regulations” and “this was the right decision,” explaining she wouldn’t put her bag in the overhead compartment.

Farrell denied those accusations.

Elouise Plain of Plano: A lesson in humane speech
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, June 20, 2008
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/opinion/stories/DN-north_plain_20edi.ART.North.Edition1.4deed7d.html

I love that commercial on TV where the cavemen are offended because we (society) have stereotyped them as stupid, dumb, slow – whatever you want to call it. I laugh every time I see one of the different scenarios they have come up with, especially the one where the caveman is walking on the moving sidewalk at the airport and sees the ad on the wall, turns around to look at it again and just makes a resigned face.

For years (since the 1980s?), we’ve been bombarded with the “PC” way of saying things, and I, like most others, have tried to abide by the ever-changing rules that different groups have come up with for addressing them. For example, as I was growing up, someone of the dark-skinned race was called “colored,” then they wanted to be called Negro, then “black,” even though I’ve never seen any person whose skin was truly black – they’re really many shades of brown.

Now they are called African-Americans, although I doubt that even 1 percent of them have ever been to Africa. I recently found out that my original ancestors are from South Africa, but I have light skin from a set of white (pink?) parents. Should I now call myself an African-American or a pink woman?

I have a beautiful young niece from Korea who was adopted by my sister and her husband when she was just a toddler. She is now 24, and has been taught by her parents to ignore the stares and hateful comments they received when she was smaller because she was a child of Asian descent with very pink parents.

As my niece grew out of the toddler stage, her parents realized that she had some learning disabilities, and it turns out that my beautiful niece is, to use the most common term, mentally retarded. As a young adult, she knows she’s “special” and has limitations in her life that restrict her from doing what other girls her age do – like getting married, driving a car or living alone. She excels at what she can do, and for several years has been very involved in Special Olympics and has a room full of medals and ribbons.

(If you’ve never attended a Special Olympics event, you’ve missed out on the thrill of a lifetime. The participants overcome some of the most insurmountable obstacles to compete, and the pure joy on their faces when they receive their medal or ribbon can’t be touched by anything else I’ve ever seen.)

What breaks my heart, though, is how people use words like “retards” and variations of this word in rude, thoughtless phrases in their daily conversations. I have heard college graduates – not that that makes them any more intelligent, just a little more educated – using the phrase “you’re retarded!” to friends, just as a comeback. I recently heard a friend who was exasperated at a driver in traffic refer to him as a “retard.”

Folks, this kind of language is unacceptable. Whether you do it as a habit or without thinking, it is painful and offensive to … actually, everyone, but especially to a person with learning disabilities.

In the early days of my niece’s “illness,” we referred to it as “M.R.” if it had to be talked about. I’ve heard many terms over the years that different people used to describe someone with mental disabilities, and the one I like best is “intellectual disability.”

My sister works with adults with intellectual disabilities of varying degrees, and I’ve gone to some of their parties and outings. Some were born that way, others had strokes or accidents that incapacitated them. All are humans with feelings, and who express pain, joy, sadness and love.

If you will change just one thing in your speech patterns, I would ask that you never, ever, refer to anyone, under any circumstances, as a “retard” or as “retarded.” That is as offensive as using the “N” word or any other vulgar, politically incorrect word. I thank you for being compassionate enough to do that.

Elouise Plain of Plano works as software support staff and is a Community Voices volunteer columnist. Her e-mail address is .

No more ‘r’-word
Lysander family launches MySpace campaign against calling people ‘retarded’

It is really fascinating to follow the links of those who have visited The ‘r’ Word site and who want to make fun of it. It is obvious they have not set down with a person with disabilities and tried to get to know them. From their posts they see people with disabilities as objects rather than people who have feelings and are full of life.

They talk about their right to belittle people with disabilities by using the “r” word and see nothing wrong with that. They do not grasp that this issue is about respect for other human beings. They can not see that making fun of someone by using words that hurt is wrong. After all, its only a joke, right?

They also do not see where this line of thinking is leading them.

How does the cycle of hate evolve? Here are the rungs of the Ladder of Prejudice;
http://www.tolerance.org/teach/activities/activity.jsp?ar=857

The First Rung: Speech — Its fun to talk bad about or make fun of those who are not like us.

The Second Rung: Avoidance — Lets shun them, ignore them. They are not like us and we are better than them. Surely if we ignore them, they do not exist.

The Third Rung: Discrimination — We don’t want them around here. We will make them leave, or at least not live next to us. We will make them live away from us in a place befitting them — like institutions, or group homes away from our community, not in our own backyards.

The Fourth Rung: Physical Attack — Lets taunt them, pick on them and if there is enough of us, hurt them. And if no one is looking or cares…

The Fifth Rung: Extermination — You mean like Hitler did to the Jews during WWII? Or maybe we can selectively breed them away or remove them by other methods — Eugenics: http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/library/wdc-lib/historical/eugenics/index.cfm

This is what we are fighting. The Ladder of Prejudice; Are You On the Ladder?

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