What were you more offended by yesterday? The Channel 4 reporter who turned an Avengers junket interview with Robert Downey Jr. into a grandstanding self-martyrdom designed to go viral? Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner’s ill-considered joke about having a threesome with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow during the same junket? Or Renner’s even more ill-considered fauxpology for his comments, which seemed even more dickish next to Evans’s genuine mea culpa?
Oh, wait, was it John Tory insisting that the provincial budget funded his still-vague SmartTrack project? Nah, I didn’t think so. (Maybe if he’d implied SmartTrack would use the new Stark Industries repulsor technology, he’d have trended higher.)
I’m betting the bigger upset was the news that Native American actors had walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s new Netflix project, The Ridiculous Six, reportedly due to racist jokes and insensitive on-set conditions. And with good reason: we’re supposed to be past this shit, aren’t we?
Citing the original report from the Indian Culture Today Media Network, Variety reported that, in addition to inaccurate costumes, “some female Native American characters were given names Beaver’s Breath and No Bra.”
That sounds more or less on par with the Dances With Wolves gags in Hot Shots! , and maybe even a little softer than the depiction of Mel Brooks’s Native characters in Blazing Saddles – which is to say, more culturally insensitive than openly racist. But in the 21st century, being culturally insensitive is openly racist you’re saying you don’t give enough of a shit to treat another culture or race with respect. That’s racism.
I can’t claim to know what’s in Sandler’s heart. But like the man said, by his works shall ye know him – and Sandler’s works are that of a man who takes the path of least resistance every time out. Unless he’s being directed by someone like Paul Thomas Anderson or James L. Brooks (in Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish, respectively), Sandler invariably goes for the easiest joke, the most obvious setup, the lowest common denominator. This is a guy who’s worn the same outfit – a T-shirt and big shorts, and maybe a baseball cap if its daytime – for twenty freaking years.
And for the same stretch of time, Sandler has brought the same commitment to “eh, whatever” at his production company Happy Madison. I do not doubt that a character’s name translating to “Beaver Breath” in The Ridiculous Six made him smile. I doubt he thought any more about it, and that’s kind of the problem.
There’s a school of comedy that says a joke doesn’t work if someone isn’t offended. And social-media culture exists in a constant state of reactive rage, so someone is always ready to retweet the latest controversy. (Jon Ronson just published an excellent book on this very subject, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. And within weeks, he was publicly shamed himself over an observation that didn’t actually make it into the printed text.)
The Sandler story will no doubt be framed as a silly comedy that got taken way too seriously in the comments of this National Post article on the walkouts, they’re doing that so insistently it reads like self-parody. What is really is, though, is the pissing and moaning of people who don’t understand why they can’t be politically incorrect any more. Of course, what they really mean when they say “politically incorrect” is “openly hateful”.
And that’s the thing about social media: when you are openly hateful – or dismissive, or sexist, or racist, or transphobic, or whatever – people can call you out on it in real time. They tweet you back. They tell their friends. They don’t have to shut up and take it. They have a platform of their own – and the media is always looking for a fresh story.
Sandler and Netflix are going to have to address this, and I hope they genuinely listen to the people they’ve offended rather than issue a passive-aggressive non-apology. Don’t Renner this, guys. Maybe you can reach out to Evans and see what he’d do.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
