Disability Coalition Places Demands on Tropic Thunder
If you haven’t heard by now, quite a few disability groups are a bit unhappy at Tropic Thunder and its star Ben Stiller. This anger mostly comes from Stiller’s portrayal of an actor playing a mentally handicapped person in the film within Tropic Thunder (titled Simple Jack and pictured to the left). Ideally, the joke that’s being presented is more to make fun of actors that go after roles seeking handicap acclaim. It happens time and time again with films like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, I Am Sam, Rain Man and probably a ton of others.
Unfortunately, some people aren’t getting the joke and are getting a little too up in arms about what shouldn’t even be an issue. Yesterday, these people announced that they were going to boycott Tropic Thunder to show their disproval for its content. Apparently the boycott wasn’t enough as today they’ve released new demands for the studio (Dreamworks). These demands come via PatriciaEBauer.com.
Film Screening: Arrange a film screening of “Tropic Thunder” for disability groups, paid for by the studio, in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C. before the end of this week.
Public Apology: Make a public apology for the thoughtless use of the “R-word” and derogatory depictions of people with intellectual disability with a summary statement of the studio’s intent to curtail its damaging effect and its commitment to specific next steps (as laid out below).
Film Editing: Completely eliminate all direct mention of or reference to “retard” jokes, disability euphemisms, and disrespectful depictions from the film before it is distributed to theatres and released to DVD.
Film Promotion: Eliminate all trailers, web postings, and ads that focus on “retard” jokes, disability euphemisms, and disrespectful depictions, and reference the “R word.”
Specially Created Trailer: Fund and produce a trailer to air prior to each showing of “Tropic Thunder” that addresses the use of the R-word and the hurtful impact it has, even when people do not mean it that way. This same trailer would also be included within the DVD packaging for after market sales.
National Campaign: Create and fund a comprehensive national educational and advertising social campaign to eliminate the pejorative use of the word retard from use in everyday language, and more importantly create a world of dignity, acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disability. The campaign would be developed and vetted by an advisory council of representatives from the coalition. The campaign would also be designed to capitalize on social media and social networking to bring young people together and empower them as agents of change for the R-word campaign and involve appearances of those involved in the film’s creation.
Film Studio Summit: Convene the heads of all the major studios to address the appropriate portrayal of people with intellectual in future films and television programs. The summit would also help reduce stigma surrounding one of the largest disability populations in the world while also raising the awareness of the extraordinary gifts and talents people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have to offer.
So, the same people that are complaining left and right about the film (a film they’ve apparently not even seen) would like free screenings to it? How the hell does that demand come about? “Umm, I find your film terribly offensive so I demand that you allow me to screen it!” These demands are a bit ludicris and unfortunately it’s pretty likely that Dreamworks will give in to many of them as they aim to remove the bad publicity floating around the film. It’s really unfortunate that these groups attempt to push their agendas onto others when there clearly isn’t an issue. And here I was all along assuming that Downey Jr. would be catching all the flack for the film.
What do you think about the demands? Do you think Simple Jack is in bad taste and too disrespectful?
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