Actor
Adam Sander smiles during a September 2014 news conference for "Men,
Women, and Children" at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival in
Toronto. (Hannah Yoon / AP)
In the 2007 comedy “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” one man’s
quest for decent health insurance leads to a sham romantic coupling of
the heterosexual firefighters played by
Adam Sandler and Kevin James.
For
an hour the movie is one shrill homophobic gag after another. Then,
something interesting happens. Sandler’s Chuck stops dead for a speech.
“Unfortunately,
we hurt people, people we wouldn't want to hurt in a million years, by
doing what we did,” he says of the gay ruse. “For the record," he says,
referring to an anti-gay slur, "that's a bad word. Don't use it. I used
to say it more than anybody, but I was ignorant. It's hurtful."
It’s a disarming moment of apology, and it’s more than the character
talking; it’s Sandler, owning up to his public. While it can’t help but
sound hypocritical in the context of the rest of the picture, it’s one
small step for mainstream acceptance of legalized gay marriage, which
seemed a long way off eight years ago.
Now I wonder if Sandler might take
the events of the last week as an opportunity for some related soul-searching.
On
April 22 and 23, a Native American cultural advisor and several Native
performers and extras walked off the set of “The Ridiculous 6,” a
Netflix-produced Western spoof co-written and starring Sandler. One
actress, Allison Young, blanched at doing a scene requiring her to fall
down drunk, surrounded by jeering white men who rouse her by dousing
her with more alcohol. Various versions of the script leaked online
include characters with names such as “Beaver Breath” and “No Bra.”
Young
told one interviewer: “We talked to the producers about our concerns.
They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave’ …
This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this
should not make someone feel this way.”
Netflix countered with the
usual defense for a cheap, lowbrow comedy. “The movie has ridiculous in
the title for a reason: because it is ridiculous,” the Netflix
spokesperson said. “It is a broad satire of Western movies and the
stereotypes they popularized, featuring a diverse cast that is not only
part of — but in on — the joke.”
The movie is months away from
completion. We don’t know if any of the Native American characters are
in on any of the jokes, which rely (judging from versions of the script
leaked online) on guys talking about putting their “pee-pee” into
someone’s “teepee.”
As the title of Bob Hope’s final starring vehicle put it: Cancel my reservation.
This
much is clear. People of color, to say nothing of women, who have been
marginalized, patronized or humiliated by a stupid joke in an Adam
Sandler movie over the last few years constitute the biggest club in
modern Hollywood. And until last week, that club was one of the least
heralded, if only because its members have been putting up with the
demeaning treatment for a century.
We routinely give comedy, and
comedians, a pass because (according to the traditional argument) you
can’t get a laugh without offending somebody. One person’s edgy winner
(“Borat,” for example) is another’s cause for outrage.
But
something has been bubbling beneath the surface of too many Sandler
comedies in recent years, a cold, mean-spirited smugness reeking of
unexamined white-male privilege.
Coming off his previous comedy,
“Blended,” which was widely derided for its patronizing depiction of its
black South African characters propping up the white leads, Sandler
must now feel he can’t win. The movies that appeal to many critics,
notably
Paul Thomas Anderson’s
bizarre, intense romantic fable “Punch-Drunk Love,” reveal him to be an
interesting and effective actor. These are the ones that tank with
Sandler’s core audience.
Through thick and thin (or, as
Mel Brooks
used to say, “through thin”), that audience for years could be counted
on to support Sandler in comedies best described as low and lower, some
of them pretty entertaining. “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” is a
weirdly compelling burlesque on Israeli/Arab tensions; it’s leagues
ahead of the other ones, the terrible ones: “Jack and Jill” and “Just Go
With It” and “That’s My Boy.”
Sandler’s comedies have plenty of
admirers, among them Bilge Ebiri, who wrote for Vulture of the star’s
“profound sense of self-loathing” as a comic and dramatic virtue.
“Whether his character is being sensitive or cruel, victimized or
boiling over with anger, falling in love or engaging in romantic
duplicity, he remains above it all,” Ebiri wrote. “He still can’t seem
to be bothered to care.” I don’t consider that quality as much of a
virtue as Ebiri does, but to each his own.
That not-caring quality
extends to every aspect of too many Sandler movies, beyond the way
Sandler positions himself as the jester with the arrogance of an
isolated, vaguely bored king. The “Ridiculous 6” controversy reminded me
of how many queasy racial stereotypes afflict his scripts.
From
the Tribune review of the 2006 “Click”: “I couldn’t get past the stupid
ethnic slurs, Sandler's trademark I'm-a-jerk-but-you-know-you-love-me
callousness, the whorish product placement and the feeling that an
unlikely comedy superstar is trying, desperately, to convince us he's
the menschy middle-age equivalent of 'Jenny From the Block.'"
From
the “Grown Ups” review, 2010: “Sandler's character is the rich,
successful, cool one, the one we're supposed to relate to, though he's
by the far the most condescending of the bunch…(among the humiliated)
are older people and heavy people and nerds and vegans and black people
and mothers who breast-feed their 4-year-olds. Everybody else gets a
pass.”
From the “Just Go With It” review, 2011: “The movie slags
off fake Germans and real Latinos, African-Americans and Hawaiians in
weird, off-handed, ineffectual ways … am I the only one having trouble
relating to people who jet off to Hawaii on a moment's notice, just to
keep an improv exercise going for 110 minutes?”
From the “Jack and Jill” review, 2011: “Latinos and Indians … come in for most of the patronizing abuse this time.”
And from “That’s My Boy,” 2012: “The jokes that don't target obese
people, Asian-Americans and other figures of amusement involve Sandler
braying, or peeing, or masturbating, or milking the sort of pathos
(Donny yearns for acceptance) that Sandler's ardent fans seem to like in
their Sandler movies ….
'That's My Boy' leaves the world a coarser, meaner, more arrogant place than its makers found it. Bring back ‘Jack and Jill.’”
The
history of screen performance hides a parallel history of performers
who held and continue to hold their noses while figuring out how to play
demeaning roles. Just ask half the men in Hollywood, and nearly all of
the women, and every single actress or actor of any sort of color.
It’s best to let “The Ridiculous 6” make its way to its final
destination, a.k.a. Netflix, before we pass judgment on the quality of
its humor or its filmmaking or the way it deploys ethnic stereotype for
laughs. For now, though, it’s hard not to take heart from a small group
of infrequently employed Native American performers who decided that
enough was enough, and the taste in their mouths wasn’t worth it.
Sandler might want to reassess that “Chuck and Larry” speech about the
ignorance and hurtfulness of certain words and certain cultural-dustbin
depictions of human beings.
Also, making funnier movies wouldn’t hurt. Just FYI.
