Red Band Rant: Hollywood Needs To Go Full Retard

By Mack Rawden: 2008-08-07 02:40:02

How many half nigger, half spic faggot chain-smoking retards does it take to screw in a light bulb while slurping transfat from a bathtub filled with gook fetuses and ‘injin tears?

It’s a trick question. Those people don’t exist anymore, at least not according to politically-correct, hypocritical Hollywood suits.

Representatives from DreamWorks met with disability advocates today to consider censoring the movie Tropic Thunder’s use of the word retard. Somewhere, Jack Vallenti is smiling. Thomas Jefferson is frantically trying to reinsert the lung he projectile vomited out.

Ohh the line between comedy and satire: so clear and easily deciphered for some, yet so elusive and mysterious for others. So, we’ve eliminated that line and the entire spectrum it resides on, as to prevent the more daring among us from accidentally tripping its invisible alarm. There’s no humor in people’s differences we optimistically tell our children, teaching them politically-correct descriptors like African-American and differently-abled. We remember the pain from being teased as children and desperately shield our own from the late-night tears and miserable isolation. We label this pleasant demeanor with grandiose terms like forward progress, never realizing the quiet and beautiful humor in being picked last for kickball or having misshapen ears. Perhaps because we’re blinded by our own good intentions; perhaps petrified and sorry for words we uttered in ignorance as teenagers. Whatever the reason, it’s beginning to make sane people feel awful for laughing at legitimately funny satire, and these positive steps are beginning to push Hollywood back into Senator Joseph McCarthy’s stifling chokehold.

Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's

As always, the descent into over-decency started out with good intentions. For years, minorities were portrayed as unrealistic caricatures who were ogled and laughed at because screenwriters were too fucking ignorant to bother researching how they really behaved. So, they shoved rancid putrescence down our throats, forcing giggles out of characters who bared an uncanny resemblance to government-sponsored war propaganda. Don’t believe me? Watch Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffanys. The minorities protested, and the powers that be decided to heed their claims, taking it all a step further by not only agreeing to decent and fair portrayals but removing anything anywhere at any time which could be considered objectionable. Too bad real comedy comes from real people behaving realistically, and real people aren’t always sweet or decent or mature. We shouldn’t be removing questionable vocabulary from movies. We should be adding fresh and exciting slurs which people have invented to slander each other and themselves as these words enter the cultural lexicon. Having an annoying Asian living next door isn’t the problem; the real sin is giving him and those around him unreasonable dialogue

I was a chubby kid growing up. In fact, all of my friends but one could have lost fifteen pounds and still been larger than Orlando Bloom. So, what did we do? We tore into each other without mercy, recycling every fat joke ever told and inventing hundreds of new ones ourselves. Did I tell you who I ran into today? My God, did they survive? Why? Because there are inherent comedic aspects to being overweight. Buying fashionable pants, for example, is a challenge, as is going swimming, running in gym class, and sliding into those one-size fits all desks in high school. Were we bad people for laughing at our plights? No. We played the hand dealt to us and poured cheap vodka into the lemonade.

At the end of the day, you either laugh or you cry. Jesus dying on the cross is either a horrific cautionary drama about a perfect human being who was destroyed by an unjust world or a hilarious farce about a sandal-clad pathological liar who gallivanted about making wild, completely ridiculous statements about the true identity of his father. World War II on the home front is either a withering melodrama about an entire generation of women sobbing for their endangered husbands every night or an uproariously funny comedy about a group of devoted wives who stepped out of their comfort zone in order to man the factories and keep things afloat while trying to still feed their children a steady diet of red meat and butter. It all depends on viewpoint.

life of brian

But you’re not supposed to make fun of the handicapped in movies because they can’t help it. And you’re not supposed to laugh about the inadequacies of intercity schools. And you’re not supposed to snicker about old people lacking health care. All of these problems are just too touchy to put on the big screen. They can only be explored in heartfelt documentaries no one will ever see because only through their eyes can the right level of mopey detachment be achieved. Well, fuck that. Pretty soon the only inoffensive fodder for comedy will be middle class white guys. Oh wait. That’s already slowly happening.

A few days ago, I was driving around with one of my best friends and we were discussing the steadily growing ethnic population in our hometown. In a sheepish voice he said the town fathers must have forgotten to install the protective moat. That’s hilarious. And satirical. And if you don’t understand the difference between that and shouting nigger at a group of African-Americans I have no interest in ever associating with you.

I don’t know what it’s like to be called a spic or a retard or a faggot by someone who has hate in their heart. I’m sure it’s a traumatizing experience I will never be able to comprehend. But those words exist. They’re used everyday, every hour, every second by people all over the world from all walks of life. And you know what? A lot of those people aren’t using them to demean. They’re using them to mock and ridicule the very hate which continues to give the nomenclature its sting.

Movies should reflect where we are as a culture. They should shock and frighten and please and bring joy and enlighten. And most of all, they should occasionally go too far. Movies should change the world, and no one’s ever changed the world by playing it safe. Hollywood needs to go full-blown retard to save us and itself, and it’ll never do that by sweeping eccentricities and epithets under the rug and acting like they don’t exist because John Q. Sample hasn‘t found enough joy from his quirky son with Down Syndrome to laugh at the absurdity of life, liberty, and retardation.

Wake up people. The canyon between hate and hilarity is so expansive that anyone able to laugh at their own uniqueness could spot it with Charles Nelson Reilly’s prescription glasses. I’m a proud cracker-faced, tennis-playing, Grey’s Anatomy-watching, honkey-assed Caucasian. I laugh about how stupid I must look every day of my life, and if you can’t do the same, you’re comedically retarded.

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