A few months back, a dozen Native American extras and the cultural consultant for Adam Sandler’s Ridiculous Six, a supposed parody of the western, The Magnificent Seven, walked off the set because of the film’s offensive representations of Apache culture (we recommend reading Indian Country’s account of the walk-off). Netflix and many of the actors involved, like Vanilla Ice, have defended the film as a comedy.
Sandler recently told Associated Press:
It was just a misunderstanding and once the movie is out will be cleared up.
I find it very troubling that Sandler thinks he can call the protests of the actual people he’s portraying who also worked on his film a “misunderstanding.” His incredibly tone-deaf defense of the film, from telling his actors to leave if they’re “overly sensitive,” to silencing his cultural consultant, demonstrates a lot of ignorance. He also told Screencrush:
I talked to some of the actors on the set who were there and let them know that the intention of the movie is 100 percent to just make a funny movie. It’s really about American Indians being good to my character and about their family and just being good people. There’s no mocking of American Indians at all in the movie. It’s a pro-Indian movie. So hopefully when people see it — whoever was offended on set and walked out, I hope they realize that, and that’s it. It was kinda taken out of context.
I’m not sure how having a female character by the name of “Wears No Bra” urinating and smoking can be “taken out of context” but, ok. I’m really irked that Sandler speaks like he’s more qualified than his cultural consultant to judge what is or isn’t offensive. It sounds like Sandler thinks that the magical not-white person is an innocent trope (surprise, it’s not) or that these representations are ok in the name of “comedy.”
It’s not edgy, it’s not subversive, and it’s not funny. What it does do, is it takes a too-often fetishized, misrepresented, and actively oppressed culture and perpetuates those harmful stereotypes.
Can this movie just disappear already?
(via Uproxx)
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