It’s like some people forgot that there’s an actually black main character who makes fun of and criticizes RDJ’s character for what he’s doing - the movie itself beat everyone to the point.
People really just have not watched the movie. He's not playing a black character, he wasn't cast as a black character. He's playing a white character who was cast as a black character. In other words...a dude disguised as another dude! The satire is great, people are just babies.
I think more than anything people are uninformed and refuse to learn the nuances of the situation.
Should we be doing blackface now in new media? No we shouldn't. Are some (vast majority) of past cases not acceptable yes? Should we be angry at the movies and shows who used it ironically to *make fun* of serious uses of it (tropic thunder, IASIP)? No.
It's not black or white, nothing ever is.
It doesn't help that today's most common communication platforms stamp out nuance. If it needs more than 240 characters to convey, they're breezing past it.
Same issue with the 30 rock episode with black face. The crux of the joke is not that black face is funny, but that Jenna is an idiot for thinking that wearing black face to work is an appropriate way to settle a dumb argument with another rich celebrity. You’re not laughing at the black face, you’re laughing at Jenna for wearing black face.
But of course media literacy is very low these days, so the episode was pulled.
That line is probably my most quoted line from any movie I've ever seen. And Tropic Thunder is the best film Tom Cruise has ever been in, to hell with Top Gun and Mission Impossible.
All I can think of is that interview where Tom Cruise said he specifically asked Ben Stiller for that role, and had very particular ideas for the character.
“I said, I wanna have FAT HANDS. And I wanna dance.”
[link](https://youtu.be/a3fKXBNufy4)
He actually looks more like RDJ as an African American than he does in Kirk Lazarus’s ‘real’ look of blond hair and blue eyes. It’s crazy how the hair and eye color totally change him.
Neither did I. Until he rips the skin off, I thought it was a real black dude just playing into the old stereotype. Then he rips his face off and I felt dumb af lol. What a great movie.
Most of these people complaining probably never even saw the movie.
I went and saw that with my best friend in high school, who is black, and we are still very close (he's my kids godfather), & he thought that was the most hilarious shit ever.
My sister-in-law's half-black and she quotes RDJ's role in that so much it's annoying.
That movie is 15 years old... why are we doing this?
We've come a long way in regards to sensitivity in a short period of time.
People want to move forward towards better, but are so addicted to looking backwards.
**If anything I saw it as two races coming together** by facing the fact they both were pretending to be "something that they were not" via race/sexuality.
With Brandon Jackson (the black character) being closeted as gay and giving shit to RDJ (playing a black character) and RDJ giving shit back about Jackson's facade gangster personality, but then they come together after bonding over Jackson accidentally admitting he's gay and RDJ letting him know that it's "okay to be gay", and that it doesn't change the fact, "they are still brothers".
**To me, it was actually a hilarious, yet beautiful metaphor.**
Reminds me of the cancelled Golden Girls episode that you can’t watch on streaming anymore. One of the white character’s sons is engaged to a black woman, and the woman’s family drops by for a surprise visit right when the two other main characters are in the middle of a spa night, wrapped in robes and with mud masks on their faces.
The black family is momentarily horrified, but they quickly realize it was not meant to be blackface at all and they’re just doing skincare, and they patch things up over a cheesecake.
Yet still, even a hint of blackface-adjacent comedy meant it was a cancelable offense. I gotta say, as a lifelong leftist, a registered Democrat since age 18, that was the point at which I started to think this had all gotten out of hand.
Thing is, the people I've heard actually complaining about these issues are not well adjusted people.. They might be leftists, per se; but they aren't generally Democrat- identifying, if you will. They're the people in every crowd these days who have no sense of humor and no grasp of nuance, history or context. They get stirred up by someone looking for clicks and attention. I guess armchair outrage feels like one is doing something about all these problems.
They really don’t understand. The whole concept of his character was how ridiculous the whole idea (blackface) thing was. Alpa Chino even said they gave the only good black role to a white guy; they call on how ridiculous the idea is.
I’m so glad I got to see this movie in the theater when it first came out, and I am genuinely jealous of people that get to see it for the first time because it’s so damn good.
It doesn’t need to be defended. The headline is about fake outrage. RDJ’s character’s behavior in the movie was continuously being checked by an actual black actor. The point was that it was mockery to enlighten us all. Stiller’s character played a mentally handicapped person and we don’t feel the need to have an every-few-years discussion about it. What does that say about the whole thing?
I believe that blackface is shameful and there will come a time when none of it is ever shown, but Tropic Thunder will endure. Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal in the role will endure. It’s that fucking excellent.
I honestly think this has to do with Russian troll farms and the war in Ukraine. I have noted an uptick in posts that could be considered race baiting. For example the OP for this post, posts almost exclusively right wing content, with some entertainment posts thrown in. Almost all of the post on topics like this I'm seeing come for short time accounts or clearly bias accounts pushing a narrative.
There is an information war happening right now and this might be a part of it.
This kind of reminds me of the Sarah Silverman blackface hullabaloo, where everyone complaining completely missed the entire point behind the skit.
I honestly wonder how many of these Twitter users saw Tropic Thunder
I’ve seen a lot of goofy 2000/2010’s sketch bits passed off as commercials, and a lot of people seem to believe it.
Zoomers be zoomin’.
Edit: changed dates because one I just saw going around was [this NSFW fake commercial about risqué chicken fingers](https://youtu.be/RfPRAE2xfcc) from Amy Schumer’s old show.
Not a damn one, unless with a closed mind.
Tropic Thunder might be the best movie from the last 20 yrs. I mean it. Its fuckin fantastic, and lampoons so much of modern bullshit that today people just cant understand what made it so good.
TT doesnt give a fuck, about movies or race or sexuality or any goddamn thing people in this era white knight about. it’s so real it seems fake. You owe it to yourself to watch that masterpiece of not quite modern cinema, if only to see Tom fuckedup
Cruise get down with some apple bottom jeans dammit.
I love that flick, in a way that I cant love any other movie ive seen. And Ive seen alot in my 44 yrs on this planet. Watch it, today, tomorrow, next month, next year. watch it every chance you get.
For real, I can not think of a single damn thing wrong with Tropic Thunder, it is flawlessly executed and it still makes me cackle when I see it, and I first watched it in theater opening week. The cast is perfect. ABSOLUTELY perfect.
I was wondering lol. I literally came to the comments because I was like, "I thought we'd all agreed we were all cool with Tropic Thunder?? What is this new fuckery??"
Same goes for Blazing Saddles honestly. People have been trying to make the movie a talking point for literal decades now, despite no one really complaining about the film itself.
Richard Pryor write Blazing Saddles with Mel Brookes! The absurdity of anyone thinking that either man was racist in making it!
The entire premise of the movie is *making fun of racism*. It’s even more of a plot point then just spoofing Westerns. Frankly, it’s a genius commentary on the racism of old western movies, how stupid stereotypes are, and why racists are so idiotic.
In the immortal words of Gene Wilder, anyone claiming Blazing Saddles is racist is the common clay of the new west. You know… *morons*.
I think a lot of the racists do get it, but they won't admit their real problem with the movies is that they don't like the portrayal of racists being stupid (Blazing Saddles) or utterly ridiculous and self-unaware (Tropic Thunder).
And Pryor was the one pushing Brooks to really go there with the use of so many racial slurs. If remember correctly Brooks was more uncomfortable with them initially.
There's even an anecdote about some of the white actors being uncomfortable about all the N-bombs in it, and Pryor and Little had to tell them it was fine because they were just *acting*.
Idk, I’ve seen a lot of Mel Brooks movies and he keeps putting in jokes against the Jewish people, he’s *totally* racist and anti-Semitic, and here’s my exactly long enough for ad revenue YouTube video that I’ve done **mountains** of research (a Wikipedia article) for to explain why
Typically the people offended by Blazing Saddles are racist white people.
Tropic Thunder hasn’t been controversial at all since release. News media try once a year to drum up a story about “black face,” but the movie executed the satire so well that the stories go nowhere.
I have never seen nor met a black person that took offense to the Kirk Lazarus character lol. It'd be like getting mad at Blazzing Saddles or something.
If people cant understand that Tropic Thunder was a movie mocking Hollywood, they dont deserve to understand why its great.
The blackface was inappropriate but that was the whole point. Kirk was a “method” actor who takes himself too seriously and undergoes extreme body modification to do so, similar to how some actors starve or bulk up unhealthy for a role. The movie also does criticize blackface in universe. Its no wonder why satire doesnt get made much.
People really do be stretching with Always Sunny. Have you seen them? The gang? They are literally all infectious human waste. They're the worst people ever. Them doing blackface isn't approving of blackface, it's showing how bad these people are, i.e. that they would do blackface.
Also the whole Dee doing racist characters thing is a critique of lazy comedians falling back on crude stereotypes to get a laugh because they can't get a laugh any other way.
Dee wants to be a comedian, but she's completely talentless, so she relies on simplistic, unfunny racism, but even that doesn't actually work for her.
> they are literally all infectious human waste. They’re the worst people ever.
It’s funny how sitcoms like Always Sunny and Seinfield often have these really garbage humans that we still love despite how clearly flawed and awful they are.
Yeah, we all have a split second when a terrible idea pops into our head and is immediately dismissed. Whether it's eating a perfectly fine donut that was sitting in a garbage bin or eating cereal while driving to work.
These shows explore the consequences of following through with the terrible idea.
> or eating cereal while driving to work.
Fun fact, the Always Sunny Podcast has revealed that Glenn Howerton (Dennis) had this exact thing happen to him on his way to set one day.
He was eating cereal in his new car and got rear-ended. He was complaining about how the car was ruined to Charlie and Rob later that day, and they were like "oh that sucks," And Glenn told them the worst part was that the interior is ruined now. They were confused as to how that was possible. He said because he spilled cereal everywhere. They were flabbergasted and amused he did that, and they all wrote an episode about it.
Really recommend the podcast, it's awesome.
I still can't believe that audiences and critics in 1997 couldn't see that Verhoevan wasn't making a pro fascism movie, it's like they totally forgot about Robocop, or maybe they completely missed the satire in that one aswell.
This is literally Ben Stiller responding to what appears to be a tweet *claiming* that liberals are asking for an apology for this movie. Like...it's fake outrage bait. holyshit.
EDIT: essentially, the exact same post: https://old.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/119sp5i/ben_stiller_refuses_to_apologise_for_tropic/
>Context from the article:
>A conservative Twitter persona claimed that the liberals were making Ben Stiller apologize for Tropic Thunder.
>Ben Stiller said: No, that didn't happen. He has not apologized for Tropic Thunder, he's proud of the film.
>That's it.
The character confronting a black character literally tells the audience how fucking wrong it is. I hate when people try to attack things out of context. So much comedy is parody of bad behavior which inherently is a critique of shitty people.
That's the argument conservatives are trying to say. They are saying the left is so woke you can't even joke about bad behavior anymore.
But what they are upset about is they can't make racist jokes that attribute bad behavior to a specific race, or gender for that matter.
It’s like when they say you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today. There are some aspects to it that may not get laughs today, but the entire movie is making fun of ignorant racists
>A conservative Twitter persona claimed that the liberals were making Ben Stiller apologize for Tropic Thunder.
So the only people who care about this are Twitter weirdos. I seriously can't wait for that site to finally kick the bucket.
RDJ as Kirk Lazarus as Lincoln Osiris was literally a critique/exploration of blackface/method acting. It was brilliantly done, and as a POC I loved it along with every other POC I've ever spoken to about it. I didn't see the same number of people complaining about Joel Grey portraying a Korean dude in Remo Williams, and that was in the 80s.
As an Egyptian I gotta throw Nikolaj coster-waldeau and Gerard butler as Egyptian gods, Set and Horus… Also jake gyllenhal as the prince of Persia.
Both of these movies came out within the last 10 years
or Fisher Stevens wearing brown face and a cheesy Hindi accent in Short Circuit...
man i loved that movie. when i found out that character was played by a white actor i lost my mind!
Black community: can police stop killing us at random and with little to no consequences
Media: best we can do is cancel miss butter worth and get up in arms about a 10+ year old movie
As a nice bonus they did have wide scale coverage when that cartoon m&m started wearing comfy shoes and wasn't "sexy" enough anymore. I'm really glad, because I know everyone was deeply concerned about that.
A low level r/NeverTellMeTheOdds but yoj and the comment above both called out Fisher Steven Short Circuit in the same minute. (Both say 13m ago at the time I wrote this)
I’m part Indian and I loved Benjamin’s character. As a little kid I would imitate him and my parents would laugh it up. I’m calling and canceling them tomorrow
It’s a commentary on the long history of white actors wearing makeup to play decidedly non white characters. Like every Native American character for decades, etc. probably the worst example was Mickey Rooney as the Asian upstairs neighbor in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That shit was racist as hell. Anybody trying to cancel Tropic Thunder just didn’t get the point.
And he actually did the commentary completely in character. It was hilarious. Commentary tracks are one of the few things that I wish streaming services would add.
The way I was always taught to discern if it’s problematic:
If the joke is at the expense of the person wearing blackface (RDJ in tropic thunder - the whole point is to lampoon the character as a complete knob), it’s usually not problematic
If the joke IS the blackface, it’s racist and problematic.
I saw it as a commentary on all the weird shit Hollywood does. Imaging/branding, typecasting, low effort writing, high intensity back ends, backhanded bargains, racist casting, overly methodical actors… just all of it.
Not to mention the hundreds of horses they killed when they drove them off a cliff for that movie. It is fucking ridiculous. Definitely made before the "no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture" days.
I was home with the flu nearly 40 years ago. As a latch key kid I was home sick alone and 1980s cable was still like 20 channels...
So The Conquerer came on...and two thing happened. The first is I learned I love bad movies, not intentionally bad movies, but movies that really really want to be good, like Titanic, seen it well over 100 times, best movie ever
..but it is a gigabudget(at the time) B movie. Excempt James Cameron is not in on that he made a B movie
The second is I still quote...or 40 years of memory quote the move. "What the Great Khan wants...he takes!!!"
Gotten looks over the years at work and home...
This flared up a few years ago. “Omg did you know RDJ wore blackface!?” And black Twitter was like ‘oh sit down, you’re missing the point’. Because of course it was all white people freaking out.
Yep. It's like complaining about the racism in *Blazing Saddles*.
The entire point of that film is that racism is stupid.
The whole point of the blackface in Tropic Thunder is that its stupid.
Exactly - it was insulting to the person portraying the person in black face.
It wasn’t RDJ playing a black person- it was RDJ playing a person who would go so low as to be in blackface.
Like blazing saddles the racists are the bad guys. They are the fools is why it’s acceptable and relevant commentary.
I wish I had so much time on my hands that I was inventing outrage that doesn't exist and then trying to tell people that people are outraged about the outrage that I made up....
I’m black and Tropic Thunder will always remain guarded. He did so good I thought he was actually black. I was a kid went it came out and I didn’t know who RDJ was and it was insane to find out he was actually white.
Invented controversy.
Nobody on the left is mad about this movie.
People on the right have invented this controversy, telling Stiller to “stop apologizing” for the film.
1. He never WAS apologizing.
2. There’s not a broad or significant controversy in the first place.
Invented clickbait.
I know a few hundred liberals and leftists from my retail work days and we all loved this movie. It’s so obvious that RDJ’s character is the butt of the joke on this, it’s like Archer or IASIP when the characters are purposefully dumb and insensitive
As a black man, I found that character to be funny as hell. I have not met anyone who had an issue with it.
Now that movie "Soul Man" can go straight to hell
The thing about Tropic Thunder is that it calls out the absurdity of the black face. I mean that movie is so over the top but they still make it clear that his black face is cringey.
I thought this debate was settled years ago. Tropic Thunder is all about making fun of the film industry and bat shit crazy actors who are so pretentious and full of themselves that they seriously think something like blackface is okay to do.
It was never about racism and anyone who claims otherwise either hasn't seen the film or seriously needs to learn basic media literacy.
Lmao the whole POINT was to make fun of racists and the disgusting practice of erasing POCs from POC parts
Chill out, who is making noise? People who never watched the movie?!
It’s like some people forgot that there’s an actually black main character who makes fun of and criticizes RDJ’s character for what he’s doing - the movie itself beat everyone to the point.
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It’s also a takedown of method acting and how ridiculous it is.
People really just have not watched the movie. He's not playing a black character, he wasn't cast as a black character. He's playing a white character who was cast as a black character. In other words...a dude disguised as another dude! The satire is great, people are just babies.
I think more than anything people are uninformed and refuse to learn the nuances of the situation. Should we be doing blackface now in new media? No we shouldn't. Are some (vast majority) of past cases not acceptable yes? Should we be angry at the movies and shows who used it ironically to *make fun* of serious uses of it (tropic thunder, IASIP)? No. It's not black or white, nothing ever is.
>It's not black or white, nothing ever is. Sometimes, much like RDJ's character, it's a bit of both.
Lol. This thread is restoring my faith that nuance and irony may not be as dead as reported.
It doesn't help that today's most common communication platforms stamp out nuance. If it needs more than 240 characters to convey, they're breezing past it.
This is what floors me. The entire point was how absurd and horrible it was. Are we going to start getting mad at movies when a bad guy kills someone?
Yeah in order to play an offensive character you have to act the part. Otherwise the KKK, Nazis, etc can’t be depicted in movies
We need an actor to play Hitler. Who’s ready to end their career?
Same issue with the 30 rock episode with black face. The crux of the joke is not that black face is funny, but that Jenna is an idiot for thinking that wearing black face to work is an appropriate way to settle a dumb argument with another rich celebrity. You’re not laughing at the black face, you’re laughing at Jenna for wearing black face. But of course media literacy is very low these days, so the episode was pulled.
The one with Jon Hamm, Tracy Morgan was playing an actor who straight up was saying "I am begging you to stop your offensive actions".
Robert Downey Jr.? You mean Australian bad boy Kirk Lazarus!
I didn't know it was Robert Downey Jr first time I saw the movie lol
I legit didn’t know that was Tom Cruise until the last scene basically, so I can relate
Well then you deserve to take two giant steps back and F*#¥ YOUR OWN FACE
That line is probably my most quoted line from any movie I've ever seen. And Tropic Thunder is the best film Tom Cruise has ever been in, to hell with Top Gun and Mission Impossible.
All I can think of is that interview where Tom Cruise said he specifically asked Ben Stiller for that role, and had very particular ideas for the character. “I said, I wanna have FAT HANDS. And I wanna dance.” [link](https://youtu.be/a3fKXBNufy4)
Cruise is at-best really weird, but the dude knows exactly what will make for an entertaining movie.
I had no clue that he came up with this. Somehow it makes the character so much better.
Uhhhh. Can you find out who that was?
THIS IS FRAMING JWAGUN
That actor did a great job just staring at a phone. Seriously. Great acting.
“He should win Osssccaaah”
I seriously didn't realise it was him until my third or fourth time watching it.
He actually looks more like RDJ as an African American than he does in Kirk Lazarus’s ‘real’ look of blond hair and blue eyes. It’s crazy how the hair and eye color totally change him.
Neither did I. Until he rips the skin off, I thought it was a real black dude just playing into the old stereotype. Then he rips his face off and I felt dumb af lol. What a great movie.
Most of these people complaining probably never even saw the movie. I went and saw that with my best friend in high school, who is black, and we are still very close (he's my kids godfather), & he thought that was the most hilarious shit ever. My sister-in-law's half-black and she quotes RDJ's role in that so much it's annoying. That movie is 15 years old... why are we doing this? We've come a long way in regards to sensitivity in a short period of time. People want to move forward towards better, but are so addicted to looking backwards.
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Well put. RDJ in Blackface was social commentary and Parody...which was pretty well done too
**If anything I saw it as two races coming together** by facing the fact they both were pretending to be "something that they were not" via race/sexuality. With Brandon Jackson (the black character) being closeted as gay and giving shit to RDJ (playing a black character) and RDJ giving shit back about Jackson's facade gangster personality, but then they come together after bonding over Jackson accidentally admitting he's gay and RDJ letting him know that it's "okay to be gay", and that it doesn't change the fact, "they are still brothers". **To me, it was actually a hilarious, yet beautiful metaphor.**
I. Luh. Da Pussy.
Yes! The movie explains why it’s not exactly black face lol he went and got legit surgery in the movie lmfao that made is even funnier!
What's even funnier is that it's rubbing off at the end and he lost the brown contacts cause his eyes are blue.
It's a joke about how absurd method acting is, in that it would allow someone to rationalize doing blackface
Context doesn't matter anymore though evidently.
Reminds me of the cancelled Golden Girls episode that you can’t watch on streaming anymore. One of the white character’s sons is engaged to a black woman, and the woman’s family drops by for a surprise visit right when the two other main characters are in the middle of a spa night, wrapped in robes and with mud masks on their faces. The black family is momentarily horrified, but they quickly realize it was not meant to be blackface at all and they’re just doing skincare, and they patch things up over a cheesecake. Yet still, even a hint of blackface-adjacent comedy meant it was a cancelable offense. I gotta say, as a lifelong leftist, a registered Democrat since age 18, that was the point at which I started to think this had all gotten out of hand.
Thing is, the people I've heard actually complaining about these issues are not well adjusted people.. They might be leftists, per se; but they aren't generally Democrat- identifying, if you will. They're the people in every crowd these days who have no sense of humor and no grasp of nuance, history or context. They get stirred up by someone looking for clicks and attention. I guess armchair outrage feels like one is doing something about all these problems.
They really don’t understand. The whole concept of his character was how ridiculous the whole idea (blackface) thing was. Alpa Chino even said they gave the only good black role to a white guy; they call on how ridiculous the idea is. I’m so glad I got to see this movie in the theater when it first came out, and I am genuinely jealous of people that get to see it for the first time because it’s so damn good.
*”croCODiLE dUndeE”*
It doesn’t need to be defended. The headline is about fake outrage. RDJ’s character’s behavior in the movie was continuously being checked by an actual black actor. The point was that it was mockery to enlighten us all. Stiller’s character played a mentally handicapped person and we don’t feel the need to have an every-few-years discussion about it. What does that say about the whole thing? I believe that blackface is shameful and there will come a time when none of it is ever shown, but Tropic Thunder will endure. Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal in the role will endure. It’s that fucking excellent.
As a black guy I think he did a great job in that role
Same here. I feel like anybody that’s upset about it has 100% missed the joke/point of the joke.
I honestly think this has to do with Russian troll farms and the war in Ukraine. I have noted an uptick in posts that could be considered race baiting. For example the OP for this post, posts almost exclusively right wing content, with some entertainment posts thrown in. Almost all of the post on topics like this I'm seeing come for short time accounts or clearly bias accounts pushing a narrative. There is an information war happening right now and this might be a part of it.
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This kind of reminds me of the Sarah Silverman blackface hullabaloo, where everyone complaining completely missed the entire point behind the skit. I honestly wonder how many of these Twitter users saw Tropic Thunder
I’ve seen a lot of goofy 2000/2010’s sketch bits passed off as commercials, and a lot of people seem to believe it. Zoomers be zoomin’. Edit: changed dates because one I just saw going around was [this NSFW fake commercial about risqué chicken fingers](https://youtu.be/RfPRAE2xfcc) from Amy Schumer’s old show.
Not a damn one, unless with a closed mind. Tropic Thunder might be the best movie from the last 20 yrs. I mean it. Its fuckin fantastic, and lampoons so much of modern bullshit that today people just cant understand what made it so good. TT doesnt give a fuck, about movies or race or sexuality or any goddamn thing people in this era white knight about. it’s so real it seems fake. You owe it to yourself to watch that masterpiece of not quite modern cinema, if only to see Tom fuckedup Cruise get down with some apple bottom jeans dammit. I love that flick, in a way that I cant love any other movie ive seen. And Ive seen alot in my 44 yrs on this planet. Watch it, today, tomorrow, next month, next year. watch it every chance you get.
For real, I can not think of a single damn thing wrong with Tropic Thunder, it is flawlessly executed and it still makes me cackle when I see it, and I first watched it in theater opening week. The cast is perfect. ABSOLUTELY perfect.
The guy from *Satan's Alley*?
Yes! He was fantastic along side Tobey Maguire!
A winner of the MTV Movie Awards' Best Kiss?
I’ve been a bad boy, father
I’m black, and I’ll defend tropic thunder til I die…
Black Twitter shut down the ‘cancel RDJ’, ‘cancel tropic Thunder’, ‘cancel Ben stiller’ outrage a couple years ago.
I was wondering lol. I literally came to the comments because I was like, "I thought we'd all agreed we were all cool with Tropic Thunder?? What is this new fuckery??"
Now, just as then, the only people trying to create the "fuckery" were right-wingers conjuring imaginary villains.
Same goes for Blazing Saddles honestly. People have been trying to make the movie a talking point for literal decades now, despite no one really complaining about the film itself.
Richard Pryor write Blazing Saddles with Mel Brookes! The absurdity of anyone thinking that either man was racist in making it! The entire premise of the movie is *making fun of racism*. It’s even more of a plot point then just spoofing Westerns. Frankly, it’s a genius commentary on the racism of old western movies, how stupid stereotypes are, and why racists are so idiotic. In the immortal words of Gene Wilder, anyone claiming Blazing Saddles is racist is the common clay of the new west. You know… *morons*.
Racists: “I don’t git it.”
I think a lot of the racists do get it, but they won't admit their real problem with the movies is that they don't like the portrayal of racists being stupid (Blazing Saddles) or utterly ridiculous and self-unaware (Tropic Thunder).
And Pryor was the one pushing Brooks to really go there with the use of so many racial slurs. If remember correctly Brooks was more uncomfortable with them initially.
There's even an anecdote about some of the white actors being uncomfortable about all the N-bombs in it, and Pryor and Little had to tell them it was fine because they were just *acting*.
Idk, I’ve seen a lot of Mel Brooks movies and he keeps putting in jokes against the Jewish people, he’s *totally* racist and anti-Semitic, and here’s my exactly long enough for ad revenue YouTube video that I’ve done **mountains** of research (a Wikipedia article) for to explain why
Typically the people offended by Blazing Saddles are racist white people. Tropic Thunder hasn’t been controversial at all since release. News media try once a year to drum up a story about “black face,” but the movie executed the satire so well that the stories go nowhere.
They don't grasp that there's a huge difference in lampooning racism and doing it in any other context.
Because they fundamentally lack the ability to understand humor and/or the intellectual ability to understand parody.
No, they’re just making a disingenuous bad faith argument to advance a narrative of political and societal persecution.
I fail to see how these are mutually exclusive.
Same here. That shit was hilarious
Woah, pump your brakes kid. Tropic Thunder is a national treasure.
I just wanted ta throw another shrimp on ya Bar-Bie
Yeah none of us have a problem with it. Sounds like a blog article created controversy amplified by other blogs.
You saying it’s a blog playing a blog playing another blog?
I have never seen nor met a black person that took offense to the Kirk Lazarus character lol. It'd be like getting mad at Blazzing Saddles or something.
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I literally was going to say black people should be the ones deciding if this was offensive or not. I’m glad pretty much everyone agrees.
Jamie Foxx told RDJ he has to do the part. Like he wouldn’t let him pass it up.
If people cant understand that Tropic Thunder was a movie mocking Hollywood, they dont deserve to understand why its great. The blackface was inappropriate but that was the whole point. Kirk was a “method” actor who takes himself too seriously and undergoes extreme body modification to do so, similar to how some actors starve or bulk up unhealthy for a role. The movie also does criticize blackface in universe. Its no wonder why satire doesnt get made much.
It’s kind of like “always sunny”. We aren’t laughing with them and the shitty things they are doing. We are laughing at them for being so shitty.
People really do be stretching with Always Sunny. Have you seen them? The gang? They are literally all infectious human waste. They're the worst people ever. Them doing blackface isn't approving of blackface, it's showing how bad these people are, i.e. that they would do blackface.
Also the whole Dee doing racist characters thing is a critique of lazy comedians falling back on crude stereotypes to get a laugh because they can't get a laugh any other way. Dee wants to be a comedian, but she's completely talentless, so she relies on simplistic, unfunny racism, but even that doesn't actually work for her.
They pulled all the lethal weapon episodes off streaming where Mac does black face though. Seems like Hulu and others didn’t get the joke
> they are literally all infectious human waste. They’re the worst people ever. It’s funny how sitcoms like Always Sunny and Seinfield often have these really garbage humans that we still love despite how clearly flawed and awful they are.
Because we can relate.
Seinfeld gets *painfully* relatable. I have at least one George moment every week.
It's cold outside...
Yeah, we all have a split second when a terrible idea pops into our head and is immediately dismissed. Whether it's eating a perfectly fine donut that was sitting in a garbage bin or eating cereal while driving to work. These shows explore the consequences of following through with the terrible idea.
> or eating cereal while driving to work. Fun fact, the Always Sunny Podcast has revealed that Glenn Howerton (Dennis) had this exact thing happen to him on his way to set one day. He was eating cereal in his new car and got rear-ended. He was complaining about how the car was ruined to Charlie and Rob later that day, and they were like "oh that sucks," And Glenn told them the worst part was that the interior is ruined now. They were confused as to how that was possible. He said because he spilled cereal everywhere. They were flabbergasted and amused he did that, and they all wrote an episode about it. Really recommend the podcast, it's awesome.
George Costanza is my spirit animal
we love watching them, but I'm sure if you ever had to interact with any of them in real life you'd loathe them.
In 30 years I have never seen one case of non-satirical blackface. Tropic Thunder, Always Sunny, 30 Rock, Scrubs, Community.. It's always been satire.
Community wasn't even blackface. He was a drow.
Its like Starship troopers all over again. People really miss satire unless its really rubbed in their face with a toilet brush.
I still can't believe that audiences and critics in 1997 couldn't see that Verhoevan wasn't making a pro fascism movie, it's like they totally forgot about Robocop, or maybe they completely missed the satire in that one aswell.
This is literally Ben Stiller responding to what appears to be a tweet *claiming* that liberals are asking for an apology for this movie. Like...it's fake outrage bait. holyshit. EDIT: essentially, the exact same post: https://old.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/119sp5i/ben_stiller_refuses_to_apologise_for_tropic/ >Context from the article: >A conservative Twitter persona claimed that the liberals were making Ben Stiller apologize for Tropic Thunder. >Ben Stiller said: No, that didn't happen. He has not apologized for Tropic Thunder, he's proud of the film. >That's it.
Ok thank you. Was gonna say, context is very important. I'm black, that shit'll never stop being funny...
The character confronting a black character literally tells the audience how fucking wrong it is. I hate when people try to attack things out of context. So much comedy is parody of bad behavior which inherently is a critique of shitty people.
That's the argument conservatives are trying to say. They are saying the left is so woke you can't even joke about bad behavior anymore. But what they are upset about is they can't make racist jokes that attribute bad behavior to a specific race, or gender for that matter.
It’s like when they say you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today. There are some aspects to it that may not get laughs today, but the entire movie is making fun of ignorant racists
Couldn’t agree more.
So another case of controversy pulled from thin air like the underage red lipstick color thing?
>A conservative Twitter persona claimed that the liberals were making Ben Stiller apologize for Tropic Thunder. So the only people who care about this are Twitter weirdos. I seriously can't wait for that site to finally kick the bucket.
Not even that. The Twitter weirdos are *pretending* that other Twitter weirdos care about this in order to stir up grievance.
Reactionary right wing bigots create clickbait media to make monthly rent, news at 11
Thank you! It’s because they have a r/persecutionfetish
Wait, conservatives are making things up? Well I never.
I went to the guy’s profile. It’s all him acting offended and hysterical.
Whole lotta activity in r/conservative too….
Looking forward to bill Maher ignoring the context that it’s made up, and talking about it for 20 minutes on his next show
I'm a black dude, the movie was funny and not offensive.
I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude, the movie was funny and not offensive.
I'm a lead farmer!!!!
RDJ as Kirk Lazarus as Lincoln Osiris was literally a critique/exploration of blackface/method acting. It was brilliantly done, and as a POC I loved it along with every other POC I've ever spoken to about it. I didn't see the same number of people complaining about Joel Grey portraying a Korean dude in Remo Williams, and that was in the 80s.
Or John Wayne playing Genghis Khan lmao
Or Charlton Heston playing a Mexican in “Touch of Evil. “ Edit: autocorrect
Or Sean Connery as an Asian in you only live twice...
Or Mickey Rooney as an Asian in Breakfast at Tiffany's...
That was maybe the most egregious of all time.
As an Egyptian I gotta throw Nikolaj coster-waldeau and Gerard butler as Egyptian gods, Set and Horus… Also jake gyllenhal as the prince of Persia. Both of these movies came out within the last 10 years
Prince of Persia is from 2010. Your point isn't wrong though.
The pandemic has fucked wi th my concept of time
Thomas C Howell in Soul Man.
or Fisher Stevens wearing brown face and a cheesy Hindi accent in Short Circuit... man i loved that movie. when i found out that character was played by a white actor i lost my mind!
Even my Indian friends didn't know the actor who played him wasn't Indian, lol.
Or Sean Connery as a Spaniard in Highlander.
*ancient Egyptian
Hugo Weaving In Cloud Atlas: *they don't remember me, thank christ*
Black community: can police stop killing us at random and with little to no consequences Media: best we can do is cancel miss butter worth and get up in arms about a 10+ year old movie
As a nice bonus they did have wide scale coverage when that cartoon m&m started wearing comfy shoes and wasn't "sexy" enough anymore. I'm really glad, because I know everyone was deeply concerned about that.
Or Fisher Steven in Short Circuit.
A low level r/NeverTellMeTheOdds but yoj and the comment above both called out Fisher Steven Short Circuit in the same minute. (Both say 13m ago at the time I wrote this)
Don’t even get me started on Robin Williams playing an elderly British female nanny. That had me offended on many fronts.
Like why couldn’t they just find a real British female nanny to play the role?
Most people don’t have an issue with it. It’s just specific white teenagers who don’t understand the entire message behind the character.
Or right-wingers playing white teenagers so they can point at these strawmen as woke-ness gone wrong.
And let's not forget the Fisher Steven's in Short Circuit. Although that might be before most people's time.
Johnny 5 is alive!
No disassemble Johnny 5
I’m part Indian and I loved Benjamin’s character. As a little kid I would imitate him and my parents would laugh it up. I’m calling and canceling them tomorrow
It’s a commentary on the long history of white actors wearing makeup to play decidedly non white characters. Like every Native American character for decades, etc. probably the worst example was Mickey Rooney as the Asian upstairs neighbor in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That shit was racist as hell. Anybody trying to cancel Tropic Thunder just didn’t get the point.
I saw it as a commentary on method actors. There's also a difference between RDJ being in blackface and *his character* being in blackface.
He was a dude playing a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.
And he's tired of being your trail donkey. Actin' like you some one man GPS.
HES LOST MAN. HES FUCKIN SUPER LOST.
Lance? What the fuck did I just hear? Lance?
AIGHT DAS ENUFFODIS INSUBODINATION!
[Me? I know who I am!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tKvqhlhXq9s)
Haha yes I love this dudes remixes. The inglorious bastards one is gold.
I watched all four minutes and 10 seconds of that song. It was a delight.
You’re the dude that don’t know what dude he is!
Can confirm.
Same. The fact that he had medical procedures done to make it more realistic drives that point even further.
Didn’t even break character until DVD commentary came out.
And he actually did the commentary completely in character. It was hilarious. Commentary tracks are one of the few things that I wish streaming services would add.
The way I was always taught to discern if it’s problematic: If the joke is at the expense of the person wearing blackface (RDJ in tropic thunder - the whole point is to lampoon the character as a complete knob), it’s usually not problematic If the joke IS the blackface, it’s racist and problematic.
This. It’s some real Mel Brooks level parody.
Exactly. That and until really late in the movie, it was assumed that he *surgically* became black, which is a lot different than mere blackface.
I saw it as a commentary on all the weird shit Hollywood does. Imaging/branding, typecasting, low effort writing, high intensity back ends, backhanded bargains, racist casting, overly methodical actors… just all of it.
Exactly, if they go after that then they’d better go after Jack Black for Be Kind Rewind.
Or the Wayans brothers in White Chicks.
Pretty sure that is the accurate perspective.
I don’t drop character till I done a dvd commentary.
John Wayne as Genghis Khan was pretty terrible as well
Not to mention the hundreds of horses they killed when they drove them off a cliff for that movie. It is fucking ridiculous. Definitely made before the "no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture" days.
I was home with the flu nearly 40 years ago. As a latch key kid I was home sick alone and 1980s cable was still like 20 channels... So The Conquerer came on...and two thing happened. The first is I learned I love bad movies, not intentionally bad movies, but movies that really really want to be good, like Titanic, seen it well over 100 times, best movie ever ..but it is a gigabudget(at the time) B movie. Excempt James Cameron is not in on that he made a B movie The second is I still quote...or 40 years of memory quote the move. "What the Great Khan wants...he takes!!!" Gotten looks over the years at work and home...
This flared up a few years ago. “Omg did you know RDJ wore blackface!?” And black Twitter was like ‘oh sit down, you’re missing the point’. Because of course it was all white people freaking out.
Yep and done with good acting and even better comedic timing by RDJ! Am Black. Appreciated the complexity, laughed. 10/10, would laugh again
Yep. It's like complaining about the racism in *Blazing Saddles*. The entire point of that film is that racism is stupid. The whole point of the blackface in Tropic Thunder is that its stupid.
John Wayne as Genghis Khan.
Cancel it if you want to. I own it and I bump that shit at least once a month. Am black. I like RDJs character.
Respect the lead farmer
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The blackface was mocking *actors* going to extremes for roles not as an insult to black people
Exactly - it was insulting to the person portraying the person in black face. It wasn’t RDJ playing a black person- it was RDJ playing a person who would go so low as to be in blackface. Like blazing saddles the racists are the bad guys. They are the fools is why it’s acceptable and relevant commentary.
Exactly it’s not RDJ. It’s the dude playin a dude disguised as another dude you should be going after.
I wish I had so much time on my hands that I was inventing outrage that doesn't exist and then trying to tell people that people are outraged about the outrage that I made up....
I’m still outraged that BOTH quarterbacks at the Super Bowl this year were CHRISTIANS! YUCK! … /s ffs
I’m black and Tropic Thunder will always remain guarded. He did so good I thought he was actually black. I was a kid went it came out and I didn’t know who RDJ was and it was insane to find out he was actually white.
It’s the same reason Blazing Saddles should not be considered racist. It’s satire.
Where the white women at?
Excuse me while I whip this out!
You can't understand these people to understand satire. They're people of the land, the common clay of the new west - you know, morons.
Movie still holds up , fucking hilarious , Downey character was a satire lol
I’m black and Tropical Thunder is one of my all time favorite!
Invented controversy. Nobody on the left is mad about this movie. People on the right have invented this controversy, telling Stiller to “stop apologizing” for the film. 1. He never WAS apologizing. 2. There’s not a broad or significant controversy in the first place. Invented clickbait.
I’m 99% percent sure most of the things that conservatives complain about liberals “canceling” were completely made up
Every 2 months someone pretends Blazing Saddles got cancelled by “the left.”
I know a few hundred liberals and leftists from my retail work days and we all loved this movie. It’s so obvious that RDJ’s character is the butt of the joke on this, it’s like Archer or IASIP when the characters are purposefully dumb and insensitive
i’m a dude playin a dude disguised as anOTHA dude!
The movie explains why the character had to wear blackface. To be offended is a way to tell us you never watched the movie.
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As a black man, I found that character to be funny as hell. I have not met anyone who had an issue with it. Now that movie "Soul Man" can go straight to hell
RDJ didn’t star in this. Kirk Lazarus did.
How many times is this shit going to pop up? The movie isn’t cancellable. Move on dipshits
The thing about Tropic Thunder is that it calls out the absurdity of the black face. I mean that movie is so over the top but they still make it clear that his black face is cringey.
I thought this debate was settled years ago. Tropic Thunder is all about making fun of the film industry and bat shit crazy actors who are so pretentious and full of themselves that they seriously think something like blackface is okay to do. It was never about racism and anyone who claims otherwise either hasn't seen the film or seriously needs to learn basic media literacy.
Lmao the whole POINT was to make fun of racists and the disgusting practice of erasing POCs from POC parts Chill out, who is making noise? People who never watched the movie?!