ASAN in Salon.com Article on Tropic Thunder Controversy

[Guest guest]

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/18/lynn_harris/index.html

The " retarded " renaissance

" Never go full retard " was the catchphrase of the summer. Activist groups

aren't laughing. Should you be?

By Lynn , lharris@...

Sep. 18, 2008

When I was in fourth grade, someone you liked was a " good kid. " Someone you

didn't like was a " retard. " (Or, in the colorful patois of my native

Boston, a " wicked retahd. " That, or this withering shorthand: " a wicked

re. " ) We did not use the term for the special-needs kids. They were " the

special-needs kids. "

Basically, we used the word to describe any annoying person (or rule or

homework assignment). There was also the timeless " loser, " of course, and

the more ephemeral " dink " -- " douche bag, " for its part, came later -- but

" retard, " and " retarded, " with all their variations, packed the most

playground punch.

And today, pop culture and the Twitterati, tirelessly mining those

formative years for irony pay dirt, have spurred -- for descriptive better

or for derogatory worse, depending on whom you ask -- a " retard "

renaissance.

You've probably read, heard or even said the word (and/or its " 'tard " -based

spinoffs) if you watched this year's MTV Video Music Awards; saw " Napoleon

Dynamite, " " House Bunny " or the trailer for the new Cera movie ( " I

love you so much it's retarded " ); listened to the Black Eyed Peas; heard

Stern on Gov. Palin and work-family balance (according to a

listener, he said, " For the sake of that retarded baby, I'm not going to

vote for her " ); discussed McCain's plan for health insurance reform;

or visited, like, any blog comments section ever.

Oh, or if you've read word one about the most recent Stiller-tacular,

" Tropic Thunder, " whose vast coalition of detractors -- including the

Special Olympics, the National Down Syndrome Society and the American

Association of People with Disabilities -- are currently leading the " for

worse " troops, protesting the use, and use and use of the word " retard " in

the movie. The coalition has also objected to the portrayal of the " retard "

in question, Simple Jack, played by Stiller's Tugg Speedman in a

film-within-a-film, which itself spawned the straight-to-novelty-tee

catchphrase of the summer. " You went full retard, man, " Downey Jr.'s

character -- in blackface -- admonishes a deflated Speedman. " Never go full

retard. "

The catchphrase factor is part of what has advocates up in arms. Yes, they

say, wearily, we know the bit, in context, is satire. (And clearly it is:

Not of Simple Jack, but of movies like " I Am Sam " -- that is, of maudlin,

" serious, " -bait film portrayals of the intellectually challenged.)

But the thing about catchwords, coalition members note, is that they don't

stay in context.

" When kids see the movie and then use that word to tease someone -- or call

someone 'Simple Jack' -- they're not making fun of Hollywood, " says

Plank, founder of WrongPlanet.net, a prominent online forum for people with

autism and other neurological differences, and a member organization of the

" Tropic Thunder " protest coalition. Or, in the words of one blogger whose

son has Down syndrome, " When we award tacit acceptance to a term such as

'retard' or 'retarded' in casual conversation -- or worse, when millions of

people watch a movie that also awards that tacit acceptance -- it most

certainly will gain even more acceptance, " she wrote last month. " My son

will be going back to school in a couple of weeks. And all around him -- I

guarantee it -- kids will be telling other kids not to go 'full retard.'

And everyone will think it's OK to say 'retard,' or that this or that is

'retarded.' And my son will walk through the halls, and more people will

think of Nick as a 'retard' than did a few months ago. Nick deserves better

than that. "

But do we need to ban the word entirely? Not necessarily, says Gail

on, mother of a working actor with Down syndrome and executive

director of the Down Sydrome Association of Los Angeles (which also

successfully hounded Fox to pull " Napoleon Dynamite " pens that said, " You

guys are retarded " ). " But we do have moral and societal guidelines that

limit the use of other derogatory words. We're just saying this word needs

to be added to that list. It is hate speech. "

So it's because of " Tropic Thunder " that the current " hate speech " vs.

" irony! " controversy has exploded. But in the broader view of this

particular culture war, Stiller & Co. were hardly the first to have dropped

the R-bomb. Todd Solondz trivia experts may note that the working title of

his 1995 outcast-fest " Welcome to the Dollhouse " reportedly was " Faggots

and Retards. " And back in 2000, Tina Fey said she had to haggle for

permission to use the word on " SNL " -- in a Sully-and--from-Boston

sketch, natch. The final word from NBC's standards and practices division:

Yes in late night, no in earlier promos. " The network is very skittish

about the word -- and rightfully so, " Fey told the New York Observer.

So what's behind the R-word's most recent surge -- in visibility and,

depending on where you look, acceptability? And, really, should it go away

for good?

As for pinpointing the term's reemergence, there's certain linguistic

detective work that just cannot be done. No one can say for sure which

cheeky blogger first thought, for instance, " Hmm. 'Idiot'? No. 'Loser'? No,

too soft. 'Tool'? Close. But I need something more pungent, more staccato,

even more deliberately juvenile. Oh, look, someone from fourth grade just

found me on Facebook. Man, I always thought that kid was such a ... [light

bulb] RETARD. "

But it's not hard to hypothesize about the term's recent proliferation, or

its unique descriptive appeal. It is at least a safe bet that -- as

feminist blogger Marcotte suggested to me in a separate analysis of

the term " douche bag " -- the full-on deployment of " retard " and (perhaps

even more so) " retarded " was at least accelerated in the online

snarkosphere, where so many jillions of people complaining about so many

jillions of things are, at the end of the day, just going to need some more

words. (Cf. " asshat, " " douchetard. " )

So, then, why " retard " ? For one thing, " retard " and " retarded " have that

retro, old-skool styling that is not only in vogue but also handy when that

puerile, playgroundy connotation is precisely what's needed. Retarded, its

fans insist, steps in where, say, " lame " (also an offensive term, if you

think about it) leaves off. " I always thought 'retard,' which means slows

and pretty in music, was actually a kind of nice way to express the

condition. So I'm sorry it got a bad rap, " says my friend Dixie, whom I

called to find out if the teen TV network where she works would allow the

R-word on air. (Answer: No way.) " It got a bad rap precisely because people

used the term to mean lame. So now that we don't use it for the

developmentally disabled, can we please use it to mean lame, stupid, way

stupid? None of these have the punch that retard does. Some things are more

than lame. They are retarded. The true essence of a poor, poor decision

isn't conveyed well enough with lame. Or with gay, for that matter. "

Ah, yes. About " gay. " It's also made quite a comeback, from the fourth

grade, as an insult -- but not against actual homosexuals. Even if you find

that objectionable, there's still a difference. Gays -- unlike

" retards " (See? You just can't say that!) -- have been using that term to

describe themselves for decades. So the word itself, however you use it,

just doesn't have the same thudding impact. And unless I missed them

somehow, I haven't heard many murmurs about a radical political strategy to

reclaim, à la " queer, " the R-word.

In fact, perhaps not surprisingly, things seem to be going in the opposite

direction. Just last year, the American Association for Mental Retardation

changed its name to the American Association on Intellectual and

Developmental Disabilities, on the grounds that, while the term was still

useful in certain legal and medical contexts, it had become dated at best,

stigmatizing at worst. As one proponent of the name change argued, " It is

in the process of dying its own death, of becoming an archaic term as

others have before it. "

That observation, in a way, bolsters the boosters' central defense: To the

degree that " retard " is hate speech, well, we use it to speak of our hate

for Paris Hilton. Or people who " go green " ... by private jet. Or certain

politicians. Or any display, really, of eye-rolling dumbassery. Not the

special-needs kids.

In fact, at least one person very close to the issue says she has no

trouble separating the epithet, in this way, from its original meaning. " My

sister has Down syndrome and I am most definitely an advocate for her and

any developmentally disabled people. That said, I am in no way offended

when I hear the word 'retarded,' " says Angelique Uhlmann, 40, a physician

in Boston who was not offended by " Tropic Thunder. " " In my mind it's just a

word. I don't recall people ever calling her that, even, but I do recall

people staring at her, mouths agape. That I find much more offensive than a

mere word. Looks can kill, as they say. "

Ari Ne'eman, an Asperger's autistic who is founding president of the

Autistic Self Advocacy Network, isn't buying this argument. " That's like

saying, 'I'm not really talking about the Jewish people when I say

someone's trying to Jew me out of my money,' " he says. " It's very

disingenuous to say this is not about the rights of people with

disabilities, because in many ways reality and actions follow terminology.

And if we can't reach a point where people with disabilities have the same

basic rights to respect in public discourse that any other minority

community really demands and is generally afforded, then we're never going

to be able to address what is very real and tangible discrimination against

people with disabilities. " (Discrimination, he says, and even violence,

noting that Sen. Joe Biden, Barack Obama's pick for V.P., in 2007

introduced legislation that would, among other things, expand the federal

definition of a hate crime to include disability.)

Ne'eman and others maintain that disability is one of the last " acceptable "

targets of bigotry. He decries this double standard: " There are people who

would never practice bigotry against people of a different skin color or

religion but are bigoted in their language or actions against people with

disabilities all the time. " I'd argue that no one's thrown around " cripple "

much since Haig, but point taken. Plenty of racism has swirled

around the Obama campaign, for example, but at least in " distinguished "

circles, it has had to come at least a little encoded. We can argue all day

about whether a particular, and subtle, turn of phrase, or sleight of

Photoshop, or glance was anti-Semitic, or gay-bashing or whatever. But

people -- whatever you may make of this -- are going around saying

" retard, " " retard, " " retard, " with not a whole lot of frowning in their

wake.

Here's how it plays out in my world. The other day an electrician, not a

tall guy, arrived at our fourth floor walkup complaining, jokingly, about

all the stairs. " It's not easy for me and my midget legs, " he said with a

grin. Was he actually making fun of my sister-in-law, who is an

achondroplastic dwarf? Of course not. Would he have said this to her face?

No way. He probably didn't even know that the word " midget " is considered

deeply offensive by many people with dwarfism. And yet, I cringed.

Ultimately, anti- " retard " activists are essentially trying to do what I

didn't do while that fellow fixed our ceiling fan: Say something. Or at

least to get people -- perhaps especially people like me: people who found

the Simple Jack business hilarious precisely because I'm so offended by

" respectful " films like " Rain Man, " people who are deeply aware of the

power of words both to pinpoint and to prick, and people who could still

maybe stand at least the opportunity -- to think twice.

" People are comfortable using 'retard' as a dis because in the past no one

has stood up and said anything in numbers worth counting. Most marginalized

groups come from places of family pride and tradition. They are able to

stand strong together out of their heritage and make a statement. But

people with intellectual disabilities, scattered through different

families, are not part of a celebrated culture, " says on, who saw

" Tropic Thunder " as equal parts outrage and opportunity. " I think today's

high-tech world has finally allowed us to take a stand. Perhaps the word

has continued to grow in popularity, since there has been no public

pressure against it, " she suggests. " Until now. "