Never Go Full Retard

We watched Milk last night. Another Academy Award winner. This one I wasn't so excited over. Too long, for one thing. I was glad to find out the whole interesting and outrageous story, and to be reminded how far we've come in so short a time, but there's just something weird about these Hollywood re-enactments of history. I got the same feeling from Frost/Nixon. It's a little too easy to play up the plot points and emotions that will lead to a clean, satisfying conclusion, and the whole thing ends up seeming kind of cheesy. I'd rather see a documentary, I guess.

The other thing that's been bothering me all day about it is this heterosexual-actors-playing-homosexuals phenomenon. At first it seems like a really noble thing, and it makes you feel good to know that these actors are secure enough in themselves to portray a character from a maligned minority so that society might benefit by seeing itself a little better in that minority. But then, the more you think about it, the more condescending an attitude that seems — and condescending to the very minority supposedly being held up for empathy. Are we really as OK with these other people as we claim if we find the portrayal of one of them by one of us "brave"? Why exactly does it make it more poignant to have Sean Penn or Heath Ledger or Jake Gyllenhaal throw himself into the role of a struggling gay man, rather than to hire an actually gay actor?

Alison raises the point that the director and producers want to make a blockbuster movie that will reach lots of people, and that means they need a big-name actor, and there are (allegedly, Tom Cruise having still never officially come out) no gay big-name actors. But if that's a real Hollywood problem, aren't they just perpetuating it? Wouldn't it be better to hire someone who IS openly gay and make him into a big-name actor with their big film, thereby really doing some good for the cause they purport to be endorsing?

Imagine if someone tried to make a film about the civil rights movement in the sixties, with all the black characters played by white actors. That would be pretty questionable, right? Especially if they defended their choice by saying, "We wanted people to relate to the blacks as if they were actual people, and to give these white actors a chance to show just how bravely they support the African Americans' struggle. Plus, the film needed to make a lot of money, and black actors just don't draw the crowds."

Or imagine a film by Spike Lee about the plight of Jews throughout history, starring all black actors, in order to show the well-roundedness of his equal rights concerns. Or a biopic of Gloria Steinem with Vince Vaughn in the lead. Actually, both of those would probably be pretty interesting.

I guess there's a similar phenomenon with mentally challenged characters. And here one must invoke Tom Cruise again. These roles usually, as in Rain Man, get filled by actors with fully functioning brains, at least by the standards of popular culture. Yes, I know Tom Cruise was not the autistic one. And neither has he played a gay character yet. Now that WILL be interesting — it'll probably coincide with his divorce from Katie Holmes and immediately subsequent marriage to a Mesopotamian fertility goddess statue.

But back to retard roles. There's a very funny scene in Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey, Jr.'s character (who is, strangely enough, a celebrated white actor playing a black character in the film-within-a-film) tells Ben Stiller's character — a lesser actor who has been trying to break out of his action hero typecasting — why the latter's brave portrayal of a retarded boy in his last film did not win him the accolades he'd hoped for. It turns out there is an unwritten but universally known law in Hollywood that an actor must never play a mentally challenged part realistically enough that audience sympathy is lost. Something must always be held back, so that the character remains pathetic, but not alien. Stiller's character's big fault was that he "went full retard." And maybe casting a gay man as another gay man would be the same fatal mistake.

By the way, Tom Cruise is also in Tropic Thunder, and he's very funny, although neither retarded nor gay. His character, I mean.

Anyway, I just wanted to rant a little about that seeming injustice. Been kind of bugging me all day. And I'm not even gay, so that makes my concern extra valid!

- Andrew