kitty
10-19-2004, 01:50 PM
Team America: Racism, Idiocy, and Two Men's Pursuit to Piss off as Many People As Possible
The first thing that strikes you about Matt Stone and Trey Parker's newest endeavour, Team America: World Police, is the puppets. Jim Henson this is not. How amusing, you think, to watch puppets acting like real people acting like puppets, yet half of the slapschtick humour revolves around the limitations of puppet theatre. The infamous (and woefully graphic) puppet sex scene, not nearly as excised as we were lead to be, is only one of several jokes that capitalize upon Stone and Parker's difficulty in manipulating their cast: from a martial arts fight that consists of having the puppets jumping up and down until one falls flat on its back, to having characters poke each other in the eye during what are intended to be dramatic moments because the puppeteers had trouble aiming the hands and feet of the marionettes.
The slapschtick comedy isn't bad, although this, along with Stone and Parker's trademark obsession with vomit and feces, makes you feel the brain cells perishing as you laugh at the kind of humour that would usually be traded across a grammar school sandbox. Still, Stone and Parker are spot-on when it comes to making fun of themselves, especially when it comes to the silliness of most of the movie's soundtrack. It's the other half of the movie that is the problem.
Team America is a spoof of Jerry Bruckheimer movies like Mission Impossible, 80's cartoon shows, and a social commentary on America's self-described role as world police. The filmmakers claim that the film was written long before the present war in Iraq and surrounding political hullabaloo, although it's hard to imagine that the script wasn't tweaked a little, in response to current events. The movie follows an imaginary covert operatives team called 'Team America' which is dedicated to eradicating terrorist cells throughout the world. Like the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the team consists of the dumb jock, the smart-aleck wiseass guy, the guy who's all heart, the girl who inexplicably isn't the sex symbol, and the girl who inexplicably is. The protagonist, the sensitive and confused Gary Johnson, is among the nation's top actors, and has been conscripted into Team America to help them infiltrate a terrorist organization. However, though the film opens with Arabic looking men blowing up Paris, the movie ends up revolving around North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his dastardly plans for world domination.
Yet, Stone and Parker's leanings towards the irreverant has, in this case gone far over the line. Conservatives who take seriously Bush's War on Terror will most likely be offended by the fun Stone and Parker have at their expense -- Team America is way over the top in their war-mongering bloodthirst. Fans of liberal actors and Hollywood activists (and probably the actors themselves) will be put off by the role they end up playing in the film. But all this pales in comparison to the unexpected (or at least to me; some might argue that I should've known better) racial insensitivy Stone and Parker display in this movie.
Firstly, the Stone and Parker play off of existing stereotypes of Arab and Middle Eastern men right at the start of the film, setting the tone for the offensiveness yet to come. In the 'let's blow the hell out of Paris scene', suicide bombers are set to destroy Paris when Team America swoops in and a firefight ensues. The suicide bomber, and all subsequent terrorist puppets, puppets are dark-skinned, thin men with long, curly facial hair and turbans, and they all look menancing and brutish. They yammer at one another in what can only be described as the 'ching-chong' language of the Arabic world -- gibberish that vaguely resembles the Sim-language of the popular Sims computer game line. These are the same stereotypes that have plagued America's Middle Eastern and Arab community since before 9/11, and yet rather than use this film to poke fun at that stereotype, in typical tongue-in-cheek South Park fashion, Stone and Parker actually use the stereotypes to distinguish their terrorist puppets as a threat, in essence perpetuating them (albeit in puppet form).
Kim Jong Il and his army of North Korean men and women fare no better. In a scene that was later edited from the movie (but I'm sure it'll be back for the DVD release), all-American hero Gary Johnson beats up a hoarde of North Korean soldiers with his 'expert martial arts' skills, no doubt a parody of the scene in Kill Bill, vol. 1. Kim Jong Il, himself, is an exercise in racial caricature: he is a short, squat man and a social outcast. To underscore Jong Il's inanity, and to obviously poke fun at the mode of speech of most Asian men and women for whom English is not their first language, Kim Jong Il not only speaks with that familiar 'R/L' accent, but is given lines that deliberately underscore this speech pattern, in order to squeeze as much laughter at the silly little foreign man's expense as possible. Kim Jong Il, the puppet, even has a musical solo, in which the chorus goes: 'I'm so Ron-ryyyyyy', by which he means 'lonely'.
Stone and Parker add insult to injury by having protagonist Gary Johnson don blackface (well, brown-face, I suppose) in order to infilitrate the terrorist organization and secure the location of the terrorist group's bombs. In a scene designed to emulate the surgery scene of Face-Off, one Team America team member 'surgically alters' Gary Johnson so that he will pass as a terrorist. When he emerges, it's simply the Gary Johnson puppet smeared in feces-coloured brown paint and with clumps of fake hair glued to his chin. The idea that these filmmakers feel not only that it would be acceptable for them to include blackface in their film, and more importantly that critics failed to address the blatant racism of such a scene, is what is truly shocking, and is more than enough indication that America's hatred of its ethnic minorities is still alive and kicking, although the butt of the jokes have shifted and expanded.
And if non-racial minorities thought they were exempt, think again. Team America also includes several potshots aimed at the LGBTQ community, including extensive use of the epithet 'fag' in a derogatory context referencing undesirable characters in a negative light by insinuating that they are gay.
While, on the surface, Team America's caricatures may seem to be directed more at global stereotypes than at communities within America, the racialization of the international cast of bad guys in this film makes it extremely relevant to America's racial minorities. Though Stone and Parker do not explicitly make reference to Asian Americans in their film, the fun they have by mocking Asian speech patterns, for example, will have an extremely negative impact upon the moviegoing audiences who do not distinguish between foreign and domestic Asian peoples. While this reviewer does appreciate a good satire, Team America definitely wasn't it: good satire is when a film is able to mock something else without having to offend anybody to do it, Team America was an hour and a half of racial mockery with a 'if you are offended, you obviously can't take a joke' tacked on at the end.
But, the worst part of Team America: World Police is yet to come. Stone and Parker are two white men pushing their limits, like children trying to see how far they can get and how offensive they can be without repercussion. The fact that critics are applauding this effort underscores exactly how good it is to be white: when it comes right down to it, if you are a white male, you can get away with pretty much anything. Film critics and reviewers (as well as moviegoers alike) have heralded Team America as the 'funniest movie of the year'. Well, don't let them fool you -- the vast majority of this film is about as hilarious as a public lynching, and to claim otherwise is to subscribe to Stone and Parker's message that non-white, non-Americans are just about the funniest thing since the Whoopee cushion.
And America wonders why the rest of the world hates us.
The first thing that strikes you about Matt Stone and Trey Parker's newest endeavour, Team America: World Police, is the puppets. Jim Henson this is not. How amusing, you think, to watch puppets acting like real people acting like puppets, yet half of the slapschtick humour revolves around the limitations of puppet theatre. The infamous (and woefully graphic) puppet sex scene, not nearly as excised as we were lead to be, is only one of several jokes that capitalize upon Stone and Parker's difficulty in manipulating their cast: from a martial arts fight that consists of having the puppets jumping up and down until one falls flat on its back, to having characters poke each other in the eye during what are intended to be dramatic moments because the puppeteers had trouble aiming the hands and feet of the marionettes.
The slapschtick comedy isn't bad, although this, along with Stone and Parker's trademark obsession with vomit and feces, makes you feel the brain cells perishing as you laugh at the kind of humour that would usually be traded across a grammar school sandbox. Still, Stone and Parker are spot-on when it comes to making fun of themselves, especially when it comes to the silliness of most of the movie's soundtrack. It's the other half of the movie that is the problem.
Team America is a spoof of Jerry Bruckheimer movies like Mission Impossible, 80's cartoon shows, and a social commentary on America's self-described role as world police. The filmmakers claim that the film was written long before the present war in Iraq and surrounding political hullabaloo, although it's hard to imagine that the script wasn't tweaked a little, in response to current events. The movie follows an imaginary covert operatives team called 'Team America' which is dedicated to eradicating terrorist cells throughout the world. Like the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the team consists of the dumb jock, the smart-aleck wiseass guy, the guy who's all heart, the girl who inexplicably isn't the sex symbol, and the girl who inexplicably is. The protagonist, the sensitive and confused Gary Johnson, is among the nation's top actors, and has been conscripted into Team America to help them infiltrate a terrorist organization. However, though the film opens with Arabic looking men blowing up Paris, the movie ends up revolving around North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his dastardly plans for world domination.
Yet, Stone and Parker's leanings towards the irreverant has, in this case gone far over the line. Conservatives who take seriously Bush's War on Terror will most likely be offended by the fun Stone and Parker have at their expense -- Team America is way over the top in their war-mongering bloodthirst. Fans of liberal actors and Hollywood activists (and probably the actors themselves) will be put off by the role they end up playing in the film. But all this pales in comparison to the unexpected (or at least to me; some might argue that I should've known better) racial insensitivy Stone and Parker display in this movie.
Firstly, the Stone and Parker play off of existing stereotypes of Arab and Middle Eastern men right at the start of the film, setting the tone for the offensiveness yet to come. In the 'let's blow the hell out of Paris scene', suicide bombers are set to destroy Paris when Team America swoops in and a firefight ensues. The suicide bomber, and all subsequent terrorist puppets, puppets are dark-skinned, thin men with long, curly facial hair and turbans, and they all look menancing and brutish. They yammer at one another in what can only be described as the 'ching-chong' language of the Arabic world -- gibberish that vaguely resembles the Sim-language of the popular Sims computer game line. These are the same stereotypes that have plagued America's Middle Eastern and Arab community since before 9/11, and yet rather than use this film to poke fun at that stereotype, in typical tongue-in-cheek South Park fashion, Stone and Parker actually use the stereotypes to distinguish their terrorist puppets as a threat, in essence perpetuating them (albeit in puppet form).
Kim Jong Il and his army of North Korean men and women fare no better. In a scene that was later edited from the movie (but I'm sure it'll be back for the DVD release), all-American hero Gary Johnson beats up a hoarde of North Korean soldiers with his 'expert martial arts' skills, no doubt a parody of the scene in Kill Bill, vol. 1. Kim Jong Il, himself, is an exercise in racial caricature: he is a short, squat man and a social outcast. To underscore Jong Il's inanity, and to obviously poke fun at the mode of speech of most Asian men and women for whom English is not their first language, Kim Jong Il not only speaks with that familiar 'R/L' accent, but is given lines that deliberately underscore this speech pattern, in order to squeeze as much laughter at the silly little foreign man's expense as possible. Kim Jong Il, the puppet, even has a musical solo, in which the chorus goes: 'I'm so Ron-ryyyyyy', by which he means 'lonely'.
Stone and Parker add insult to injury by having protagonist Gary Johnson don blackface (well, brown-face, I suppose) in order to infilitrate the terrorist organization and secure the location of the terrorist group's bombs. In a scene designed to emulate the surgery scene of Face-Off, one Team America team member 'surgically alters' Gary Johnson so that he will pass as a terrorist. When he emerges, it's simply the Gary Johnson puppet smeared in feces-coloured brown paint and with clumps of fake hair glued to his chin. The idea that these filmmakers feel not only that it would be acceptable for them to include blackface in their film, and more importantly that critics failed to address the blatant racism of such a scene, is what is truly shocking, and is more than enough indication that America's hatred of its ethnic minorities is still alive and kicking, although the butt of the jokes have shifted and expanded.
And if non-racial minorities thought they were exempt, think again. Team America also includes several potshots aimed at the LGBTQ community, including extensive use of the epithet 'fag' in a derogatory context referencing undesirable characters in a negative light by insinuating that they are gay.
While, on the surface, Team America's caricatures may seem to be directed more at global stereotypes than at communities within America, the racialization of the international cast of bad guys in this film makes it extremely relevant to America's racial minorities. Though Stone and Parker do not explicitly make reference to Asian Americans in their film, the fun they have by mocking Asian speech patterns, for example, will have an extremely negative impact upon the moviegoing audiences who do not distinguish between foreign and domestic Asian peoples. While this reviewer does appreciate a good satire, Team America definitely wasn't it: good satire is when a film is able to mock something else without having to offend anybody to do it, Team America was an hour and a half of racial mockery with a 'if you are offended, you obviously can't take a joke' tacked on at the end.
But, the worst part of Team America: World Police is yet to come. Stone and Parker are two white men pushing their limits, like children trying to see how far they can get and how offensive they can be without repercussion. The fact that critics are applauding this effort underscores exactly how good it is to be white: when it comes right down to it, if you are a white male, you can get away with pretty much anything. Film critics and reviewers (as well as moviegoers alike) have heralded Team America as the 'funniest movie of the year'. Well, don't let them fool you -- the vast majority of this film is about as hilarious as a public lynching, and to claim otherwise is to subscribe to Stone and Parker's message that non-white, non-Americans are just about the funniest thing since the Whoopee cushion.
And America wonders why the rest of the world hates us.