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October 19, 2004
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.
Posted by Elbert Oh at October 19, 2004 09:18 PM
Comments
>>> "when it comes right down to it, if you are a white male, you can get away with pretty much anything." <<<
This is so far from the truth. While I am not racist and did take some offense to Team America, you have to realize that the movie was meant to be offensive, and it had to be offensive to EVERYONE in order not to seem biased.
Posted by: White guy at November 1, 2004 07:39 PM
This movie is obviously a parody about our own racism and American way of thinking. The movie was simply a mirror to show and to exaggerate how much of the US population thinks. I did not take any offense to the movie which was actually making fun of Americans and their ignorance. Saying that the movie is offensive is like saying "Dances with Wolves" is offensive because of how the white men treated the Indians. But that is the whole point; they are merely showing us our ridiculous stereotypes.
Posted by: Will (another white guy) at November 2, 2004 09:11 AM
White guy, and white guy number two: regardless of the stated (or, in this case, presumed -- remember, neither Stone nor Parker have explicitly stated that their intention was to piss off everyone equally) intentions of the filmmakers, the fact that they must resort to *racialized* humour is what is offensive. The satire they make of American militants is not racialized -- they are poked fun at because of their political beliefs, but not their race. Kim Jong Il and the terrorists, on the other hand, were racialized caricatures of non-white minorities. So, in response to white guy number one, the movie did NOT offend everyone equally -- to have done so would've meant including racial humour of whites and blacks, neither of which was evident in the film.
re: the movie as a mirror for our stereotypes.
I agree that while this may have been an intention of the film, this was not, obviously, the only intention. If we are to believe white guy number one, than the major intention of the film was to piss everyone off equally. This doesn't allow for your belief, that the film was a mirror in which to examine our own prejudices: we are too busy being pissed off, according to white guy number one, in order to understand this commentary.
However, if we are to go with your interpretation of the film, then I would point to this film as a colossal failure. How many audience members went into this film to come to some higher understanding of the inanity of their stereotypes? Most of the comedy was centered around laughing WITH the stereotypes, not at them. If this film was geared towards young white males (such as yourselves), how many are aware of the N. Korean situation, or really understand the rationale of terrorists or the struggle in the Middle East? Let me point to another pop culture reference: in a recent episode of the Apprentice, Raj and a white male (as far as I'm concerned, Raj's assimilationist attitude on the show, and his seemingly nonexistent Indian heritage, makes him representative of a white man for most audiences of the Apprentice; most don't know or recognize his actual ethnicity) makes a caricatured 'lalalalalala' yell as he imitates a Middle Eastern terrorist in much the same fashion as is seen in Team America. Are we to believe that the humour there, as in this film, is due to how untrue that caricature is? Or how true?
Speaking of which, Dances of Wolves IS considered offensive to the First Nation politicized movement, because of the way that Native Americans are portrayed in the film: alternatively being killed and 'saved' by the white man.
Let me ask you though: do you think it right, as two white men, to attempt to define for another community, what they should and should not find offensive? Isn't the offense, itself, reason enough to examine the film for its racial content? If someone shoots you in the chest, do we stop to question whether you really should be feeling as much pain as you do, before we book your attacker for attempted murder?
Posted by: Jenn at November 2, 2004 11:47 AM
Well, I do not attempt to define for anyone what they should or should not find offensive. And when I stated that I found this movie a little offensive, I should have also said that it did not effect my enjoyment of the movie at all. I am not only white, I am also Jewish, and as such, I have to deal with the common Jewish stereotypes as well. In fact, the "cheap Jew" stereotype has been featured on South Park, another Stone and Parker creation, every so often, and while it might offend me in some way, it does not really bother me.
Every different race must deal with their own stereotypes and try to abolish them from the common perception, but you shouldn't let it get to you too much, or else you are letting prejudice keep you down, which reinforces its hold on society.
The reason racial humor about blacks was not present in the movie was because it did not have anything to do with the situations in the movie. The only white stereotype I can think of at the moment was the “dumb surfer” voice of the intelligence computer.
As a side note, one of my Korean friends who saw the movie was not offended by the Kim Jong Il character. Everyone takes things in different ways.
Posted by: white guy (the first one) at November 2, 2004 07:32 PM
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