Adam Sandler’s Latest Movie: Degradation and Dehumanization of Native American Women & Elders
On April 22, close to a dozen Native American actors walked off the set of a new Adam Sandler Western parody called the “Ridiculous Six” citing a script that grossly misrepresented Native peoples while insulting women and elders through the racist and misogynistic jokes throughout the script.
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While producers of the movie tried to defend the parody as being a satire akin to Mel Brooks’ 1974 classic “Blazing Saddles,” the released portions of the script show that rather than being satirical, the movie engaged in tasteless, dehumanizing jokes at the expense of Native Americans for a few cheap laughs. Blazing Saddles on the other hand challenges topics such as racism, slavery, discrimination, and genocide through a thoughtful lens of humor that leaves the viewer aware of the continued legacy of injustice that these issues and institutions have left in our country.
The Ridiculous Six, which is said to be a parody of The Magnificent Seven, uses “Indian Names” for women that are offensive and crude such as the two mentioned in the script below. In other scenes, Native Americans are depicted in the tired stereotype of the alcoholic savage and one woman urinates on the ground while smoking a peace pipe, a symbol with great religious and spiritual sacredness in many indigenous ceremonies.
In a Hollywood climate in which Native Americans are still marginalized and only offered stereotypical Indian roles, which leaves very few acting opportunities for Native American actors and creates a lot of competition, the very act of standing in solidarity and walking off the set could have economic and professional repercussions for the actors. Brian Brayboy, professor of Indigenous Education and Justice would argue that the solidarity shown by the Native Americans that chose to walk off set is an articulation of some of the central tenets of Tribal Critical Race Theory. The actors that walked away possessed a deep understanding of cultural knowledge” which Brayboy defines as “an understanding of what it means to be a member of a particular tribal nation; this includes particular traditions, issues, and ways of being and knowing that make an individual a member of a community” (Brayboy, 2006). Brayboy argues that this cultural knowledge leads to power through “survivance” - a combination of survival and resistance.
This solidarity and act of resistance against the dehumanization of Native Americans has been met with support and has sparked campaigns to get Netflix to drop their support for this project. This in part comes from the release of the video below, which highlights the continued patronizing and imperialistic manner in which white people “handle” Native Americans. The crew tries to emphasize that Adam Sandler’s character is someone that “loves you guys,” which brings to mind the arguments of “we are trying to honor you” that are so often used for the justification of the highly problematic and racist use of Native Americans as mascots of sports teams.
Ultimately, the video shows how any talk of addressing the concerns of the actors is dependent on interest convergence as Castagno and Lee point out in their analysis of “dialogue” around the use of Native mascots in school sports. In the end, since there was no interest convergence and the actor’s protests were instead costing money as they halted production, the producer tells the actors that if they are so sensitive about it, they could just leave. This callous lack of interest in the very real concerns of Native Americans means that it is up to us as consumers and as allies to stand in solidarity with these actors in order to ensure that this act of resistance is one that ultimately leads to change in Hollywood’s practices.
Sources:
Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, 2006 “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education”
Angelina E Castagno and Stacey J. Lee, 2007 “Native Mascots and Ethnic Fraud in Higher Education: Using Tribal Critical Race Theory and the Interest Convergence Principle as an Analytic Tool”