Tonto, Tootsie, and How Not to Tackle Prejudice
Yesterday I was sitting in the theatre about to watch the Heat, and reading about how Johnny Depp really wanted to represent the plight of the Native American by playing Tonto. Or something like that, I didn’t save the magazine. I haven’t seen the Lone Ranger, so I don’t know how good a job Johnny does of avoiding racial stereotypes, but the casting of a white guy in this role is, I feel, akin to casting Mickey Rooney as the Asian neighbour in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We forgive the classics for their arrogance, their racism and misogyny. We pat ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come. And then we cast a well-meaning white-guy in a Native American role. ”I wanted to maybe give some hope to kids on the reservations,” Depp told Rolling Stone. “They’re living without running water and seeing problems with drugs and booze. But I wanted to be able to show these kids, ‘F*** that! You’re still warriors, man.’ ”
Now I’m white, so I can’t really speak for indigenous people. (Or maybe I can, according to Johnny). But I don’t see how seeing Caucasian actors take on the few Native roles in Hollywood is going to give kids on a reservation any hope at all. I suspect that those kids need Captain Jack Sparrow in a stupid bird hat representing them about as much as women need Dustin Hoffman in drag to talk about feminist issues.
Normally that Dustin Hoffman reference would have been slightly dated, but recently there’s been a clip circulating of Dustin brought to tears over the lessons he learned in playing Tootsie. If you haven’t seen it yet, basically Dustin asked the make-up people to make him more beautiful and, upon realizing that they couldn’t do any better, he went home and cried to his wife: “I think that I’m an interesting woman…and I know that if I met myself at a party I would never talk to her, that character, because she doesn’t fulfill physically the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out…There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.”
It’s very nice that playing a homely woman made Dustin less shallow, except that Tootsie is one of the most sexist movies imaginable. All the men (including Hoffman’s Mike Dorsey) are thoughtless womanizing dicks while all the women are personality-challenged doormats who need a man in a dress to show them how to be a strong woman. That doesn’t mean the flick isn’t entertaining, just that its attempt to tackle feminism is, at best, quaint.
But hey, it was the 80s. Let’s pat ourselves on the back again over how far we’ve come! Now we have The Heat, an action comedy with female leads. Huzzah! This is a movie that tackles feminism only by its very existence, a movie that never tells us that woman can kick butt and be just as funny as men, but shows us at every turn. I loved Melissa Mccarthy in bridesmaids and I loved her in The Heat, and Sandra Bullock is her perfect partner, funny in a completely different way. (It’s almost as if two women can have two completely distinct personalities…mind blown). This is the kind of movie that gives me hope, not one that tells me what a victim I am for being a woman, not one where the female lead is played by a man. I’m a little bummed that movies like The Heat are so unusual, but it’s a step in the right direction.
So here’s my idea, how about we let people speak for themselves? Natives can represent Natives, women can represent women, Asians can represent Asians and so on. We are epically awesome in our diversity. Let’s show that in our entertainment.
