A few months ago I posted about when I played some old video games and realized they weren't as good as I remembered. Here's another nostalgia fail:
Back in April I was bored on a Sunday afternoon and on the Roku Channel they had Short Circuit 2, which I remembered was not a great movie, but since I couldn't think of anything else to watch, I decided to put it on.
The first movie was about a robot that's struck by lightning and comes to life. The military wants to capture and/or destroy the robot but its creator (Steve Guttenberg) and a food truck lady who was apparently ahead of her time (Ally Sheedy) save the robot. And then don't appear in the second movie, because they were smart, not that we ever really heard of them much after 1989 anyway.
The second movie focuses on Steve Guttenberg's assistant, who has made toys of the robot and moved to New York. When I watched the opening credits though I realized that the Indian assistant was played by Fisher Stevens. I remembered seeing him in the 90s CBS series Early Edition (with Kyle Chandler who went on to star in the Friday Night Lights series) and the thing is, he ain't Indian. He's white and Midwestern like me!
So the star of this movie is a white guy wearing brownface and talking like Apu from The Simpsons--who is also voiced by a white guy. That made it kind of icky to watch.
The thing is, when you're like 10 years old you don't really pay attention to that stuff. It doesn't even occur to you that Indian guys or black guys or Asian guys might actually be white guys in makeup. Some things you know are made up (like talking robots) but why would grown ups lie to you about that? And back then we didn't have the Internet like IMDB to look up stuff so easily. So I can let myself off the hook for not noticing back in the 80s, right? Right?
The irony is both movies are supposed to be about tolerance and accepting those who are different, like a robot that's alive. And yet the producers and director thought using a white guy in brownface was totally cool? Really? I mean come on, it was like 1985, not 1935. But oh hey, we couldn't find a real Indian actor...like the millions of them in fucking India! Or we needed the awesome star power of Fisher Stevens...who no one had fucking heard of outside maybe Chicago.
They should have known better, but I guess since there was no Internet to stir up outrage, they didn't really give a fuck. And now I'm pissed off because I liked that first movie and it's forever tainted! It's like finding out your favorite athlete was on steroids or cheated. (You know, like Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong...) I feel like such a dupe, not that I spent any money on it; I'm sure it was my dad's money back then.
It makes me wonder how many 80s movies are similarly tainted. I rewatched Trading Places a few weeks ago and near the end when Dan Ackroyd gets on a train, he disguises himself as a rastafarian--in blackface. The weird thing is he ends up in the same room as Eddie Murphy, who's disguised as an exchange student from Africa. Shouldn't there have been some discussion of this disguise beforehand? I mean, why would Eddie Murphy let him go around in blackface? Pretty tacky.
I really don't want to find out what other examples are out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment