Topic Thunder: How Tropic Thunder Might Be Taking the Black Jokes too Far

In a world where fatal, pandemic diseases like AIDS can be joked about casually, where Neo-Nazism is softened to teddy bear proportions a la The Producers, and we can jokingly (and successfully) produce animated films about the ennui of a globalist culture and its destruction of the earth while creating enough toys and merchandise to fill several landfills, does Tropic Thunder move the edge a few inches further, or fall over it?

The scarred lives of Vietnam veterans and the cinematic appropriation of those scarred lives have occurred at least three times a decade since the Evacuation of Saigon. While most films either a) Feature a single Italian-American or a Greek-alphabet related force single-handedly winning the war, or b) "Explore" the madness and brutality of war, few have dared tread where Tropic Thunder goes.

No, this has nothing do with poking fun of the swollen genre of ‘Nam films, but instead with the certain "make-up" storylines which highlight the film.



If you haven't heard all the ballyhoo already, Robert Downey Jr. stars as a trans-racial actor that stars as a pathos-filled African-American soldier (hmmm ... could this be a reprise of his role as Charlie Chaplin?).

Already, countless blogs and slow-news-day-articles have discussed the insensitivities of this movie, drawing connections to the extremely racist Minstrel Shows of a less than a century ago, which featured white actors in "blackface" makeup that characterized African-American culture, while perpetuating vicious stereotypes and spreading misinformation. And to make matters worse, the music was terrible.

Although it would be easy to criticize Ben Stiller and other parties involved, most of which have played un-variations of the same character for the last twelve movies or so, to throw this film into the same pile of "insensitive" movies would be a mistake.

Tropic Thunder holds a comical middle finger in the direction of Hollywood and its turgid clich