Way back in April, Native American extras walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s Netflix film The Ridiculous Six over dicey racial material – a move which Sandler has just gotten around to addressing.
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“Hopefully when people see it – whoever was offended on set and walked out, I hope they realize that, and that’s it”, he said.
While promoting his new movie Pixels (the film that finally brought Waka Flocka Flame and Good Charlotte together), Sandler was approached by Screen Crush about the allegations of racism in his new film. The demonstration was in protest of jokes they felt were offensive to Native American culture, such as the naming of characters like “Beaver’s Breath” and “Wears No Bra”.
See also: Where are the mainstream TV shows about American Indians? Sandler has co-written the movie, which has been described as a “broad satire of western movies”.
Others, however, defended the movie, with actor Bonifacio Gurule arguing that they knew it was “a comedy, not a documentary”.
The stakes are high for Sandler to defuse any controversy: “The Ridiculous Six” is the first in a four-picture deal that the “Saturday Night Live” veteran’s production company, Happy Madison, signed with the streaming video site. “There’s no mocking of American Indians at all in the movie”. It’s a pro-Indian movie. His incredibly tone-deaf defense of the film, from telling his actors to leave if they’re “overly sensitive,” to silencing his cultural consultant, demonstrates a lot of ignorance. It sounds like Sandler thinks that the magical not-white person is an innocent trope (surprise, it’s not) or that these representations are ok in the name of “comedy”.
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Though there have been contradicting standpoints on the film, we will only find out the truth when The Ridiculous Six comes out later this year.
