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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
"Never go full retard" was the catchphrase of the summer. Activist groups aren't laughing. Should you be?
By Lynn Harris
Read more: Lynn Harris, Life
Sept. 18, 2008 | When I was in fourth grade, someone you liked was a "good kid." Someone you didn't like was a "retard." (Or, in the colorful patois of my native Boston, a "wicked retahd." That, or this withering shorthand: "a wicked re.") We did not use the term for the special-needs kids. They were "the special-needs kids."
Basically, we used the word to describe any annoying person (or rule or homework assignment). There was also the timeless "loser," of course, and the more ephemeral "dink" -- "douche bag," for its part, came later -- but "retard," and "retarded," with all their variations, packed the most playground punch.
And today, pop culture and the Twitterati, tirelessly mining those formative years for irony pay dirt, have spurred -- for descriptive better or for derogatory worse, depending on whom you ask -- a "retard" renaissance.
You've probably read, heard or even said the word (and/or its "'tard"-based spinoffs) if you watched this year's MTV Video Music Awards; saw "Napoleon Dynamite," "House Bunny" or the trailer for the new Michael Cera movie ("I love you so much it's retarded"); listened to the Black Eyed Peas; heard Howard Stern on Gov. Sarah Palin and work-family balance (according to a listener, he said, "For the sake of that retarded baby, I'm not going to vote for her"); discussed John McCain's plan for health insurance reform; or visited, like, any blog comments section ever.
Oh, or if you've read word one about the most recent Stiller-tacular, "Tropic Thunder," whose vast coalition of detractors -- including the Special Olympics, the National Down Syndrome Society and the American Association of People with Disabilities -- are currently leading the "for worse" troops, protesting the use, and use and use of the word "retard" in the movie. The coalition has also objected to the portrayal of the "retard" in question, Simple Jack, played by Stiller's Tugg Speedman in a film-within-a-film, which itself spawned the straight-to-novelty-tee catchphrase of the summer. "You went full retard, man," Robert Downey Jr.'s character -- in blackface -- admonishes a deflated Speedman. "Never go full retard."
The catchphrase factor is part of what has advocates up in arms. Yes, they say, wearily, we know the bit, in context, is satire. (And clearly it is: Not of Simple Jack, but of movies like "I Am Sam" -- that is, of maudlin, "serious," Oscar-bait film portrayals of the intellectually challenged.) But the thing about catchwords, coalition members note, is that they don't stay in context.
"When kids see the movie and then use that word to tease someone -- or call someone 'Simple Jack' -- they're not making fun of Hollywood," says Alex Plank, founder of WrongPlanet.net, a prominent online forum for people with autism and other neurological differences, and a member organization of the "Tropic Thunder" protest coalition. Or, in the words of one blogger whose son has Down syndrome, "When we award tacit acceptance to a term such as 'retard' or 'retarded' in casual conversation -- or worse, when millions of people watch a movie that also awards that tacit acceptance -- it most certainly will gain even more acceptance," she wrote last month. "My son will be going back to school in a couple of weeks. And all around him -- I guarantee it -- kids will be telling other kids not to go 'full retard.' And everyone will think it's OK to say 'retard,' or that this or that is 'retarded.' And my son will walk through the halls, and more people will think of Nick as a 'retard' than did a few months ago. Nick deserves better than that."
But do we need to ban the word entirely? Not necessarily, says Gail Williamson, mother of a working actor with Down syndrome and executive director of the Down Sydrome Association of Los Angeles (which also successfully hounded Fox to pull "Napoleon Dynamite" pens that said, "You guys are retarded"). "But we do have moral and societal guidelines that limit the use of other derogatory words. We're just saying this word needs to be added to that list. It is hate speech."
So it's because of "Tropic Thunder" that the current "hate speech" vs. "irony!" controversy has exploded. But in the broader view of this particular culture war, Stiller & Co. were hardly the first to have dropped the R-bomb. Todd Solondz trivia experts may note that the working title of his 1995 outcast-fest "Welcome to the Dollhouse" reportedly was "Faggots and Retards." And back in 2000, Tina Fey said she had to haggle for permission to use the word on "SNL" -- in a Sully-and-Denise-from-Boston sketch, natch. The final word from NBC's standards and practices division: Yes in late night, no in earlier promos. "The network is very skittish about the word -- and rightfully so," Fey told the New York Observer.
So what's behind the R-word's most recent surge -- in visibility and, depending on where you look, acceptability? And, really, should it go away for good?
As for pinpointing the term's reemergence, there's certain linguistic detective work that just cannot be done. No one can say for sure which cheeky blogger first thought, for instance, "Hmm. 'Idiot'? No. 'Loser'? No, too soft. 'Tool'? Close. But I need something more pungent, more staccato, even more deliberately juvenile. Oh, look, someone from fourth grade just found me on Facebook. Man, I always thought that kid was such a ... [light bulb] RETARD."
But it's not hard to hypothesize about the term's recent proliferation, or its unique descriptive appeal. It is at least a safe bet that -- as feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte suggested to me in a separate analysis of the term "douche bag" -- the full-on deployment of "retard" and (perhaps even more so) "retarded" was at least accelerated in the online snarkosphere, where so many jillions of people complaining about so many jillions of things are, at the end of the day, just going to need some more words. (Cf. "asshat," "douchetard.")
Next page: "Some things are more than lame. They are retarded"
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