The Ridiculous Six

Charging The Ridiculous Six with racism is the stupidest response to a film I’ve come across in years. It’s like complaining Gone With the Wind wasn’t a weather report.  

Adam Sandler wrote and stars in a satire of American racism, the current scene and its historic roots. Rejecting its use of Indian stereotypy is senseless. How can you expose America’s anti-Indian tradition without showing the anti-Indian tradition?

The first three shots establish that theme. Two signs read “No injuns allowed” and “Redskins keep out.” That reveals the white men’s inferior knowledge, humanity and spelling. His tradition of demeaning native Americans persists down to our own shamelessly stubborn Washington Redskins. 

Then the newspaper headline gloats “Cavalry Massacres Godless Apaches.” But as all the Sandler hero’s success is based on his “mystical shit” it’s clearly the Apaches who have a spiritual connection to the world and the whites who are the godless, driven by lust and greed.    
     Topping it off, the newspaper’s smug reader has only one functioning eye — which he eventually plucks out to join the ill-fated Left Eye Gang, only to find his colleagues in fact duped him and preserved the eyes under their patch. Can’t trust those whites, man. They’re not the men of vision. Indeed, this bigot can’t figure what five sacks of flour at 45 cents each should cost. (Clue: $2.25). And he’s the superior race? His physical repulsiveness should alert us to the film's disgust with his racism.

In this white world you can’t even trust your father. The most basic human responsibility has been lost. When the six’s vagrant dad (Nick Nolte) proves to have duped his son Tommy the betrayal works on both the personal and the social levels. Tommy leaves him to heaven, or at least to what in the cave will find him, preferring the superior ethic he learned as White Knife from his real father, the Apache chief who raised him. As the film's hero chooses the Apache way over the white, any charge of racism is blind to the film. You have heard the sound of one axe grinding. 

As the bad father betrays all his sons first by abandoning them and their mothers, then by exploiting them, the present finds itself betrayed by the past that created the mythology and values to which it adheres too long. The 19th century bred the 20th which begat our 21st. America’s present self-conception derives from the 19th Century with its highly suspect and dangerous myth that the whites brought a superior civilization to the ostensibly savage Indians. White America brought modernity to the desert but — far worse — an arid, sterile materialism, religiosity and fatal savagery to the spiritual people they conquered. And still suppress. That;'s what this spoof is saying.

The positive alternative is the titular collection of brothers who join forces to save their unknown dad. A village idiot, a Mexican, a guilt-riddled honky drunk, a mute monster, a black, the converted-to-Indian hero — this racial and class cross-section of unlikely brothers evokes the brotherhood of man that modern America continues to affront.  

To remind us that the western reflects our current culture the characters frequently slip into contemporary jargon and gestures. Hello: "That's way cool" is not classical Apache. Like any period drama, it seems to be about the Then but it’s really about the Now. If we didn’t still have a racist -- even savage -- America we wouldn’t need — or get — a film that traces its roots back to the white man’s conquest of the frontier and its prejudice against any non-whites. 

Hence the cliche Mexican with his beloved burro and the black piano-player who mercifully doesn’t know everyone knows he’s black so enjoys being used for music and sex. The Abner Doubleday scene offers exploited Chinese labourers for the opposing team, including one renamed Shortstop. As this scene dramatizes the beginning of modern baseball, the film embodies the roots of modern American racism. It’s a response to Sarah Palin’s brazen reaction to a black president — “Give us back our America.” — and the sad Donald Trump show that succeeded her. President Lincoln’s assassination also signifies the death of the Republican ethic.
     Like the classic comedy the film ends in a marriage. Here the motley brothers happily join the Apache community and the lovers overcome the usual obstacles to serve true love. Incidentally, one gang of villains convert to virtue, so there is hope for us. 

So that’s what the film is doing. It ridicules a current and historic evil. It shows racism in order to satirize and condemn racism. ”Just dumped some satire on you, General,” Mark Twain tells General (“Leave the Indians to me”) Custer. So the film is not brilliant. The Magnificent Seven it’s not — nor set out to be. Too many jokes are puerile, like naming native women Never Wears Bra and Beaver Breath, which stoops to the level of the vile man’s “Poca-hot-tits.” So it’s Mad Magazine humour, without the sophistication and elegance of Mel Brooks.
     But still, it’s a responsible, ambitious, serious reminder of how racist American culture has been — and worse — continues to be.  Hats off to Adam Sandler, and to his knee-jerk critics of his supposed racism: “You must be joking.”