The Thin Line Between Offence and Respect

This is an exchange between a native American woman and a white man in Adam Sandler's Ridiculous 6; see if you can guess which character is which. Recently, a group of native Americans-including the film's cultural advisor-walked of the set of Ridiculous 6. This does not bode well for the film. At all.

Still, this has got me thinking about the line between offence and humour. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's also has a treatment of native Americans that could be construed as racist. Indeed, it has been criticised-though always by non-native critics. In fact, native critics seem to have rallied around it as the only accurate portrayal of natives in a sitcom.

On the other hand, Ridiculous 6 seems mean-spirited. While UKS gently mocks the "metal eagle" tradition, R6 seems to embrace it whole-heartedly.This can be attributed to the fact that UKS had native writers, while R6 was spearheaded by a Default Man, mocking a Default Man genre (with the exception, I suppose, of quasi-Western Calamity Jane) through PoC.

This has really disappointed me. I trusted Netflix to produce innovative, progressive content. Them funding Sandler was a bad sign, but this is a worse one.