On DVD, 'Miss March' Isn't 'Retarded' Anymore
Filed under: Comedy, 20th Century Fox, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing
The box office flop Miss March has plenty of material that could be considered offensive, which as I recall was one of the film's main selling points. The film's graphic depictions of poop, the accidental drinking of dog urine, jokes about epilepsy, plenty of nudity, and all the nonstop filthy dialogue you'd normally associate with R-rated sex comedies. But audiences who rent or buy the DVD when it comes out this Tuesday will find one less offensive thing than they found in theaters: the film no longer uses the word "retarded."And thank goodness! Drinking pee is OK, but calling someone "retarded" is over the line.
I noticed this while reviewing the DVD for another outlet. There's a scene in which two abstinence promoters are trying to frighten kids into never having sex, and they share a story about a teenager who smoked while she was pregnant, causing the baby to come out a "crack head." Except the actress' lips clearly weren't saying "crack head." Her lips looked like they were saying "retard." The baby is mentioned twice more, each time with "retard" replaced with "crack head." Later in the film, someone's behavior is described as "stupid," and again it's clear that he originally said "retarded." Both the theatrical and uncut versions of the film are on the DVD, and they both have been de-retarded. (Which means the theatrical version isn't really the one that played theatrically, and the uncut version has been cut. Nice job.)
I didn't see the film in theaters, but plenty of reviews confirm that it used the word "retarded," and the two fellow-critics I asked verified it. The change appears to be new for the DVD, and perhaps also for the film's U.K. theatrical release in September.
There's been no official word from 20th Century Fox, but one assumes this was done in response to criticisms from the groups that usually complain whenever the word "retard" shows up in a film. There's a group for everything, as you know, each one believing that its cause is more worthy of attention than the other groups' causes. If a character smokes a cigarette, that upsets the Don't Smoke in Movies people. If a character has a disease, condition, disability, or affliction, it will upset the corresponding group, unless it is portrayed with 100 percent accuracy and without being the butt of any jokes. (Make all the jokes you want about everyone else, though. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess the Don't Say "Retard" people didn't voice objections to anything else about the movie.)
I can see the reasoning if the word is used in a film that is otherwise praiseworthy and decent. The filmmakers might truly have meant no offense and included the word thoughtlessly. But taking "retard" out of Miss March, apart from being as useless as applying a bar of soap to a sewer, overlooks the fact that the film is supposed to be offensive. It's aimed at an audience that WANTS politically incorrect humor. By taking out the five or six uses of the R-word, what is Fox saying? That it stands by every objectionable element of the film, just not THAT one? Why is this one any worse? Because the other special-interest groups didn't complain loudly enough?
Not that I'm upset or anything. Heck, it's your movie, do whatever you want with it. (Same goes for you, Sacha Baron "Make Fun of Everyone but Chicken Out When One of Them Dies" Cohen.) I just think it's amusing how studios are really "bold" and "daring" up until somebody complains, whereupon they turn tail and run.
And by the way, if you haven't seen Miss March, don't bother. With or without the word "retard," it's awful.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-28-2009 @ 10:55AM
Eric said...
Fucking PC retards. Guess what mental retardation is the medical word. Just like if you have epilepsy your a epileptic. If you suffer from mental retardation then you are a retard. People need to chill out.
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7-29-2009 @ 10:02AM
Mike said...
It's not about being p.c. No one is taking away your right to use the word. It's about having a little dignity (go look it up).
Using the word retard as slang just dehumanizes people with special needs. Shocker...they have feelings, they get when you are mocking them. Why don't you go pick on someone you own size and stop making yourself feel better just because you were born with a few more IQ points.
7-28-2009 @ 11:09AM
Felix said...
You know, that is just retarded. Or should I say crack-headed. Would the people who complained about the use of the word "retard" be okay with the apparent assumption that the term "crack-head" is interchangeable?
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7-28-2009 @ 11:56AM
Chet said...
Censorship sucks. Thanks for calling attention to it.
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7-28-2009 @ 4:03PM
Kevin said...
This isn't cenorship though...
7-29-2009 @ 10:34PM
Chet said...
It is selective corporate censorship of commercial entertainment for fear of a negative public reaction, motivated by the braying of a special interest group. It's still censorship.
And it's lame.
7-30-2009 @ 8:42AM
Kevin said...
Unless someone who worked on the DVD version comes out and says that then you have no evidence to support that claim besides the (I will admit) fair assumption of it. But if you are claiming that self censoring ones own material in order to avoid unnecessarily offending others is wrong and terrible than you must think the entirety of existence is wrong and terrible. We all go through everday of our lives thinking things we don't say or do simply because we exist in a society surrounded by others. I don't see anything wrong with a director or producer who originally green lit the lines and then at a later time said "You know what, this is over the top and is something I no longer want included in the film". Do I agree with their decision? No, I think taking the time to remove the line seems wasteful, but I don't think they've done anything inherently wrong by removing it.
7-30-2009 @ 11:10AM
Chet said...
Fair assumption of it is right, based on the circumstances as described. I'm glad we agree that it's reasonable to call it censorship.
"But if you are claiming..." nice attempt at a straw man, sport. Leave that stuff in the kiddie pool where it belongs.
7-31-2009 @ 5:17PM
Kevin said...
Its not a straw man "sport". Lets try this....you ARE claiming that this "sucks" because they have removed material inorder to avoid offending someone and thereby increase their profits. That is your argument. Now reread the rest of what I said to get the gist of why being upset about that is utterly ridiculous (I almost self censored myself there to avoid calling you ridiculous, and did censor myself to keep from using the word "retarded" to describe your attitude, none of which would classify my behavior as anything other then normal. Behaving that way does not "suck")
8-01-2009 @ 1:49PM
Chet said...
You just can't quit shoving words in my mouth. What I said was concise and should be self-explanatory. Why should I re-read your long-winded rants based on bad inference?
Censorship sucks. This case of it is lame. And you've ground your axe down to the handle. I'm done with you.
8-04-2009 @ 9:15AM
sean dailey said...
kevin is right. it's REALLY not censorship. more, restraint.
7-28-2009 @ 12:16PM
Riley Freeman said...
thank u all these groups are annoying and really need to stop. get a real job instead of being a certified whiner.
anyways i saw this movie like weeks ago and i dont even remember the use of retard. the movie was stupid boring even for a r rated nude fest. i wasnt amused at all.
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7-28-2009 @ 12:18PM
Scott K. said...
I think 'retarded' is an accurate description of the consequences of any type of retardation, mental or otherwise. But calling somebody a 'retard' is derogatory and intended as an insult. (But so is calling somebody an 'a$$hole' and that's less technically correct.)
Not that it should be censored, particularly from a movie that is trying to offend. Really, what's the point? Seriously. What do these people expect to happen? Expecting the removal of an insult to have a real effect on anybody's life is... (Nah, too easy)... dumb.
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7-28-2009 @ 12:18PM
ML said...
OK. I have epilepsy & I don't mind when people make jokes about epilepsy. But I do kind of mind that it's OK to make jokes about people with epilepsy but not OK to use "the R word." What is it now? Some disabled people rate more than others? Give me a break.
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7-28-2009 @ 1:02PM
Pingles said...
Honestly, this is a very "dark" word and while it may seem comical to call your drunk frat brother "retarded" the word is used all of the time to taunt those who are disabled and I'm all for showing my contempt for that action by removing that word from my own use.
As a kid I lived in a neighborhood where some kids took great pleasure in making a disabled girl cry with that word and I never understood how they could enjoy that.
Not gonna force anyone else to but I always appreciate it when folks show sensitivity to it.
As a writer myself I'm not big on censorship but there are words that our society has decided to downplay and this is a very specific insult that I don't mind avoiding.
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7-28-2009 @ 1:06PM
Midnight13 said...
Comedy as an artform, wait, art in general should never safe. Sure you may go "Miss March" is hardly "Apocolypse Now" but hey maybe to the screenwriters it is. They compromised thier art, and well as the artist that is thier choice, but by playing it safe they've turned it into a neutred dog. Have I just been offensive? Deal with it.
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7-28-2009 @ 1:08PM
jonashpdx said...
As the parent of a child with Down syndrome, I have mixed feelings about this. I agree in some ways with Eric's assertion that there was probably no reason to make this change in a movie like "Miss March" which is basically a race to the lowest-common-denominator bottom as far as offensiveness is concerned.
On the other hand, I'm very tired of the negative connotations and stereotypes that are associated with the use of the word "retarded" or "retard" and the depiction of anyone with a mental and/or physical disability onscreen. If African Americans were ONLY seen onscreen (or not even seen but just referred to) as inner-city gangsters and/or referred to by the n-word, you can bet there would be objections there. Or if the gay Bruno-like stereotype was the ONLY represenation of gay culture in the movies and "stop acting like a fag" was still in wide circulation, again, you'd get some pushback from activist groups on that.
So why not "retard"? Positive views of people with disabilities are few and far between and certainly nearly invisibile in mainstream entertainment.
In response to a few of the commenters above:
-yep, i'm fine with crackhead -- people BECOME crackheads, it's not something that's inherent in a genetic makeup.
-"mental retardation" may be the medical word -- though you'd be hard-pressed to find a person in the medical world who'd still used that outdated concept, but "retard/retarded" are not used in a medical way when they're used as a derogatory statement.
-words like "asshole", "crackhead", "douchebag", etc. do not single out a group of people or an individual -- they're all-encompassing. Again, I wonder how many instances of "nigger" or "faggot" are used in "Miss March." To some members of the community who are involved in disability, using "retard" is as much a slap in the face as either of the above.
I try not to have a knee-jerk reaction to the use of that word, as much as I find it personally distasteful. But I wish more people would think about the usage before they just start calling people names for objecting.
*I'd also say that because "Miss March" was regarded as a bit of a dog, I don't recall their being any kind of outside pressure from advocacy groups (unlike for "Tropic Thunder"), so who knows why Fox made this decision.
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8-03-2009 @ 11:37PM
SyKo said...
Retards, faggots, niggers, crackers, wetbacks, chinks, gooks, porchmonkeys, spics, wiggers, dykes, etc, ALL need to GET THE FUCK OVER IT. They're just words. Saying "Native American" instead of "Indian", saying "African American" instead of "Black", or saying "Hispanic" or "Latino" instead of "Mexican" or "Porto Rican" is just a fucking stupid as saying "Mentally Disabled" instead of "retarded".
At the end of the day the world is full of people with free will and the ability to move on with their lives and get the fuck over it. Do they? No. They bitch and moan about political correctness and censor other people because of something THEY find offensive. You know what? Tough shit. It's a everyone's right to be free and have freedom of thought and speech. When groups come forth to censor and stop others rights to say whatever the fuck they want, they're taking away other peoples freedoms, and THAT is the most offensive thing of all. Fucking retards. -_-
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