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What's So Funny?Dana Stevens addresses the touchy questions of sensitivity and humor surrounding Tropic Thunder.

Posted Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008, at 2:45 PM ET

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Dana Stevens: There's no question that the net result of the calls for boycotts will get more people interested in the movie (as happened with The Passion of the Christ a few years ago). It's the old "no such thing as bad publicity" effect. I'm all for voting with your feet—if a movie offends you, by all means don't see it, and stand outside it waving a sign—but this notion of banning individual words or types of representation, along with the legal concept of "hate speech," worries me a little. The line between hate speech and free speech can get pretty thin.

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Laurel, Md.: I'm a black women who's really not into comedies, but Robert Downey Jr.'s character is the only reason I wanted to see Tropic Thunder in the first place. I can tell he's being genuine. If he was on some Soul Man-type crap then I'd probably be mad, but he actually looks like a black man. The sneak preview I saw was hilarious, and I'm far from offended.

Dana Stevens: Downey's remarkable performance is at the heart of what makes this particular aspect of the movie work so well (leaving Simple Jack and his problems aside for the moment). It is, quite literally, soulful, and lovingly indebted to black actors of the past (like Richard Roundtree of the Shaft movies) without being a minstrel-style race caricature. This isn't just due to Downey, but to the way his part's been written—it's complexly satirical, not just "Ha ha, look at the dude in blackface."

I'm following up your question with one from another black viewer who was annoyed by the movie, or at least the idea of it:

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Durham, N.C.: I still don't get it. I understand that Robert Downey Jr. is excellent (I have thought so, for a long time). I don't understand in what universe Ben Stiller thought this was okay. After all is said and done, both Stiller and Downey will continue to have "white male privilege." In the mean time, I have paid them $10 to insult me. As a critique of the industry, the wound is too close. There is a frenzy about Mad Men, when The Wire has been overlooked for years. I hope that Stiller goes out of his way to have a true relationship with black audiences (as well as other folks he has offended). No matter what his intention? This isn't cool. Stiller has not advanced the conversation.

Dana Stevens: This opens up a really touchy question about representation in the entertainment industry: Do white filmmakers have any right to explore issues of race in their work (in any way other than earnestly plodding drama calculated to offend no one)? Spike Lee used blackface as a form of social commentary in his film Bamboozled; is Ben Stiller out of bounds if he does the same? I'd argue that muzzling discourse on race based on who's doing the talking doesn't advance the conversation, either. Before you decide Tropic Thunder is insulting you, see the movie. (If you really can't bring yourself to enrich Ben Stiller, pay for another movie at the multiplex and sneak in! Not that I'm encouraging such behavior.)

And while it's true, and depressing, The Wire was unfairly overlooked by the Emmy awards, it was almost universally adored by the critical establishment—here at Slate we all but built a Wire shrine.

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Pittsburgh: As someone who has a person with a mental disability in the family, I took no offense to the use of "retard" in the movie. It's all about context, and anyone with a scintilla of intelligence should be able discern the true target of Stiller's script was Hollywood. I am aware that a certain portion of the audience will find humor in this segment for the wrong reasons. Should Stiller have "dumbed-down" this part of the movie because a few idiots will find humor in the use of the word alone? Should Les Grossman's part have been toned down because it plays on stereotypical moviemakers? No. It's a movie, and those who cannot discern Stiller's true targets shouldn't be allowed to censor him.

Dana Stevens: It's good to hear that not everyone with a personal relationship to someone with a mental disability is automatically offended by the movie. In her review in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis points out that the Les Grossman character that Tom Cruise plays, a grotesque caricature of a vulgar Jewish movie mogul, is arguably the most offensive thing in the movie, amounting to a kind of "Jewface." Maybe it's because Stiller himself is Jewish, or maybe it's just that Tom Cruise was so unexpectedly hilarious in that role, but that one rolled right off my back.

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Dana Stevens: Wow, I've gone overtime on this chat because there were so many good questions to answer. Sorry I couldn't get to them all. But before you all go forth to continue this conversation in real life, give the movie a chance, if only for Downey's performance alone.

All best,
Dana