A ‘Sausage Party’ movie moment between ‘Frank’ (Seth Rogen) and an Indian Chief that is a bottle of alcohol labeled ‘Firewater’ (Bill Hader), as well as the Indian’s compatriots, an African American who is a box of grits and a white man who is a Twinkie.
I admire Vincent Schilling for sitting through this mess of juvenile idiocy, sexism, and unabashed racism, so I won’t have to do it. I was absolutely appalled by the 2nd Despicable Me flick, and almost killed my own television set, because we only netflixed that monstrous mess of racism, sexism, and casual violence.
To the excitement of Seth Rogen fans, his toilet-humored animated film “Sausage Party” hit theaters this August. To the dismay of anyone with a social conscience, the movie has a slew of racially charged epithets that seem contrived to offend just for the sake of being offensive.
I am a Native American, and I grew increasingly uneasy watching the moments between ‘Frank’ (Seth Rogen) and an Indian Chief that is a bottle of alcohol labeled ‘Firewater’ (Bill Hader), as well as the Indian’s compatriots, an African American who is a box of grits and a white man who is a Twinkie. (Video Clip – Caution: Strong Language)
https://youtu.be/wRLQ0g9z0P0
The film, directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is also filled with sexual references involving any phallic shaped foods, and there are a minor few funny moments reminiscent of life during recess in sixth grade, but the racially charged moments only seem to qualify themselves by continuing to attack all races without any real attempt to call forth a social commentary.
Shortly after the film gets started – it was off to the races with racially charged humor. Food products in the Chinese food section had slanted eyes and spoke in broken english, German food products were led by a Hitler looking product screaming “Kill the Juice” and the relationship between a bagel (Edward Norton) and a lavash (David Krumholtz) laid upon the issues of the Jews and Palestinians.
There was also a slew of stereotypical punches thrown at Mexican Americans as a bottle of Tequila with a slurred drunken Mexican accent (also played by Bill Hader) lures Brenda the bun to a saloon filled with red-eyed mexican jars of salsa and hot sauce, until she is rescued by a taco shell (insert more female anatomy jokes here) played by Selma Hayek.
Overall the movie did have a few funny moments as a potato screams when he is peeled and thrown into water realizing the human gods are not so nice after all, but I could never shake the blatant racial tones.
I genuinely felt uncomfortable moving forward and tried desperately to find the social commentary based on an Indian smoking weed in a kazoo. After 89 minutes, I couldn’t find any redeeming thread except that a jewish character was played by a jewish actor and the African American character was played by an African American actor.
In Sausage Party, Firewater the Indian smokes marijuana from a kazoo. Sony Pictures.
Ok, so perhaps we can laugh at ourselves, but I found this particular premise a bit of a stretch:
The writers of the movie grabbed feverishly on to the fact that ‘Frank’ was a sausage and his girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig) was a hot dog bun. They were going to tell every single solitary joke about a weiner and a bun they could fit into 89 minutes of film time.
Overall I was shocked and offended. The two women behind me appeared dumbfounded.
Yet again, I left a movie theater thinking, ‘Welp, Native people got screwed once again and we look like a big joke.”
Admittedly, the joke’s on all of us: “Sausage Party” had a production budget of approximately $19 million and has grossed $81 million so far.
I haven’t seen it, and I’m shocked, offended, disgusted, and deeply saddened, not only that someone made this pile of isht, but that people are flocking to see it. And people wonder why old, old bigoted stereotypes won’t die. And no, this is NOT a case of “hey, lighten up, just in fun, just joking!” It’s not a joke. It’s not funny, either.
Via ICTMN. If you’d rather not sit and be entertained by disgusting racism and sexism, you can always chill out with a stack of Native movies.
I saw a preview a few months ago which didn’t contain a single racist characature, voice or word. It only dealt with the cooking and killing of plants and meat. Clearly, it was carefully edited to remove offensive material and lure audiences in.
Here’s hoping this movie destroys Rogen’s career the same way “Love Guru” destroyed Mike Myers’s.
left0ver1under:
Ohhhh. I had no idea. So, they obviously knew what they were doing was disgusting and wrong.
Knowing it was a Seth Rogan movie was enough to keep me away, but this sounds even worse than I could have predicted.
My exposure to the movie went like this:
1. Saw a movie poster outside a movie theater en route to see something-or-other, rolled my eyes and said to my girlfriend “well that looks terrible”
2. Saw the trailer left0ver1under mentioned, turned to her and said “okay, that actually looks pretty good in a darkly funny sort of way”
3. Saw the movie. There are some legitimately hilarious bits here, the movie has an actual point to make about faith and belief systems, and even the non-stop sex puns/jokes are… funny? or at least cringe and chuckle worthy (although that ten minute orgy at the end of the film was just… yeesh. Do not watch this with other people!). But yeah, the nonstop stereotyping is just abominable. What’s worse is that they knew it, too! Besides the edited trailer, Frank even has a line near the climax about how they “could be more than stereotyped caricatures” (paraphrasing from memory), and it’s like “Yes, and this movie would be so much better if that were the case!” Bah
Well, I knew Seth Rogen was sexist and not funny, I guess I can add screamingly racist to that. They definitely hid the racism in the trailer I saw. I can’t wait until hipsters try to explain how it’s “ironic” and therefore OK (I can wait forever).
themann1086:
It certainly looks like they were deliberately deceptive, in order to pull people into theatres. Now I have to wonder how much of that $81 million came from people who were deceived by that trailer.
I’m perfectly glad I hated the Minions on sight. The trailer in the cinema showed an ancient civilisation made up 100% of yellow dudes, but as soon as they’re in NY and see a fire hydrant or something they start hitting on “her”.