When the much-anticipated trailer for Zoolander 2 debuted it was immediately hit with a firestorm of controversy due to an androgynous, genderfluid character called All, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and the transphobic jokes hurled at them by Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson’s Derek and Hansel.
However Justin Theroux, who wrote for the script for the film, has stepped forward to say that wasn’t his intention at all, and that it was taken out of context.
He told TheWrap, “Our target is not, and never was, to disenfranchise anyone… I don’t even know what to make of it, because it hurts my feelings in a way. I take great care in the jokes I write, and the umbrage being taken is out of the context of the scene. I wish people would see the movie first. Satire is a thing that points out the idiots, and we went through it on ‘Tropic Thunder’ with the ‘R’ word [referring to the movie’s use of the word ‘retard’].”
Theroux adds, “The goal was not to mock or be cruel to the mentally challenged, but exalt in the stupidity of people who use that word. I’m all for letting words be ugly when the target is correct. With social media and all the rest of it, people’s issues need to be heard… at the end of the day people are looking for bandwidth. People are looking for places to inject their voice. But our target is not, and never was, to disenfranchise anyone.”
While there is a chance things have been taken out of context, in the trailer All and their gender identity is definitely the butt of the joke, with the brief appearance of the character making them seem slightly self-important and ridiculous.
Soon after the trailer debuted an online petition was launched, calling for a boycott of the movie both due to the seemingly ‘over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals’ and the choice of casting a cisgender actor in the role, comparing it to blackface.
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