August 20, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The decision by Special Olympics to boycott the new movie ‘Tropic Thunder’ because it uses the word “retard” was a “big tactical communications mistake,” says Kivi Leroux Miller.
Writing on her Nonprofit Communications Blog, Ms. Miller says that the boycott overshadows a Special Olympics’ campaign, announced simultaneously, to convince people to stop using the word “retard.”
The “Stop Using the R-Word” campaign is a great idea, says Ms. Miller. But “by linking the campaign to a movie boycott, Special Olympics comes off as a bunch of humorless finger waggers, which makes them very easy for the public to ignore.”
Tropic Thunder is a satire of the movie industry, writes Ms. Miller. By using the term “retard,” its characters aren’t mocking people with mental disabilities, but distasteful people in Hollywood who throw around the word.
So what could Special Olympics have done differently to get people to pay attention to its campaign? Ms. Miller says the nonprofit group should have tried to do something as “equally creative, sharp, and satirical as the movie itself.”
“What about coming up with a faux ‘Actor’s Guide to Playing a Retard’ that puts the advocates’ issues with Hollywood out there in a stark yet humorous and intelligent way?” she writes. “Or what about a faux thesaurus of more acceptable slurs than the word ‘retard’?”
Sure, these kinds of ideas take a lot of creativity, something Ms. Miller says is in short supply in the nonprofit world. And they could be misinterpreted. But, she says, “Make me laugh at something outrageous and I’ll remember you and your message much longer than this movie will be in theaters, and infinitely longer than the chanting at a movie protest.”
Do you think the boycott was a mistake? What do you think of Ms. Miller’s proposals?
