Can the Cinema be a Safe-Space for Discrimination? Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Living in the 21st century, we are very used to satirical humour playing on a line between political correctness and offensive. Satire by nature reveals the inadequacies, weaknesses and wrongdoings of our social environment making us laugh, but then question the very values we are laughing at. But what happens when satire loses its way? It turns from a medium that probes society’s construction in the hope of bettering it into one that enforces those exact racist, sexist and discriminatory behaviours. Three Billboards rides a line, questioning the ignorance of such discrimination but by the end completely derailing to blindly enforce discriminatory stereotypes in favour of a few hollow laughs.

Three Billboards contains a large amount of satirically discriminatory humour of two kinds; that which furthers the narrative, and that which is there for simple gags. Racism is tied to the narrative of Officer Dixon, while sexism and sizism are isolated as fuel for the gags. Let’s briefly break down an example of each of these [this will contain a few minor spoilers so to save yourself skip to the next paragraph]. Let us start in reverse. Sexism is obvious through the women that occupy the film’s periphery. Penelope (Charlie’s 19 y/o girlfriend), Pamela (the advertising secretary) and even Anne (Willoughby’s wife) are all, for lack of a better word, stupid characters. They act completely subserviently to the men surrounding them, portrayed as simply wanting sexual fulfilment or appreciation from the other sex, while being the butt of ‘blonde’-related gags focusing on the characters’ clear lack of intelligence. Similarly sizism is thrown in for simple laughs once James (Dinklage) is thrown into the storyline nearing its more sombre conclusion. The issue with these two examples is that they stay in the realm of the gag, and are therefore unexplored and unresolved narratively. Thus the intellectual effect of satire (questioning the discrimination) falls away, and we are simply left with an audience laughing at an unreasonably dumb woman or a dwarf being forced to poke fun inwardly. Considering racism we see some more development. Dixon begins as an outright racist, obviously standing in for the concept of police brutality against the black community in the US, and by the end of it he has come around to accept that he was wrong—a classic redemption arc. But if we look closer I believe even this arc is flawed in favour of the discrimination it is trying to combat. Half way through Dixon’s narrative he is sacked by the new police chief Abercrombie, an all-good Black cop. But this ‘all-good’ nature is exactly the downfall of the satire. The film portrays Ebbing as a town filled with rich, complicated characters; characters that deeply hate but still care for eachother, characters that are racist but redeemable. It is these opposing values which make all the characters so gripping and full. However when the response to Dixon’s overt racism is a one-dimensional all-good black cop who holds none of this depth in character he quickly becomes a cheap flag waving the words ‘the racist things we said were wrong’. Not to mention the other two black characters who end up on a date for no other reason, at least which I could see, than they were racially alike and in the same place at the same time. This obviously isn’t an outcry against the black character’s being good or united, simply that they occupy an unreasonably one-dimensional world of ‘good’ which isn’t shared by any of the other characters—keeping them away from being developed counter-arguments on racism and instead making them buffers to allow the racist humour to come about without backlash.

But if these discriminatory jokes are not discussed, and not fulfilling the satire, why do we still laugh at them? We could answer this in two ways. (1) we laugh anticipating the discussion to follow the discriminatory joke throughout the film or (2) we are simply all racist, sexist or sizeist to some extent and the film allows us to access these socially-detrimental states of mind in a safe environment—thus actually enabling the behaviours and achieving the inverse of a good satire.

Thus far, then, we have established that Three Billboards utilises satirically discriminative humour but it fails to take this into a level of discussion which encourages social change and inspection—where we would laugh, question why we laughed, then attempt to purge those discriminatory behaviours from everyday life. Yet as the discriminatory humour is un-discussed, and therefore ‘un-redeemed’, we begin to question the team behind such gags. Are they racist, sexist or sizeist? Should we then be endorsing their product if they are? Should we be allowing individuals to create outlets for such derogatory thoughts which simply act to affirm their existence? Let us pause here for a minute, to consider two alternatives to this argument: (1) can using the cinema as an outlet for these societally negative tendencies be a positive? (2) Who has the responsibility to make explicit the problems with these discriminatory displays on screen—the audience or the writer?

Although it is easy to jump to conclusions with (1) it is still worth considering, at least conceptually. One could argue that if we provide a safe-space to outlet these socially detrimental thoughts they may be ‘used-up’ within that space thus preventing such widespread usage outside of this space—although this assumes we are all naturally discriminatory, and require an outlet for these thoughts. On the flip side it can also be easily argued that providing a safe-space merely permits and enforces discriminatory behaviours therefore making them more, not less, prevalent in society. Furthering this, such media could even become a learning tool to teach individuals that such discrimination is OK—indoctrinating them as social deviants. Either side could be argued, but ultimately our question (2) furthers the debate.

Considering (2) is complicated, and it is hard to generalise an answer across a medium such as film that spans from the realm of art to consumer-based entertainment. To elucidate the question, and get closer to an answer for (1), do we require the writer/filmmakers to make explicit the negatives/positives of on-screen action or is it the responsibility of the audience to consider that for themselves? Ideologically one should always trust the audience. To paraphrase Tarkovsky, creators should always assume the audience is at least as intelligent and perceptive as themselves, if not more so. Therefore we should trust them to unpick, analyse, scrutinise and judge the film and its contents for themselves. In such a way, when Pamela delivers an envelope to her boss and brainlessly exclaims something along the lines of ‘did I do good?’ the audience should consider the moment and identify it as a detrimentally sexist representation. But is this ideology realistic, especially considering a high-grossing commercial satire such as Three Billboards attempts to sell to mass audiences? In this instance, should the writer in fact take more responsibility to elucidate the issues on screen in order to steer it away from simply creating a safe-space for racists to be racists, and sexists to be sexists?

The final difficulty with this argument is that we don’t personally know the writer/creator and we in fact don’t understand their agenda. Are they writing discriminatory jokes simply for the gags, then placing in counter measures to cover their tracks with political-correctness? Or are they in fact putting these things into the public sphere for us to create this very discussion, bringing to light the issues of discrimination in the hope to solve and purge them a little more from our societies? We can’t immediately know these things when we are being confronted by the text, but we can know if we are laughing at these discriminatory jokes and we must therefore be aware of ourselves and use ourselves as a tool of analysis. Are we laughing because these things are extreme caricatures of social issues we don’t condone, or are we laughing because we are closet racists/sexists being given a safe-space to outlet these thoughts?

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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4/13

To conclude, Three Billboards isn’t a film which outwardly promotes racism or discriminatory behaviours—it is quite the opposite. However the discussed undercurrents in the creation of characters do enforce hugely negative representations of certain groups, and, I believe, it is our responsibility as an audience to identify these representations and analyse them along with our reactions to them if the satire is to achieve it’s goal of positive social development.