What was Seth Rogen thinking?
This thought ran through my mind at least fifty times while watching Sausage Party. Like many moviegoers, I walked in with high expectations for the movie. But instead, I left feeling greatly disappointed and cheated. I had let singing corn and baby carrots fool me into buying a ticket in support of a movie laced with racism and rape scenes.
The movie follows a hot dog — and yes you guessed it; It’s an All-American, male hot dog, the standard protagonist in U.S. films – on a journey across the market world in a heroic endeavor to divulge the truth about “The Great Beyond.” Along his travels he happens upon the first POCs he’s ever met, and each is stereotyped beyond a comical or satirical purpose. Amongst the many, you have: 1) the virgin-olive-oil-craving, Middle Eastern Lavash, 2) an overly-sexualized and overly-religious, Latina Taco, and 3) a Black Mr. Grits who is always angry about the White Crackers.
Now if these racial stereotypes had been for satirical purposes, then this movie might have been forgivable, but that wasn’t the case. These stereotypes were used for nothing more than comical effect, and for many POCs, these stereotypes just aren’t funny. In fact, they are damaging, and we can’t just let them be normalized, especially not for comical effect.
But racial stereotyping wasn’t the only fault in this movie. In addition, the movie also had terribly unexpected and unnecessary rape scenes. (Both of these rape scenes were committed by a Douche, who was most likely based on the once again harmful stereotype of a jock or fraternity brother.) In the first scene, the Douche rapes a juice box, resulting in the box’s death and the Douche’s literal power boost. Then the second rape scene involves a nerdy cashier, which the Douche is then able to control while inserted into the cashier’s rectum. Portraying this literal empowerment and controlling manipulation in the rape criminal, was not only unnecessary but also leaves a sour taste in the mouth long after the movie. Rape is never comical, and shouldn’t ever be used as such in a movie. Rape victims are survivors, not joking material. And the fact that both rape victims were male only adds to the injury. Male rape victims are no less important than female rape victims, and we definitely don’t need to be adding to a harmful culture that treats these victims like a joke.
So even long after seeing the movie, I’m stuck thinking "What was Seth Rogen thinking?" He took the ingenious concept of food being alive in a dimension outside of human consciousness, and ruined it by using racial stereotypes and rape scenes as comedy. Obviously, Rogen learned little from the criticism. The Interview received for its overuse of racism, and only got worse with "Sausage Party" by adding rape into the mix. I can definitely say that I won’t be going to any more Rogen movies for a while, and maybe ever.
