Film outcasts redefine ‘normal’

It’s a timeless story line: Outcasts find one another, discover their collective strength and prevail against the philistines who once made their lives miserable.

In a recent spate of films, those outcasts have been redrawn to address America’s halting acceptance of diversity, and perhaps razz the religious right while they’re at it. Not only do these motley and imperfect characters testify to the glories of embracing multiculturalism, they offer their own as a means of deliverance.

Pragmatic alliances become loyal -- and even loving -- tribes in films such as “Napoleon Dynamite,” the debut sensation by director Jared Hess, and “Saved!,” directed by Brian Donnelly, as well as Peter Hedges’ “Pieces of April” and Jim Sheridan’s “In America,” both touching looks at the way families must reach beyond their confines to brave tragedies.

All are small films with relatively modest budgets. All are about improvised families whose members may variously be gay, black, white, disabled, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, HIV positive, socially inept, or unwed and pregnant -- or possibly all of the above.

Barely tolerated by their communities at first, these outsiders use their social disadvantages as a catalyst for empowerment. But that can happen only if they embrace “the other,” such as when Napoleon’s insipid older brother Kip falls in love with a beautiful black woman. In turn, her love transforms him into a confident, ghetto-licious guy with all the right moves.

Napoleon, seemingly clueless, liberates his high school from its fair-haired, physically coordinated Mafia when he loses himself to the urban rhythms of a black dance song. With a hip-hop wiggle, he dispatches the even-featured evildoers who have made life hell for everyone else. In doing so, he also banishes the myth of a uniformly blond, blue-eyed and aggressively middle-of-the-road America.

Of course, Napoleon’s not the first antihero to do this. Nor is he the first to find refuge in an unconventional family. From “You Can’t Take It With You” (1938) to “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967) to “Monster’s Ball” (2001), film families have often deviated from the nuclear “norm,” notes Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center, based at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. He mentions as well the many Disney animated movies that feature an orphan or a child raised by a single adult.

“My guess is that most people (including Hollywood people) think of themselves as outsiders, and find their family circumstances to be far from the Rockwell (and religious right) stereotype, so it makes sense that when they do creative work, it’s a way to make peace with their circumstances by contesting what’s ‘normal’ and redefining the meaning of a happy ending,” Kaplan says by e-mail.

Like its predecessors, today’s atypical cinematic family is a catalyst for exploring divisive cultural issues, including gay rights, the definition of “family values,” the HIV/AIDS crisis, immigration (legal and otherwise), the country’s rapidly changing demographics, economic disparity, and social isolation and malaise.

Because they are nonjudgmental of others’ idiosyncrasies, Napoleon and his cohorts find a place to belong. In this way, they set an example for a nation chronically unable to reconcile its founding principles with an inherent mistrust of difference.

“Small movies have always been able to do things that big studio movies could not (with some exceptions), and so they often take stands that are in opposition to what is popular,” says William Blizek, editor of the Journal of Religion and Film and a professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

“Such films aren’t made deliberately to oppose a particular agenda,” he says by e-mail. “It may be that the visibility of the Christian/conservative/evangelical right makes it appear that things are now in opposition to that group or movement, but the opposition may stem from the new visibility, rather than any intention on the part of filmmakers.”

In all of these movies, the protagonists use their eclectic talents and their diversity to build an emotional fortress that protects them from the slights of bullies -- even as it offers those bullies a haven from their own prejudice. By claiming the moral high ground, these oddball families don’t just vanquish their white-bread oppressors; they offer them salvation. Just because they’re boring and narrow-minded, that doesn’t mean they should be left out in the cold. And maybe if they come inside, they’ll drop their facades and get real too -- even if that means making fools of themselves.

In “Saved!,” unlikely believers show their doctrinaire counterparts what it means to be a true Christian. By the film’s end, the ragtag crew that exposes the hypocrisy of its holier-than-thou foes has turned the other cheek. It is a tacit gesture intended to save the silly zealots who once sought to drum them out of their sacred community. But in the final scene, with its allusions to the birth of Christ, it’s clear that the outsiders have established their own sense of belonging and no longer require the acceptance of others.

In “Pieces of April,” the disaffected protagonist builds an extended, racially mixed family in her New York City apartment building, even as she reconnects with her own father, cancer-stricken mother and siblings.

In “In America,” a fatally ill black man befriends a family of Irish immigrants and allows them to make peace with a past tragedy while they ease his bitter rage.

On a superficial level, these movies are variations on the classic underdog theme. On a deeper level, they are about redemption, whether secular or religious. In a way, they are the filmmaker’s response to those who define themselves through rejection of the “other,” be it gays, non-Christians or people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. The message, if delivered a bit too broadly and predictably, is not at all out of register with the Ten Commandments or other faith-based codes.

But these films aren’t just about targeting hypocrisy. Despite their improbably bright endings, they’re also about what’s real. Debates about gay marriage and interracial marriage and other public discussions are far behind the reality of what America looks like.