Pretty Stupid

Warner Brothers is releasing a movie called “Orphan” in July. This is apparently a horror flick about an adopted child “going bad”, and then attacking and killing members of her new family.

This is both (a) about as extraordinarily rare as biological kids killing their parents or siblings, and (b) a common and sad stereotype of adopted kids.

As an adoptive dad, I’ve experienced this to some degree. While no one has ever directly brought up this kind of violence, a few have danced around it, asking if I was worried about whether our son might reject us or “act out” when he is older. To which I answered, “sure…but I’d have the same worry about a biological child, too.”

The problem I have with the reinforcement of this stereotype is that being “an orphan” or being adopted is not something that a child chooses for him or herself. In that way, it’s much like race itself.

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of political correctness. I’m not one to get all up in arms over something like this. And truthfully, if there was a movie about a family, and one of the minor characters was an adopted child acting out this stereotype as one part of a broader story, you probably wouldn’t hear much from me.

But this is a movie called “Orphan” where the false stereotype is central to the film itself.

This is the equivalent of releasing a movie called “Black” about how gangbangers are ruining neighborhoods…and you can replace that with any other kind of false stereotype that judges people not by their choices, but by how they were born.

The height of offense is the line in the trailer: “it must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own” (spoken by the little girl herself).

This is one of those seemingly empathetic statements made by people who often possess subtle attitudes of anti-adoption discrimination. Frankly, it’s the racial equivalent of “oh, Korean people can’t drive as well because their eyes are slanted…it’s not their fault!”

First, an adoptive child IS most definitely “your own.”  There is nothing not “your own” about an adoptive child.

Second, there is nothing harder about loving an adoptive child than a biological one. That’s difficult for some people who have never experienced adoption to understand. But when you become the adoptive parent of a little boy or little girl, a magical bond is created that extends way beyond the few strands of DNA that differ between you.

So the release of this movie saddens me. Warner Brothers has already apologized for the “hard to love” comparison and is removing that line from the trailer (and ostensibly, the movie).

But I hope they rethink their approach with this film. There are plenty of ways to entertain people without reinforcing false and hurtful stereotypes on a group of people who didn’t choose to be members of said group.

And for the record, Koreans can drive just fine.

What do you think? Am I being overly sensitive about this as an adoptive dad? Am I viewing this too subjectively? Or did I hit the nail on the head?