The casting of little people in these films may offend some, who think that they are being objectified because of their stature. Not surprisingly, little people themselves have differing opinions on this issue. Some see the chance to act as a way of furthering the success of little people both individually and as a group. Others see roles for little people as consistently involving typecasting and preventing acceptance of LP’s as people. It’s obvious that little people are almost always cast in roles primarily because of their height, but there is a statistical qualification to be made here. When a director needs a male character, or a black character, he has to cast an actor who fits the description. So if a director needs a character short of stature, he has to cast a short actor (well, not always--see the discussion of The Lord of the Rings, below). Now, there is a smaller population of little people than of, say, men or African Americans, which means stature is more likely to be a larger part of the casting decision. Denzel Washington is probably never cast just because he’s black, but a little person is much more likely to be cast just because she’s short.Furthermore, Denzel Washington is never cast in a role where his only appearance is in a dream sequence in which he inexplicably wears a cowboy outfit and trots around on a pretend horsey for a few seconds (Happy Gilmore). Which brings us to my main concern when thinking about the ethics of casting little people. Is the role in question gratuitous or objectifying in nature? Asking whether little people actors ought to play little people roles is like asking whether human actors ought to play human roles. Of course they should; not even the most talented chimpanzee could offer the smoothly delivered dialogue of Arnold Schwarzenegger or the emotional warmth of Nicole Kidman (okay, maybe chimps could do those things, but I bet lobsters couldn’t). There’s nothing wrong with finding an actor appropriate for the part. The question is whether the part itself is appropriate.
So now I’ve entered the debate, seemingly on the side that argues that little people ought to be cast when there’s a role for them. So there’s nothing wrong with gigs like that of Hank the Angry Dwarf on The Howard Stern Show, right? Not quite. As I mentioned, there is the appropriateness of the role to think about, and besides, I’m talking about movies and TV. Talk radio is a whole different (and sad) story. If I may make a grand, sweeping generalization, we can divide roles for little people into two basic categories. There are those roles which call for a short person solely for the effect, comic or otherwise, of seeing a little person; and there are roles in which an LP is called for because of what might be called broader conceptual or storytelling concerns. I have in mind something like the distinction that actresses often make between gratuitous nudity and nudity that’s necessary for the story. Both distinctions are likely to involve a thoughtful consideration of the script, but they also both have their extreme cases in which it’s obvious what’s gratuitous. Anything that gets airtime on the USA Network, for example, will involve gratuitous nudity, and there’s an entire “sport” which involves gratuitous participation by little people, although dwarf tossing is thankfully not often depicted in movies or television. The point is that we have to consider contextual factors unique to any given role to decide if it’s appropriate one or not.
Let’s take some examples. Michael J. Anderson plays a backwards-talking and -dancing character in David Lynch’s freak-out soap Twin Peaks. Why is this character short? There’s not really any reason, other than that Lynch wants to weird you out as much as possible. The weird-out factor obviously takes precedence over, well, pretty much everything else in this series, but especially in the scenes in the mysterious Black Lodge. It’s clear that Lynch just wants you to be spooked by the character, and finds using a little person as an appropriate way of doing that. I say this role is gratuitous. Anderson’s value in the finished product is as a freak, as something to recoil from. Now, I know that Lynch likes unique-looking people of all kinds to be in his projects (and they’re often his close friends), so I hesitate to say that he’s objectifying Anderson specifically for being short, but at the same time, the character’s overall effect is to make the viewer weirded out by little people.
Now, let’s get to the real reason you’re reading this: Mini-Me. The hugely popular Austin Powers movies have made this character a household name--but have they used Verne Troyer’s amazingly small stature for good or for evil? Being a science-fiction geek, I’m inclined to say that the idea of cloning producing something totally unexpected is a pretty good scenario and is something that should really make you stop and think about, you know, genetically-engineered corn and stuff. But taking the character in context, what can we say about Mini-Me? We certainly can say a lot more than he can, because it’s not a speaking part--usually a bad sign in terms of objectification. Mini-Me is a perfect example of a human being used as a prop. He’s there for the immediate visual effect of a very small person dressed exactly like another character, and not much else. Comedy is especially dangerous in its use of little people, as they are more often that not just there to be laughed at, and really need not speak or have any character traits at all other than being short.Comedy, however, is not inherently demeaning to little people. There’s more to the recurring character of Mickey on Seinfeld than being short, although there’s also not a pretense that Mickey is just a normal character--he has concerns unique to his identity as a little person. But most of the time the audience is invited to think of Mickey (played by Danny Woodburn) as Kramer’s hot-tempered friend, not as a freak or a joke. Material from the show includes Mickey being offended by George’s thoughtlessly calling him a midget and worrying about being ostracized by the community of little people actors and stand-ins. One problem worth noticing about the character of Mickey is that the writers did fall into stereotypical thinking about little people in assuming that they mostly or entirely work as actors. One of the main issues with little people stereotypes is that people think that all they can do is play leprechauns and Oompa Loompas. This stereotype is normally reinforced by the fact that people’s only contact with little people is when they watch them on the screen. Mickey’s character reinforces the stereotype in a much more direct way, presenting a character who works as a stand-in for a little boy and as a Christmas elf at the mall. We see him as someone who needs to work as an actor, he’s very upset about the prospect of losing his stand-in job. There is hope, however, in the slow progression of the prime-time programming of major networks toward diversifying their casts. CBS has a recurring role for 4’2” Meredith Eaton as an attorney on the drama series, Family Law.
One of the most famous little people is Warwick Davis, who played the title role in Willow, and made his on-screen debut as Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi. Davis now runs an acting agency in England that specializes in little people and has recently begun to work with people over seven feet tall as well. There are key roles for both short and tall people in the Star Wars movies, from Artoo to Chewbacca. George Lucas’ use of little people is a good example of the needs of the role coming before the casting of LP’s as freaks or jokes. Kenny Baker is credited as Artoo in every Star Wars movie made. Although we never see his face (other than quick glimpses through the droid’s eyepiece that show up in fanboy blooper lists), and many people are shocked to find out that there’s a person in there at all, Baker has been able to make a career out of touring geek conventions for the past 25 years in addition to being guaranteed the role for the prequels (when Episode III comes out, Artoo and Threepio will be two of only four major characters who appear in all six films, and Artoo will be the only one who is both played by the same actor and undergoes no major change in appearance). Star Wars also features two major groups that are played by little people, the Jawas and the Ewoks, in addition to miscellaneous short aliens in Mos Eisley, the Cloud City, and so on.
So are the little people in the Star Wars movies objectified? Artoo is a perfect example of concept preceding casting. Artoo’s design has to do with his fitting into a comic relief duo which uses a traditional big/little juxtaposition. This is something Lucas got from classic Japanese and American films and Vaudeville--Laurel and Hardy are perhaps the most famous example. The droids’ difference in size and shape plays up other ways in which they are opposites; such as the way Artoo’s technical know-how and pluckiness are contrasted with Threepio’s verbal ability and cowardice. The point is, Artoo was going to be garbage-can shaped no matter what. Originally, the droid was going to be entirely remote-controlled, but Baker was cast when it was decided that Artoo needed more personality. Lucas didn’t want a little person for people to laugh at, he just needed someone who could fit inside the costume.Similarly, the Ewoks’ being played by little people came about somewhat accidentally. Originally, Endor was going to be populated by wookies.
When Lucas chose what material out of the epic story he had in his head was going to make into the original film (which, as far as he knew, was going to be the only film), he decided to make Chewbacca, a wookie, Han Solo’s loyal first mate in Episode IV. Peter Mayhew (7’3”) got the part by default when fellow tall guy David Prowse elected to play Darth Vader. The point of Chewbacca is that he’s very tall and furry. So when Lucas got around to doing Return of the Jedi and needed to populate the forest moon of Endor having already used wookies as a technically savvy space-faring species, he kept the furry part and went to the opposite end of the height chart. It’s a pretty logical decision, in science-fiction mythology terms. So Ewoks are another example of broader conceptual concerns providing good justification for casting little people.The technical advances in special effects of recent years bring with them a completely new issue in this debate. While characters in the twelve- to one-inch range have always been played by people of average height interacting with giant props and bluescreen environments (from The Incredible Shrinking Man to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), characters of a more believable short height have traditionally been played by people who actually are that height. But in the new movie version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, director Peter Jackson decided to use average-sized actors and the magic of special effects to create Tolkien’s hobbit and dwarf characters. Notably, the lovable Elijah Wood plays the main role of Frodo, and 6’1” John Rhys-Davies plays Gimli the dwarf. The effects used to make the actors appear smaller range from computer wizardry to stand-ins and that classic device of moviemaking, oversized props. The overall effect is pretty distracting to the discerning movie viewer, since the scale of these shorter characters varies drastically throughout the film, computer integrations of separately photographed subjects are easy to spot with their conspicuous differences in lighting and bluish borders, and stand-ins are as obvious today as they were in The Parent Trap.
There’s an open aesthetic question as to whether Jackson made the right decision in using average-sized actors to play these roles. But beyond that, there’s a controversy among little people about whether the decision was a slap in the face to them as actors. Hundreds of little people could have worked on the Lord of the Rings pictures, but they missed out because of Jackson’s decision. On the one hand, it seems like little people face less stigmatization if directors don’t have to use them for short characters, but on the other hand, it seems insulting to think that enough talented little people can’t be found to play those roles. Again, statistics play a part here. Little people are a small demographic, so it’s less likely that there will be as many talented little people actors as in the general population, simply because it’s a smaller sample size. We can also imagine Jackson’s vision being such that little people with disproportionately shorter arms and legs (which is a characteristic of most LP’s) would not be the look he wanted for hobbits or dwarves.
On the other hand, claiming there aren’t enough talented people in the requisite group or wanting a different “look” for shorter characters both sound somewhat like justifications made for the use of blackface early in the history of the motion picture industry. Using actors who are not what they are playing in both cases allows the dominant group(s) to speak for marginalized groups or to propagate stereotypes on their behalf and without their participation. If the argument that the ability of little people to consistently play certain types of characters furthers little people individually and collectively holds any force at all, then the use of average-sized people for those roles takes opportunities away from LP’s. The comparison to blackface is somewhat unfair, because minstrel shows and movies presented stereotypes of black people’s behavior in derogatory ways and were an inseparable part of the racism of society as a whole. No one would claim that Tolkien’s hobbit and dwarf characters do the same things for little people. They are the heroes of the story, ingenious craftsmen and brave warriors. Of course, hobbits are also depicted as somewhat xenophobic loners, and Tolkien’s dwarves sometimes seem to be greedy and bloodthirsty. It’s extremely unlikely, however, that viewers will assume the same things are true of the little people in our society because of these films.
The likelihood of audiences forming social stereotypes of little people based on their screen roles is low, precisely because they often play fantastic characters like aliens and goblins. But the problem of audiences thinking of little people as freaks or as something to be laughed at--in short, as nothing more than little people--is a very real one. What is needed is the same thing that is needed to foster acceptance and understanding of any marginalized group: storytellers must create realistic characters who are treated as people, not ignoring their specific identities as little people or whatever else, but integrating those identities into a character that fits into the story and the world in a complex and believable way. Not entirely coincidentally, that’s exactly what’s needed to create good stories!