Charges of racism
Despite its critical acclaim and popular success, Gremlins has been criticized as racist and culturally insensitive. Some observers have commented that the film presents gremlins as African Americans in a bar scene, and in an unflattering manner. The creatures exhibit some of the worst sterotypical behavior attributed to blacks. They are wild, drunken, carousing, violent, murderous, seductive, lascivious, sometimes simple-minded, crude and rowdy. The females are depicted with big, red lips and wearing ugly, blonde wigs. The males swagger, wear sunglasses at night and big-apple slouch hats, a fashion popular in urban African American communities in the 1970s and 1980s; and in one scene a gremlin spins on the floor, breakdancing.
In her book Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies, Patricia Turner examines the issue of the movie's depiction of the "African-American gremlins" as racist caricatures.
Nowhere are the negative ethnic messages clearer than in the actual depiction of the unearthly beings....
These malevolent miniature Mogwi are the most destructive and reflect negative African-American stereotypes. Soon after their unexpected birth, the pesky gremlins are devouring fried chicken with their hands. Their first target is Billy's kind, overburdened mother, and they are soon pursuing the hero's girlfriend at Dorry's Tavern. In some unexplained way, several of them have managed to acquire shades and caps that cover their eyes. Cigarettes droop from the corners of their mouths. They make haste to a tavern where they cannot get enough to drink. Here we see their love of music and their ability to break-dance.[15]
The character of the elderly Asian man who sells Gizmo and sets off the chain of events that comprise the movie's story line also has been criticized as reinforcing Asian stereotypes--his flawed English, heavy accent, and his belief in, and association with, magic
