Honestly I’m surprised that anyone who has heard of Lars von Trier even in passing hasn’t heard about the endless debates over misogyny in his films. Both in terms of attacks on him and defense of him. Dogville being a particular case in point. I found it repellent as hell, but as noted in that wiki many consider it a masterpiece. Perhaps it is both.
These seem to contradict each other.
Hitler turned to eating what was then called vegetarian, which included fish. Today we’d call it “prescatarian”.
But yeah, like many people on a diet, he had off days.
Right- you can very easily have a movie like “Gettysburg” that portrays Lee without getting into the issues of slavery or racism. But it’s not a biopic, it’s a movie about a battle.
Generally speaking, biopics are historical in nature, and not including or downplaying racist aspects of the person in question is in its own way, a sort of active racism. Kind of like how a biography of Hitler that talked about his political machinations and meddling with the prosecution of the war without making his involvement in the Holocaust would be incomplete, and the racism/hate is found in what’s omitted.
Conversely, including the facts about someone doesn’t make the movie itself racist. It just portrays racist aspects of a person being biographied. Which, unless those things are being celebrated by the biographers, don’t make the movie hateful or racist.
I’ll add ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ to the list. They were the enemy but they weren’t monsters. They could be reasoned with and (spoiler alert) allied with.
I think you nailed the disconnect. I haven’t read any such articles. My only “source” is a few decades of participation in dozens of movie discussion groups, film clubs, fat chewing with friends after seeing a movie, and many many such discussions here at the dope. I’ve heard these opinions expressed by many different people with a particular passion for talking about and analyzing movies. So it never occurred to me to find a third party published citable source; my experience with these varying analyses has been with individuals analyzing a movie we’ve both seen. As someone else pointed out, it’s pretty much common knowledge that these accusations of misogyny are regularly made toward Verhoeven and Von Trier, whose movies often portray misogyny as experiences that catalyze a woman to take up the sword (Verhoeven), or as the obstacle, even enemy, to overcome which she must discover her inner strength (Von Trier).
On the other hand, the follow up movie, Gods and Generals, portrayed Lee and Jackson at the beginning of the war, and was widely criticized for glossing over the role of slavery as a reason for the war.
That’s actually one of the movies I was thinking of when I said that glossing over that stuff is probably more racist, or in this case, making it into a sort of “Lost Cause” movie, instead of a historical film or biopic.
That would have been an okay answer. Not a terrific answer, as this place does like citations, but it would have answered the question of “why are you dragging these up as examples?”
For future reference, if you want people to understand a point you want to make based on something in which they don’t know the context, the burden DOES lie on you to provide the context. If you had expected people to know that context, and they don’t, it’s up to you, of course, whether it’s worth the bother of trying to do so or not. But if not, you should step out of the discussion without dismissing the other people.
For instance, a perfectly fine exit line might have been: “I’m a movie buff, and I’ve talked to dozen of people about these movies, and I’ve heard that come up a lot. But if no one else in this discussion has heard of these movies, I guess it didn’t add anything to the conversation to bring them up.”
That’s very different from “you have no context from which to argue your point, and you expect me to provide it for you.” There, you are blaming everyone else for not knowing context. And that’s not appropriate.
I won’t debate a movie with someone who hasn’t seen it. Lifelong policy. It seems my mistake was in trying to explain why - that in order to do so I would have to provide the context one would have from seeing it. I apologize if my tone seemed abrupt or impolite. That was not my intention. In fact it was the opposite of my intention. Your feedback is gratefully acknowledged, @puzzlegal.
The answer to this one is easy. Miranda was adapting Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, which explicitly states in many different places that Hamilton was extremely (at least for the time period) anti-slavery.
In the last year or two (i.e., four years after the show opened on Broadway and 15 years after the book was published*), a number of historians have come forward to say that Hamilton wasn’t anti-slavery after all, and in fact owned enslaved people himself. AFAIK, Chernow insists he was right and the others are misinterpreting various historical documents.
Anyway, the point is that Miranda “glossed over” slavery (it was, in fact, mentioned several times … always negatively) because he believed Hamilton to be adamantly opposed to it.
- If anyone said anything earlier than that, I didn’t hear it.
Reading that wikipedia article there is no mention of misogyny. There is of misanthropy, however.
I would say that how you initially presented your argument made it seem like this was a commonly held belief among the general public or by critics.
However, it is not hard to find articles saying Lars Von Trier is misogynist.
I suppose that leaves you free to argue on how these films that are considered misogynist and contain misogyny are in fact not misogynist themselves, but since I have not seen these films, you have to debate that with others.
Are you mistaking me for lissener because neither of us have avatars and are names are highlighted in very similar shades of tan/brown 
? I wasn’t making an argument, just linking to a description of the film that seems to have started Lars von Triers is a misogynist discussion in a big way. The link you added discusses that film as part of the charges that have been leveled against him.
But I didn’t bring up the topic. I was just mildly surprised anyone who would have heard of von Triers wouldn’t have heard about the accusations of misogyny. He’s a semi-prominent independent filmmaker whose films occasionally get talked about on this board and this topic has dominated discussion of his work for decades now. Personally I’ve only seen a couple of his films, which was more than enough for me - I dislike unrelentingly bleak as an aesthetic. I was just bemused lissener was getting such fierce push-back, because parochial guy that I am I thought everyone would have heard of this 
.
Indeed I thought that was a post by @lissener, I’m on mobile and used to the default avatar icons being a variety of colors instead of the sameish color.
Though the part I quoted, the Dogville wikipedia article does not mention misogyny, though a reader familiar with his work might not need it mentioned.
My apologies since my reply was directed at @lissener, and had no intention to confuse or conflate your posts.
I’m sorry, but it’s absurd to say that it’s automatically racist if you don’t cover a person’s racism.
I’m sure any number of musicians/explorers/ancient rulers/athletes/artists/business people who are racist, misogynistic or anti-Semitic but you can do a perfectly fair bio-pic about their career without the added commentary on whatever their flaws are. This doesn’t make the producer complicit. It just means they are taking the artistic license to tell a story about a specific topic.
Can you do a bio-pic without including a person’s infidelity?
Can you do a bio-pic without including a person’s sexuality?
Can you do a bio-pic without including a person’s spousal abuse?
Can you do a bio-pic without including a person’s money troubles?
Can you do a bio-pic without including a person’s childhood abuse?
Can you do a bio-pic without including a person’s drunk driving convictions?
Of course you can. Does doing so make the story teller somehow in support or opposition to any stance on those issues? Of course not, so long as you’re not presenting the subject as the opposite of whatever failing they had. People are complicated and the movie probably isn’t going to be interesting if it has to be made as if it were a Wikipedia page come to life.
This is Cafe Society, not Great Debates. A informed discussion of this issue would have been interesting to read, for someone that doesn’t know much about movies. Not all descriptions of an on-going point of discussion in an aesthetic field have to framed as debates.
I totally agree. I’m pretty well-read in my own tiny hobby-field (modern sf/fantasy), but see very few movies these days. Nonetheless, I’m interested to learn about what’s going on in movie criticism, and articles about directors, and discussions about how people are thinking about historical movie trends, can be interesting to me.
Just as I’m happy to talk about Sad Puppies (for example) with folks that don’t read much modern sf, I appreciate it when folks who bring up issues in their own fields of interest are willing to elaborate.
Ehm, yes.
Do a biopic of Freddy Mercury without mentioning his sexuality, do a biopic of Ike Turner without the spousal abuse, do a biopic of Teddy Kennedy without mentioning Chappaquiddick, someone who does that could only be doing it deliberately.
Once things like that are publically known, there are no neutral stances on it.
Money troubles, I would say, are the exception, unless it’s about a person famous for having money or handling money, in which case, it would be a glaring omission.
I’m trying to imagine a 90 minute biopic on the life and craft of Rudyard Kipling, who was born in, partially raised in, and started his career in, British-run India, author of Kim, Plain Tales From the Hills, Gunga Din, The Man Who Would Be King and The White Man’s Burden, that skips over his racism on the grounds that it’s irrelevant to his craft and life and I am coming up very, very blank indeed.
And the idea that “anyone born before the 20th century was a racist” is a damned cop-out. It’s not true. There are plenty of counter-examples, unless you’re using a definition of “a racist” that also encompasses everyone alive today. Also, the problem with Lovecraft isn’t that he was a run-of-the-mill early-20th-century racist. It’s that he was valedictorian of the racist class, going above and beyond, taking every extra-credit racist assignment he could and staying after school to clap the racist erasers.