I’ve seen *The Reckless Moment * and I’ve read the book it was based on. I didn’t find either version misogynistic. I found the book because it was reissued by Persephone Press. They bring back books that have gone out of print by women authors. I’d be very surprised if they brought it back because/if they thought it was misogynistic. I didn’t find the movie misogynistic either. I googled some commentary on the film and didn’t see misogynism discussed.
Yeah, I don’t know if that would be a racist movie, but it would really suck as a biopic.
They have made films about Caesar without mentioning his slaves.
See, that’s absurd. There’s nothing that says or even implies that a biopic about a character in 18th or 19th century America is required to include some sort of mention of slavery one way or the other, unless their relationship with it is part of their historical legacy.
I mean, if you were to write about say… George Armstrong Custer, there’s no real reason to bring slavery into it one way or the other. However, it would be remiss not to mention his relationship with Native Americans and his treatment of them prior to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
I’ve seen My Boy Jack, and you’re right. It spends too much time focusing on Kipling’s hawkishness and the consequences for His Boy, Jack, to go into depth on his racism.
I will say I think they were too hard on the common soldier for not helping his idiot son out of the line of fire of a machine gun he led them into.
But, as with other films or film ideas put forth (Hitler and events related to Stalingrad or Hitler as depicted in Downfall), I’d call that more of a historical drama than a biopic. Limited in scope to a particular time/place/incident as opposed to trying to tell the story of his life in any great part.
You mean… Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor?
Like… Every Roman if the era who could afford it had slaves. The more important slaves had their own slaves. I assume Caesar had a house full of slaves, but that’s hardly what’s interesting about him.
I think, however, a large majority of people born before the 20th century were more racist, more misogynist, more anti-Semitic, and more homophobic than Western societies today. These were just basic attitudes ingrained in society. A few individuals here and there were more enlightened, but that wasn’t typical. We can praise individuals who were ahead of their time, and blame those who were extreme bigots even then, but it’s a historical fact that general attitudes were different. Even many abolitionists didn’t believe that Blacks were the equal of whites; they just didn’t believe they should be enslaved.
I read a lot of accounts and travels and exploration from the 19th and early 20th Century. These are usually loaded with casually racist remarks. These were often written by educated people, for an educated audience. The fact that they were included just indicates that society in general accepted such attitudes.
You could have a point there but it is called a "biographical television film " which is why I included it.
Exactly.
Portrayal is not necessarily endorsement, omission is not necessarily endorsement. (unless you are the world’s laziest thinker).
So the answer to the OP is trivially yes.
It’s not about his life and craft though. The original claim was that you could explore, among others, Kipling’s life and craft without bringing up his racism because it wasn’t relevant. Any treatment of how Kipling came to produce his lifetime body of work that doesnt engage with his views on race would be a sham.
And don’t forget: portrayal but NOT bringing it front and center for direct explicit denunciation is not endorsement either. “Show, don’t Tell”.
Though sure, some people will say that leaving it to the audience to judge is itself favoring the wrong side by implying it’s even up for judgement.
Yeah, this is true. And honestly, a biopic of Caesar ought to touch on his views on social rank and interaction. But it really wouldn’t have to dwell on his slave-holding.
Cobb, which starred Tommy Lee Jones as Hall of Fame ballplayer Ty Cobb, was a biopic which cast an extremely negative light on its subject. In a way, it was a corrective to the sort of whitewashed portrait that might have been done during Cobb’s life, or for years afterward, in which the fact that he was a nasty, racist spouse abuser would never have been mentioned. In this case, his achievements on the field were put way in the background; his hateful personality was front and center.
If you wonder what the point is of making such a picture - there are lots of people out there who behave badly - I think it has to do with being honest about those we choose to elevate to hero status. You have to consider the whole package.
Was the movie released before or after it became widely known what an S.O.B. Cobb was?
The movie (1994) was partly an account of Cobb’s relationship with sportswriter Al Stump, who wrote a hatchet job biography of Cobb after his death in 1961. Stump’s account has been largely discredited and many incidents described in it were fictional. So the movie wasn’t a corrective, but another inaccurate account but in the opposite direction.
Biopics rarely are an accurate picture of their subjects. They will either idealize them or demonize them, rather than show complex human beings as they really were.