I agree with a sentiment said earlier. Offensive traits or depictions in older movies don’t bother me that much because they are a product of the age they were made. If the same things appeared in a movie made today it would bother me.
A recent instance for me was watching Holiday Inn for the first time. Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds (?) do a whole routine in black face. (In the movie Bing runs an inn that is only open for holidays and he does a special show for each one; the black face was for Lincoln’s birthday, and to keep Fred Astaire from recognizing Reynolds).
I appreciate that it wasn’t offensive (or as offensive) but it did completely take me out of the movie. I mean, I can’t completely remove myself from my era and I just don’t find it amusing.
But it would be wrong to stop showing these old films or to remove the offending bits. (Jeffrey Wells has reported that a line about terrorists may be removed from E.T. because of September 11.)
As for “Coal Black” and other such cartoons, I think part of the problem is that American society still sees animation as something just for kids. So I believe that there’s this assumption in the minds of many that if we show those cartoons again, we’ll have to show them to children, and/or the only people who’ll be interested in seeing them is children.
Of course, as this thread shows, that’s not true, but I think whenever the possibility of showing these cartoons again comes up in the minds of TV executives, they immediately imagine the cartoons, mockery of minorities and all, running at 7 pm on the Cartoon Network in front of millions of eight year olds…
“What makes the Red man red” from Peter Pan wouldn’t play in Peoria today.
The last time I saw Blade Runner in a theater, there were a lot of boos when Decker used the threat of violence to keep Rachel from leaving his apartment. Probably not the reaction Ridley Scott was looking for.
That was the first thing I thought when I read this thread. I have a fairly high threshold for “unPC-ness” but that portayal is phenomenally offensive. It ruins a great film.
Another one is the character Helen Ramirez (played by Katy Jurado) in High Noon. There’s the speech that she gives to Gary Cooper about what it is like to be a “Mexican woman” in a small U.S. town. The implication is that if she doesn’t have a husband the only other possibility is to be a whore.
Haj
The entire movie “Soul Man”. Its an early 80’s comedy starring Thomas Howell Smith or whatever his name is. He is a rich white kid whose dad wont pay for him to go to college. So he takes a bunch of FUCKING TANNING PILLS to turn his white ass black. He puts Jeri Curl and the whole nine yards. White guys are fighting to have him on there basketball team cause they think hes black. Then there is the “mudshark” who is after his black pecker.
A real funny romp.
Offensive stereotyping does make great movies less great – just as any other obvious flaw would diminish them. You can’t just say, “Oh well, that’s how things were back then” and ignore an obvious problem.
On the other hand, it’s a bit much to expect yesterday’s filmmakers to have been ahead of their time. They suffered from the same prejudices as everybody else. Sometimes those prejudices found their way into their movies.
Still, modern audiences can acknowledge those flaws without dismissing an entire film. You can be offended by a particular element without letting it destroy your enjoyment of the rest of the movie – but it’s still offensive, even if it was acceptable in its era.
Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com
When I first saw Dr. No I was prepared for the casual sexism, but the casual racism caught me by surprise. The Asian characters (mostly white actors with heavy eye makeup) were bad enough, but the black characters made me cringe. I found the cowardly, bug-eyed, superstitious, rum-drinking sailor especially memorable. And I thought for sure Bond would seduce the attractive Jamaican henchwoman to get information out of her, but instead he roughed her up. Didn’t seem very gentlemanly. I suppose they just couldn’t have Bond sleep with a black woman at the time.
I recently turned on the TV to watch Columbo and caught the tail end of a Streets of San Francisco episode. I heard the Michael Douglas character ask a witness, “What did he look like? Did he look like an American?” I imagine he was really asking, “Was he white?” The comment really took me by surprise.