Pretty Baby with Brooke Shields, who appeared nude at the age of twelve.
With the mortality codes and whatnot of early Hollywood, I’m skeptical that there was much from 30s-50s cinema that couldn’t have been made in the early 70s.
I wonder how the opening bit of The Wild Wild West with James belting a saloon girl would go over today.
“Withnail and I” has a fair amount of good-natured drinking. The film is described in this essay as “the finest alcohol-soaked film in history.”
Not a remake, but in 2015 Jane Krakowski, in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, played a Lakota Native American. It’s explained that she dyes her hair blonde and wears blue contacts to pass for being white. While even the audience knows this was just a throwaway line so they could cast Jane, there are jokes/subplots based on it scattered throughout the series.
Amidst the controversy, I remember reading articles from a few Lakota/Native American authors stating that, for one reason or another, they didn’t find it racist or problematic. Also someone “official” (don’t remember who) stated they were okay with the subplot. It had raised awareness of their people.
Reading about Pretty Baby, they had originally wanted Jodie Foster who was was just in Taxi Driver, but because she was 14 they thought she would be too old. Would 12 versus 14 even make a difference today?
More problematic was them auctioning off her virginity. Regardless of age, that’s pretty out there.
What gets me is that this complaint also get made about shows that were on the air within the last 30 years. Watch clips on Youtube of Friends or Seinfeld or Married. . . with Children, etc. and somebody is sure to bring up this complaint.
That’s the one I thought of.
You could absolutely do a remake of The Birth of a Nation today, as a “sweeping historical epic,…families divided by war, and (with a) a romance story at the centre” would still be compelling. Of course, the remake would need to show what the birth and early history of the Klan was actually all about.
Scrubs would probably need to rework the Chocolate Bear/Vanilla Bear thing. But on the other hand, if you’re concerned with Joey being a womanizer on Friends, remember we had Barney on HIMYM which started after Friends ended and ran until 2014. No one has really had an issue with him. It comes up from time to time but no where near to the point that anyone is going to stop airing it.
That’s kinda what I was thinking. There’s nudity, sexuality, and profanity in current movies that barely raises an eyebrow, but would have had people fainting in the aisles in the '40s and '50s. On the other hand, scenes of racism or animal abuse have become much less acceptable.
The idea that audiences now are objectively more squeamish or PC is ridiculous, it’s just that the taboos have changed over time.
Humor is timeless. People, not so much.
Well, Blazing Saddles is one of those that kind of was problematic even before the current era. I was assistant manager at an independent video store way back when that was still a thing. The policy on what movies to play in the store was pretty much “PG and anything less most of the day, PG-13 is OK after 10 PM”. Importantly, this store was in a pretty diverse area of Dallas.
One Thursday night (our busiest night for regular customers), the other assistant manager decided that playing Blazing Saddles around 9:30PM would be a great idea. I worked the next morning, and heard about the reaction of the customers from the clerks when I arrived. At that point, I knew it was going to be a long day, and no amount my saying “But Richard Pryor was the co-writer” to the customers complaining to me that day was going to save his job. My prediction was correct.
Yes, it’s rated R, but I had played (judiciously chosen) rated R movies after 10 in the store and never had a complaint. That movie gets its comedy from pushing a lot of buttons hard. You might make something like it today, but it would be difficult. Heck, I kind of feel it was kind of a herculean task back then, and we are better for their success.
I just think a few scenes would be edited out. Some of the movies I loved “back in the day” had the old "guy forces himself on girl, she ends up in love with him"trope. And some even had rape scenes played for laughs.
First thing that came to mind was that Revenge of the Nerds (?) scene where the nerd puts the moves on the popular girl (who thinks he’s her boyfriend in the dark). Porking ensues.
But leave that on the cutting room floor and it’s back to being a fun movie.
More specifically than a remake, some lines of dialogue would be problematic, even from shows that have aired in more recent times.
In 48 Hrs., many of the big yuks came from Jack Cates’ (Nick Nolte) intentionally provocative racial slurs.
In Good Will Hunting, just before Sean and Lambeau argue in the bar over sandwiches, Sean (Robin Williams) taunts the bar owner with some comment about a winning lottery ticket being enough to pay for his (the bar owner’s) sex-change operation.
Similar “homophobic” dialogue is heard in several episodes of The Simpsons, like the one where they count cards in a casino to raise funds to rebuild the church. At one point, they’re wearing disguises, and Marge later goes to see Rev. Lovejoy and finds that he and his wife Helen are still in costume because they’re having sexy fun with them. From the couch, Helen says something like, “Is that a woman’s voice I hear? Oh, send her in!” and Marge gags and presumably pukes in the bushes.
There’s a pretty good video essay on Youtube on that particular topic, which concludes that’s not that you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today, but that you wouldn’t want to because it parodies and relies on the tropes of a dead genre and general era of filmmaking, which is dead largely because of Blazing Saddles. It’s worth a watch if you have the time to spare.
On one hand there are all the examples shared here. OTOH there is South Park, which seems to stretch every one of today’s boundaries, and is still popular. The show’s creators claim to make fun of everyone equally, but still, I wonder why that show is so seemingly offensive but so successful at the same time. Does it get a pass because it’s animated?
This.
And the use of terms like “PC” obscure this fact, by making it sound like the taboos of the past are “right”, and any deviation from them is wrong. Lucy and Ricky sleeping in separate beds was the “PC” of that era.
Maybe it’s true that you couldn’t make All in the Family today. You could, however, make commercials in 1961 with Fred and Barney hawking cigarettes.
What, people had to die fully clothed? Loose women had to perish?
While he may not have been forcing himself on her, Indiana Jones was definitely in a relationship with an underage Marion Ravenwood.
Ooh, bad idea: that’s not a good movie to have playing in the background. I think it’s clear to most people who sit down and watch the movie that the racist/offensive elements of the movie (including frequent use of the N word) are there to show how moronic racism is. But to someone who hasn’t already seen the movie, overhearing bits of dialogue or seeing bits of scenes out of context is just going to be jarring and offensive.