I mean Roots was very popular. If people watched that, did that mean that they were racists? Were everyone down to the people who provided sodas to the cast supportive of racism?
What? Roots is pretty anti-racism I would say… Art depicting the horrors of racism is not supportive of racism. I mean. What?
That’s in the eye of the beholder. Maybe some racists like seeing Kunta getting whipped.
Maybe some serial killers liked to kill animals when they were younger. What exactly is your point? Anyone involved in any artwork involving negative things in history are therefore supporting those things? Stephen Spielberg was supporting the Holocaust with Schindler’s List?
Yeah, sorry but for something like Roots there would not be that sort of backlash. At most you’d be seeing people reasonably ask for a trigger warning at the start and after every major break for broadcast on TV or a Cable program-streaming channel.
(Places like YouTube OTOH are another story with their algorithms that demonetize anything with “nasty” content.)
The Birth of Nation is based on a series of books written by either the son or grandson of one the Klan’s first Grand Dragons. I read one of the books as a project for US History class in high school-- yes, I knew what I was getting into, and I’d already seen the movie at that point. The books, to put it mildly, were not popular, and the only publisher the author could find was one that produced books cheaply for short shelf-life-- the same publisher that produced the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books.
While it would certainly be possible to produce an histortical picture about the development of the KKK, and even adopt the perspective of a KKK member, you could not use those books as a source.
For one thing, their accuracy is questionable, something few people would have noticed in 1915, when most people without personal involvement, hadn’t even heard of the KKK.
Even at the time, that was controversial. I recall someone saying it was like “Making Malcolm X with a white guy”.
I thought it was a deliberate choice to make them flow better as reruns. I mean, 9-11 isn’t mentioned a whole lot in reruns, and when it is, if the reference isn’t overt, sometimes I, who was 34 in 2001, miss it.
Also, actors hate having stuff covering their faces. That’s why actors playing soldiers never strap on their battle helmets, and actors pioneered the cap-with-the-bill-in-the-back look. Imagine how much they must have hated the idea of medical masks.
That is actually fairly accurate. Until fairly recently the chin strap on a helmet was more of a liability than a help. Most soldiers left them unfastened whenever possible.
Backwards caps came out of LA fashion, but it was the cameramen who popularized it, not the actors. They’d flip their caps around so the bill wouldn’t hit the camera when they looked in the viewfinder. The style gained popularity in LA, because it was an easy way to look like someone who worked in film without having to look like a movie star.
I always thought it was Ken Griffey Jr.
No, he was responsible for the fad for massive hydrocephalus.
They aren’t usually this open about it. Well, they used to be not so open about it.
This may come as a surprise, but bears also defecate in the woods.
That was Rich Kids. Not a bad film. Trini Alvarado was the girl; I forget the boy’s name because he only did this. Anyway, yeah, they’re twelve and they spend a weekend at the boy’s father’s bachelor pad. It’s implied that they do not have sex, because they know they’re not ready, although they are ready for kissing and cuddling. The “scandalous” trailer had Alvarado bringing whatsisname breakfast in bed and giggling, “Being married is easy!” But that’s all we see, after a very chaste kiss the night before. And they don’t get caught then; it’s the following day, and they’re in a hot tub. Eek! With swimsuits? I forget; maybe.
Bumping because an article popped up on CNN today.
CNN — On social media at least, Mel Brooks’ classic “Blazing Saddles” has become the standard example of a film that supposedly could not be made today because of rampant left-wing political correctness. Rewatching the 1974 film on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, though, what stands out is its cheerfully irreverent antiracism — and its open enthusiasm for insulting and mocking racists.
<snip>
Gene Wilder as Bart’s fast-drawing friend Jim, is even more explicit. “You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers,” Jim reassures Bart after he’s endured racist insults from a nice White grandma. “These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
<snip>
But you’re really not supposed to outright say that rural White MAGA voters — the “people of the land” — are deplorable racist dunderheads. You’re supposed to be respectful. But Blazing Saddles,” 50 years ago, said that treating racists with respect is BS — even if those racists look like your grandma, even if those racists live in small towns and hang out in diners.
If a movie like Brooks’ masterpiece were made today, the left would love it. It’s the right who would recognize, slowly and dimly, that they were being insulted, and howl in rage — as, hopefully, they will howl after reading this article. The best way to honor “Blazing Saddles” is to offend some racists.
Richard Pryor, a black man, wrote much of that movie. Paul Mooney, another black man, wrote an SNL sketch not long after, featuring the n word, the reason these are supposed to be “problematic” now, that the word can’t be used in any way. Now I grew up back then, despite all of the talk about racism being constantly “on the rise”, at the time there was a question whether a black player could be an effective NFL QB. So I’m really not sure when this magic time with minimal racism is supposed to have existed. (Hint: it never did.)
Anyway, I’m guessing that a lot of people making the “problematic” call are white. I guess the black man just needed the white man to tell him how to do it again. /s Unbelievable.
I don’t know about that. Around 1996 I was an assistant manager at a video rental store in an area of Dallas where the clientele was around %50 black. The other assistant manager decided to play Blazing Saddles on Thursday night, our busiest night. I worked the next morning. The people I took complaints from were universally black, and no amount of my saying “But Richard Pryor wrote it” was going to be sufficient to save his job.
One of the funniest albums I ever had (might still have it in the storage unit) was one of Richard Pryor’s. I don’t think I’d be allowed to say the name of the album IRL, let alone here. So two-click rule. The link broken after www, so you won’t be able to click on it. You’ll need to copy the link and remove the space.
I don’t know if I’m even allowed to laugh at it anymore, since a lot of Pryor’s humour was making fun of Black stereotypes.
Anyway, I found it funnier than Cheech and Chong’s Big Bambú album.
It’s not a movie I’d want playing in the background around people who were unfamiliar with it.