Can we forgive old movies?

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Cassandra said:

Why not go after the big dogs like President Woodrow Wilson who segregated the Army and Washington, D.C., or Senator Robert Bryd who was an actual member of the KKK.  Why not take their names off of building and destroy their statues?

 

Excellent idea.

[Ranxerox]

Yes, we can forgive old movies (and books, and plays and comic books).  What we can't do is insist that other people other people forgive them as well.

 

For example, I love Will Eisner.  The man was genius at visual story telling and created a large swath of the storytelling techniques that are used in comic books today.  Beyond his talents as a creator, based on the stories that he chose to write, I believe he was a compassionate and honorable man.  Unfortunately, he was also a product of his times, and without even being aware picked up the blatant racism of his day.

 

So, yes I can love Will Eisner's work, but I can't ask anyone else to overlook the extreme racism in his depiction of blacks and Asians.  If others find these portrayals as insurmountable obstacles to enjoying his work, I should not tell them to give him another chance, or to be more open minded, or to look at in historical prospective, or any garbage like that.  I just need to acknowledge that they have a point and not try to foster my love of Will Eisner on them or judge them over our different perspectives.  

[Tech priest support]

You know HPL was pretty racist and most of his works had racist themes. He even wrote a poem about the origin of black people that was pure racism. The american horror writers guild stopped giving out awards in his likeness but it seems that he's still popular and games themed after his work keep on coming out.

 

 

[Clonus]

On 11/21/2017 at 3:25 PM, Simon said:

This whole thread orbits around something I've been trying to figure out....and I still don't know that I have it clear mentally, so the following is likely not going to come out entirely right (consider this an advanced apology...and I'll attempt to clarify as needed).

 

Looking at some of the behaviors and depictions in old movies is VERY similar to looking at the behaviors and actions of certain individuals in recent press in regards to sexual abuse/predation.  Context plays a large part, but intent seems to be a major factor that is not discussed either because it's considered irrelevant or is too "sticky"/difficult to address.

 

By context, I'm referring primarily to the prevailing attitudes of the time.  Ben Franklin owned slaves.  So did most other wealthy Americans.  It was part of that period of time.

 

 

 

It's worth bearing in mind that Franklin freed his slaves and become president of one of the earliest Abolitionist societies so he gets credit for being ahead of the curve.  

[Clonus]

1 hour ago, Tech priest support said:

You know HPL was pretty racist and most of his works had racist themes. He even wrote a poem about the origin of black people that was pure racism. The american horror writers guild stopped giving out awards in his likeness but it seems that he's still popular and games themed after his work keep on coming out.

 

Note that there's a difference between forgiving the author of a work and the work itself.  The works of HP Lovecraft that most blatantly displayed his "I have never even seen a Tibetan or an African but I am terrified of everything unfamiliar" tendencies are deservedly left to moulder in obscurity.  I've never yet seen a Lovecraftian RPG that used the Lovecraft story where the protagonist discovers to his horror that his grandmother was "an African ape-woman".  

[Tech priest support]

19 minutes ago, Clonus said:

 

It's worth bearing in mind that Franklin freed his slaves and become president of one of the earliest Abolitionist societies so he gets credit for being ahead of the curve.  

Um, ben franklin never became president contrary to popular belief and i don't know if he freed his slaves. thomas jefferson did become prez and freed a few of his slaves. Yes franklin freed his two slaves at his death. just checked. out of 200+ slaves jefferson owned he freed 5 at his death.

 

 

[Lucius]

10 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

Um, ben franklin never became president contrary to popular belief and i don't know if he freed his slaves. thomas jefferson did become prez and freed a few of his slaves. Yes franklin freed his two slaves at his death. just checked. out of 200+ slaves jefferson owned he freed 5 at his death.

 

 

 

If you're going to comment, please actually read what was said. Look again.

 

10 hours ago, Clonus said:

 

It's worth bearing in mind that Franklin freed his slaves and become president of one of the earliest Abolitionist societies so he gets credit for being ahead of the curve.  

 

See it now?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says I have little room to talk and often fail to read as thoroughly as I should.

[Clonus]

22 hours ago, Tech priest support said:

Um, ben franklin never became president contrary to popular belief and i don't know if he freed his slaves. thomas jefferson did become prez and freed a few of his slaves. Yes franklin freed his two slaves at his death. just checked. out of 200+ slaves jefferson owned he freed 5 at his death.

 

 

 

No, he freed his slaves in 1781.  He became president of The Philadelphia Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1787 and died in 1790

[gewing]

On 11/21/2017 at 2:10 AM, Badger said:

 

Well, being someone who watches a lot of old Westerns (I grew up on John Wayne movies) I may not be the best to decide.

 

But, I have to agree it is a product of the times, for the most part.  Although, some things they should have known better.  I am slightly more forgiving with Japanese portrayals in WW2, extremely uncomfortable with it, but we were in the middle of a pretty brutal, cutthroat war with them, you cant forget that before you do pass judgement. 

 

THe nation and the Western world, for that matter, seem to be in a mode of wanting to hide history, to fear history, rather to confront and learn from it.  I worry that will ruin us all someday.

 

If I gather more thoughts, I'll try to re-reply

 

Last night I watched a couple Mash episodes. Imagine all the sexual harassment allegations that would be coming out in the modern world. The whole show was what 50% sexual harassment?

[Cassandra]

Remember that screenwriters are basically the worst people in the world.

[Hermit]

2 hours ago, Cassandra said:

Remember that screenwriters are basically the worst people in the world.

 

I missed my calling???

[Cassandra]

Except Paddy Chayefsky.

[Michael Hopcroft]

In the context of recent events, some more recent films have become at the least very uncomfortable. An example is many of Woody Allen's films, most obviously Manhattan -- acclaimed as his masterpiece, but involving his self-identified character in a sexual relationship with a schoolgirl. Allen is a serial predator of young women, especially young women of whom he is in a guardianship relationship, and has been credibly accused of much worse than he has admitted to.

 

Manhattan may indeed be worth my seeing now -- once, and never again, as a look into the mindset of someone who can do the sorts of things he did. I have two teenage nieces, and in these times I sort of worry about them.

[Cassandra]

I preferred Love and War, and Sleeper.

[Tech priest support]

1 hour ago, Cassandra said:

I preferred Love and War, and Sleeper.

I think you mean love and death, which I like as well.

[Tech priest support]

The point of this tread is "do we have to condemn old movies that had things  we'd hate today" and essentially seal them away in vaults dropped in the mariannas trench IR can we accept them good and bad?

 

If a movie was made by someone with a terrible side that was not widely know outside the insular Hollywood community, and KT was good, do we have to condemn it after his dark little secret comes out?  Now if I know someone has something intolerable about  them it doesn't matter if he makes something good, I won't watch it. Like Stephen Collins . I won't burn my star trek the motion picture DVD because of him but I would bit watch a new movie with him in it.

 

Also after they made ”valley of the wolves" I would not watch a movie with billy Zane or Gary busey in it but I still like "predator 2".

 

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

Then maybe along those lines we may look at one of the hottest new video games of 2017 -- the action 2D shooter Cuphead.

 

Cuphead is a tribute to those awesomely trippy 1jazz shorts made by the Fleischer Brothers and their contemporaries in the 1930s. Now the context of those shorts was that all the really exciting things in 1930s American music were being done by African-American artists like Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and the artists of the Harlem Renaissance. But the bulk of the USA was trapped in an abyss of Jim Crow racism, with censors in just about every state looking to sniff out and ban just about any piece of celluloid that didn't fit their prejudices. The Fleischers loved their jazz and their trippy scenes, but had to disguise it and, when they did display the artists whose music they used, had to do it in a way that fit the disparaging stereotypes of their day (I don't know how the artists themselves felt about it, although Calloway at least participated enthusiastically) -- and that is how some of the greatest and most original American animation came down to us as a legacy of Jim Crow.

 

Which brings us to Cuphead. The makers of this game (which is renowned for its beauty -- and its extraordinary difficulty) were inspired by those cartoons, but claim to have made a deliberate effort to separate it from the times in which they were made and avoid offense. But can you ever separate any piece of art from its historical context without making its problems worse through denial?

[gewing]

On 11/25/2017 at 12:34 PM, Tech priest support said:

The point of this tread is "do we have to condemn old movies that had things  we'd hate today" and essentially seal them away in vaults dropped in the mariannas trench IR can we accept them good and bad?

 

If a movie was made by someone with a terrible side that was not widely know outside the insular Hollywood community, and KT was good, do we have to condemn it after his dark little secret comes out?  Now if I know someone has something intolerable about  them it doesn't matter if he makes something good, I won't watch it. Like Stephen Collins . I won't burn my star trek the motion picture DVD because of him but I would bit watch a new movie with him in it.

 

Also after they made ”valley of the wolves" I would not watch a movie with billy Zane or Gary busey in it but I still like "predator 2".

 

 

Never saw Valley of the wolf but I have no intention of ever watching anything involving Roman Polanski again. He should have been in prison rotting for the last 40 years or so

[Pariah]

If the films or other products of byegone eras are in line with the values and standards of their time, just as the films and other products of our era are in line with our contemporary values and standards, doesn't it seem a little presumptuous of us to talk about "having" to forgive them? Like they are in some inherent need of foregiveness, just because they reflect opinions that we now, well after the fact, happen to find distasteful? Is it bad to accept them for what they are, while realizing that we know better now (and maybe congratulating ourselves for this fact, just a little)?

 

Just my 2¢.

[Badger]

1 hour ago, gewing said:

Never saw Valley of the wolf but I have no intention of ever watching anything involving Roman Polanski again. He should have been in prison rotting for the last 40 years or so

 

Agreed, I lost all respect for Polanski after I heard about the incident.

[Cygnia]

Neither Half-Price Books nor Record Exchange would take our copy of The Usual Suspects (blue-ray version) or our Cosby CDs when we tried to trade them in.

[gewing]

On 11/26/2017 at 7:30 PM, Badger said:

 

Agreed, I lost all respect for Polanski after I heard about the incident.

I also lost pretty much all respect for the people who say that he's a genius so we should still glorify his movies.

[Ranxerox]

On 11/26/2017 at 7:15 PM, Pariah said:

If the films or other products of byegone eras are in line with the values and standards of their time, just as the films and other products of our era are in line with our contemporary values and standards, doesn't it seem a little presumptuous of us to talk about "having" to forgive them? Like they are in some inherent need of foregiveness, just because they reflect opinions that we now, well after the fact, happen to find distasteful? Is it bad to accept them for what they are, while realizing that we know better now (and maybe congratulating ourselves for this fact, just a little)?

 

Just my 2¢.

 

Well, that depends a bit on who you are doesn't it.  Maybe some people get to find these to be distasteful opinions, but if are black, Asian, Jewish or homosexual these movies aren't merely distasteful.  They are direct spits in the face of you and  yours.  Just because an insult or an injustice took place a long time ago does not mean that it no longer requires forgiveness, particularly when a physical embodiment of that injustice is sitting right in front of you. 

[rjcurrie]

On 11/22/2017 at 1:37 PM, Cassandra said:

 

Yes, movies are terrible.

 

Want to really be offended watch Nancy Walker's Rabbit Test starring Billy Crystal.

 

Joan Rivers made Rabbit Test not Nancy Walker. Nancy wasn't even in the movie.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Maybe some people get to find these to be distasteful opinions, but if are black, Asian, Jewish or homosexual these movies aren't merely distasteful.  They are direct spits in the face of you and  yours.

 

I'm a Christian.  It is increasingly difficult to find a movie portrayal of a Christian who is not depicted a hypocrite, bigot, sexual pervert, mean spirited snob, or otherwise terrible person.  The TV show Law & Order has made a decade-long career of portraying Christians as monsters in all its variations and iterations.  We're kind of used to that in modern culture, so the offense is slight, but its more or less constant. 

 

And you know what?  Any problem I have with that is in me.  Its my problem.  How I respond to something is on me.  Yes, some actions are so naturally and reasonably objectionable that any ordinary person will react poorly - our laws cover that.  But the truth is, the offense we feel and the way we respond to things is because of how we feel and react.  Nobody compels me to be upset or offended or shocked.  Nobody owes me an apology for the 9800th portrayal of a Christian as a terrible person, a murderer, a pervert, etc.