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Erkki

What to make of problematic elements in older films

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This day and age, we shouldn't still accept blatantly sexist or racist movies as honored classics. I refuse to give a free pass (and a good rating) to The Searchers or It Happened One Night (which I saw today) just because they have some great cinematography and/or other things going for them. There are enough classics and great movies that haven't quite reached a classic status even from the early days of film that tell genuinely interesting human stories without resorting to bigotry that is somehow justified in some movies just by being from a bygone era.

 

Nope, a bigoted piece of work should not become a classic for all time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't study these works for historical or whatever reasons, but it means we shouldn't accept them as part of a corpus of great and important works of art somehow despite their inner bigotry.

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Case in point, a comment about IHON on IMDB: "I'm glad to see very little mention among the comments about the sexism of it all. The characters have life; their words have life; and if such art as this could only be produced by a sexist society, it's almost worth creating a sexist society (and then dismantling it), in order to get the art."

 

This is total bullshit. This wasn't some era that was only able to produce sexist works. I haven't seen THAT many movies from the period, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had a not that dissimilar ratio to sexist and human works to our current society.

 

[edit] Another review starts like this: "You can’t really escape sexism in most movies but the older the movie, the more likely that the sexism will be overt. Just like the racism in classic films, though, everyone involved in making the films was oblivious to what they were doing. Nobody was trying to be sexist. They just were."

 

A more thoughtful one: "I definitely run the risk of giving a pass to old movies, over-compensating for the jarring, outdated ideology at work and the old-fashioned (by our standards, totally backwards, sexist, patronizing) attitudes towards women and sexuality. In trying to see through it to the movie that they would have seen at the time, and simultaneously trying to measure it against whatever “objective” criteria I have today, I can come through the other side completely bereft of a satisfactory critical methodology of any kind, and find myself resorting to “Did I like it or not”-isms, like now. I liked it! If you like old movies, you might like this too! But if you don’t, then you probably won’t make it halfway through."

 

These are both from the first page of google results for "It happened one night sexist". Why the hell should these movies get a free pass because people at the time "just were" sexist?

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...it's almost worth creating a sexist society (and then dismantling it), in order to get the art...

 

This is priceless. Imagine weighing hundreds and hundreds of years of accumulated human misery against a hundred feet of celluloid and thinking 'yup, worth it'.

 

I always thought Dumbo is an interesting example of a film which still maintains the status of a 'classic', but which is also loaded with 1940s attitudes towards race that are...problematic to say the least. But I think in that case, its problems are worth discussing. On one hand, there's some crude stereotyping of black characters as a band of crows (!); but they're also portrayed as a sympathetic group of outsiders, and the film as a whole is basically about the cruelty of being excluded due to matters of biological difference.

 

I don't think that wholly redeems it -- I mean, nobody ever escaped discrimination because they learned to fly. But it certainly places it in a different category to most crude caricatures of that era of animation.

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A recurring issue too is people thinking that it's alright to have problematic classics because we "got passed that sexism, racism etc." anyway, even though we obviously haven't.

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I don't like It Happened One Night and I haven't seen The Searchers, so I can't speak to those, but I think it's kind of a fool's errand to pretend that racism/sexism/etc. can render a work "not classic" or something. If that's a criterion then there are basically no classics, and some paradigmatic classical works (Moby Dick, Catch-22, The Odyssey, etc.) don't count as classics, which is silly. The best example is something like Triumph of the Will, which is a groundbreaking and massively influential documentary film about how awesome Hitler is. Pretending that the movie isn't well-made because we don't agree with its message is like saying food tastes bad because it's not healthy. It's just confusing two different things.

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I don't know Triumph of the Will, in fact this is the first time I heard about it. I'm sure there is value in seeing it and studying it if it's well made. That doesn't yet make it a classic that gets paraded around as something that everyone should watch because it's such a good doc. The Searchers especially, and It Happened One Nigth to a lesser extent are films that are actually in various "top movies of all time" and "films you should watch before you die" lists and are brought out as great examples of their respective genres: Western / Romantic comedy. One is also racist to the core and the other is sexist, if not outright misogynistic to the core.

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It's one thing to have some sexism in a movie - this happens all the time even today. C'mon, even Fury Road, called "feminist propaganda" by MRAs, still has some sexist elements. Another thing is to make a movie that is so inherently sexist or racist that it can't be separated from what the movie is, and at the same time not make any effort by the author(s) to distance themselves from the inherent bigotry - as is the case with my two examples, I believe, although it's possible to argue that the author does view John Wayne's character in The Searchers as kind of an outcast or remnant. These movies are IMHO, not that irreplaceably important to the history of film that they should actually be lauded as some of the best movies ever despite their obvious problems.

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I've never heard of any of these movies!

 

Except Dumbo, which was also a "nickname" provided to me by schoolyard bullies because of my big ears.

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How are people in this conversation defining "classic"? It's one of those words people tend to have their own meaning for...

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I always thought Classic means an old movie that holds up. Being important in the history of film feels like it should have a different term. I would never call Triumph of Will or Birth of a Nation classic, but they are historically important.

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Pretty much agree with Cordeos, plus a classic should have a certain amount of respect from critics and the public. And yes, the main thing I want to distinguish is films important for historic purposes and classics that should still be watched by a large number of people because they are still good and relevant... And even if an old important film is rotten in some aspect, it can still be admired for cinematography and innovations, as long as it's all knowingly (and maybe with disclaimer). The innovations themselves are not enough to make a classic. I really like the cinematographic storytelling in Soy Cuba and for that I love the film, but I don't for a second forget that it's at least 1/3 soviet propaganda.

 

Similarly, I really like some of the set designs in It Happened One Night, but I still think the movie as a whole, even if somewhat a product of its times, is kind of disgusting.

 

PS. I definitely want to watch Triumph of the Will now, and Birth of a Nation is on my watchlist as well.

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Yeah I consider a classic to be a film that's older, but still recommended viewing for a modern audience. In that sense, I understand thinking "This film is too sexist for me to want to recommend to people as modern viewing, but as a film with interesting elements I consider it worthwhile, if problematic."

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Of course, but there's a big difference to discounting the merit of something and saying "the problematic elements in this are bad enough that it shouldn't be on 'Everyone Must Watch' lists."

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Maybe the real problem is the premise of an Everyone Must Watch list. I think that Everyone Must Make Up Their Own Minds About What They Want To Watch, but the premise that those who accept that art made in the past reflects the culture of that past are "giving something a pass" just because they understand how history works is annoying and myopic.

 

If you only love things that are pure that probably means you aren't directing strong enough scrutiny at the things you love, and just because you don't like The Searchers doesn't mean anyone who does just doesn't care enough about racism.

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Maybe the real problem is the premise of an Everyone Must Watch list. I think that Everyone Must Make Up Their Own Minds About What They Want To Watch, but the premise that those who accept that art made in the past reflects the culture of that past are "giving something a pass" just because they understand how history works is annoying and myopic.

 

If you only love things that are pure that probably means you aren't directing strong enough scrutiny at the things you love, and just because you don't like The Searchers doesn't mean anyone who does just doesn't care enough about racism.

Yeah, agreed. I don't think there's any such thing that everyone must watch, and there's plenty of stuff that's worth watching even though it's problematic, because as Patrick points out, if you only watch non-problematic stuff, you'll watch effectively nothing. In fact I don't think there's any level of racist/sexist/whatever content that would make something not worth watching if it has other merits, so long as there's some good reason for watching it. Adding racism/sexism/etc. makes the message shittier, and if you watch movies for their message then it will turn you off, but there's more to a movie than what it believes, and if you watch movies for other reasons, then those can be reasons to watch things that espouse shitty beliefs.

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Yeah, agreed. I don't think there's any such thing that everyone must watch, and there's plenty of stuff that's worth watching even though it's problematic, because as Patrick points out, if you only watch non-problematic stuff, you'll watch effectively nothing. In fact I don't think there's any level of racist/sexist/whatever content that would make something not worth watching if it has other merits, so long as there's some good reason for watching it. Adding racism/sexism/etc. makes the message shittier, and if you watch movies for their message then it will turn you off, but there's more to a movie than what it believes, and if you watch movies for other reasons, then those can be reasons to watch things that espouse shitty beliefs.

You have to decide how much racism/sexism/bad plot/janky film making etc you are willing to tolerate. Its also a lot easier to spot these problems in older films since you are already outside the cultural context in which they were made. I do feel like there are a lot of those 'must watch' lists that gloss over some of the serious problems with older films. I would have liked to know how unsatisfying the plot of Citizen Kane was before watching the whole ponderous thing.

I also think it matters if the director is still alive and benefits from you seeing it. I am kind of glad the new Birth of a Nation is getting bad reviews since I am much less conflicted about seeing it now. I think some of my issues stem from the film industry giving people like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski a pass. Their films are considered important, but they are bad people that I don't think we should be venerating. I think it gets easier to separate the work from the issues after some time and important figures have passed. 

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Patrick & Tycho, your words are saying that things are more nuanced and complicated, but actually you are the ones simplifying what has been said (e.g. by me).

I'm saying is the society should stop putting these FEW (I personally only feel this way about the 2 movies I mentioned, having been watching mostly old movies for more than a year) obviously very problematic and IMHO rotten to the core movies on par with the best classic works out there without even acknowledging the problems (e.g. as a disclaimer in a review).

I especially feel this about The Searchers as its at the top of nearly every list of best movies of all time. Is it ok for people to love that movie - YES. Is it really such an irreplaceable part of "best movies ever" canon - NO. The avoidance to judge those works as what they are because existing "classic" status is IMHO something similar that helps rape culture & racism spread.

 

[edit] Perhaps I left something unsaid - that IMHO, the large corpus of "classics" that I've seen so far is no different regarding sexism or racism than todays films, except that some of them portray times that were more sexist or racist. In fact, I've been pleasantly surprised, that a vast majority of old movies I've seen seem to show humanist tendencies or at least not the opposite. It could be that I'm taking a too simplistic view of these movies, and they are more sexist/racist than I think, but... I'm talking about recognizing movies that are OBVIOUSLY sexist/racist as such. Yes, I acknowledge that obviousness may be subjective and that makes things maybe more complicated than what I've presented...

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Cool, I guess the long post I made last night never posted. Always fun.

 

This day and age, we shouldn't still accept blatantly sexist or racist movies as honored classics. I refuse to give a free pass (and a good rating) to The Searchers or It Happened One Night (which I saw today) just because they have some great cinematography and/or other things going for them. There are enough classics and great movies that haven't quite reached a classic status even from the early days of film that tell genuinely interesting human stories without resorting to bigotry that is somehow justified in some movies just by being from a bygone era.

 

Nope, a bigoted piece of work should not become a classic for all time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't study these works for historical or whatever reasons, but it means we shouldn't accept them as part of a corpus of great and important works of art somehow despite their inner bigotry.

  •  

 

The continued use of the word "we" implies that you are not just describing how you feel but how everyone should feel. Your assertion that these films are "rotten to the core" as opposed to just merely offensive, or reflective of their time, or flawed or whatever is completely subjective.

 

If a large number of critics consider The Searchers one of the greatest films of all time I assure you it is because they have thought a lot about it and have come to that conclusion and not because they never considered it's racism. Everyone has considered The Searcher's racism. It is a film about race. It is a film where the lead character is a racist. It is a film about how the people he encounters feel about his racism. It is a film in which John Ford grapples with his own racist legacy. I assure you, no one is giving The Searchers "a free pass". No one is "avoiding judging those works". 

 

But more importantly, the tone of your post implies an aggressive approach to curating canon, which I think is always a mistake and wasted energy. No one needs to define a canon, canon defines itself. Every time. Sight & Sound, Pazz & Jop, and lists like this can be good historical documents and thermometers into the culture, but they aren't prescriptive. I hate Jean-Luc Godard but his works are canon because people still watch and enjoy and discuss and are inspired by them, not because Criterion or a Letterboxd or IMDB or Film Threat or Cahiers Du Cinema list told us they are. How many best picture winners and box office smashes do people never talk about or watch anymore? How many flops are now so popular people don't even remember they tanked at the box office? I discovered the other day that The Shawshank Redemption was a big box office bomb and was flabbergasted. Canon always defines itself.

 

By all means, despise The Searchers and It Happened One Night (though what about the latter you find beyond the pale I have no idea, unless it's just the standard sexist attitudes that are in most rom-coms of every era) and don't be shy about it. But I find your approach, the "we must strike these from the canon, down with those who give them a free pass" tact, to be backwards and presumptive. 

 

Perhaps I left something unsaid - that IMHO, the large corpus of "classics" that I've seen so far is no different regarding sexism or racism than todays films, except that some of them portray times that were more sexist or racist. In fact, I've been pleasantly surprised, that a vast majority of old movies I've seen seem to show humanist tendencies or at least not the opposite. 

 

I really don't know how to be polite about this except to say I disagree super fucking hard with this.

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I hope my post did not make it seem that I think there should be someone in charge for curating canon and defining what is classic. No more do I think that than I think there should be a sexism police to stop the press from printing misogyny. Canon doesn't define itself, people define it. Including critics who keep lifting some works above others. And these critics are influenced by the other critics that came before them. I do not accept that movie critics somehow make purer decisions than the greater society, and their influence on defining classics is completely free of the racism and sexism that is present around them.

 

From rogerebert.com about "It Happened One Night" (written by Michał Oleszczyk):

For a story bearing visible traces of "The Taming of a Shrew" all over it, there’s surprisingly little chauvinism to "It Happened One Night". Ellie does get spanked, but it’s a playful gesture not meant at doing harm (though I bet Amanda Bonner of "Adam’s Rib" would beg to differ).

...

Eighty years after being made, "It Happened One Night" remains a mirror and a measuring stick—not only for all subsequent romantic comedies, but also (perhaps more significantly) for all lovers who came after Peter and Ellie and dream of a similar union of bodies, wits and fates.

 

Man, this story is filled to the brim with it so much that it can not even be separated from chauvinism at all... Here's a brief summary of the movie

 

1) At the start of the movie, the father thinks it's pretty ok to hold his adult daughter prisoner against her will, because he doesn't like her choice of husband (she's already legally married, although it's a bit unclear how & why she has been separated from her husband). The father says that the guy is a fraud. At the end of the movie of course the father has been proved to have been correct and to have been the good guy all along.

 

2) The woman escapes (at least showing some agency, but without it there wouldn't even really be a story) and takes a bus ride where he meets an annoying and kind of creepy man, who soon realizes that he must make the decisions for the woman because she can't be trusted to make these decisions herself. Of course, this man is almost immediately proved to be correct as the woman is proved financially incapable for convenience.

 

3) The woman is immediately thankful to this initially annoying man the moment he swoops in to save him from a more obviously sexist character (who is there as comic relief) making a pass at her. Later, she falls in love with her "savior" after he has bullied on numerous occasions and even slapped her.

 

4) She often shows weakness, and bad decision making, such as not accepting to eat carrots when hungry, but at one point she actually shows that she can do something better than the man, and that is hitchhiking by showing her leg to a passing car.

 

5) In the end the man and the father are proven to be right and are the good guys for making her realize what a mistake she had made by marrying that fraud and when the.

 

I admit though, that I could be wrong about old movies in general not being more racist or sexist. I have mostly been watching the cream of the crop of old movies (mostly from 50s and 60s), so the ratios could be different, compared to a wider coverage of different quality modern movies I've seen. And I haven't exactly been taking notes, so it's all rather speculative. But what exactly do you "disagree super hard with", as I just described my personal experience. Do you mean the part where I imply that some movies aren't necessarily sexist themselves if they portray a more sexist society? (I do believe in that in some cases as long as it can be seen that the director has distanced themself from the portrayed sexism - but I admit this may appear very subjective).

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I should say, I am constantly offended by most media I consume, so the act of embracing works I do not agree with politically is something I'm very well-practiced in. The racist, hetero-normative, ablist, transphobic, body shaming, misogynist, etc. etc. etc. world we all live in always shines through in some way and deciding that some movies are cool because the director probably didn't mean it and some movies are not because they are "rotten to the core" feels incredibly arbitrary and antithetical to actually having discussions about art.

 

Also, if you want to talk about movies before the 70's (and most of it after the 70's, just to diminishing degrees) you have to already accept an insane white supremicist world view in which America doesn't include people of color, except to occasionally open the doors for the white main characters. You have to accept that gay people don't exist, except maybe as a winking prancing punchline. Just because a movie doesn't feature any people of color to be racist about doesn't mean it's not racist. In fact, that usually means it is. Erasure is a big deal.

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I should say, I am constantly offended by most media I consume, so the act of embracing works I do not agree with politically is something I'm very well-practiced in. The racist, hetero-normative, ablist, transphobic, body shaming, misogynist, etc. etc. etc. world we all live in always shines through in some way and deciding that some movies are cool because the director probably didn't mean it and some movies are not because they are "rotten to the core" feels incredibly arbitrary and antithetical to actually having discussions about art.

 

Also, if you want to talk about movies before the 70's (and most of it after the 70's, just to diminishing degrees) you have to already accept an insane white supremicist world view in which America doesn't include people of color, except to occasionally open the doors for the white main characters. You have to accept that gay people don't exist, except maybe as a winking prancing punchline. Just because a movie doesn't feature any people of color to be racist about doesn't mean it's not racist. In fact, that usually means it is. Erasure is a big deal.

The recent examples of Ghost in the Shell and the Bruce Lee movie show how bad Hollywood still is on this and the backlash against Ghostbusters shows the problems with the viewing public. We have come a ways since the 70's but its painfully clear that we haven't gone nearly as far as we should.

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The recent examples of Ghost in the Shell and the Bruce Lee movie show how bad Hollywood still is on this and the backlash against Ghostbusters shows the problems with the viewing public. We have come a ways since the 70's but its painfully clear that we haven't gone nearly as far as we should.

 

Absolutely, but while erasure in 2016 means they change the role to a white woman, in 1930 it meant

 

FILM_Tea.jpg

 

(And The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) is another good example of how canon defines itself and how much more complicated racism is than just making something 'rotten to the core', because at the time this film was considered beyond the pale and disgusting because it dared to tell a story of a white woman falling in love with a Chinese man and racist audiences, churchs and early feminist groups found the concept revolting. But when I saw it in theaters last year the audience found it disgusting because of the yellow-face and general exotic orientalism and a Beauty and the Beast sort of story of a woman falling in love with her captor. In truth it is a movie that tries to tackle racism and succeeds in some ways and mostly fails in others but is still beautifully shot and acted and has important things to say about the willful ignorance and condescension of those who think they are doing acts of charity and isn't this all much more interesting then saying it's rotten to the core.)

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