What to make of problematic elements in older films

[TychoCelchuuu]

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 mean, I can't defend every reviewer or their lack of disclaimers or anything, so if that's all you're saying - that reviews should have disclaimers - that's fine. I have no issue with that. As Patrick points out, I do think that it's not really right to say the movies are "rotten to the core" - maybe they're more rotten, or they have more rot, or whatever, but so what? The issue is whether they are good movies despite the rot, not how rotten they are. Like Patrick I find rotten things all over, including in the cores of many movies I like very much. My favorite movie, Dr. Strangelove, is pretty sexist. If that means it's rotten to the core, then I guess being rotten doesn't make it a bad movie. It's still my favorite movie.

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.

I don't know what it means for a movie to be "irreplaceable," so I can't speak to that unless you want to elaborate. Plus I haven't seen this movie, so I can't tell you whether I think it's so good that it ought to be part of the canon. Plenty of other people who have seen the movie do think it's that good, though, and you saying they're wrong doesn't get us very far. We get a bit further because you give us a reason for thinking they're wrong, namely, that the movie is super racist. However, as I've pointed out before, lots of stuff is super racist, including many good films. The racism surely doesn't make them better but in many people's eyes, racism doesn't have to stop a film from being good. This might not be true in your eyes, but people disagree about this and it's not clear why I should be on your side rather than the other side (which is where I already am). If I were on your side it seems to me I would have to stop liking almost everything, or I would have to find some arbitrary line of racism/etc. above which I can't like something but below which I can like something.

The avoidance to judge those works as what they are because existing "classic" status is IMHO something similar that helps rape culture & racism spread.

Again I haven't seen The Searchers, and I already told you I don't like It Happened One Night, so I don't really think it's fair to pin me with an "avoidance to judge those works." Moreover, I've granted for the sake of the argument that both are super racist/sexist/etc. and that's judgy as hell. Clearly I am happy to judge these movies for what they are. They are racist/sexist/etc. and also they are masterpieces (again, not talking about these two specific movies).

 

[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...

Yes, there's some of that. What's obvious to one person is invisible to another. You quote below a reviewer of It Happened One Night who thinks the movie isn't sexist. So clearly the sexism is not quite as obvious as one might have hoped. I'm sure most of your favorite movies have stuff I find utterly reprehensible.

[Erkki]

"rotten to the core" wasn't the best phrase to use, I had already typed a lot and didn't come with anything better. I'm not a perfect wordsmith and English is not my native language so please don't hang on to that phrase too much. What I meant by that was a movie where the director shows something that is bigoted through and through and then seems to confirm that it's ok and the bigots are still the heroes of the story.

 

I admit that not everyone interprets the stories the same way and it's somewhat subjective, and yes, my argument relies on being able to distinguish whether the director made the movie to support the bigotry that is being shown or to view it from a distance with a critical eye... and yeah, maybe it isn't easy to make that distinction some times... and I'm not sure I can always tell which is which. But I still think that sometimes there is still going on glossing over the sometimes hugely problematic aspects of these stories because they are already considered as classics, because of other values they have.

 

So what if John Ford confronted his own racism in The Searchers? Should we applaud him for that while he still made a racist movie, where the racist main character ended up being a hero anyway, despite being somewhat of an outsider by the end? I think we shouldn't and that many are still putting that film on a pedestal where it doesn't belong. And I'm thinking this way because to me, being racist at the core actually inherently decreases the value of a work, so it's not like a concept of "best movie ever, but racist" exists for me. To me, a racist movie just can't be "best movie ever" because it's lacking something important.

 

On the matter of movies where the racism is present more in a way of erasure, I don't feel the same way about them, maybe somewhat thanks to my privilege as a white male. I think that is more something that can't be helped - the director used the environment that was available to them to tell the story - the environment may have been more racist than today, but at least they didn't make the story itself racist. I admit that erasure is a big deal, but I find it hard to blame any individual work, especially from the past, on that, without blaming the whole culture.

 

PS. Actually I checked the movie again and the spanking in It Happened One Night was kind of playful and I remembered one thing wrong - the father was the one who slapped her in the beginning of the movie, not the man she met on the bus. But I still stand by that there's a lot of sexism at the core of that story.

[Erkki]

...I already told you I don't like It Happened One Night, so I don't really think it's fair to pin me with an "avoidance to judge those works." ...

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to pin any single thing on anyone personally, I'm just saying that as a society as a whole, we are still giving some "classics" more leeway than new work just because of their esteemed history (which IMHO can be questioned just as well as anything current).

[TychoCelchuuu]

And I'm thinking this way because to me, being racist at the core actually inherently decreases the value of a work, so it's not like a concept of "best movie ever, but racist" exists for me. To me, a racist movie just can't be "best movie ever" because it's lacking something important.

Yeah I mean it's pretty clear that you think this, but people disagree with you, and what we're looking for is a way to adjudicate the dispute.

One way is to make it into a numbers game, where the majority wins. If that's the case, then I think you lose this round, because as you've pointed out, "society" seems to think that movies like these are classics, this despite their racism/sexism/etc.

Another way is to look at which approach makes more sense. I've already pointed out that your approach makes little sense to me. Either there are practically no classic movies, because basically every movie has issues, or there's some arbitrarily chosen level of racism/sexism/whatever above which a movie can't be a classic and below which a movie can be a classic, which makes no sense to me. How high is that level of racism/sexism/etc.? Who determines that?

One way to help salvage your point would be if very few movies are in fact sexist/racist/etc., or at least very few movies are bad enough along these lines to disqualify them from being classics. You've suggested as much above when you said you've watched a lot of classics and few of them have these issues. Like Patrick, I am suspicious about your claims. I suspect you are simply less sensitive to various injustices that I (and Patrick) take pretty seriously, and if you started paying attention you'd see these all over movies, including classics. As I noted above, and as you noted above, one person's "obvious" sexism is another person's "what? this movie has no sexism." In this case, the reviewer on rogerebert.com was the one who couldn't spot the sexism, but it may be that you, yourself, are in a similar position with respect to other sorts of injustices present in other classic movies that you take to be spotless.

Another argument you might make is to say there's no right answer. Everyone just makes their own choice about what is an isn't a classic movie. I think that's mostly what Patrick and I have been saying, with the additional point that if lots of critics think X is a classic movie, then who are you to tell them that they're wrong? And in fact you're the one that touched this off by asserting that there is a right answer, namely that these movies aren't classics, right? So I'm not sure "there's no right answer" works well for you.

I think there's not much use in arguing whether something is or isn't a classic. Sometimes your point seems to be less about that and more about whether movies get a "free pass" from "society." I can't really speak for "society" - you strike me as part of society, and you are not giving these movies a free pass, and I strike me as part of society, and I don't think I'm giving these movies a free pass, and so on.

If the point is just that "society" does not talk as much about the particular injustices you care a lot about, join the club. I'm a member! Most people are members. The issue is that everyone has different injustices they care about, and different ideas about what counts as an injustice or not. Patrick and I care about, for instance, things that are " racist, hetero-normative, ablist, transphobic, body shaming, misogynist, etc. etc. etc." and if we spent our time (like you) saying society shouldn't give a "free pass" to movies featuring this, that's all we'd ever talk about. In fact, there are some injustices that I care deeply about that almost nobody cares about, and when I talk about them, I get a lot of shit. Injustice against animals is one example of this. I take it you think a movie where animals are killed and eaten and where this is treated as normal or even great is a movie that scores much worse than It Happened One Night on the "how morally reprehensible is this movie?" scale. So I would have to disqualify that movie from being a classic or whatever. I take it if I filled this thread with that sort of discussion, you would not have a lot of patience for my argument, though. If every time you bring up your favorite movie I talk about how the characters ate a hamburger and how awful that is, I think you'd want me to look past the hamburger for a moment and appreciate the movie for the qualities that you like.

That's not to say these aren't worthwhile topics. I'm happy to talk about them any time. I just don't think they make a movie bad, or that they disqualify it from being a classic, or anything like that. Apocalypse Now killed a cow but that movie is tremendous. Maybe The Searchers is racist but also amazing. So to the extent that you're not just saying "hey it would be cool to talk about bad stuff sometimes" but something stronger, I think I still disagree, and it's not clear what could be said in favor of your view as opposed to mine.

[Erkki]

I think you make some pretty valid points, I may have to think my attitude over a bit.

I still have the opinion that e.g. that critic on rogerebert.com and others are just ignoring/forgiving pretty obvious sexism, whatever the reason is (maybe somewhat because of the movie's oscar winning records and influences on future cinema and featuring beloved stars of the era), and by proxy helping sexist attitudes live on.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I think you make some pretty valid points, I may have to think my attitude over a bit.

I still have the opinion that e.g. that critic on rogerebert.com and others are just ignoring/forgiving pretty obvious sexism, whatever the reason is (maybe somewhat because of the movie's oscar winning records and influences on future cinema and featuring beloved stars of the era), and by proxy helping sexist attitudes live on.

 

I mean, they also might just flat out be sexist enough that they don't think it's a problem in the movie. Not even that they're forgiving it or anything, just that they don't really think there is any.

[unimural]

A very interesting discussion. I've been thinking about similar things on and off over the past few years.

 

I haven't seen It Happened One Night, but I have seen The Searchers roughly a decade ago. I recall being impressed by the movie, mostly due to it trying to do more with a Western. John Wayne's role was probably as shocking as Henry Fonda's in Once Upon a Time in the West a few years later. I re-read Ebert's Great Movies piece on it, and found it a good read.

 

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-searchers-1956

 

It is perfectly possible that some people do not need to see a particular work. Michael Haneke said of his movies that the people who walk out of the cinema on his movies do not need his movies anymore. Perhaps the audiences of the 60ies would experience the same with our action movies. And it is possible that some people could find these works as a reinforcement of the prejudices.

 

I do think The Searchers is worth watching. I recommend it. A classic, if you will. To me a classic doesn't mean a movie that holds up, or is good, or is enjoyable. My concept of classic roughly means that it has to have some aspect of notable craftsmanship and it also has to have something that's worth consideration. Some value beyond as a way to spend some time. I recall The Searchers being visually beautiful. Although I would say the same thing about many a western. It is also illustrative of a time and world view. It has an interesting, plausible main character. It's also well made, a work of good craftsmanship on many levels. Acting, pacing and cinematography.

 

I would find it troublesome to say that The Searchers helps prejudiced attitudes live on. To me, pretty much the opposite is true. I would argue the film is conscious of a lot of what it presents. But even if it wasn't, I think, that for most modern audiences, the movie also tackles with the meaning of being different and the value of human lives. Even if that was not the intended value of the movie, it is a value the movie currently has, for us. Forgetting that we humans tend to fall into this traps of thought is the true danger, and that's one of the values of stories from different times and cultures.

[Patrick R]

So what if John Ford confronted his own racism in The Searchers? Should we applaud him for that while he still made a racist movie, where the racist main character ended up being a hero anyway, despite being somewhat of an outsider by the end? I think we shouldn't and that many are still putting that film on a pedestal where it doesn't belong.

 

Not to drag this out more because it seems like you understand where I'm coming from, which is all I wanted to achieve, but it's worth noting that one's interpretation of any given movie is subjective and in particular I personally disagree with your read on The Searchers.

 

I think The Searchers is racist because of how it others native Americans, mostly playing them for fear and inscrutiny (the attack on the homestead is a brilliant bit of film-making but also pretty racist in how inhuman they come across), and all the stuff with the Squaw. I think there's also a wacky Mexican character a la Stagecoach, but I can't remember exactly.

 

So I will not argue The Searchers isn't racist, albeit in a way I find common among films of it's genre and era.

 

But as far as the depiction of John Wayne's character Ethan, I think it's more complicated than you are giving it credit for. His "heroism" is depicted as alienating zealotry more offten than not. The IMDB plot summary says it's about "A Civil War veteran embarks on a journey to rescue his niece from an Indian tribe." but really, it's about a Civil War veteran who embarks on a journey to kill his niece, because he is such a twisted racist he thinks

1) death is better being raised among/than living with/being implicitly raped by Native Americans.

2) once she's had sex with a Native American she's tainted and beyond saving.

 

The film presents these beliefs as aberrant and disgusting. You just need to see everyone's reaction to him shooting out the eyes of the dead native American to know he's more Travis Bickle than Ringo Kid. His nephew(?) joins him on his journey explicitly because he feels if he doesn't Ethan will do something terrible. I think casting an actor like John Wayne in this role is a challenging and confrontational choice that really makes you reconsider what you thought of his characters fighting Native Americans in films like She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Stagecoach and Fort Apache.

 

Ford's career was fascinating in how he both created and deconstructed myths of the west and while I would never imply that he was a force of social justice (outside of The Grapes of Wrath; he was a big time New Deal Democrat and goaded Wayne every chance he got about how he never would have had a career without FDR), his tendency to be self-critical or, at the very least, critical of those who tell stories and the stories that make up our histories, means that movies like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are about more than what they're about.

 

The most heroic thing Ethan does is put aside his beliefs at the end and not murder his niece. But he's still a crazy racist and realizes that while he has been instrumental in bringing back some sort of chance at normalcy (again, normalcy defined by white imperialist American life) to his family, he has no place there. And there is a certain tragedy to that. I think it's one of the few times the film actually asks you to empathize with Ethan and I don't personally see anything wrong with films asking viewers to empathize with immoral or awful characters, if only for a moment or two. I think that's what psychologically complex art often does.

 

----

 

Now of course you may completely disagree with all that, and that's fine. But the assumption that people are giving racism a pass is first the assumption that people are seeing the same racism you are. And, given our different interpretations of how much of a "hero" Ethan is (again, because The Searchers inspired Taxi Driver, I wonder how much of a hero Travis Bickle is), that clearly isn't always the case.

[Patrick R]

Actually, thinking a little more about it, I also want to concede a few things to Erikki, especially in light of what's been happening in the world of online film criticism:

1. I think "canon" (which doesn't really exist as any one list of films, but as lots of lists of lots of films that all intersect at different places based on one's specific interests and peer groups) is determined by critical consensus at least partially (but not, I think, predominantly). And I think that critical consensus has been historically white, straight, male and not personally invested in condemning racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. etc. etc. works. Giving a side eye to consensus that elevates problematic works over works by marginalized artists, or works that address issues of marginalized people, is very healthy.

 

2. In a world where voices of film criticism were equally likely to be Native American* as white, The Searchers, and westerns in general, would probably stop ranking so high. Of course, in this hypothetical world where there is equality, would any of these works be made in the first place? #SpeculativeFiction

 

3. A lot of old films that are most beloved by contemporary cinephiles (particularly old Hollywood films) are so because they are outliers where artists were able to smuggle subversive and anti-authoritarian messages into mainstream culture. So, as someone who picks movies he watches based on lists on Letterboxd (a social media site largely designed for cinephiles) it does not surprise me that a lot of older films Erikki sees are not offensive in the way he feels The Searchers and It Happened One Night are. These films were outliers in their day, but are now more commonly recommended than films that had more traditional values.

 

4. The Searchers was designed to be seen in theaters. Part of this is that it's landscapes are completely breathtaking, probably some of the most beautiful natural settings in the history of film. But another part of that is that a lot of the dramatic scenes play out in medium shots, where there are a lot of characters in the frame. A lot of very subtle and important character work, particularly in the first 20 or so minutes, in The Searchers is done through the body language and faces of characters who are in the background as characters in the foreground speak unrelated dialogue. I don't know how Erikki saw The Searchers, but as someone who didn't quite grasp who Ethan was on the first viewing and probably felt similar about the heroism of his character as Erikki, seeing it on the big screen is a great experience that really opens up not just the world of the film but the people too.

 

*I think I remember someone telling me this term is offensive now for reasons I don't remember and that there's a better word more commonly used today, but I don't remember it, so I am genuinely sorry and if someone knows what I should be saying I'll go back and edit my posts.

[Ben X]

What everyone is missing here is that if The Searchers didn't exist, we wouldn't have that rad bit in New Hope where Luke sees his uncle and aunt's skeletons.

[TychoCelchuuu]

And if Triumph of the Will didn't exist, we wouldn't have that rad bit in A New Hope where the Rebels line up in the auditorium and give medals to everyone except Chewbacca!

[Twig]

damn

[Gormongous]

I didn't really have anything to contribute to this excellent discussion until now, but...

 

*I think I remember someone telling me this term is offensive now for reasons I don't remember and that there's a better word more commonly used today, but I don't remember it, so I am genuinely sorry and if someone knows what I should be saying I'll go back and edit my posts.

 

I've tried my best to keep an eye on this issue and it seems that there's no good answer. Some people dislike "Native American" because "native" is commonly a dogwhistle for "primitive" or "savage" and "American" is the name given to the continent by a succession of foreign interlopers. They tend to prefer "American Indian" (or just "Indian" if they object to the whole business with Amerigo Vespucci) or "First Nations/Peoples"... except the issues that other people have with "Indian" are well known, while "First Nations" or "First Peoples" are variously disliked for feeling overly sterile/ethnographic with the "nations/peoples" terminology and for calling them "first" like they're ancient history and not around anymore. Every option's problematic, except trying to use the chosen name of the specific nation or tribe itself or, if that's not an option, using one of the general terms and just being contrite if someone takes offense.

[Patrick R]

Good to know!

 

EDIT: This article "How The West Was Lost - How Hollywood Whitewashed The Old West" in the Atlantic a week ago is worth a quick read although, like most people, author Leah Williams has a read of Django Unchained that I disagree with and find far too simplistic. 

[Erkki]

On a related topic, pretty disappointed in Werner Herzog now after seeing the animal cruelty in Even Dwarfs Started Small. It was otherwise a good movie, but the undoubtedly real cruelty left a really bad taste in my mouth.

[TychoCelchuuu]

On a related topic, pretty disappointed in Werner Herzog now after seeing the animal cruelty in Even Dwarfs Started Small. It was otherwise a good movie, but the undoubtedly real cruelty left a really bad taste in my mouth.

If you think that's bad, wait until you learn what happened to the animals that people eat on screen in movies!

[sclpls]

I didn't really have anything to contribute to this excellent discussion until now, but...

 

 

I've tried my best to keep an eye on this issue and it seems that there's no good answer. Some people dislike "Native American" because "native" is commonly a dogwhistle for "primitive" or "savage" and "American" is the name given to the continent by a succession of foreign interlopers. They tend to prefer "American Indian" (or just "Indian" if they object to the whole business with Amerigo Vespucci) or "First Nations/Peoples"... except the issues that other people have with "Indian" are well known, while "First Nations" or "First Peoples" are variously disliked for feeling overly sterile/ethnographic with the "nations/peoples" terminology and for calling them "first" like they're ancient history and not around anymore. Every option's problematic, except trying to use the chosen name of the specific nation or tribe itself or, if that's not an option, using one of the general terms and just being contrite if someone takes offense.

 

A friend of mine that grew up on a reservation said she preferred the term American Indian, so I've always gone with that. But yeah, it is a contentious and complicated issue, and I doubt opinions and preferences are uniform.

[Erkki]

If you think that's bad, wait until you learn what happened to the animals that people eat on screen in movies!

Killing for food is not the same as torture before killing. Werner Herzog is one sick fuck.

Although, yes, today we can't say that the meat we eat didn't live in torturous conditions