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VAULTED TREASURES: MOVIES YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT, YOU FORGOT,
... OR YOU FORGOT TO LOVE MORE THE FIRST TIME AROUND!
With trenches being dug in recent days over the “canceling” of everything from Pepe LePew and that handful of Dr. Suess books, to THE MANDALORIAN’s Gina Carano and more, an intriguingly apt (if somewhat off-color) analogy occurred to me the other day – cuck porn. For those unfamiliar with the term (… or those pretending to be unfamiliar with it), I’ll let the esteemed GQ magazine define it as their verbiage is considerably more “journalistic scholarly” (or at the very least more polite) than mine.
“Cuck has its roots in cuckold, an old-fashioned term for a man whose wife is having sex with another man. Because everything is porn eventually, this soon became an X-rated genre of its own with a (usually white) guy watching impassively while his wife has sex with another guy, who's often, but not always, black. Porn with racial tension that plays to a white man's insecurities about his ‘possessions’ being taken from him?”
Now, we could end this piece right there and the point would be made quite clearly. But let’s add another link to this chain – an economic / historical one. After 9/11 Paramount Pictures decided to yank DVD copies of it’s 1976 Dino DeLaurentiis’ version of KING KONG from stores, and to replace the jacket sleeve image - that famously awesome John Berkey poster art with Kong astride the World Trade Towers, surrounded by helicopters and fighter jets, with Jessica Lange in one hand and an exploding plane in the other - because it felt that image might be uncomfortably troublesome for many still sensitive to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack. So, was that “cancel culture” (long before the term was coined), or a corporate decision by an intellectual property owner maybe partially doing it out of genuine altruistic social concern, but certainly, ... undoubtedly, ... and mostly concerned about how the marketability of their product, if unchanged, would now fare in a world which had changed?
We could end right there too. But for the hell of it let’s add even a few more links. At any rate, none of this is new, and, contrary to the cries of many - in regards to (so-called) "woke-ness" and the demand for a more balanced depiction in media regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation - not much has actually changed over the last 50 or so years. If anything it seems that only the colors, be they white, black, yellow, … but mostly green, … have.
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| Original 1976 KING KONG poster campaign (art by John Berkey) |
VIRTUE SIGNALING, P.C.-NESS. AND KOWTOWING, ...
OR LOOKING OUT FOR ONE'S OWN MUTLI-BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATE ASS?
I stand 6’5”. Years ago I worked at a restaurant as a waiter, and there was a span of about three months where I noticed that whenever I entered the kitchen I was stooping because some of the large ventilation and air conditioning duct work was ever-so-slowly beginning to lower from it's ceiling brackets. Over the weeks (and months) I noticed I was stooping more and more, and I mentioned this, ... and that concerning duct work ... to management, yet nothing happened. Well, nothing happened until, ... haha! I was off for about three days, came back, noticed the duct work had finally been corrected (and it looked damn nice!), and I made what I thought was a joke, saying, “What happened, did it finally get low enough for one of the managers to hit their head, and they decided, ‘Yeah, we’d better get that sh*t fixed?’”. When everyone looked at me with that look I realized that’s exactly what had happened. OOPS! So, yeah, it’s kinda unfortunately the lamer part of human nature to not really notice (or sometimes even give a damn) about something until it affects us personally. Which brings us back to the “cuck” analogy.
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| The LGTBQ lifestyle is "dangerous" and "not to be trusted" in FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974) and CRUISING (1980) |
Many - and, yeah, some of you reading this right now - love bitching and moaning about how “nowadays” movies and audiences do (or don’t do anymore) this or that. Y’know, looking back fondly on a time before (how does it go?) “Hollywood became the home of chickenshit, apologetic, cancel culture virtue signaling”, etc. But I gotta tell you it cracks me up how (I’ll use the word too) nowadays many of these same people - most often white hetero men - put their ignorance on display by “fondly looking back” on a film industry time which existed before many of them were even born, and of which they've only recently become "aware" because last night they happened to catch a film on TCM, Showtime or Prime that got them all fired up. Yeah, there are older whiners too, also usually white hetero men. But the younger ones are really hilariously irritating in proving the old adage that "A little bit of information can be a dangerous thing".
Case in point, in the last year I’ve read a few postings by people who after recently seeing films such as Richard Rush’s FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974) or William Friedkin’s CRUISING (1980) went on hubris-filled, piss-and-wind tears about how “In today’s Hollywood, with all the virtue signaling, you just couldn’t make a film like this”. Well, I love FREEBIE AND THE BEAN too (not so much CRUISING), but technically you really couldn't make those films back then either. I mean, I remember when they opened. Both were box office bombs, critics tore them apart as being among the worst films ever made by those respective filmmakers (particularly CRUISING, which was kind of the flip side of Friedkin's acclaimed THE BOYS IN THE BAND ten years prior), and both were very publicly and loudly protested for their depictions of the gay community. So was the 1968 Frank Sinatra film THE DETECTIVE, by the way. The only difference is that back then no one gave a leapin’ sh*t about the opinions of those doing the protesting.
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| THE DETECTIVE (1968) |
Today, however, it’s not just the “white heterosexual male dollars” which drive the economy. And if there’s any kind of “woke”ness going on, it’s simply the age-old one of companies waking up to the fact that certain demographics – be they Black, women, Asian, Latino, LGTBQ, etc. - represent a huge buying block which (because of skewed metrics) they never realized or chose to acknowledged before. So, not taking anything away from those in corporate leadership positions who truly want to enact more positive social change. But more than anything, though, it’s a simple "1+1=2" matter as to why now corporate entities are more open to listening to the concerns of those demographics when once upon a time they weren’t nearly as inclined to do so. It’s more about bottom line bucks than it is about “wokeness”. So, how ‘bout deleting that lame-assed defacto argument from your gueue, because it's a rather impotent one these days?
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| AUNT JEMIMA brand's (at the time) newly revamped ad campaign, launched at the 1933 World's Fair |
The same exact thing with other “problematic” corporate properties like THE SONG OF THE SOUTH, the name “Washington Redskins”, the depiction of the do-ragged, mammy-like AUNT JEMIMA, Christopher Columbus statues, Confederate flags outside state and federal office buildings and more. None of these protests are new. People have been raising Cain about them for decades and beyond. Only now, with an acknowledgment of the economic power of the dollars of these once ignored groups, have these concerns finally reached a point of being addressed. So, just like with the duct work in the restaurant and the managers, just because you may have only now noticed the controversy behind some of these things because it’s had an effect on something close to you, doesn’t mean any of this is new or represents “wokeness”, “kowtowing”, “virtue signaling” or anything else. It just means you didn't know, weren't aware and / or just didn't give a damn either way until today. So, that's more a factor of your own personal ignorance, and not that of a suddenly "woke" society. Let's be very clear on that.
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| (left) SONG OF THE SOUTH - 1946 / (right) Well, ... you get the idea. |
Once again this brings us back to the “cuck” analogy wherein it’s all about “a (usually white) guy watching impassively while his wife has sex with another guy, who's often, but not always, black. Porn with racial tension that plays to a white man's insecurities about his ‘possessions’ being taken from him”. Only in today’s entertainment industry the analogous “wife” is the corporate entity / studio, the “black man” is the demographic previously ignored but now pleasuring her to multiple orgasms, and the insecure “husband” terrified at his loss of what back in “the good ‘ol days” was his power is / are those who are “fondly looking back” on a time when that economic power / influence wasn’t (oh, what the hell) as flacid as it is today. Yeah, perhaps a bit too Freudian an analogy. But it’s not an entirely inaccurate one, is it? Don’t take my word for it, though. How ‘bout we crunch some actual numbers?
THE LAND WHERE DEAD PRESIDENTS RULE (THAT'S MONEY,
AND NOT THE 1995 FILM, BTW)
Once upon a time (back in the 50s - 60s, and even to a degree into the 70s and 80s) the world media economy catered to what it felt was it's largest and most powerful demographic - those aforementioned white heterosexual males. Y’know, the bread-winner. The one who put the gas in the car. Hell, the one who bought the car, the lawn and the lawnmower and the house upon which it all stood and / or around which it was all centered. But in recent years the world has become much smaller – one where (as we’re primarily talking the entertainment industry) the average studio film will now pull in 70% (and sometimes more) of it's revenue from countries outside the U.S. In fact in 2018, the year of A STAR IS BORN, BLACK PANTHER, BLAKKKLANSMAN, INFINITY WAR, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY and GREEN BOOK, of the $41.66 billion taken in at the global box office, $29.8 billion of it was non-domestic (came in from foreign territories). (2014) How the global box office is changing Hollywood - BBC Culture / (2019) 2018 Global/Overseas Box Office Studio Rankings, 2019 Forecast – Chart – Deadline . Also keep in mind that recent economic projections have been zooming in on the fact that the continent of Africa and the region of Southeast Asia have been deemed two of the largest potential growth markets of this century in general, and not just in relation to the entertainment industry, ... which (of course) in time ultimately becomes a part of that assessment.
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| 2018's record breaking BLACK PANTHER |
In the U.S. it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple to deduce how the conception of economic demographics has drastically shifted over the last, hell … 20 years. Simply take a look at how many prime time TV commercials (and not just those on “specialized” networks like BET, LIFETIME, etc.) are selling everything from cars to pizza to home mortgages with spots featuring interracial, same sex, Asian, Latino and other non-white / non-hetero couples. Yeah, once upon a time corporate industry and media felt it didn't have to give a damn about the complaints of many “minority” groups. But now to continue to adhere to that ancient attitude is economic suicide. Many have been protesting and raising hell about GONE WITH THE WIND, Pepe Le Pew and more for the last 50 years. This isn't new. The only thing that is new is that corporations are finally starting to take those complaints seriously because they now know where their financial bread is buttered. And, oh, hey, I hate, hate, hate to say it, … but it’s an age thing too. Yup, we're talkin' about those goddamned Millennials!
Say what you will about that smartphone-addicted, “touchy, feely” cultural cabal of young’ns born after 1980. But did you know that in 2020 Millennials surpassed the Baby Boomers as the largest living adult population, and clocked in with a buying power estimated to be approx. $1.4 trillion annually? As the old saying goes (my old generation’s saying, I guess), “That ain’t chicken feed”. And while, yes, you certainly have Millennials as culturally tunnel-visioned as any of their parents or grandparents, on the whole they tend to be more open minded and desirous of change when it comes to social, racial, environmental and economic issues. As such, one has to realistically ask “Are the changes happening now simply ‘virtue signaling’ and uber PC-minded ‘cancel culture’”, or are they- like Paramount’s decision on it’s KING KONG World Trade Center imagery - simply wise corporate decision making?
Let’s be totally straight-up, common sense for real here, huh? With over $40+ billion annually at stake, and most of it coming in from so-called “minority” demographics (LGTBQ, women, Black, Asian, Latino, etc.) around the world, do you honestly think any rational and intelligently thinking corporate exec will risk a nickel of that because of the dumb-assed statement or action (using the “N” word, referring to someone as a “f*g”, being busted as a sexual harasser, flying a Confederate flag on their social media page, making a joke about rape, take your pick – there are so many!) of some actor, singer or other individual? Would you risk it with your money!? Going back to those many years in restaurants, I can pretty much say, “Hell, no!”, most wouldn’t. The average Joe or Jane Schmoe (and not just some Hollywood corporate exec) is pretty damned particular, careful, ... and often downright stingy ... when it comes to their own hard earned nickels and pennies. Hell, I’ve seen customers poorly tip the waiter because they were pissed they were seated next to a table which was too loud (something outside the waiter’s purview), or who refused to tip - or even wanted fired - the hostess or coat check girl because they felt she didn’t smile enough. And this is for a check under $100, and not a $41 billion corporate purse. So, can we please just knock off the faux righteous indignation posturing? Oh, and in conclusion (yeah, finally – haha!), as for that ever-recurring bitch / moan, faux "just and righteous" complaint about how “All of this ‘virtue signaling’, ‘cancel culture’, etc. is the death of artistic integrity”... . Please! Do you wanna really go there? Okay, ...
WHITEWASHING, TRULY CANCELED CULTURES, …
AND THE “RUBBERBAND EFFECT”
It’s ultra-ironically-hilarious (that is, when it’s not so enraging) to hear cucks … . I’m sorry, I mean to hear those complaining about “virtue signaling” and “rampant canceling” attempt to use the final option, “Hail, Mary”, can’t-pull-anything-else-out-of-the-basket excuse of how this “new culture” will be / is the death of artistic integrity and free speech, and that it’s censorship, blah, blah, blah. Ehhhh, … no. Cut the b.s. and back up off of that! As said earlier, none of these complaints concerning the depictions of minorities, gays, women, etc. is anything new. They’ve been around since forever. You and others just never gave a damn until they finally started to threaten the status quo of something you enjoy. So, there’s that. But when you try to fly the “artistic integrity” and “anti virtue signaling” flag when a film is remade or a franchise character’s race or gender is altered from previous versions, … but you never said a damn thing about how until Antonio Banderas in 1998 the character of Zorro had never ever been portrayed by a Latino (but by white actors) in an American film or tv series, … . Or how (with a few notable exceptions) Shakespeare’s legendary Moor character OTHELLO was seldom portrayed by a black man, but rather by white actors in blackface (such as Olivier, Welles, etc.) in both major filmic and stage productions over the last century … . Or how Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo from 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA had in every major American film until 2003’s THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN been altered / changed from Verne’s conception of a character of Indian ethnicity to an erudite Englishman portrayed by the likes of James Mason, Herbert Lom, Michael Caine, etc. ... . And how it wasn't until after nearly 100 years of Nemo being portrayed in film that THE LEAGUE finally featured an Indian actor - acclaimed stage and screen performer / director Naseeruddin Shah - in the role ... . Well, if you really want to talk about truly canceled cultures, then, yeah, okay, let's do so. And we can start right here and now by asking the question "Where were your 'artistic integrity' concerns while all of this and more was going down every time you turned on the tv or bought a movie ticket over the years?". Artistic hypocrisy's a cold and ironic little bitch, isn't she?
Now, are there those who take P.C.-ness to ridiculous heights? Of course there are. And there have always been such people. I remember growing up in the 70s when there were parents groups circulating petitions to get THE THREE STOOGES banned (or at least edited) on local tv because of the “violence” in them. And certain groups have since forever been attempting to have books like THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN and others banned. This isn’t new either, but has been going on damn near since these classics were first published. But for every one bass-akward school district or library which attempts to do so, another 20 libraries and school districts celebrate those and other novels by having annual "Banned Books Celebrations" to encourage people to read them for themselves. But that's not what you see or read within the echo chamber of social media when the cucks complain about “cancel culture”. No, to them this is all a new (and therefore dangerous) phenomenon. The same with movies being presented with some kind of contextual introduction.
Anyone remember the "disclaimers" which ran during the first network tv airings of THE GODFATHER (in November 1977) and DePalma's SCARFACE (January 1989) - placed there when Italian-American and Cuban-American groups raised concerns about the films’ depictions of the respective races? Even during it’s production SCARFACE was something of a socio-political hot potato – especially in the Miami, Florida locations where much of it was filmed. It’s amazing how these relatively not-too-long-ago examples are conveniently forgotten when bitching and moaning about the “alarming new trend” of “virtue signaling”. (April 2018) Revisiting The Controversy Surrounding Scarface (vulture.com) . And as for films presented / broadcast with a contexualized introduction, and how such an intro is supposedly “demeaning to the audience, and assumes they aren’t sharp enough to ‘get it’ on their own”, well …
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| (left) THE GODFATHER - 1972 / (right) SCARFACE - 1983 |
That’s what they've been doing on TCM and other networks for the last 30 years with every film anyway - y'know, with intros by Ben Mankiewicz, the late Robert Osborne and even guest hosts like Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollock, Ellen Barkin, Spike Lee, Hugh Hefner, Tom Ford, Whoopi Goldberg, Alec Baldwin, David Mamet and others. Ever step out of your narrow social media echo-chamber where everyone speaks the same thing, I mean, just long enough to hear Scorsese talk about the racism of John Wayne's character in THE SEARCHERS? Or about the technical mastery but thematic / philosophical disgust with the racism of D.W. Griffith’s BIRTH OF A NATION? This ain't new. And Scorsese - since his career began - has always been very vocal about the need to view these kinds of films within the proper context. And he loves THE SEARCHERS! It's one of his favorites.
So, how 'bout we not just automatically toss everything under the convenient (and wholly inaccurate) umbrella of "cancel culture" or “virtue signaling” when the actual accurate truth is that every situation is unique unto itself. Yeah, I know actually taking the time and effort and energy to really, genuinely think sometimes in shades of gray, and not just simplistic “either / or” black & white, can be cumbersome and time consuming, … and may even ruin a great meme which on the surface seems to roll off the tongue. But if you really want to make a valid point (and not just guzzle your own backwash), then that kind of critical thinking is a necessary adjunct. And as for those occasions when sometimes over / uber P.C.-ness seems to be taking things to extremes? …
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| (left) John Ford's THE SEARCHERS - 1956 / (right) D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION - 1915 |
Yeah, on those occasions you call that extremism out. But you do it intelligently – using history and economics and more - and not just by whining like the proverbial little bitch because you heard talk through the grapevine, or you read a posting that someone shared … which was shared by another, then shared and shared again ad infinitum like the online version of whispering something to the person next to you on the school bus, … that a cartoon or movie you last saw maybe twenty years ago is having an intro attached to it. By “intelligently” I’m also talking about understanding that umbrella of what I’ve over the years come to refer to as “The Rubberband Effect”. This is when things have been to one extreme for sooo long, that when that bias is finally snapped, things tend to catapult to the opposite direction to an equal extreme until eventually over time reaching a real world / actual / accurate / mid-point stasis.
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| "The Rubberband Man" (1976) - The Spinners, ... Sorry, couldn't help it - haha! Now you've got the song running through your head, don't you? |
Take for example how for many years Blacks were depicted in films as mammy maids and midwives, “Stepin Fetchit” types, railway porters, bug-eyed comic relief in old-school zombie flicks, and members of what Mario Van Peebles once referred to as the “Moteesa” tribe, … as in those shuffling, slow-witted butler characters in movies who always said “Mo’ tea, Sir?”. But when SWEET SWEETBACK’S BADASSSSS SONG and SHAFT snapped that cord, things went to the opposite - but equally extreme and unrealistic - end of the cinematic arena with (what Richard Pryor once called) the “Super Nig*er” movies of the 70s blaxploitation era. This till finally reaching a more equal / more realistic depiction of a race and culture in tv shows like LIVING SINGLE, BLACK-ISH and others.
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| (left to right) From Stepin Fetchit (1934), to BOSS NIGGER (1975), to BLACK-ISH (2014) |
We see the same “Rubberband Effect” paradigm with the depictions of Asians in film - going from buck-toothed FU MANCHU-esque villains, comic relief laundry boys and asexual buffoons (remember Mickey Rooney in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S? 😳), to super martial arts kick-asses, then finally to more realistic depictions in films like THE JOY LUCK CLUB, THE FAREWELL, and tv series such as FRESH OFF THE BOAT. The same with Native Americans, Latinos, LGTBQ characters and more as well. To a degree we’ve go to expect / anticipate a certain amount of “The Rubberband Effect” as part and parcel of social (and by extension entertainment industry) evolution – remembering that by definition evolution is a series of (sometimes traumatic) mutations which eventually converge to make the species (and, in this particular case, artistic industry) stronger as a whole.
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| (left to right) From BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1961), to ENTER THE DRAGON (1973), to THE FAREWELL (2019) |
Anyway, those are my points in regards to this whole “cancel culture” discussion. And while you may still not agree, I think you have to admit that I’ve made some of those points in a pretty damn valid manner. I welcome any discourse and / or disagreement. But if you do I demand that you too also use actual historical, economic and other precedents to make your point, and not just run off on a-not-very-well-thought-out emotional tangent. Because, be it concerning politics, religion, contemporary culture or whatever, …
Contrary to what many believe today, saying something loudly and with a great deal of sincere conviction isn’t the same thing as making a valid point or being right.
Let’s try to remember that as we often limp and stagger into a more evolved future.
Peace. ✌️
CEJ
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