For movie lovers heartily sick of the sight and sound of bloody Renee bloody Zellweger and her breathy brand of self-centered cultural bloody imperialism, this is my comment thread of the week.
When I read this Joe Queenan article on the movie Blood Diamond I had a feeling Steve Gilliard would have something to say about it and he certainly did.
The comments thread to his post turned into one of the most interesting cultural discussions I’ve read in a while ; not only well-informed and written but wide-ranging, civil and virtually troll-free. Here’s a snip:
“Subtly brainwashing?” Nothing subtle about it. But it is also true that as someone pointed out above there is a strong tendency in *all* american films and sit coms as well to americanize, masculinlize, white-ize and “familiarize” characters and settings as though the universal viewer they are aiming for is a single, fat, white, suburban guy who has never gotten out of his barcalounger to even peek out the window. They moved the g-dMN “Little Princess” to New York, for g-d’s sake, because, what, London wasn’t both exotic and homey enough?
But no one has brought up the “tragic mulatto” motif which bleeds nicely into the MLK motif in which the main non white character *never reaches the promised land* so the remaining “real” white characters can grieve and move on. That might be bagger vance, which I couldn’t stop gagging enough to even try to buy a ticket for. Isn’t “the green mile?” another one of these. In addition to black-guy-as-buddha we’ve always had a rash of “cute black kids in white families” and, of course, “cute midgets playing black kids in white families” and, of course, saintly retarded people revealing meaning of life to harried white guys in hospitals who are forced to rethink their priorities when they meet saintly retarded or black people.
So I think the ideal message movie would be white guy/woman comes to teach at a school entirely composed of midget, retarded, black kids and whips them into a basketball team of surprising strength that comes together and beats the nazis before expiring and leaving behind no trace of their victory but the white characters looking longingly at the trophy.
aimai
Mem to Hollywood: in addition, please, no more mining our British childhood heritage for star-vehicle biopics or safe Christmas blockbusters. CS Lewis, Virginia Woolf… what’s next, Johnny Depp does Postman Pat? George Clooney as Roald Dahl?
Oohh, I know, Paris Hilton as Princess Diana….
