|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
I remember listening to William Friedkin explain how he got funding to make The French Connection, a dark and rough take on the world of cops and robbers from the spare change drawer. The 70s movie became a classic, helped epitomize an era of filmmaking, and is now just another product to be cut up for offensive material before it’s finally ‘rebooted’ into a streaming series with a black female lead.
Hollywood Elsewhere was the first to note that the Criterion release of The French Connection, supposed to be the gold standard, had crudely cut out a scene in which Gene Hackman’s character uses a racial slur. You can guess which one. Commenters are blaming Disney which got the rights to the movie when it bought up FOX.
Previously, HBO MAX had been caught removing Gone With the Wind and putting up title cards in front of movies it considered insensitive, but actually censoring movies is a major escalation.
But so is rewriting classic novels.
Film lovers might not make too much noise about Gone With the Wind, but there’s a whole generation of Tarantino wannabes who worship movies like The French Connection. It’s part of the National Film Registry and its rough style is considered inspirational by filmmakers no matter how leftward they lean. Censoring it is a punch to the gut. And yet it’s likely one that Disney will get away with. Testing the waters here, expect to see a growing list of butchered movies, much as we’re seeing with the censorship of Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl and numberless others.
The great book burning is underway. Why not burn a few movies too?
Tragic. I think I had that one on DVD. Exploiting cultural stereotypes is one of the tricks that appeals to audiences.
Even my ex wife liked “The French Connection,” and she hates everything. It’s a good movie although I laugh when I see the big crappy cars they drove back in the 70s. It was such a different era.
On a related topic, it’s Hillaryarious that they want John Cleese to remove the “Loretta” scene from the stage adaptation of “Life of Brian”. The movie is from the 1970s. Monty Python was prophetic! For those that don’t recall, or didn’t see…..here it is:
Thanks on behalf of others, but my Monty Python and Mel Brooks collection is complete. Even the most outrageous 70s comedy is now reality, and many of those movies could not be made today, like apparently, the French Connection.
As I’ve noticed in life, the one thing untalented people seem to have in common is the desire to change things created by more talented people. Instead of censoring other people’s work these idiots would better spend their time creating works that better meet their discerning standards.
“I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it….
I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.” – “The Fountainhead”
No one cares about the Fountainhead, or you.
Mediocrity abhors genius.
The untalented must destroy the works of the talented, or their mediocre, at best, or lousy works can be seen for what they are.
Remaking old classic films and sticking aa Minority in the role where a White once did then the movies all bombed
Real cultural appropriation!
No book or film is safe. Not even the ones teaching math, science, history language, literature and philosophy.
Especially the math books. I noticed that already in the 1980s, when I was trying to help some elementary school students.
I came across an internet meme(for lack of a better word) from a few decades back, of a homework assignment using common core math. The question was how a student(Jack) got a simple subtraction(427-316) wrong using a common core method(a “number line”) with the work shown, writing a letter to jack telling him “what he did right,” and how to ‘fix’ it . A parent wrote a memorable response.
“Dear Jack,
Don’t feel bad. I have a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering which included extensive study in differential equations and other higher math applications. Even I cannot explain the common core mathmatics approach, nor get the answer correct. In the real world simplification is valued over complication. Therefore, (old vertical equation follows). The answer is solved in under 5 seconds – 111. The process used is ridiculous, and would result in termination if used.
Sincerely,
Frustrated parent.”
Being nerdy, and a little OCD and aspergery, I had to figure out what they were trying to do, and it WAS ridiculous. No wonder high school graduates can’t even make change or read a fractional tape measure these days.
Thanks Cowboy!!!
I sure am angry and make noise about them removing Gone with The Wind. One of my all-time favorite movies. I remember the first time I was a teen and went to the theaters to see it. Yes the first time I saw it was in the 1970s in the theater and it was wonderful. The past is in the past and that was just the way it was so people who don’t like it need to get on with building a better life and world for themselves if they don’t like it which is my motto. I am not responsible for the past when I wasn’t even alive. Stop playing the victim card and make something of yourself and life and be responsible for your own actions. The past is over and done with so let it go and hopefully we all learn from it.
“Gone With the Wind” is a great movie. I recently watched it on my big screen TV but it wasn’t the same as seeing it in a theater. It needs to be watched on the big screen. What a great story and great characters and actors and actresses. Clark Gable was so cool And I like that black guy who played the ex slave who saved Scarlett O’Hara from the rapist hiighwaymen. Every actor and actress in that movie is excellent.
Awful! Can you imagine Hollywood giving us woke versions of any of the great films?
Totally. Thank goodness Hollywood has always been a bastion of reactionary conservatism. Especially those neo-realist films of the 60s and 70s.
Go lick a dick.