It seems that we are living through a phase of the so-called “culture of cancellation” today. Later this week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it will no longer publish six lesser-known books by the famous children’s author due to offensive and racist representations. Mr. Potato Head is now genderless. Some episodes of The Muppet Show has special warning labels on Disney +. Aunt Jemima is knocked out on the syrup shelves. In a comprehensive wave of reevaluation of the cultural images with which we grew up in our American life, a new and more sensitive spotlight is being presented in the way we see the past through the prism of a more politically correct 2021.
In this sense, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), the cable channel owned by WarnerMedia dedicated to lovingly presenting Hollywood’s cinematic heritage from the beginning of the media to now, has also entered the fray, announcing that it will dedicate prime time programming every Thursdays in March, starting tonight with a new series called “Reframed: Classic Films In The Rearview Mirror”. The network puts it this way: “TheAll the films in this series are legendary classics, but when we watch them today, we see them in a different cultural context. We often see problems now that we might not have seen when they were made, whether about race, gender or LGBT issues. The five presenters of TCM will take turns giving presentations at a round table of each of the films, where they will discuss these 20th century films with a 21st century perspective. The goal is never to censor, but simply to provide a rich historical context for each classic. “
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The series starts tonight with a focus on And the wind took, seven brides for seven brothers, Hitchcock’s Rope and 1939 The four feathers. The opening film, the 1939 MGM Academy Award winner David O. Selznick starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, has already been the subject of some critical reflection by TCM’s new brother, HBO Max, who removed him from his nascent streaming service. during last summer’s racial unrest and following a Los Angeles Times opinion piece by screenwriter John Ridley who criticized the film for glorifying slavery and perpetuating racist stereotypes about African Americans. At the time, the streamer said that it would end up being reinstated with “a discussion of its historical context and a denunciation of those same representations … If we want to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first recognize and understand our history. ”He finally returned a few weeks later, accompanied by a 4 1/2 minute video introduction by TCM presenter Jacqueline Stewart, putting it in context for the audience now, as well as an hour-long discussion panel recorded at TCM Classic Film Festival 2019 which examined the complicated history of the beloved epic.
Based on that, TCM is making its own programming aiming at a selection of films that were made in an era that, in a way, can be played very differently in this era, at least without context. “I think that in the past two years, just as the world has changed and the culture has changed, we at TCM really try to rely on that too, and to be more than just a place for pure nostalgia, but also to be a place that can really be a vital part of today’s cultural conversation, even though we’re showing films from the past, ”said TCM co-host Dave Karger, explaining why the network decided to expand what HBO Max started. “The idea was suggested to us that all five of us co-present this month-long series, where we take a look at a dozen or more of true classic films, but look at them from a more contemporary point of view. And the idea is not to embarrass these films or scold them, but just to explain part of the context of some of the content that may seem shocking, out of place or even offensive in some extreme examples today. “
Karger says there is no suggestion of censorship at all. These films are not being cut and, in fact, TCM is proud to present the films as they were made, without commercial interruption. But he says the world has changed a lot since many of his films started showing on the channel, which founder and original owner Ted Turner created to showcase his purchase of the famous MGM library, including the crown jewel and his time favorite all, Gone with the Wind. “I think it’s important to look, you know, in certain cases, the United States was just coming out of World War II, and you know, the male and female gender roles were very different back then than they are today, of course. The way people looked at LGBT issues was very different, ”he said, noting that homosexuality was often seen as just a psychiatric disorder in many of the films of the past that are MTC bread and butter for programming.
The hosts also contributed to the choice of some of the films in the series. For example, co-host Alicia Malone suggested including something about the way trans people and gender identity are treated. This led to the inclusion of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, that I have to confess that I never thought that way. “I think the trans community is often left out of conversations like this, and it’s just looking at it through, again, a different modern lens than it means to have a villain who dresses like his mother (as Anthony Perkins did in Psycho), and if the word transsexual is mentioned in the film, which is, of course, a very old term now, they say that it is a mental illness. And so, all of this can be problematic when we look at perhaps some of the repercussions in real life of having a trans or crossdressing character being something very comical to laugh at or something quite horrible to think of as monstrous, especially when you see studies that show that most Americans find the image of a trans person through film and television, not in real life, ”said Malone.
Among the films that will be released next month are Guess who’s coming to dinner, The Jazz Singer, The Searchers, Swing Time with Astaire and Rogers, Diligence, Tarzan the Monkey Man, My Fair Lady, The Children’s Hour, Gunga Din and more.
One of the films in the series is from 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s with his unforgettable performance of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly. She was not the problem there, however. Recently, there was a report that Paramount was trying to obtain the rights to remake the film; I suggested to an executive friend of mine in the studio that a better idea would be to just relaunch the original and cut Mickey Rooney out of it. Problem solved, right? Rooney played a gaudy Asian stereotype, put on the film by director Blake Edwards for some cheap laughs. It would be better without this character in retrospect, but the censorship is just as bad.
“We were talking about that movie and how much, you know, that whole story where Mickey Rooney’s character feels out of place, intolerant and all, for the rest of the movie, and then, you could see an argument to cut things off,” Said Malone. “But, of course, at TCM, I know that we all have a strong conviction to keep films intact and also to continue showing them, even if they are problematic, because it allows us to have these discussions instead of just ignoring them and pretending that never existed. “
Karger added: “I really got tired of seeing the phrase cancel culture thrown all over the place, and I like to see what we’re doing instead of canceling, it’s contextualizing, it’s conversation, to use some other words with ‘c’. And I think it’s a much more productive way of doing things. And as Alicia said, let’s not pretend it didn’t exist, but we’re also not going to just put everything on a pedestal and say it was all great. You cannot show Breakfast at Tiffany’s without discussing the offensive portrait of Mickey Rooney and trying to understand, that Ben Mankiewicz really helped me to understand when we talked about it for this series, why it happened at that time. “
Another of the films tonight is the classic sparkling musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture in 1954. What is possibly wrong with what? “It is a wonderful musical. It is a delight to watch. The choreography is athletic and impressive, and then you have, you know, the whole issue of brothers kidnapping wives, and so, you kind of speak to this idea of male dominance as being a romantic idea and consent and all these problems, ” Malone. “But then again, it’s not necessarily a movie that you might think would be involved in this series, but when you watch it with a modern look, you can see certain things and certain reasons why it’s problematic and why some people don’t like it. watch because of that. But I think a lot of the pleasure of doing the series was having all these discussions and trying to just discover different ideas and just deal with the gray area, I think, is very, very important. “
The “gray area” is what this series is about: a way to watch classic movies and still love them, but possibly in new ways too.
“I think there’s a big mix here that concerns a wide range of issues, and what I really love, and I know that Dave and the other hosts feel the same way, is that we can have these comprehensive conversations that sometimes, normally, don’t we talk about when it comes to film, ”said Malone. “But, as each of these films is a time capsule from when they were made, we can really delve into what society was like back then, what it is like now and how far we still have to go.”
Here is the complete schedule:
Thursday, March 4
8 pm: And the wind blew (1939) (Ben, Jacqueline, Eddie)
Midnight: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) (Alicia, Dave, Eddie)
2 am: rope (1948) (not hosted)
3:30 am: The Four Feathers (1939) (not hosted)
Thursday, March 11
8 pm: Woman of the Year (1942) (Eddie, Alicia, Ben)
10:15 pm: Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967) (Jacqueline, Alicia, Eddie)
12:15 pm: Gunga Din (1939) (Ben, Jacqueline, Dave)
2:30 am: Sinbad the sailor (1947) (not hosted)
4:30 am: The Jazz Singer (1927) (not shown)
Thursday, March 18
20:00 The Searchers (1956) (Ben, Alicia, Eddie)
10:15 pm Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) (Dave, Alicia, Ben)
12:30 pm, swing time (1936) (Jacqueline, Dave, Eddie)
2:15 am Stagecoach (1939) (not hosted)
4:00 Tarzan the Monkey Man (1959) (not hosted)
Thursday, March 25
20:00 My Fair Lady (1964) (Dave, Jacqueline, Alicia)
11:00 pm The Children’s Hour (1961) (Alicia, Dave, Eddie)
01:00 Psycho (1960) (Ben, Alicia, Jacqueline)
3:00 Dragon Seed (1944) (not hosted)