It has never been easier to cause cultural offense than it is now, and beloved movies from yesteryear are increasingly being singled out for featuring racist, misogynistic overtones.
Even Disney is not immune. Some hits like “Gone with the Wind” or “The Silence of the Lambs”, which are being increasingly singled out for causing offense, generated controversy upon release. But the five movies below have recently found themselves in the line of fire for committing the crime of suffering from an absence of modern political correctness:
“QUANTUM OF SOLACE”
Everybody’s favorite British spy likes his martinis shaken but not stirred but recently 007’s perceived outdated attitudes to women and work have been stirring up the PC brigade. Profiling Marc Foster, the director of “Quantum of Solace”, Logan Hill in New York magazine wrote in 2008: “The Bond franchise has an outrageously politically incorrect history. It’s not just the racist caricatures of Caribbeans in “Dr. No” or the obvious objectification of women and rampant xenophobia in, well, almost every Bond film.” According to New York, Marc Foster even considered Bond a rampant neo-con: “It’s also the specific political parallels—the way that Bond reminds Forster of Dick Cheney.”
Is it surprising that with such politically correct concerns at the forefront of Forster’s mind, “Quantum of Solace” proved the biggest flop of the Daniel Craig-Bond era?
“SHORT CIRCUIT”
“Number 5 is alive!” Many a kid growing up in the late eighties would have been enchanted with the adventures of Johnny 5, the robot main character in the 1986 hit film “Short Circuit” and its 1988 sequel “Short Circuit 2”. But lately a growing band of commentators have declared life would have been better if Johnny Five had never been alive because of his scientist creator Ben Jabituya, the stereotypically Indian character as played by white actor Fisher Stevens.
Leading the charge is comedian Aziz Ansari who even tracked down Stevens for a feature for the New York Times. “As a child, I thought the villain of the film was Oscar Baldwin, the banker who tricks Johnny 5 into helping him commit a jewel heist,” Ansari wrote. “As an adult, I thought the bad guy was actually Mr. Stevens, who mocked my ethnicity.” Ansari concluded: “It was 1987, so we were all a little less savvy about the things we were doing that were actually hurtful to large groups of people.”
“BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S”
The charm of Audrey Hepburn as Truman Capote’s effervescent society lady Holly Golightly has not receded in the 55 years since “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was released. But what now gives some modern critics “the mean reds” is her uptight Japanese neighbor played by Mickey Rooney. “The grandfather of all “Yellowface” stereotypes,” wrote Chris Lee in the Los Angeles Times. “Yunioshi — taped eyelids, buck teeth, sibilant accent and all — has become one of the persistent icons of ethnic stereotype, brought up whenever conversation turns to the topic of Hollywood racism, slammed Jeff Yang for the WSJ’s Speakeasy blog. Rooney defended the portrayal until right before his death, when he said if he had known how many people he had offended, he “wouldn’t have done it”.
“LOVE ACTUALLY”
“Love Actually” was a 2003 cheery Christmas-themed sleeper hit from Britain featuring Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley and Emma Thompson as couples falling in and out of love during the holidays. So far so inoffensive.
But the debate has become more heated in the last half-decade about the film’s perceived patronizing attitude to its female characters. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have revealed they are divided on the merits of the film (they won’t say who likes or loathes it). Jezebel recently fumed: “”LOVE ACTUALLY” SEES NO PROBLEM WITH TREATING ITS FEMALE CHARACTERS LIKE GIANT BIPEDAL VAGINAS IN SWEATER VESTS.” Salon called the film “demoralizing, misogynistic holiday twaddle…one big lump of sexist coal that stinks actually”.
“SIXTEEN CANDLES”
“Sixteen Candles”, the 1984 coming-of-age movie, wasn’t remotely controversial when it was released, putting John Hughes on the map as the cinematic chronicler of American high school days. Now a growing movement is emerging lambasting the film for featuring an Asian exchange student called Long Duk Dong and jokes about rape. Sara Stewart of the New York Post wrote last year that the movie “seems to celebrate both racism and date rape…gather round, kiddies, and check out how rape and racism used to be hilarious punch lines”.