Trouble

 Movies we have a problem with. That would be the title I would have chosen for Turner Classic Movies series they are running during the month of March. Or perhaps I should say, Movies with which we have a problem. The folks at TCM went with "Reframed: Classic Films In The Rearview Mirror." There are plenty of conservative types who will probably scream "Cancel Culture," but they were doing that in spite of the thoughtful reflection given by this series. 

Starting with Gone With The Wind, which disappeared briefly from screens across the country this past summer, these are movies that are troublesome for one reason or another. Troublesome for anyone living in the twenty-first century trying to make sense of the depiction of slavery in the antebellum south, and the aftermath of the Civil War. If this was your only reference to that point in American history, you might wonder what all the fuss about civil rights was. Most viewers today would say that this classic film does not paint the most accurate picture of that era. It is worth noting here that another movie made at virtually the same time was The Wizard of Oz, which might be hard for us to watch if you happen to be a scarecrow. They are both Technicolor fictions, made by MGM. I would suggest, especially in hindsight, that neither should be taken as historical documents. Except as a lens through which we can view our culture at the time. The choices made in how to depict the world of 1861 seventy-eight years after the fact reflect deeply on the way we had evolved as a country. We were obviously still not ready to take a long hard look at what we had done. In many ways, it helped perpetuate white supremacy by making it seem like the natural order of things. 

I have a problem with that. But I am not willing to disappear Gone With The Wind from the history of American cinema. It tells a story of how much further we have to go. Films like The Jazz Singer and Birth of A Nation should elicit similar cringing reactions, but the fact of blackface and the elevation of the Ku Klux Klan to hero status cannot be denied. These movies remind us of what we once were. And give us a signpost from where we can mark our progress. If we are making progress at all. 

And not just the depiction of African Americans in our movies. Asian Americans, Native Americans, Woman Americans. You name it, Hollywood has found a way to degrade it over the past century. I'm looking at you Mickey Rooney. Misguided attempts by Walt Disney like Song of the South that are now being scrubbed out of the Happiest Place On Earth. It's 2021 and we're just now getting a woke version of The Simpsons. 

In the 1960s I was watching reruns of McHale's Navy in which the enemy was endlessly referred to as "the Nips." This was in spite of the fact that their houseboy was a prisoner of war and of Japanese descent. Even back then, something felt a little wrong about that to me. And let's not even get started about those nutty Nazis on Hogan's Heroes. Springtime for Hitler, anyone? 

Racism, misogyny, hate, ignorance. They're all on display in our movies and TV. You don't really have to search for it. That's the trouble I have with these movies. And TV. And so on. But we can't erase them. They left a mark. Maybe not for the reason they intended, but they can remind us to be better. Lots better.