{"id":195725,"date":"2018-12-29T06:15:33","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T11:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=195725"},"modified":"2018-12-29T06:15:33","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T11:15:33","slug":"old-favourites-outdated-attitudes-can-entertainment-expire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/29\/old-favourites-outdated-attitudes-can-entertainment-expire\/","title":{"rendered":"Old favourites, outdated attitudes: Can entertainment expire?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE: From the romantic comedy ‘The Philadelphia Story’ (Photo<\/a>: Kristine\/Flickr,<\/a> CC BY-NC 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 They are fighting, yes, but the fight crackles with the enticing electricity that only Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn could deliver. He is storming out the door. She is throwing his golf clubs after him. The music is jaunty. He is charmingly irritated.<\/p>\n

Then he . he . he strides up to her, throws a fake punch in the air at her, opens his fist and shoves his palm into her face, slamming her onto the ground. She looks up at him with what appears to be mild exasperation. She rubs her injured neck. The rom-com musical score plays on.<\/p>\n

So begins 1940’s \u201cThe Philadelphia Story\u201d: with a case of domestic assault played for laughs. Eight decades later, the movie is clearly two things: uneasy fare for a post-#metoo culture \u2014 and an enduring American classic.<\/p>\n

They exist throughout society’s pop-culture canon, from movies to TV to music and beyond: pieces of work that have withstood time’s passage but that contain actions, words and depictions about race, gender and sexual orientation that we now find questionable at best.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s blackface minstrel routines from Bing Crosby’s \u201cHoliday Inn,\u201d Apu’s accent in \u201cThe Simpsons,\u201d bullying scenes in \u201cRudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,\u201d the arguably rapey coercion of \u201cBaby, It’s Cold Outside\u201d and \u201cSixteen Candles\u201d or the simplistically clunky gender interactions of \u201cMr. Mom,\u201d Americans have amassed a catalogue of entertainment across the decades that now raises a series of contentious but never-more-relevant questions:<\/p>\n

What, exactly, do we do with this stuff today? Do we simply discard it? Do we give it a free pass as the product of a less-enlightened age? Or is there some way to both acknowledge its value yet still view it with a more critical eye?<\/p>\n

Does American entertainment ever have an expiration date?<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cJake, she’s a child!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Two male high-school seniors discussing an attractive female sophomore in John Hughes’ \u201cSixteen Candles\u201d (1984)<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose?\u201d Molly Ringwald, who played the \u201cchild\u201d referenced above, wrote this past April in The New Yorker, 34 years later. As the decades passed, she grew more uncomfortable with some of the material that made her one of the 1980s’ biggest young stars.<\/p>\n

This can be a fraught debate, and understandably so. Some Americans, often those who wield society’s power, cast popular culture as froth that’s unworthy of serious scrutiny: Hey, it’s just entertainment. Don’t overthink things.<\/p>\n

But entertainment is a byproduct of its era \u2014 of how we view ourselves, of who gets to call who what and who wields the paintbrushes of representation in society. And if you’re never the one holding the paintbrush, how entertaining can it be?<\/p>\n

This delicate question pervades some of our culture’s most beloved work, from Mark Twain’s \u201cHuckleberry Finn\u201d on down. It is the wonderful and the problematic, often presented side by side.<\/p>\n

So if we’re watching \u201cI Love Lucy,\u201d do we consider how belittling Ricky (and most everyone else) is to her? Or do we take away the fact that no matter what, she never stops trying and is never contained? In \u201cThe Honeymooners,\u201d do we key in on the obvious love between Ralph and Alice or on his fist-shaking threats to send her \u201cto the moon\u201d?<\/p>\n

If we’re listening to the Beatles, and we adore John Lennon for his vision of a more peaceable world, what do we make today of his 1965 song that began with the lyrics, \u201cI’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man\u201d?<\/p>\n

If we’re showing our kids Hollywood classics, and we put \u201cGone with the Wind\u201d in front of them, what do we say when Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) acts like a happy slave who adores her masters? What about the frequent racial and ethnic stereotypes \u2014 from Mexican to African-American to Irish to Italian \u2014 in Warner Bros.’ beloved collection of cartoon shorts from the 1940s and 1950s?<\/p>\n

For the Gen-Xers among us: Through what prism should we view such hormone-drenched 1980s fare as \u201cFast Times at Ridgemont High,\u201d \u201cPorky’s\u201d and \u2014 heaven help us \u2014 \u201cZapped,\u201d an entire movie about a teenage boy who can pop open girls’ blouses with his mind?<\/p>\n

And what of Hughes, who captured teenage life’s authenticity as never before but also handed us material that sent some fundamentally confusing and problematic sexual messages to adolescents?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you could erase all the scenes that are offensive to us today, even if you could, would that be a good idea? I don’t really think so,\u201d says M. Alison Kibler, who teaches American studies at Franklin & Marshall College and researches how groups struggle for fair representation in entertainment.<\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cI would step back from any kind of one-dimensional read of movies and performances from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cWoman not made for heavy thinking but should always decorate scene like blossom of plum.\u201d \u2014 Charlie Chan (a decidedly un-Asian Roland Winters), \u201cCharlie Chan in the Chinese Ring\u201d (1947)<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

The \u201cCharlie Chan\u201d movies of the 1930s and 1940s, shown repeatedly on TV in the 1970s and 1980s, seem today to brim with racial problems: non-Asians portraying Asians, fortune-cookie sayings spouted in precious accents and, for good measure, some broadly played African-American representations too.<\/p>\n

Yet according to Yunte Huang, who traced the character’s history, many Asians welcomed the films at the time because, in an era of Fu Manchu stereotypes, they represented something coveted: a respected Asian protagonist who outwitted every white person on the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a history to everything. And we need to know history \u2014 including those ugly representations and everything,\u201d says Huang, author of \u201cCharlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, we need to be critical and continue to protest,\u201d he says. \u201cOn the other hand, it is important for us to get people to talk about this. . Let them come out, but talk about them and analyze them so we know how far we have travelled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until the last couple decades, older fare resurfaced only sporadically, when studios or networks put it back out there on air or VHS tape.<\/p>\n

But the dawn of the digital era and the rapid rise of streaming culture means that now, anything can be accessed by pretty much anyone on any screen. That in turn means that a dizzying library of our cultural past, warts and all, is available at the press of a button.<\/p>\n

This is also a different question than what’s being grappled with around entertainers like Bill Cosby, Louis C.K. and Woody Allen, whose work many now reject because of the artists’ behaviour rather than the content itself (though many have identified problems in Allen’s and C.K.’s work).<\/p>\n

Consider Apu, the South Asian convenience-store owner long voiced by Hank Azaria in \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d \u2014 an unusual case because the show has spanned more than two generations of evolving attitudes.<\/p>\n

Last year, comedian Hari Kondabolu released a film, \u201cThe Problem With Apu,\u201d documenting stereotypes he saw with the character and its effect on entertainers of South Asian descent. The response included hints that Apu might fade from the cast of thousands that populate the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t sit right with Shilpa Dave, author of \u201cIndian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film.\u201d Apu, after all, is also a beloved character and community member. Isn’t there another solution?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe easy thing is to point a finger and say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ But I think we have to say, what are the alternatives? How do we want to progress now that we have more information and a higher consciousness?\u201d Dave says. \u201cDoes entertainment mean that we leave our brains behind?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

When Tim Cogshell was a child, he loved John Wayne. He’d watch Westerns and root for the cowboys \u2014 the \u201cgood guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen my uncle told me, ‘Stop rooting for the cowboys,\u201d’ Cogshell says, allowing that his uncle also used a word between \u201cthe\u201d and \u201ccowboys\u201d that began with an \u201cf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today Cogshell, a film critic for FilmWeek on KPCC-FM, an NPR affiliate in Pasadena, California, thinks a lot about how yesterday’s attitudes should be considered in today’s environment. Part of his answer comes down to intent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gotta know the details. What’s going on here? What’s the intention here?\u201d Cogshell says. \u201cSometimes you have to peel the onion. And then one decides how to think about it, how to feel about it, where to put it in the canon.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while \u201cBirth of a Nation,\u201d the groundbreaking 1915 film widely regarded as one of the most corrosively racist ever made, is viewed ever more harshly as the years pass, a misogynist bigot like Archie Bunker from \u201cAll in the Family\u201d presents a different story: Whether a successful portrayal or not, Cogshell says, it was intended to highlight a problem and get it discussed.<\/p>\n

Some of this is discussion is perhaps moot. YouTube-savvy teenagers are probably not watching \u201cBirth of a Nation,\u201d \u201cThe Mask of Fu Manchu\u201d or even \u201cPorky’s\u201d on their mobile devices.<\/p>\n

The solutions, though, suggest a general direction: Don’t simply ban or eliminate or delete. Talk about stuff \u2014 whether formally, when it’s presented to the public, or informally at home. And don’t assume we’re smarter today; as you read this, entertainment is being made that’ll be just as problematic to our great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n

And involving more voices in the production of today’s popular culture \u2014 and the selection, curation and characterization of yesterday’s \u2014 can make sense of this more than dismissing the issue as overreaction or scrubbing the leavings of less-enlightened eras.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean that newly offensive classics can’t be entertaining. Many of these things are American favourites for a reason: They resonated with us over many years, and have things to say that remain relevant \u2014 and, at times, fun and escapist.<\/p>\n

But wherever you come down, to suggest that entertainment \u2014 music, movies, TV, a multibillion-dollar industry designed to sell our culture’s stories back to us in infinite configurations \u2014 is not something to examine sometimes under a more close-up lens seems a bit self-defeating. This, after all, is us \u2014 maybe not an inclusive enough \u201cus,\u201d maybe not the \u201cus\u201d that many want us to be, but something that demands to be understood.<\/p>\n

Let Molly Ringwald have the last word: \u201cErasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art \u2014 change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past, in all of its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Ted Anthony, director of digital innovation for The Associated Press, writes frequently about American culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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