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This week on GLoP, we’re in the midst of a low level cultural revolution in which movies, tv shows, books, statues, and more are all looking at possible cancellation. So the Tom Cotton/NYT and the Bon Appétit contretemps are kicked around, then we get to Gone With The Wind. Also, were the late 60’s worse than what we are going through now? Some thoughts about mothers and daughters, Rob shares his recipe for Pavlova, and Jonah needs some Irma la Douce.
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My mom got along with her mom. I suppose you could say it was ‘complicated’ but it was genial all the way through.
Alaska Indians? Really? I doubt that Jonah ever heard a Gavora living in Fairbanks call them Indians.
It’s “Natives” or “Alaska Natives”.
Unless you refer to a particular indigenous culture (not tribe) such as the mostly Athabascan villages that surround the Fairbanks area.
Hattie McDaniel was, of course, the first black actor win an Academy Award. Back in the spring of 1940 when the awards were handed out Hattie had a very long walk to the podium as she was confined to a table in the back of the room next to the kitchen. (The ceremony was then held at the Coconut Grove.)
After her death in 1952 her Oscar was donated to the Theater Department of Howard University. During renovations in the late 1960s it was lost. There are a lot of rumors as to its whereabouts. One theory has it that it was thrown into the Potomac river during the unrest after Martin Luther King was assassinated. Others think it has just been lost as few might not even be aware of what they’re looking at because before the war the Best Supporting Actor and Actress Awards was not the traditional statues but plaques. (World War II changed that. Because of material shortages the statues were gold colored spray-painted Plaster of Paris replicas and carried the promise of replacement with the real thing as soon as possible after the war.) Howard officials today can’t even be certain it was actually in their possession since they say a record doesn’t exist for it.
Mammy was a very admirable character. She was dealt a bad hand at birth, but makes the best of it. She works to uphold the standards of society when many of the higher born fail.
Man, nice show, and I’m now so old I remember when a George Clooney bragged about Hollywood’s Oscar recognition of Hattie McDaniel. I’m surprised Pod or RL didn’t recall that too. Bravo.
You want to see an embarrassing film? Try DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. I saw it I’m college as part of a film history class. Important in the development of film as an art form but the story is just awful (and boring, too.)
Pod nit: Inflation was showing up in the late 60s because the Federal Reserve under William McChesney Martin became LBJ’s little bitch. Mismanagement of the Bretton Woods Gold Standard (only the US dollar was tied to gold; other world currencies were fixed to the US dollar) led Charles De Gaulle to start conversion of France’s dollar reserves into gold, which is the protection mechanism against gold standard mismanagement and which could only be exercised by nations under Bretton Woods. This ultimately caused the US to abandon ship under Nixon (who took over Martin’s humiliation) and the massive dollar devaluation now called the Nixon shock. That’s when inflation became something truly astounding. As reflected in the jump in the price of oil (priced in dollars, then as now), which most still believe had to do with the Arab Oil Embargo. Probably not.
I don’t think we can keep blowing off the Marxist war on history and culture just because we don’t like the movie that’s been disappeared. Eventually, they will come for your sci fi, your superhero movies and sitcoms. Already at least one Seinfeld episode has been yanked, so the mob has already come for mine.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/06/13/list-of-movies-and-tv-blacklisted-by-the-woke-taliban-so-far/
First they came for the Westerns and I did not complain for I did not like Westerns…
They’re going after Fawlty Towers too. The BBC has pulled the episode The Germans.
Probably one of the funniest episodes – “Don’t mention the war”. “You started it” “No you did, you invaded Poland!”
Good show.
Time for some politician to have a Sister Sohla moment.
Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I’m hoping and somewhat expecting that
cancel culture is in the process of jumping the shark. They are attacking influential artists who can and will in turn counter attack the PC scolds.
Mammy was the American Gunga Din.
So was Uncle Tom. He was manlier and more admirable than any of the higher born because he chose to be beaten to death rather than hit a woman. His depiction probably made more than a few whites who admired manliness and Christian love less racist. (I have heard that manliness and Christianity are often popular in the deep south.)
But ever since the 1960s, we aren’t allowed to have nice things.
It has been a long time since I watched Song of the South. But what is so embarrassing or intolerable about Uncle Remus today?
I doubt you had similar misgivings when it was white country bumpkins portrayed in O Brother, Where Art Thou or a hundred other popular films that deliberately poke fun at uneducated hayseeds, particularly from the South. To the contrary, Song of the South didn’t present Remus as the joke but rather as the amicable storyteller.
Uncle Remus was modeled on Aesop, the Greek slave.
Uncle Tom was flogged to death by slave trusties at the command of Simon Legree because he wouldn’t turn over two slave women he was hiding from sexual exploitation by Legree.
Legree had bought Tom in the first place because he wanted an honest and intelligent slave to run the plantation, freeing Legree to play the gentleman in New Orleans. Prior to the dispute over the women, Legree’s only problem with Tom was that he would not use the lash, which Legree thought was needed for maximum efficiency.
This is far too recent for Pod to reference it. A good rule of thumb: did it happen after The Odd Couple’s original network run? If so, Pod is going to leave that to the kids.
Hilarious reply, especially since it’s so plausible.
And Legree was a Damned Yankee*. Tom’s previous master (Arthur Shelby) was a Southron and kind.
* For those who don’t know, “Damned Yankee” is a technical term. It’s a Yankee who moves to the South and stays.
Link for the “Sola” video?
Isn’t JPod factually incorrect about not winning in Vietnam? Last I heard, aside from the widely-broadcast body counts etc, the US was on a path to victory until Walter Cronkite convinced a lot of people that it was impossible.
So he seems even more manly. Thanks for correcting the details.
And JPod asserts “the murder of George Floyd.” As I commented on another thread regarding the message of sympathy from George W Bush, “objection, assuming facts not in evidence!”
Every time I thought the political correct craziness was about to collapse on itself, I’ve turned out to be wrong.
The millennials that have come out of the current academic environment aren’t giving up what they learned there. Reality may hit them in the face eventually, but probably not any time soon.
Well they don’t have to live in the places destroyed by antifah mobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIQK0FGd6DE
If it wasn’t legal murder per the code of laws of the state of Minnesota, it was biblical murder, at least.
Hey, independent young filmmaker here, that Rob wasn’t sure was listening.
I think Rob is understating the degree to which the young film school crowd has swallowed the panic porn of the virus. I shot my last feature film 5 years ago in an MFA program, released 2 years ago. (Kickstarter, a few festivals, no distribution deal)
There is no chance I could get more than 5% of that crew or cast back to work on something right now. Maybe I could get a new crew made up entirely of people willing to take “the risk”, and that’s assuming I could secure locations and had a viable script ready to go.
It’s possible, but I wouldn’t be rushing anything into production right now and expecting a deal.
This attempt to erase an award winning portrayal of an admirable character in a great movie reminds me of the time the Library of Congress put a display of rare photos of actual African American slaves in their gallery. It’s was announced in the Post and I thought, ‘interesting, I’ll go have a look. Might learn some actual details of what slavery was like and gain insight into the factual history of this important topic.’
Nope! There were immediate objections and the photos were taken down and returned to the archives (if not destroyed) ASAP. Can’t recall if anyone at the Library was punished.
I have seen a stage production of Gone With the Wind in Japan. The Japanese fondness for the classic romance amid defeat and survival seems natural. But how to depict the black slaves? Honestly, I can’t remember, which probably means they were completely left out for lack of interest.
If the 1939 movie has become too painful to watch, perhaps it’s time for a remake. And all that historical, controversial slavery stuff can simply be left out, because as a 21st century global citizen (whose great, great grandfather marched with Sherman), I’m completely over it.