Old Movies

[lynxreign]

Earlier this year, I purchased the 9 disc set of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. I grew up watching these movies whenever they were on TV and enjoy them greatly. They were made in the 1930s and there are quite a number of moments that are simply wrong to the modern movie viewer. Ginger Rogers played a very independent (for the time) woman in most of the movies and yet there are still quite a few moments where her behavior is jarring. Several of the earliest movies in the series have a stereotypical "dumb Italian" character that should remind any modern movie-watcher just how broad racism was as recently as 50 years ago.

emilytheslayer and I were watching Swing Time (1936) the other day and there's another relic of a bygone era that gave me pause. This movie contains Fred Astaire's only blackface number. To his credit, he didn't do a traditional blackface, he simply darkened his entire face with makeup, it wasn't a caricature like in minstrel shows or on Al Jolson. And the dance routine was intended as a tribute to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, considered by many to be the greatest dancer of the era. However, the props in the early part of the number are... unfortunate. And while the dance routine itself was great, it is also uncomfortable for a modern viewer much of the time.

I'm never quite sure how to feel when watching things like this. While the movies themselves are still quite entertaining and funny, they also can serve to show modern viewers just how much things have changed in a very short time.

Comments

[allegedly.livejournal.com]

I second that. Such things *are* very uncomfortable - and I definitely don't know how to feel about them. If I were watching something modern/current, I'd know exactly how I'd feel (or the six or seven different, simultaneous things I'd be feeling...which the artist would probably want me to be feeling). But watching something almost completely out of context from a different era when certain things were not considered racist...is a weird experience for me.

[ultra-lilac.livejournal.com]

I think you have to try appreciate them within the context of their time.

In a way it's good because it shows us we are making progress as a society!

[wizardru.livejournal.com]

You accept it for the entertainment it was and acknowledge the wrong-headed thinking for what it was. It's not that people didn't consider that stuff racist...it's that they didn't consider racism itself to be a bad thing. At the same time, you have to remember that plenty of people viewed it then as we view it now.

I've been watching 'Pioneers of Television' on PBS, and they make sure to highlight how Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan demanded to be allowed to have black entertainers on their shows. How Nat Cole managed to get on the air and find an audience (though no one thought he could) but then found that no sponsor had the guts to support his show. I never really thought of Tony Orlando and Dawn as a ground-breaking show...but then, I never really considered that that a show hosted by a latino and two black women was ground-breaking...because, you know, I WAS FOUR.

Some times you have to roll your eyes a little. Hate the sin, love the sinner and all that. I mean, even Star Trek had proto-Spock yelling "The WOMEN!". ;)

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Having painfully sat through many an argument in film school about this, the most I can (and want to) do is just sit back and enjoy it for what it is. I accept the faults for what they are, and focus on the entertainment.

I'm never quite sure how to feel when watching things like this.

[chaoticmoth.livejournal.com]

I experience the discomfort you mention, but I know that it is from a different time. The hard part will be if I am ever watching something with CB and have to explain it.

[kevnes.livejournal.com]

I believe that the creators of these films were not intending to insult or demean these ethnic groups, but were using stereotypes and ethnic caricatures in an attempt to entertain their audience. We've been trained to see it as hateful because we know the context, but writers today still use stereotypes as often as ever and as audience members we play along as long as we are being entertained.

I find watching these old films makes me less uncomfortable then when I hear that the N-Word is being removed from a production of To Kill A Mockingbird or when a teacher chooses to remove the N-Word from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass when he or she reads the book aloud to his class. It's one thing when a piece of art makes us uncomfortable (that's good), it is something else when we deliberately change it for fear of offending anyone (that's bad). No one likes to be reminded how bad things used to be, but if we aren't reminded we might lose the ability to see how bad things still are.

the way we were…

[monjundi.livejournal.com]

I think it's important not just to appreciate the work for its good and timeless qualities but also for reminding us that things have changed. Otherwise I think it's far too easy to take what has been gained for granted. The idea that people are editing out the n-word is horrifying. I recently took a class in Afro American literature and our prof would never dream of such revisionism. Nothing else has the same impact. In context it's perfectly appropriate.

I recently heard an interview with the actressKelli O'Hara on Fresh Air with Terri Gross about playing the role of Nelie Forbush in the revival of South Pacific. At the time it was groundbreaking in that it depicted a European widower having an Pacific Islander family, and the reaction of his new middle American love interest. Check out the interview at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91548090 All Things Considered also did a story on the revival, which can be found at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89309296

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I think so long as you know the historical context, you can make some rational choices about recognizing and somewhat compartmentalizing your discomfort and just enjoying the performance for what it is. For me the big thing to remember is how crazy hard it was for a performer like Astaire to do the right thing in these movies by modern standards even when they wanted to.

You couldn't perform in the same scenes with black performers, let alone do partner dances with them. The studios would fight you, and even if you got the scene in, it would be cut out of many of the prints so as not to offend audiences in various areas (especially the south). Something like the "Be A Clown" bit with Gene Kelly and the Nicholas brothers was incredibly tough and rare.

[lynxreign.livejournal.com]

Astaire did manage to keep the blackface part of the routine from being the traditional exaggeration and simply used the makeup evenly on his entire face.

It was always strange to me when I was a kid to see the division between black and white performers in the old movies. In Sun Valley Seranade Tex Beneke and the Modernaires sing Chatenooga Choo Choo and then there's a short bridge and the entire song gets played again with Dorothy Dandridge and The Nicholas Brothers.

They were almost completely different numbers and I think that's the reason I came up with when I was a kid, but it is a strange number.