In 2006, I published a list of the movies I’d watch again and again: The Movies I'd Watch Again (and Again).
It started with my top ten favorites movies:
- Touch Of Evil - Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich
- Freaks - Tod Browning
- Auntie Mame - Rosalind Russell, Forrest Tucker
- Casablanca - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman
- Days Of Wine And Roses - Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick
- How To Marry A Millionaire - Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe
- Hairspray - Divine, John Waters
- Lawrence Of Arabia - Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness
- Airplane! - Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves
- Salo - Pier Paolo Passolini, Paolo Bonacelli
In these days of taking a good hard look at racism in my life, I realize that some of my all-time favorite movies include stereotypes and racist depictions that I know are wrong and make me question how often I overlook racism when it’s inconvenient for me.
I want to watch Auntie Mame, because I think it’s a great story with a good script, good acting, and fantastic production. Then I remember that it glorifies Southern plantation culture by presenting it as polite, bucolic, and hospitable. It is none of these things.
There may have been some kind white people who lived on plantations, but plantations were comfortable, profitable, and “nice” because the plantation owners were slave-owners. They enslaved black people and forced them to grow the crops that were sold for profit, maintain their homes and grounds, cook their food, wait on them hand and foot, clean their clothes, and procreate only to have their children stolen from them and sold at auction. Horrific!
And what about the butler, Ito, a small Asian man in formal attire who talks in the pidgin English that was always used to stereotype and emasculate Asian men in mid-Century culture? His character is not flat or benign, he shows disdain for the horrible characters and adores the fabulous characters. His depth-of-character does not forgive the stereotype.
Does the glorification of plantation culture and the stereotyping of an Asian man make Auntie Mame an unacceptable movie that only has relevance in a historical context? Is it now a movie I should watch with my child and other young people so I can talk about plantation culture and racism? Do I now ignore Mame's anti-racist position when her future in-laws are exposed as anti-Semites, and she finances a home for Jewish refugee children on the land abutting their home? Do I ignore the witty repartee and discussions of sex and social change that were incredibly progressive for 1958?
Ito plays a major role in the scene that makes me weep like a baby each time I watch it? It’s Christmas Eve during the Great Depression. This privileged white woman raising an orphaned nephew with an immigrant staff of an Irish woman and Asian man, is in her massive Manhattan apartment (mansion), broke and worried that she has run out of money. The conversation turns to the butcher and the grocer, both of whom shut her off because she is unable to pay her bills, and the staff proudly displays the stack of bills (all marked paid), announcing that they have used their life-savings to pay off the bills so they can all eat again without nasty looks from the creditors. Again, does giving this character a depth-of-character, a humanness, forgive the stereotyping that made us all feel . . . superior(?) . . . relaxed(?) . . . around his different-ness?
Do I stop watching Auntie Mame and miss that scene I have been watching since I was a boy? As I type this, I do not know.
Two other movies on that list include troubling stereotypes:
Touch Of Evil takes place in Mexico and the depiction of Mexican characters is not progressive or flattering, even though the filmmaker (Orson Welles) was known to be a progressive, and became a public activist for the disenfranchised later in his life. The Mexican characters are depicted as bumbling fools.
Airplane! includes a scene that still makes me laugh inside, but it is totally racist. You know the scene! The actress Barbara Billingsley, famous for playing a white suburban housewife on “Leave It To Beaver,” announces: “Excuse me, stewardess, I speak Jive,” and proceeds to talk to three men in an urban patois that looks and sounds ridiculous. It’s exaggerated to make it funny, and until recently I never heard of anybody being offended by it. I know now that it is racist.
What do we do? Do we stop watching these movies? Do we watch them and then point out the racism when it appears? Maybe I will choose the latter: I will watch it and point out the racism. Am I making them a teaching tool or making me a cop-out?
What are you going to do?
