{"id":2487,"date":"2005-11-27T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-27T07:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/11\/steyn-on-hollywoods-pc-perversion\/"},"modified":"2005-11-27T07:10:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-27T07:10:00","slug":"steyn-on-hollywoods-pc-perversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/11\/steyn-on-hollywoods-pc-perversion.html","title":{"rendered":"Steyn on “Hollywood’s PC perversion”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From Mark Steyn\u2019s latest Chicago Sun-Times<\/i> column<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

The average multiplex is surely not long for this world. Already, 85 percent of Hollywood\u2019s business comes from home entertainment \u2014 DVDs and the like. Suits me. Or so I thought until, on the way home from the hell of Harry Potter, I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the \u201dLooney Tunes Golden Collection<\/a>.\u201d Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we\u2019re not meant to find funny: \u201dUnfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups,\u201d she tells us sternly. \u201dThese jokes were wrong then and they\u2019re wrong today\u201d \u2014 unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg\u2019s most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There\u2019s a gag for the ages.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what Whoopi\u2019s making such a meal about. It\u2019s true you don\u2019t see many positive images of people of color on \u201dLooney Tunes,\u201d but then the images of people of non-color aren\u2019t terribly positive either (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam). Instead, you see positive images of ducks of color, roadrunners of color and tweety birds of color. How weirdly reductive to be so obsessed about something so peripheral to these cartoons that you stick the same damn Whoopi Goldberg health warning on all four DVDs in the box. And don\u2019t think about hitting the \u201cNext\u201d button and skipping to the cartoons: You can\u2019t; you gotta sit through it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FWIW, I was a bit miffed by the Whoopi intro as well \u2014 and I wondered if anybody else out there, perhaps including Whoopi herself, was a bit miffed at the sheer tokenism of the whole thing, the way that some executive at Warner Brothers presumably said, \u201cHmmm, we need to hire someone who is (a) a person of colour and (b) a woman to soothe our collective liberal guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n

I much prefer the approach Walt Disney has taken with its latest \u201cWalt Disney Treasures<\/a>\u201d sets. Those cartoons which contain the potentially offensive stuff are bracketed off, in a special section on the second disc which contains a brief introduction by animation historian Leonard Maltin. And the rest of the cartoons are just there for the viewing, without any annoying intros.<\/p>\n

FWIW, the rest of Steyn\u2019s column includes comments on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/a><\/i>, The Interpreter<\/a><\/i> and Stealth<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Mark Steyn\u2019s latest Chicago Sun-Times column: The average multiplex is surely not long for this world. Already, 85 percent of Hollywood\u2019s business comes from home entertainment \u2014 DVDs and the like. Suits me. Or so I thought until, on the way home from the hell of Harry Potter, I stopped to buy the third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSteyn on "Hollywood's PC perversion"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From Mark Steyn's latest Chicago Sun-Times column:The average multiplex is surely not long for this world. 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