There are three points in time. There is the past, the present, and the
future. The past is everything you have
done up to this point. Your trials,
tribulations, mistakes, failures, and successes. The happy moments, the sad, and everything in
between. The present is the person that
you are based on what happened in the past and how you let those events shape
you. Then there is the future, which is
what you want to make it. There are
unavoidable variables such as death, but for the most part you can shape your
future. You can use your past and who
you are in the present as a way to nudge yourself down a certain path.
Movies are the same way.
The people making them see their past while making their present work
and try to course correct to make a better future. That could be in the case of making
long-lasting franchises. What I want to
talk about, though, is the cultural sensitivity shown through movies as they’ve
progressed over their 130ish year existence.
Take, for example, this week’s movie The Terror of Tiny Town. It
was a western released in 1938 that boasted itself as the first film produced
with “an all midget cast.” Buck Lawson
(Billy Curtis) was a farm boy who was being tormented by Bat Haines (Little
Billy Rhodes), a gang leader. The two
batted heads over robberies, cattle, and Nancy Preston (Yvonne Moray). It all came to a head in a cabin where there
was burning dynamite.
That story might not seem like a big deal. It’s the basic western story. White hat versus black hat. If not literally wearing the hats, the
archetypes of each character. That’s not
why The Terror of Tiny Town was included
in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. As has
already been mentioned, there are three stages of time: the past, the present,
and the future. The past is necessary to
understand the present and the future. The Terror of Tiny Town is the sketchy
past of Hollywood that led to the current okay present.
The Terror of Tiny
Town treated the cast like a joke.
The entire time, their height was the butt of sight gags. They were riding Shetland ponies around
because they were small enough for the stature of the actors. There were jokes about the actors walking
under swinging saloon doors instead of pushing them open. They would walk under fences instead of going
around or hopping over. Everything was
made into a joke about how small they were.
This kind of treatment wouldn’t fly so much today. It took a while for that to be the case, but
things have slowly come around to people being respectful of the varied heights
that we all are. Through the 1980s,
there were small characters like the Ewoks, Willow, and Howard the Duck where
their size wasn’t the sole reason for the movie to exist. They weren’t there to be made a mockery
of. There were still movies where small
people were a joke. Look at pretty much
anything with Santa and his elves up until even Jingle All the Way in 1996.
The elves tended to be there for jokes about how small they were and how
easy it was to toss them aside.
The tide started shifting much more recently. The
Wolf of Wall Street used a small person for a joke, but they weren’t the
joke in themselves. The tossing scene
that was featured in the movie was a joke about how horrible Jordan Belfort and
his cohorts were. They wanted to throw
someone small because they thought it was funny. The audience is supposed to know it’s a
horrible thing and laugh at how horrifying it is that these people would think
it’s a good idea.
This isn’t the only issue with older films that has slowly
become something that can’t be done in movies.
The Birth of a Nation was
about the KKK being the saviors of the south.
Black people were portrayed by white people in blackface and were
characterized as dumb, sexual predators always trying to get the women in the
area. None of this would fly today. The institutional racism and sympathy for the
KKK that the movie showcased has since been, rightfully, considered a bad
thing. Blackface is an insult to black
people. It’s a mockery of them by the
white people who were suppressing them for so long (and in some cases, still
are). The KKK should never be applauded
because they’re basically for genocide.
The rise of black filmmakers in American cinema has really
helped to curb a lot of this treatment in movies. That’s not to say that America has completely
improved. Both of these ideas came
together in last year’s great film BlacKkKlansman. Some people might write me off at this point
because I’m a white guy quickly writing about racial issues while not really
experiencing them all that much. I get
that. All I want to say here is that
Spike Lee has been making films for black people for over three decades now. And he may have made more important,
impactful movies like Do the Right Thing
in his past. But BlacKkKlansman managed to take a story about a black man in the
1970s, add Spike Lee’s signature style, and infuse some of the present day
issues to make an important statement about the current state of the USA. It’s a long way from what The Birth of a Nation was 100 years
earlier. There’s still a lot of work to
be done, too, as Charlottesville has shown us.
Then there’s the issue of the way women have been treated in
the film industry. It’s not great,
Bob. There are way too few movies about
women when compared to movies about men.
There are men in most of the roles of power in the industry, which leads
to more male driven content. Think of it
like this. To properly understand
someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. If there is a cis male in charge of writing a
story about a woman, he’s never going to understand what she goes through on a
day to day basis.
That’s not the worst of it though. For a long time, men in America treated women
like property. They had a woman at home
taking care of the kids, cooking, and cleaning.
When he wanted sex, he would get it.
She was his woman, and that was that.
The mentality of treating women like property would make its way into
the stories that were told in movies.
Women were romantic interests meant to be earned by the men. A male character would do something to get
the woman. He would defeat a romantic
rival. He would save the woman from a
monster. Whatever the conflict was, at
the end, she was expected to be with him.
Things are still that way in many films.
That’s why the Bechdel Test exists.
It’s a means to check how well done the female representation in any
given movie is. Are there no women? Failed.
Is there only one woman? Failed. Are there multiple women and they only talk
about the men? Failed. If there are multiple male characters who
talk about things other than the women they want, why can’t there be female
characters that don’t talk about the men in their lives?
Much like with the racism that has been a part of the movie
industry, more female artists will help to alleviate the problems with how
women are portrayed. People like Ava
Duvernay, Lynn Ramsay, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, and Patty Jenkins are
helping pave the way for better female representation both in front of and
behind the camera. Wonder Woman was as successful as it was because of the women
involved. Zero Dark Thirty had a strong female lead partially due to a woman
at the helm. Hopefully, they inspire
more women to come into the business and make stories that bring new points of
view.
My intention with this post was to use the injustice that The Terror of Tiny Town did to its
actors as a springboard to a more personal story. What it ended up being, though, was me, an
average height white male speaking of the injustices that everyone else
experiences. And much like I said
earlier, you need to walk a mile in others’ shoes to understand what they go
through. I haven’t lived the lives of
the people I’ve been writing about in this post. I can’t say how much their lives have
improved or fallen apart over the years due to these issues. I can say that movies have gotten better
about not being disrespectful to people.
There are still major issues with the people who make the movies,
sure. But the content has slowly been
getting more culturally sensitive. For
the most part, that is. Characters who
aren’t cis white men have been improving.
Watching movies is becoming more exciting with these other stories being
told.
The past in movies can be troubling to look at. Racism, sexism, and all other forms of
discrimination ran rampant for the longest time. Being able to look back at it has made the
present an interesting place as people are trying to course correct. Looking into the future, there will be more
variety in stories and storytellers.
They won’t be 95% cis white men.
Things are starting to change. It’s
an exciting future to look forward to as new voices come to the forefront. I’m looking forward to it. I hope you are too.
I hope you’re looking forward to these notes, as well:
- Howard the Duck (week 75) and Jingle All the Way (week 160) were mentioned in this post.
- Have you seen The Terror of Tiny Town? How do you think the film industry has grown with these issues? Let me know in the comments.
- Twitter and the comments are good places to let me know about what movies I should be checking out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always looking for suggestions about what to watch.
- There’s an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad”Movies. Follow it if you want. I give updates about the posts and that kind of stuff, so you’ll be able to keep up with things there.
- I also have a Snapchat. It’s not blog specific, but I do share clips of the bad movies I watch there. Add me (jurassicgriffin) if that sounds like something you want.
- Next week is the week I’ve been looking forward to for some time. I’ll be heading back to a franchise that has been a big part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies since the first year. The Marine 6: Close Quarters came out late last year, and I’m obviously going to catch up with it. Every other movie in the franchise was featured in the blog. So, come back next Sunday to see what I have written about it. See you then.
