“Why,” I get from people who loved and hated the movie, “did you spend so much time defending Ferris Bueller?”
Because the Left attacks our cultural icons with, as Alan Siegel did, petty complaints and smears and outright untruths. They’ve managed to throw most of the Western Canon into disrepute, at least amongst the intelligentsia and on our college campuses — you know, exactly where it matters the most. And so we aren’t left with much more than Ferris. It ain’t Shakespeare, but it’s one thing we had left unsullied. Even though the movie is mostly insubstantial summer fluff.
But if it’s all I have left, well, I’m going to take a stand. I’m going to defend it. Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it.
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I can’t stand the movie, but that’s got nothing to do with pointing out lying attacks against it.
It’s called “being principled.”
Time marches on. You’re showing evidence that the goal posts have once again shifted. Until fairly recently, it seemed that pretty much everyone was a racist who existed before the mid 60s. Now it’s gone up to ’86.
Forgetting that a movie is only a movie and a book is only a story, people read racism into pretty much everything. Balanced perception was suddenly out the door; if Warner Bros. cartoons consisted of caricaturing everything in sight suddenly, doing so to black folks in a few cartoons was racism.
Laurel and Hardy, the town fools: no problem. Amos and Andy the town fools: racism.
Tarzan became the very symbol of racism against and a disdain for black folks as people who never liked the books apparently skimmed over any positive roles for black folks and there were plenty. The good guy black folks were courageous and noble and the bad guy black folks were ignorant stumble bums and that was true of all of Burroughs’ characters but there is just some special blinding sheen that makes our eyes goggle and become hypnotized when it comes to simply seeing black folks like anyone else that can have stark positives and negatives drawn within pop culture or in terms of satire.
Were I black I would be careful of what I wished for in this regard but black folks in America today don’t generally think this all out to its logical extension because finger pointing is ever so much more fun than the eventual consequences of people segregating you out because you’re just too much trouble at a party.
I guess we’re up to a quarter century ago now and the deconstruction of America continues apace. Soon only aliens and white folks will be able to be bad guys unless of course a Chinese guy makes a Chinese villain and then it’s okay.
Ferris is light comedy and like all good comedy contains some jabs at the truth and pokes fun at ourselves and our own foibles. It’s not anything beyond that. It grabs pop stereotypes and archetypes we’re all familiar with and makes fun of them. Even those we may not have had in our own lives are still recognizable because of the way they’re presented.
A true liberal movie or play like “Rent” or some other trash is where the cast is 2.3% lesbian/gay, 12.6% black and so on. To me, watching “Rent” was like watching a Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film about America’s bright future.
The reason progressive politically correct films are more fantastic than science fiction is that one cannot find cultural equality in innovation and contribution in the real observable world. Reality dictates some culture will always be smarter and brighter. But now that is seen as some kind of insult. Success is an insult. Keep it down, someone will be offended. Put muslims in space so they’ll feel included so then they won’t blow so much stuff up.
This is called racism today – reality is racism. Liberals are nuts.
We’re all racists now. Except for the leftists, who expunge their own Original Sin of racism by endlessly hectoring us on our own.
Whenever a leftist writes anything condemning “us” he actually means “you.”
I’m not going to address the question of whether we’re all racists or not, because I don’t particularly want to jump down your throat on that. I’d be happy to discuss it, but not without your having broached the subject.
I just want to note that I’m not trying to purge myself of my own racism by hectoring others. I’m working to try to improve the state of something I see as a real problem. Some of that involves being on other peoples’ cases. Some of that involves being on my own. It’s not inconsistent to include myself as part of a problem that I’m trying to solve.
Granted, (especially white) left-wingers who fanatically believe that everyone! but! me! is! a! racist! tend to get pretty obnoxious.
I find it amusing that Shakespeare is considered so highbrow in comparisons like that. Shakespeare wrote for the masses, and the only reason he’s remembered as snooty now is that the language is archaic(and, of course, that the stories are good enough to be worth remembering at all). Romeo and Juliet may be known as the great romantic tragedy, but two minutes in there’s a couple soldiers cracking rape jokes, immediately followed by a big fight scene. And, of course, the hippies try to ruin that too.
The characters Shakespeare created are so realistic that they resonate with us even now, five hundred years later. Anyone of whatever political persuasion who can listen to the Saint Crispin’s day speech and not get chills is a eunuch.
Or works for The Atlantic.