I have a love-hate relationship with HBO personality and fellow progressive Bill Maher. While I tend to agree with his viewpoints approximately 80% of the time, my opinions run in stark contrast to his the other 20%. Even when I do agree with him on a subject, there's a good chance he'll go so overboard with a rant, it'll make me cringe as a result. Having said all that, I definitely agree with what he said regarding Hollywood's evolution of wokeness in Friday's episode of Real Time.
Apparently, Molly Ringwald of the John Hughes teen classic, Breakfast Club, has recently said, in hindsight, she finds that film and others like it to be troubling in the age of the #MeToo movement. Maher responded by saying, "Stop being surprised every time you watch an old movie or TV show and find some of the ideas in it are - old."
He added, "It's nuts to blame someone for not being 'woke' 30 years before 'woke' became a thing. I remember the 80's. Being 'woke' means you had too much cocaine. ... More recently, 20 years ago, the jokes on Friends were 'just funny.' These days, however, 'some millennials - some! I applaud the sane ones - find the jokes sexist, transphobic and fat-shaming.'"
Maher then said this:
"You can't enjoy music, movies or TV from 'back when' for any length of time without seeing something we just don't do any more. But aren't we adult enough to separate what we like about an old movie from what we don't?' We can watch Big as a movie about a kid who becomes an adult, not as a movie 'about a grown woman who f*cks a 12 year old. ... The most beloved and wholesome act in history was The Beatles but even they wrote 'She was just 17, you know what I mean,' which today sounds a little Roy Moore-ish."
He closed with these historical tidbits:
"- In the early 1900's, heroin was a children's cough medicine.
- In the 50's, amphetamines were sold to housewives as diet pills.
- We used to drive without seat belts.
- And drink while we were pregnant.
- And litter indiscriminately - just throw sh*t out the window!
- We smoked on airplanes. We would board an enclosed aluminum tube, with old people and children and asthmatics, and light up a Chesterfield.
- We had pageants where we paraded women in swimsuits and judged them on their appearance. Oh wait - we still do that."
While I may strongly disagree with Maher on a number of points, he's right here. Look, we all make mistakes, both individually and collectively. What's of grave importance isn't the initial mistake, but learning from it and evolving. This can only happen if one admits the mistake(s). How can one learn from a mistake if he or she denies it ever existed? That same logic rings true here. I'll be the first to admit there are some points in our history which embarrass the hell out of me and I wish had never taken place. However, I and others can't just pretend like these events never took place. If we do that, we'll make ourselves more susceptible to repeating these atrocious mistakes. It's perfectly understandable for the Molly Ringwalds of the world to look back at a piece of art from decades back and cringe due to their seemingly low level of "wokeness." However, instead of fixating on and feeling remorse for that previous "mistake" (if one wants to refer to it as such), it'd be highly more beneficial to appreciate the art for what it is, see it as a building block, and look at how much we've evolved since then. Evolution isn't possible if we don't see need for it.
http://deadline.com/2018/04/bill-maher-blasts-critics-of-un-woke-old-tv-shows-and-movies-real-time-1202363189/
Apparently, Molly Ringwald of the John Hughes teen classic, Breakfast Club, has recently said, in hindsight, she finds that film and others like it to be troubling in the age of the #MeToo movement. Maher responded by saying, "Stop being surprised every time you watch an old movie or TV show and find some of the ideas in it are - old."
He added, "It's nuts to blame someone for not being 'woke' 30 years before 'woke' became a thing. I remember the 80's. Being 'woke' means you had too much cocaine. ... More recently, 20 years ago, the jokes on Friends were 'just funny.' These days, however, 'some millennials - some! I applaud the sane ones - find the jokes sexist, transphobic and fat-shaming.'"
Maher then said this:
"You can't enjoy music, movies or TV from 'back when' for any length of time without seeing something we just don't do any more. But aren't we adult enough to separate what we like about an old movie from what we don't?' We can watch Big as a movie about a kid who becomes an adult, not as a movie 'about a grown woman who f*cks a 12 year old. ... The most beloved and wholesome act in history was The Beatles but even they wrote 'She was just 17, you know what I mean,' which today sounds a little Roy Moore-ish."
He closed with these historical tidbits:
"- In the early 1900's, heroin was a children's cough medicine.
- In the 50's, amphetamines were sold to housewives as diet pills.
- We used to drive without seat belts.
- And drink while we were pregnant.
- And litter indiscriminately - just throw sh*t out the window!
- We smoked on airplanes. We would board an enclosed aluminum tube, with old people and children and asthmatics, and light up a Chesterfield.
- We had pageants where we paraded women in swimsuits and judged them on their appearance. Oh wait - we still do that."
While I may strongly disagree with Maher on a number of points, he's right here. Look, we all make mistakes, both individually and collectively. What's of grave importance isn't the initial mistake, but learning from it and evolving. This can only happen if one admits the mistake(s). How can one learn from a mistake if he or she denies it ever existed? That same logic rings true here. I'll be the first to admit there are some points in our history which embarrass the hell out of me and I wish had never taken place. However, I and others can't just pretend like these events never took place. If we do that, we'll make ourselves more susceptible to repeating these atrocious mistakes. It's perfectly understandable for the Molly Ringwalds of the world to look back at a piece of art from decades back and cringe due to their seemingly low level of "wokeness." However, instead of fixating on and feeling remorse for that previous "mistake" (if one wants to refer to it as such), it'd be highly more beneficial to appreciate the art for what it is, see it as a building block, and look at how much we've evolved since then. Evolution isn't possible if we don't see need for it.
http://deadline.com/2018/04/bill-maher-blasts-critics-of-un-woke-old-tv-shows-and-movies-real-time-1202363189/
Comments
Post a Comment