Should I feel guilty for liking and owning crocodile Dundee?

Here is one attack on it I saw:

Search google for: crocodile-dundee-was-sexist-racist-and-homophobic-lets-not-bring-that-back

Not sure what’s wrong with lethal weapon unless you’re a South African apartheid supporter. Shame about lethal weapon 4 though. Fun fact: die hard with a vengeance screenplay was originally intended to be lethal weapon 4.

I haven't yet seen LW in its entirety myself, but I know Tom Breihan mentioned that Al Leong gets called a certain anti-Asian slur at one point in it (plus the person saying that slur Mel Gibson, so I can certainly understand why someone would have issue with the film for that moment).

Some of the jokes have been considered offensive.

But the fact that a character says that shouldn't mean the movie is objectionable. That character may have just been an *******. Or an anachronism.

Extrajudicial behavior. Cops beating the **** out of suspects and acting like they’re above the law.

It’s not super problematic, but it does flirt with the line quite a bit.

i think i only seen 2 of dundee movies

Like what you like, Lord knows I like things most people don't like and I don't like things many people like. Why feel guilty? Just don't put too much merit on other people's opinions and philosophies. Develop and adhere to your own.

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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage

My two favorite standup specials are Delirious and Bill Cosby: Himself. On the scale of things, I don’t think CD is that problematic.

Thinking about it the only thing that bothers me watching lethal weapon is the recording of Gibson berating his wife which unfortunately I can’t unhear. Same with amber heard now, and any movie that starts with Weinstein in the opening credits will leave me wondering what the female leads had to do for the role. Ignorance is bliss.

No, you shouldn't feel guilty. Just enjoy the movie and ignore the whiners.

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How am I supposed to find someone willing to go into that musty old claptrap?

I can understand trying not to be a passive viewer and accepting the supposed problematic material like some kind of inert sponge. Maybe even reflect on it, and how we've since bettered ourselves as a society if you feel there is some reason you should feel guilt about it. But otherwise, it's no one's business but your own what you like. Anyone who says otherwise is a turd.

Doesn't this apply to almost all cop movies and TV shows?

Been a while since I've seen it and don't remember the incident Stu cites, but the character is presented as pretty flawed from the get go. He's not just some cool guy we're supposed to agree with all the time about everything.

I get that, and I understand that injecting racist language into a character, especially a flawed one, can make them feel more "real" (since of course, racist people exist in the real world, and they can be lurking anywhere without you having a clue), but at the same time, it's still such a tricky thing to inject into your film since it's naturally such a sensitive subject, and doing so can still hurt one's appreciation of the film in question, especially if the film isn't primarily about racism, and the character being racist is an incidental/non-essential aspect. It's why I tend to be skeptical of the racism in Tarantino's films, even when it's relatively "appropriate" to the period, location, or story like in Django Unchained, since QT already had a bad track record of making multiple characters unnecessarily racist in his films, even when that came off as anachronistic (such as in the ones that were set in Los Angeles in the 1990's), which is why a lot of that feels like another desperate attempt be "edgy" on his part, despite the overall quality of the films around those characters.

I understand bringing up problems with old films. It should open up discussion. Broaden peoples horizons. It's the canceling that I don't get. Then again the right cancelled people back in the fifties. It was called black balling.

The fact that it's become such a tricky thing is the problem though. While it's great this 'trickiness' has maybe made us aware of the importance of understanding how the words (or images, or behaviors) that are depicted in film can unknowingly shape how we view the world, this trickiness I feel has considerably frozen artists willingness to engage with sensitive subject matter, or paint in shades of grey, or confront the audience with difficult ideas to parse. In short, paved the way for a lot of ****ty and pointless art, that strives for meaning, but has absolutely nothing to add to the conversation.

I'm all for having a good discussion, once the film is over, and talking about what one thinks is harmful or helpful about a particular film, but the reflex to cast these wide nets to trap anything that doesn't conform to exact moral expectation has been mostly a gigantic failure, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's been a failure on part of those that create art, and a failure on the part of those who want to make a good point about why these are issues we need to be talking about. It's gotten to the point they've completely diluted all of the many good points that have been put out there.

The whole effort to be more empathetic and inclusive in films clearly began as a legitimately important critical discussion of how we erred in the past, and how we can course correct in the future, but over the last few years has just turned into some dubious game where we are Where's Waldo-ing anything that could be considered objectionable, to the point we're now pulling everything out of context and purpose in order to find them. It's not a good look and its a bankrupt strategy, at least considering how godawful the quality of discussion has become about these matters these last few years. I've never read more terrible takes on why particular films are problematic, and I have also never read more terrible takes from those who think everything is a over-reaction on the road to cancel culture. Nuanced (and, frankly, properly articulated) opinions are frequently cut out of the discussion, leaving all the bone heads to shout at eachother, and keep making everything worse by amplifying all of their worst tendencies.

Because of this we've never been more in need of these less emotionally fire-bombed opinions. But due to the ugly nature of discourse these last few years, we're unlikely get them. Why would anyone who has an opinion that actually takes some time to parse even bother nowadays? Either they'll be drowned out by all the deafening hyperbole coming from both sides, or they will be branded as an apologist for some kind of horrible behavior they clearly don't support, which people would know if the general masses actually bothered to read and not just react these days.

So, while yeah, I understand if someone has a visceral reaction to a word in Lethal Weapon that is charged with racial harm. It's hard not to get that, at least as much as I can. No doubt, there's good reason why someone who has been a target of these words should never want to hear them again. And I'm not arguing they should want to. If they'd prefer to avoid any film that uses them, more power to them. But in regards to creating an actual discussion about something like the 'racist Lethal Weapon', simply because someone might have a bad reaction to a word one character says, what do we get out of this? We already know the word is bad, so I guess that means that movies that have these words are equally bad? And they should be judged solely on the appearance of that word, even if its entirely removed from the context and intent of how it was meant to be used in the film? Am I allowed to call this out as garbage nonsense and not look like an ******* who supports racial epithets? In some quarters, probably not.

Basically, does every emotional reaction someone has towards a film deserve equal attention? There is no end of things we might not like to see or hear, but does that mean they shouldn't be shown? Even for totally novel purposes inessential to the film at hand. My family has been absolutely levelled by alcoholism and addiction, but does this mean I should be angry at films that depict characters harmlessly enjoying a beer? Because don't they know where this might lead? Shouldn't they show the tragic results, because I know what those tragic results are, and they aren't being articulated in any of those joyful slurps I'm seeing up on screen. I'd use the tired and boring slippery slope argument, but if we are talking about a racist Lethal Weapon (at least it being racist because of the singular instance used above) we're already tumbling down it.

In short, there is a difference between an emotion and an argument. And while people should be able to talk about their emotions all they like, they should maybe slow it down when they think their emotion should lecture others for how they interact with or create their art. Because it's poisonous, even if it seems (and sometimes is) so well intentioned.

I blame social media for the trend of canceling or whatever the kids call it these days. Social media and group think is like a permanent immersion in jr high school mentality. I didn't follow the crowd back in school and I sure don't now. Think for yourself peeps, don't let Twitter decide which movies you should or shouldn't watch. Besides if we don't remember the past how can we ever learn from it?

There's a quote about the matter I like a lot. It's by a British conservative who often goes by the name Theodore Dalrymple. I don't know much about him, but I just stumbled on this quote somewhere and think it's very good:

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Hey dude, for all you know it's part of a scene where the movie examines Gibson's deep seated prejudices towards Asian Americans.


You haven't seen the movie so you can't know if I'm lying.*