Judging dead people
It's so easy. A fucking moron can do it.
sharethen there wouldn't be any history books.
shareAh, yes, because that's all history books do...🙄
share
MovieChat Forums > John Wayne Discussion > Judging dead people
Normally pointless, but the fact is that there are still idiots who praise Wayne and who hold his bigoted, non-serving-in-WWII ass up as a model of masculinity. On occasion, it is necessary to counter their foolery.
shareYou are a great sponge. Just what the corporate elite want. You know nothing. You question nothing you're told. March on, robot!
shareI see no problem with "judging dead people" provided historical context is taken into account.
Thing is, context doesn't help Wayne here. He said things in his infamous 1971 Playboy interview that were considered foolish and offensive by the mainstream standards of that day, and the interviewer kept pushing back against his claims.
You could argue Wayne was an old man stuck in the past, but even then he wasn't incredibly old (being 64 at the time) and he clearly had the means to acquire literature and talk to people who could contradict any prejudices he'd have grown up with. Instead he appears to have doubled-down.
That being said, there's been no shortage of actors with bad politics and/or bad personal lives, and I have no difficulty separating the art from the artist when it comes to Wayne (especially considering so many of his characters' views on race would make him look almost liberal by comparison.) But then that's just me.