I may be reading too much into this, or I may be factually wrong, but as far as I can remember Richard Carlson's character - Reed - was all for staying and studying the creature when it was attacking and killing natives, and decided they should leave only when a white person was attacked.
shareYes! you are reading to much in to it.It,s a monster movie,and a great one at that,to be honest I dont even remember this being said,are you quoting dialogue from the movie?
shareNo, it is just my recollection. As far as I can remember Reed only changed his mind when one of his colleagues was attacked. Not racism perhaps, but a certain disregard for the natives.
shareIt's a film! what is the point your making?He was playing a part,anyway I was more concerned what the creature was doing!!
shareWhat is YOUR point? That a film cannot be racist? Racism in art is ubiquitous and insidious, as evidenced by the fact that you deny it can even be there. Open your eyes--you may see more than you thought you could. And I hope we can agree that racism, wherever it is found, is an evil. (This is not a comment on this particular movie, only on your generalizations.)
shareI am getting REALLY sick of the "racist" card getting pulled out every 5 seconds. IT'S ONLY A MOVIE! Don't you have anything more important to think about?
shareRacism: If it's in a movie, it doesn't count.
shareI'm getting REALLY sick of people who can't have a sensible discussion without resorting to playground level tantrum. It's not playing the race card to point out a fact.
share[deleted]
"Racism in art is ubiquitous and insidious,"
No, racism is simply part of the human condition. Everyone, including yourself has had racist thoughts at some point in time. So get off your high horse.
Racism happens, so it's okay.
Killing other people happens, too. Lots of otherwise healthy people even fantasize about doing it, albeit with no intention, hope, or desire on carrying it out. Ought we just sit by an accept murder when it happens instead of trying to better ourselves? Isn't pointing out a problematic aspect of the human condition in an attempt to fix it the point of plenty of science fiction horror films?
OMG! Some people look for racism in anything! The natives lived there for one thing- the research team was there only to study and hopefully capture it. The creature may have killed dozens of natives up to that point. But when they (the researchers) realized how over matched they were (not equipped with the proper weapons or technology) most of them felt they should come back in a later expedition, better suited to capture the creature. Plus they had a woman with them which always makes the men more reluctant to stay behind and fight it.
The racism crap is tiring. I had a gay friend who was like this about the gay issue. He could find something anti gay in commercials, print ads, anything and everything. It just never stopped with him. I remember his father finally b!tched him out about it cause he was do sick of him sling everything a gay issue, and the martyr crap was beat.
I finally gave up hanging out with him because once he came out, that's all anyone ever heard about.
Paraphrasing: my friend came out to me and then tried talking to me about a lifetime's worth of crap he had piled up inside plus the new crap being added on daily. I'm a *beep* friend so instead of being there for him I walked away.
I'm not gay, I'm also white and a male, but while there can be legitimate debated points of contention about media portrayals of a specific group it's not really the position of anyone who isn't part of that group to be able to say whether or not someone of that group can or should take offense to a particular item or whether that item is racist, homophobic, etc.
I mean it can be argued based on actual evidence, but just saying "shut up, no it's not, it's just a movie, I don't want to hear you whine" comes off as a bit bitchy and whiney in itself.
Nice, you have no clue to our friendship other than a paragraph I wrote. Do I need to fill in all the gaps? Every time I dated someone.....FEMALE, because I'm straight, this ex friend of mine would rip them apart. He hated women, and he was jealous that I would even bother dating these creatures, or as he referred to them....COWS.
I could also say he was funny, a great guy, and had a big heart, but he intentionally tried to start fights between me and my girlfriends. It wouldn't have been so bad if he made random comments in jest, but he was malicious. At some point, you have to realize when someone is no longer being a friend and adding value to your life.
He also pressured his boyfriends to come out to their families when they weren't comfortable with it. What they felt didn't matter to him. His point was, if you love me, you'd do it. That's b.s. and up to each poison to do what's in their best interest, and if he really loved them, he wouldn't have pressured them.
I wasn't the 5h!t friend, he ended up being that way, to everyone including his family.
Even if the scientist had observed that the Creature was developing a new taste for white men as a special adaptation, wouldn't that have sent shivers up your spine if you were in his place? (LMAO!) He was a white fella -- not racism, just self-preservation at its most basic. Of course, the natives didn't have the economic wherewithal to escape the habitat of the Creature whereas the white people did, so you could argue that was racist... (lol)
shareI love your combination of intellectual analysis and wit.
shareIf you recall they thought a Cat of some type killed the men. They did not know about the creature yet.
shareGive me a break. Maybe the Creature was a bigot too since he only attacked human beings.
shareWhen the creature starts killing his colleagues, he obviously realizes the creature will eventually get to him. Why would he want to keep studying when his life is on the line?
I get what you are saying, but it's more a matter of life and death for him when his own is in danger.
He doesn't care for natives, Reed was a nazi
shareThe natives were equivalent to the "red shirts" on "Star Trek."
http://www.bumscorner.com
http://www.myspace.com/porfle
Reed was a Nazi ? He was an FBI agent posing as a communist !
I Led Three Lives
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045397/combined
Nazis were socialist, not communist. Educate yourself.
shareEducate your self. Nazi was literally National Socialist, nationalist and fascist and hard right wing -- the opposite of socialists, left wing internationalists whom the Nazis sent to concentration camps as a top priority.
shareThank you! I get so tired of hearing self-appointed experts mistaking their name-calling for inelligent discussion or commentary when they can't even get the terminology correct. Extremes on the right or the left are undesirable. Unfortunately, too many of our fellow countrymen mistake their opinions for fact.
share"Is Reed a racist?"
Who Cares?
what if Reed had been black? would this even have come up? this pc bullcrap is so boring!
shareWhat if Reed was a creature and the Creature was a human, perhaps even played by Richard Carlson? And the rest of the cast were all midgets--midget Shriners in little go-carts?
http://www.bumscorner.com
http://www.myspace.com/porfle
Personally, I don't think he was. I think the way it happened was that he heard rumors that natives were being attacked, but never actually saw it. Thought maybe it was a tiger, or something they dealt with on a day to day basis (I don't remember exactly, I haven't seen this film in a while, need to watch it again) and whenever he went and his own people got attacked, and he saw it was because of some unknown creature, he wanted to get them away from the danger.
shareWhat a load of bunk.
Its stated quite implicitly that they thought a JAGUAR had killed the natives, and thats why they stayed. They still didnt know the creature existed except for a fossil.
Then later, they realized that the creature is alive and is whats stalking them, thats when they decided to leave.
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I don't think Reed himself was depicted as racist, but I do think the film portrayed the natives and the ship captain as less level-headed and intelligent than the rest of the boat's occupants. At one point, after his brother is dragged into the water by the creature, a deck hand is inconsolable, which results in the captain forcing him to come to his senses by slapping him the face. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the doctors on board treat death with a certain distance and apathy (personally, I would have left right after finding those two guys died in the tent).
Creature from the Black Lagoon is certainly not the worst example of 50's cinema racism, but it is a product of its time and, unfortunately, we still find this kind of passive/subtle stereotyping in movies released today.
Thanks for a good laugh on a Friday night. One would almost believe you were being serious!!
shareIt's a fact that people in Latin America rely a lot more on religion/superstition than Aristotelian logic in making decisions -- just as fundamentalist Christians in North America will make decisions less rational than your average Joe. Are the filmmakers supposed to deny this?
shareGood point!
shareyou're reading WAY too much into this it's just a movie...not everything is racist stop looking for it where it isn't
shareReed is an idiot. His retarded idea of not leaving after they captured the creature because he wanted to photograph some plants and rocks was responsible for the professor disfiguration and, later, the death of Mark. If they had heard Mark when he said that they should leave when the monster was first captured, none of that would've happened. No one did anything to stop Reed's dumb decision, except Mark that was right all the way.
Your mother cook socks in hell!
But of course he´s racist; isn´t everybody? Nice and racist.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Explorers. so yes.
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