Free the Slaves?
I understand there is a screenwriter, but dang you'd think Martin would refuse to say that line!
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MovieChat Forums > Airport (1970) Discussion > Free the Slaves?
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It was the best line of the movie!
Dean Martin probably ad-libbed the line.
People are way too touchy these days!
We in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few,
We Band of Brothers ~W.S
So what was the line and in what context was it used? I caught the movie earlier but missed a good chunk of the beginning. If it came later in the movie, I missed that part too.
shareWhen they clear the stuck airliner off runway 29 (the only one that can accommodate the damaged plane piloted by Dean Martin), this allows the jet to land safely at the fictitious Chicago airport called Lincoln. This news causes Martin to radio the airport, "Thank you, Lincoln, you've just freed the slaves again."
It's a throw-away line that really makes no sense, but it's harmless enough and people laugh at it without thinking about it.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. Now that I know where it is in the movie, I probably did hear the line but, having missed the first hour, I heard and saw a lot of things I didn't fully understand.
I was able to fill in most of the blanks, like the relationship between the pilot and the stewardess, but anything else that I found vague I assumed was in reference to something earlier in the movie I hadn't seen. Had I seen the entire movie, that line might have caused me to question its meaning too.
Well, making the passengers analogous to slaves is kind of a problem. Mostly it just doesn't apply to anything -- there's no real link or similarity. It's just an excuse to use an inapt line containing the word "Lincoln", one that sounds funny until you realize it really doesn't make any sense.
Of course, Airport is no different from any other movie -- if you miss half of it you're bound not to understand a lot of what you do see. There's nothing unusual in what you experienced.
Wow, I only just now, while reading your comments, got the whole Lincoln reference in regards to the 'freeing the slaves' comment. I was actually going to say maybe it was a Moses and Ramses reference but obviously not.
I think it was a bad joke done in poor taste but I don't think it was meant to offend or single out any group. Martin's character is, after all, referring to himself and everyone else on the plane as slaves.
I don't watch many movies from the seventies but in the ones I have seen people didn't seem as touchy about race issues as they are today - even though the political climate was what it was. The whole Political Correctness thing hadn't yet reared its ugly head making everyone super uptight over everything.
Obviously the movie wasn't a comedy but I did notice some attempts at levity. At that point in the movie they were probably hoping to start easing off the tension and wind things down a bit towards the end.
Yeah, the comment wasn't meant to be offensive, and I don't think it really was, just as you say probably in poor taste, and again, not really a valid analogy, even as a joke. Just a dumb throwaway line.
Airport did have a few light moments and efforts at humor but they were mostly pretty heavy-handed. The movie has lots of clichés, plot gaps and predictability but it's well-made and entertaining, and what's wrong with that? It's not as bad as many of the one-dimensional, shallow, brain-dead movies we see today.
"Political correctness" is a term I generally avoid since it's pretty much a matter of whose ox is being gored. There's always been some form of "p.c.", only they didn't call it that and the desire to be "correct" took different forms. That said, it's been stated, and I agree, that a TV show like All in the Family couldn't get on the air today. Funny how in supposedly less enlightened times a lot of things were filmed that couldn't find support today, even when their purpose was not to insult but to educate.
I agree, I enjoyed what I saw of the movie. I'm not one to easily take offense so I didn't even notice the comment at first. When you explained it, it didn't seem to me like it was an attempt at anything more than a pun on the name Lincoln.
In regards to Political Correctness, I use that phrase a lot. I see it as a big problem in today's society. It's not about being considerate of others, it's used to attack, label, and malign. It plays upon some of the worst traits of humans, the tendency to follow and to judge. Once something is deemed 'proper' people stop thinking and just react based on what they know is the 'right' way to respond. A single word can cause a riot; often not by the people who you'd think would take offense but by the ones who need to 'prove' they don't feel the same. It's a fear of being associated with the 'wrong' side.
Look at how people have been treated in social media for saying something rather benign. Lives and careers can be ruin in less than a day, all because they said the 'wrong' thing. How absurd! If that movie had been made today, Dean Martin would have had to come out and apologize or risk being boycotted. It's pretty crazy.
You're right; this kind of thing has always been around, but now there's a specific term for it and, because of social media, things are different. It has always caused much more harm than good but now it all happens much faster. Like you said, certain things won't make it on air today because so much will be made of it. Each time that happens, it is a lost opportunity; not only to educate but foster tolerance and acceptance.
Political Correctness, in my opinion, aims to make us all united in our way of thinking and being. That's wrong because when we do that, deny our differences, we also fail to appreciate those differences and value people for who they are; their uniqueness. And let's not kid ourselves, mean-spirited, hateful, bigoted, sexist, awful things are still being said, they're just now done in secret. In the dark, hate only grows. Expose it to the light and it shrivels. PC is used by the very people who, in public, say all the right things but in private it's one more attempt to control the masses.