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HarveyManFredSin's Replies
A Fish Called Wanda and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels are two of my all-time favourite comedy movies (and certainly the best comedies of 1988, although I've also got a lot of time for Scrooged and Beetlejuice). Maybe it's a sign of my age, but the mid to late 80s, and early 90s, was an era when smart, but accessible, comedies featuring the likes of Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, the Monty Python crew, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, John Candy, Rick Moranis and Dan Aykroyd were still being made. Comedies that appealed to a large audience and were built on fairly broad high-concepts, but traded in genuinely clever jokes, witty plots and sharply observed characterisations, rather than the gross-out trash, lazy improv from over-indulgent filmmakers (I'm looking at you Judd Apatow and Paul Feig), and poorly-aged pop-culture referencing 'comedy' that started to become the trend circa 2000 (and, tbf, the comedy scene in the late 70s and early 80s, save for a few Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy films, were pretty bad too, dominated as they were by misogynist 'sex comedies' like Porkys and Revenge of the Nerds etc).
But is that an example of 'white privilege' as many are claiming?
Does she? Where did you see that?
Also, she's British. It's doubtful she particularly aligns with any US political candidate or figurehead.
I'm not particularly keen on cancelling anyone either, unless they are a serious criminal who hasn't yet served time and/or an ongoing threat to others, particularly colleagues. That said, I could also understand why some Black and Jewish actors and crew members would feel uneasy about ever working with Gibson in view of his statements.
I am not personally judging Gibson for waving at Trump (as much as I despise the latter), but what I'm saying is that it hardly persuades his critics that he's a 'reformed character,' in view of everything Trump is aligned with.
I like a redemption and rehabilitation story as much as anyone else (except for rapists and child abusers, like Weinstein, Cosby and R Kelly), but has Gibson ever truly apologised for his various anti-Semitic and racist rants? If I'd been caught saying such bigoted things, I'd be repeating 'Mea Culpa' for the rest of my life, but any time a person raises it during an interview, Gibson seems to get testy and irritable, as if he didn't do anything wrong, which is why I struggle to believe he's sufficiently changed and recognised the offence his words understandably caused. Waving in an enthusiastic manner to Trump, recently, certainly doesn't suggest that Gibson has made much significant effort to assauge his critics' doubts.
I also suspect that a lot of his champions are simply fellow anti-Semites and racists. They may have been fans of Gibson beforehand, but I doubt they'd simp so hard for a liberal/progressive actor.
To double-down on the 'victimhood'.
Monroe belonged to the most privileged of ethnicities/races (i.e. she was a white woman of Scots-English ancestry). Such privilege doesn't suit the purposes of the hack filmmakers behind this pity parade. So, they decided to cast a 'WOC'.
Of course, it's ludicrous to describe Ana de Armas as a 'WOC', but that's how she's perceived by the media elite. After all, in Knives Out, she is portrayed as the 'poor, unfortunate ethnic minority' in contrast to the rich white people she works for (at least one of whom is played by, Jamie Lee Curtis, a member of an *actually* oppressed minority), although interestingly enough, her mother and sister in the film, who are signposted as 'less virtuous' than her, are actually darker-skinned Latinas than the borderline WASPy-looking de Armas.
Since I'm half-Portuguese, I guess by Hollywood standards, my mother and I must be POC, if the entirely Spanish de Armas is a WOC (and arguably, we're *more* oppressed than de Armas, since *her* people, the Spanish, tried to colonise *my* people, the Portuguese).
Yes, The Penguin was THE victim of the entire film. Anyone who doesn't get this, doesn't get Tim Burton, and they certainly don't get this film.
His life was horrific. This unfortunate deformed and disabled individual was 'greeted' with horrified screams as soon as he entered the world, he was kept in a cage as a baby, he was thrown into a stream as an infant (with his parents intending that he died), he was raised underground in the sewers on and off for 33 years, and in-between that time he was exhibited as a circus 'freak' to be mocked and derided.
The reason you all hate him is because he's ugly, and also because, whilst we've mostly all started to catch-up when it comes to systemic sexism, racism and homophobia, it's still socially and culturally 'acceptable' to hate on the disabled (and the fact he's a straight white man, means he doesn't tick any of the big three boxes when it comes to oppression, even though, as I say, his life was FAR worse than most human-beings, regardless of sex, gender, race or sexuality).
Also, Josh and The Ice Princess, two 'normal', 'good-looking' people, weren't as innocent as you say, and The Penguin only wanted to kidnap the spoiled rich first-born children, so they would suffer a similar fate to the one marked for him.
So, yes, of course we are meant to feel bad for him. What an absurd question to ask.
Yes, Otter, may I confirm, as a white straight man, that we do indeed have a hive mind, and are thus ALL entirely responsible for every evil committed by any individual man. By contrast, the individual women who have attacked me, bullied me, threatened me, assaulted me (sexually and physically), and set their boyfriends to attack me, are NOT remotely representative of ALL women, and moreover, I'm sure, as a man, I have only myself to blame for their actions. Correct?
Of course, I am being entirely sincere. Anything else would be a 'misogynist' act of 'mansplaining', and a demonstration of my 'male privilege', since anyone who appears to reasonably and rationally suggest 'NotAllMen' is a terrible human-being, and clearly as bad as any rapist, domestic abuser, child molester and pimp.