"All In The Family" is largely considered one greatest shows in television history. It was also controversial during its time, and probably would be if it aired today as well. The lead character is a "lovable bigot," pontificates about "wops, spics, coons, and micks" for half an hour, with the show satirizing & finding humor in some of society's most controversial subjects & serious issues. One of the most remembered episodes of the show's run was the attempted rape of Edith, which the writers somehow interspersed with jokes.
Some while back, I remember seeing an interview with Mel Brooks where he talked about a person coming up to him & asking why he would make jokes about Nazis? And Brooks' response was that he thought humor was more effective than vitriol in destroying the Nazis & what they stood for in making it all "laughable." Just like with the satire of Archie's world view in "All In The Family," if you actually say out loud the more ridiculous view points of life, how can you not laugh at it?
On the other hand, there are some people who argue that "serious business is serious" & shouldn't be made a mockery of with jokes, and will dismiss any arguments about satire. So, for the question of the night, is there any film, TV show, song, artist, etc. that you like in spite of whatever controversy might surround it?
Not all controversies are created equally, and the line where something becomes offensive is different for everyone. Can you watch and admire a Roman Polanski film, and divorce it from the man & what he's accused of having done? Is 'On the Waterfront' still a great film, even if you add in that it was Elia Kazan's way of rationalizing "naming names" to the HUAC Committee? Usually every other week there's somebody on one side of the "Culture War" that's offended by something, either those on the right screaming some variation of "won't someone think of the children?," or some on the left who feel a film, TV show, song, group, etc. has crossed over a line.
For example, Hip Hop is a genre of music with some great talent that's had a huge cultural impact over the past 30 years and sold billions. It's also a genre that been accused of rampant homophobia & misogyny. So for some people, they can push the lyrics that bothers them to the back of their head, or rationalize the lyrics in some way & recognize the talent involved, while for others it crosses the line & invalidates whatever talent that might be there. Most critics don't dispute Eminem's talent. However, he's still asked to explain lyrics that's criticized as being homophobic.
The impetus for this diary comes from a piece over at the A.V. Club that spurred a pretty interesting discussion and centers around the question of when does entertainment trump any possible "moral" qualms one might have?
My favorite movie of all time is Manhattan, in which Woody Allen has a comfortable (if somewhat smirking) relationship with an 18-year-old Muriel Hemingway. Now, here’s the problem: it’s not that I am able to overlook my serious qualms when I watch the movie, but that I literally stop caring. Have you had a similar experience of entertainment so completely trumping morality?
The staff & readers had responses like this:
"I have this experience pretty much every time I watch a rousing action film in which a guy (and it’s almost always a guy) kills his way through a bunch of underdeveloped, faceless baddies in order to get to one or two specific face-and-name-having baddies, and kill them as well. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal against the death penalty; for the most part, I don’t think it’s up to individual human judgment (much less our flawed legal system) to decide whether someone has become irredeemable and worthless and is ready to be discarded from the planet. And yet I get the same thrill as any other action fan when the hero finally manages to bump off the villain and end the threat. Real life is complicated, people are nuanced, and choices are difficult; it’s cathartic to see a simple, black-and-white situation resolved in a simple, black-and-white way."
"If punk rock has such a thing as a bogeyman, it’s Ian Stuart Donaldson of the neo-Nazi skinhead band Skrewdriver. But in spite of the infamy the band gained in the ’80s with white-power rallying cries like the chillingly titled (yet catchy!) Hail The New Dawn, Donaldson’s original ’70s lineup of the band was pretty much apolitical—that is, other than espousing the type of anti-religious, vaguely pro-working-class angst that was rampant in the original British punk era. Skrewdriver’s 1977 album, All Skrewed Up, is a batch of typical—though especially aggressive—proto-Oi! street-punk songs in the vein of the rest of Chiswick Records’ output at the time. Simply put, the shit is awesome. Still, I’ve always felt a little creeped out having Skrewdriver records of any era in my collection. Then again, I’ve also bought plenty of music over the years featuring the vocals of the equally reviled (and equally deceased) El Duce of so-called “rape-rock” inventor The Mentors, and the equal-opportunity offender GG Allin. What does this say about me, a far-left liberal who only grows more intolerant of even the mildest racism or misogyny the older I get? Maybe it’s a strictly academic awe. Or maybe there’s still a puerile little part of me that gets a cheap kick out of sick shit."
So... Do you have any guilty pleasures?