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TV/Movies Megathread

Started by Eddie Teach, March 06, 2011, 09:29:27 AM

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Jacob

I guess it depends on how much you value historical verisimilitude in a musical about high school cliques and romance.

Barrister

Quote from: Jacob on March 16, 2023, 07:52:10 PMI guess it depends on how much you value historical verisimilitude in a musical about high school cliques and romance.

I mean if you are willing to make the remake about a cross-racial romance I think the storyline translates pretty easily...

(Note: I don't think I've ever watched Grease, but the movie is so pervasive in pop culture I believe I understand the basic plot points)
Posts here are my own private opinions.  I do not speak for my employer.

grumbler

Greaser culture was at least as much Latino as white, and greaser bands had black members.

I'm not seeing any major hypocrisy coming from having a more diverse cast than one would see in a typical 1950s California High School (California not having explicitly segregated schools).
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Sheilbh

Quote from: Barrister on March 16, 2023, 07:55:05 PMI mean if you are willing to make the remake about a cross-racial romance I think the storyline translates pretty easily...
Yeah. As I say I think it's light enough to bear it and I think you just have to colour blind in the entire thing - you're making an imagined 1950s. And that's implicit within Grease which is in any event a 1970s imagining of 1950s Americana - it is from the start profoundly unreal.

If you acknowledge race is a thing then I think you should proobably be making West Side Story and it is more dubious.
Let's bomb Russia!

HVC

#53089
Quote from: Jacob on March 16, 2023, 07:34:30 PM
Quote from: HVC on March 16, 2023, 04:36:34 PMA racially diverse grease sequel is coming out. That'll do well  :lmfao:

Is there anything about Grease that requires it not being racially diverse?

In a similar theme to GF reasoning I think someone who'd want to watch this is of an older age and the diversity aspect wouldn't work for them.

*edit* plus it'll probably just suck in general :D
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Josquius

#53090
Grease is a musical. They randomly break out into song for no apparent reason. People not being racist isn't really going to ruin the 1950s immersion.

Quote from: Sheilbh on March 16, 2023, 05:39:26 PMNew film out tomorrow that's a romcom set in my neighbourhood in London :o Very exciting. Looks like it'll be good too.

(Separate thought: I feel like romcoms are due a comeback. Feel like there's not been a really good one for ages.)

Edit: Local to the extent that I've literally had birthday food at the restaurant in the trailer :lol:

Comedies have been dead for ages full stop. Which is a big shame.
Romcoms are a lesser form of this and similarly I wouldn't say they're as dead, just more straight to Netflix - there was the lindsey lohan one at Xmas which was popular.
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Eddie Teach

Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2023, 11:53:56 AMWillow has been cancelled after 1 season.
Good that I did not watch it.

link

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 16, 2023, 01:41:42 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2023, 11:53:56 AMWillow has been cancelled after 1 season.
Good that I did not watch it.

link

It was bad.  I kept hoping it would get better, but it kept getting worse. 

Yup.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Josephus

Quote from: HVC on March 16, 2023, 04:36:34 PMA racially diverse grease sequel is coming out. That'll do well  :lmfao:

LOL...Because that era in particular was so diverse.
Civis Romanus Sum

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

The Larch

If anything a "diverse" Grease will bring out to light how terribly whitewashed the original movie was. As grumbler said, minorities were very relevant in the youth cultures portrayed on it.

garbon

If I can't have my white fantasy it'll be terrible?
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Josephus

Quote from: The Larch on March 17, 2023, 06:11:22 AMIf anything a "diverse" Grease will bring out to light how terribly whitewashed the original movie was. As grumbler said, minorities were very relevant in the youth cultures portrayed on it.

I don't know. Would there have been many racially diverse people at Rydell High? My impression of 1950s USA was that it was very segragated, even in California--even not legally than de facto.
Civis Romanus Sum

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

The Minsky Moment

Wikipedia reports that during the 2011–2012 school year, 69% of Venice High students were Hispanic/Latino, with 12% white/European Americans, 10% African Americans and 8% Asian Americans.

As for how it was in the 50s, no idea.  However, the restrictive covenants that kept races apart in LA fell in 1948 and the 1950s were a period when there was significant movement of minorities into previously all-white areas.
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--Joan Robinson

Darth Wagtaros

The Fablemans was good. 

PDH!

crazy canuck

Quote from: Jacob on March 16, 2023, 07:52:10 PMI guess it depends on how much you value historical verisimilitude in a musical about high school cliques and romance.

If that was a concern, the original Grease should have bombed.

Sheilbh

Quote from: The Larch on March 17, 2023, 06:11:22 AMIf anything a "diverse" Grease will bring out to light how terribly whitewashed the original movie was. As grumbler said, minorities were very relevant in the youth cultures portrayed on it.
As I say I think it's fine if it's light and operates on the level of fantasy - which Grease does. It's a 1970s fantasy of the 50s. And a 2020s fantasy of the 50s will certainly be diverse.

But if you're setting something in most of 50s America that acknowledges race but is racially diverse, isn't the problem that in most settings (there will be exceptions) it's not true in a way that erases an evil? It's like a racially diverse film about the British empire where everyone just gets along.

It's why I think colour blind casting is fine as long as the subject of the film doesn't really engage with racial politics or reality. If it does then I think it's a problem. As I say I think Grease will be fine, I think the recent David Copperfield adaptation was also fine (it was great). I think it generally works more in the more theatrical films like musicals (but not West Side Story) or like David Copperfield that play up to the artificiality of film as there is more of a suspension of disbelief. Same, obviously, with fantasies, comic book films etc.
Let's bomb Russia!