Politically correcting our favorite movies

[monkeygirl]

Romeo and Juliet were co-dependent teens

[Guest Robin]

I don't think I'm qualified to diagnose Romeo and Juliet, but let's examine them for a moment before we the modern, experienced and wise ones all agree to condemn them as young, stupid and or clinically broken.

 

Romeo and Juliet are two youths who are in love, what they have is not infatuation it is love, that is the intent of the entire story. The world they breathe is violent and hateful, they attempt to play peacemaker but to no success. Romeo and Juliet with the help of a peaceful Friar create a plan to force the hatefulness of their surroundings to mend. There is hope for a future, but then it all goes wrong. Separated from each other, Romeo banished, their families at war, Juliet and the Friar concoct a plan for reconciliation which hinges on a messenger reaching Romeo. The messenger fails in his duty, unbeknownst to Juliet and initially to the Friar as well. One moment hope, the next complete utter despair at the appearance of the total loss of love. This moment tragically repeats for both.

 

Romeo and Juliet are noble hearted people that want peace, love and the ability to just live their life as they so choose. All the hope in the world is ripped from them, all they see is a world of hate and death. They are people at the best moments of which people can be and people at the worst moment a person can reach.

[Poe Dameron]

Romeo and Juliet are two youths who are in love, what they have is not infatuation it is love, that is the intent of the entire story.

 

I think you give Romeo too much credit. I've always found him to be a rather immature character that let his passions get the best of him. For one, he was in love with Rosaline, Juliet's cousin, at the beginning of the play and despondent that she rejected him. He even went to the ball to see her. Then he immediately dropped her from his mind (I have forgot that name, and that name's woe) as soon as he saw Juliet. That tells me that Romeo's love is a lot closer to infatuation than we like to think.

 

He lets his temper get the best of him and kills Tybalt. He wishes for execution instead of banishment for his crime and has little thought for the man he killed or even the slain friend who he committed murder for in revenge. He tempts fate the morning after his wedding night with Juliet, forcing Juliet to send him away. And he kills Paris for no reason considering he was just about to commit suicide. Sure, his relationship with Juliet appears to give him some maturity, he no longer cares about the feud for one. But that could also be interpreted as yet another example of his letting his passions sway his feelings.

 

Juliet's a lot better. She spends much of her time thinking things through. Her monologue on the balcony, for example thinking on whether she should pursue this thing she has with her enemy (What's in a name?), while Romeo has already made up his mind and is currently risking his life to see her. She the one of the two that expresses some reserve as Romeo gushes (O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon), when confronted with the death of her cousin and the revelation that Romeo is the one that did it, she properly mourned her cousin, thought through what it meant for how she would regard her newly minted husband (My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain; And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband). I find her to be the truly mature one despite being the younger and less experienced of the two. Romeo's path is relatively easy in that he follows his heart. Juliet is the one questioning, left to deal with the mess, and tries to make her own way despite being a young girl knowing only her father's sway. Choosing Romeo was no easy decision for her, it took a measure of courage as compared to Romeo's impetuousness. Fate certainly dealt her the worse hand, while Romeo's fall is due more to his own shortcomings. She fell in love the wrong guy and waking up to see him dead, she made her first real impetuous decision and took her own life.

 

I would also say that the plan to unite the family's through their marriage was Friar Laurence's manipulation, not the young lovers'.

[Guest Robin]

Romeo wasn't in love with Roseline, he was infatuated with her. Roseline and Paris as love interests for Romeo and Juliet serve to show the contrast between the different emotions for those people and then what Romeo and Juliet share. Romeo travels thru infatuation to discover actual love, Juliet is faced with an arranged relationship, with duty over actual love.

 

I agree that Romeo is impulsive and Juliet headstrong. These traits spur the narrative along.

 

As for peace via marriage, I agree the Friar pushed that concept. An aside here is I am certain the Friar is the audience representive, doing what he can to ensure what the audience is so hoping for, but like us watching he is left as helpless.

 

That said, the lovers see the union as a strong way to force acceptance for their love, believing thanks to the Friar that the two families' new united duty will overcome the hatred between them. This elevates the romance to heroism and is their attempt to create agency over their fate.

[Mara Jade Skywalker]

West Side Story is better than Romeo and Juliet anyway.

[Jacen123]

I feel petty, oh so petty...

[Lord Darth Hunter]

In Weird Science, does Lisa have any rights? She was created from a Barbie doll and has the ability to change people's clothes, conjure up expensive cars and mutants on motorcycles, and freeze people or turn them into piles of crap. So she's not really human. She freely tells the two douchebag antagonists she "belongs to Gary and Wyatt."

[Guest Robin]

If I recall right that's answered by the end of the film when Lisa goes off on her own.

[Lord Darth Hunter]

All I remember is her saying it "hurt" that Gary and Wyatt now have girlfriends and that she had to go. She then disappears in a mist before reappearing as a gym teacher at another school.

[Darth Wicket]

I don't think this is really a PC issue, but I couldn't imagine this scene from Parenthood being in a movie today:

 

[Tex]

Yeah 911 changed all of that. Prior to you could goof on mass shootings.

 

Killing a few thousand New Yorkers with an airplane, however, totally changes the game.

[Guest Robin]

We still blow up buildings and cities in popcorn films and others, whether robots or superheroes or ninja turtles comedic lines are dropped during what would be horrendous moments for citizens in those worlds.

 

We have films like Four Lions which satires terrorism to critical acclaim and films like InAPPropriate which both tank and are heavily criticized.

[Tex]

And then they do a Superman movie where he and Zod tear up the city and people lose there ****ing minds over it.

[Guest Robin]

You're confusing the reasons why people ranted about MoS.

[Tex]

Actually no. After complaining about Supes and Zod destroying the city there was still plenty of butthurt to cry about Supes killing Zod.

[Darth Wicket]

Yeah 911 changed all of that. Prior to you could goof on mass shootings.

 

Killing a few thousand New Yorkers with an airplane, however, totally changes the game.

Not just 911, but also a lot of shootings which have occurred on school campuses.

[Driver]

I didn't experience 9/11 first hand but I get uncomfortable with the level of city-destructo-porn in a lot of Superhero movies. Mostly because if you look back at movies like ID4 (for example) the way buildings used to be portrayed blowing up is totally different. While effects getting better is part of it, the towers coming down is clearly a model of how to destroy a building for FX people to study.

 

That's icky.

[Tex]

Is it icky to blow up a Death Star, or is it so far removed from reality that you don't care about the thousands of people who died?

 

I only ask because we've been seeing mass destruction in movies for years, but after 9/11 people are more sensitive about it even though they know it's just a movie.

[Driver]

Yeah I see a difference between scifi structures and present-day buildings going kablooey. It's really just specifically skyscrapers.

[Tex]

I guess it's just a matter of personal preference, but to me a movie is a movie. When Clerks made the same point I made above I laughed because I had never once thought about the innocent people who died that day, even though "they knew what they were getting into."

 

Not that i love the movie, but I still like what they did with MoS. As much as I loved Superman II, the actual fighting was horrible. If you have two godlike figures dukeing it out in a big city you're gonna have a ton of collateral damage.

 

And yeah Supes was right to snap his neck. Better to do that than to de power the guy and let him freeze to death in snow.

[Guest Robin]

Agree to disagree, Tex. I feel bringing MoS into a PC discussion like this is curious at best. The fan rants about MoS were about Superman not doing enough to help Metropolis not because the audience was terrified with 9/11 flashbacks. The fan rants about Zod's death were also because Superman was written into a corner to take that killing step, not because of some PC blacklash against a death penalty. The ranting, the disgust was all about the characterization of Superman.

 

Afterthought: Now a solid PC point with Superman is with Superman Returns where they intentionally did not say, "Truth, Justice and the American Way." Instead they ended with "all that stuff", there was tremendous outcry over that because it was felt it was a statement regarding present day America and it's failings both home and abroad.

[Tex]

I never thought about it before but Superman should be the poster boy for political correctness, yet we all shit on him anyway. The Nolan Batman trilogy got to all of us, but there was just no way to sell Supes.

 

I guess he's too perfect. It reminds me of the Woner Woman controversy, where gals felt fat shamed by Gal Gadot eating a protein bar. I've yet to see it, but I find it funny that women are either empowered or offended depending on their level of self esteem.

[Lord Darth Hunter]

I saw Nationals Lampoon's European Vacation yesterday during the AMC vacation marathon. Towards the end on their flight back to the States, Clark confuses the cockpit door for the bathroom door. He forcefully busts through it and gets tangled up with the pilot, who makes choking sounds and loses control of the plane as a result. The plane nose dives and hits the Statue of Liberty. It's supposed to be comedic, as the Statue's arm bends down and the credits start rolling. But in our post 9-11 world, the image of a plane diving down and hitting a NYC landmark doesn't play well anymore.

[Lord Darth Hunter]

I remembered this thread recently when the subject of Disney changing the name of Boba Fett's ship from Slave I to Firespray hit the net and people had a field day.  It also got me thinking that in the 4 years that have passed since this thread started many more films/TV shows have come under fire and added to the "that film/show is no longer appropriate" list. 

[Zathras]

IS Slave I really the canonical name, anyway? It is never named in dialogue in any of the movies. Firespray is the EU name for the model of the ship.  I get that it is lame people are that touchy these days over the name Slave I, but technically, it was never named in any of the movies.  TCW, maybe, and I am sure in video games and novels, but not in the movies. Really, it was just a press release for toy marketing, so to me I ignore such things.