Wokeness Killed My Favorite Movie

On the off chance you don't know what "wokeness" is, it's viewing the world through the lens of whatever is currently deemed politically correct. And being "woke" killed my appreciation for one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man starring John Wayne. It's a saccharine homage to Ireland in which Wayne plays an Irish-American boxer who killed a man in the ring and out of guilt, decides to return to his ancestral homeland and start over. The screenplay lards on the clichés so thick that it's a wonder that a real Irishman didn't lob a firebomb onto the set in protest. I realized those shortcomings the first time I saw the movie but gave it a pass because why let reality interfere with a good tale? If nothing else, what I most admire about the Irish is the way they let everyone mangle their heritage and customs, but buy them a pint and they shrug it off. The rest of us should live by their example. In The Quiet Man, Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne play their roles in a typical romance-movie template of cold-warm-cold-warmer-colder-hot-coldest-hotter-happily ever after. For me, the wokeness part comes in when after a spat, O'Hara locks the door of her bedroom. Wayne kicks it open, demonstrating that he will not allow anything to come between them. When he did that, I immediately thought of "Domestic violence. He's off to jail." The movie had plenty of other period tropes that are now painfully uncomfortable to watch.

A couple of TV shows that trigger wokeness are Cheers and Frasier. Both sit-coms depend on double entendres, sexual innuendo, and outright come-ons that would get you hustled to HR and then right onto the street. What blunts the offense are the sharp put-downs and physical reprisals, though I would not suggest acting this way in any professional setting. At least, not without legal representation.

The one author who most activates my personal "wokeness" meter is John D MacDonald. As a teenager I loved his Travis McGee series but on a recent revisit, his women characters are decidedly milquetoast. On the other hand, Mickey Spillane would today be pilloried for his lack of political correctness, though at the time, he was his own brand of woke. Plus his women characters tend to be as dangerous as the men and that trumps any level of wokeness. Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow.

As It Was, But Not Much Better

Lately I've been feeding my nostalgia for the 70s by watching contemporary crime movies. Mind you, I graduated from high school in 1973 and I hated the time (just as most teenagers hate their high-school years).  What jumps out from those movies set in New York City is how much has changed there since then. I have first-hand knowledge because I was actually in NYC in 1973-75 and was overwhelmed by the grit, filth, and crime. In Times Square, you could stand on a street corner and watch violent crimes happen. Everything seemed smothered in graffiti. The ambiance was of inevitable collapse. The movie Heavy Metal has a scene of a science-fiction New York rife with corruption and decay and there was no reason that it wouldn't turn out that way. Of course, the Big Apple has since morphed into a theme park for the rich and is America's largest gated community. My sister lives in Midtown Manhattan and when I tell her how it was back in the day, I might as well be talking about mastodons and saber-tooth tigers. In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) holes up in a tiny studio apartment that can best be described as squalid. Today, the same space would be a million dollar condo. Easy. Al Pacino's character in Serpico rents a garden-level apartment in Greenwich Village, then the bohemian nexus of the East Coast. By modern standards the place is run down but was acceptably chic for its day. Nail boards together, paint everything white, and decorate it with eclectic flourishes.

What else jumps out from these movies is the undercurrent of racism. Pretty much all the riff-raff criminals in The French Connection, Serpico, and Death Wish are black. In those days that was actually seen as progressive because in prior years, blacks weren't even portrayed as that. Sadly, if you go back further, the situation was worse. I was watching one of Humphrey Bogart's lesser known titles, High Sierra, and was dismayed by the character Algernon, played by Willie Best. Given his role as the mountain camp caretaker, Best could've been allowed to play his part with more dignity and realism. But he was costumed in threadbare clothes, shuffled about, was inclined to laziness, and spoke the required "sho nuff" dialog. At least, I suppose, he got a substantial speaking part. Unfortunately, like most black actors from that era, in later years he was denounced as a witless stooge, though, as he pointed out, he didn't have much choice. Either take the part as is, or get out.

Which makes me think that despite our "wokeness" in this hyper-PC environment, future generations will look back at us and ask, "What were they thinking?"