I am still traveling, and we are again dipping into the Our Land archives to rerun a piece from the early days of this newsletter that prompted a big response from our initial subscribers. This article, published on July 31, 2021, raised an issue that frequently comes up in conversation—at least, in my conversations: changing attitudes and popular culture. Could a network these days air a show like The Office, with its toxic workplace full of racist and misogynistic comments? Even if the point is to lampoon the offenders? Fawlty Towers is being rebooted. That could be a minefield for John Cleese. Read the below and tell me what you think.
I recently watched one of my favorite movies from decades ago: The French Connection. I’m not sure when I’d last seen the 1971 cops-chasing-drug-dealers thriller, which swept the Academy Awards, winning best director (William Friedkin), best actor (Gene Hackman), best picture, best editing, and best adapted screenplay, and I wondered if the film would hold up 50 years later. Friedkin’s gritty documentary-style directing, pioneering at the time, still comes across as crisp and tense. Hackman’s and co-star Roy Scheider’s performances, respectively, of tough-guy police detectives Popeye Doyle and Cloudy Russo are on the money. And that famous car chase—actually, a chase between a car and a subway train on an elevated track—established a gold standard for this cinematic workhorse.
But the film’s plot now appears a bit too straightforward; there are few twists. And, more important, the movie is loaded with abuses and misconduct that were once taken for granted. It was tough to watch Doyle hurling the n-word and other racial epithets at civilians he regularly roughed up in pursuit of narcotics smugglers. There’s another scene in which he shoots a suspected drug trafficker in the back. Uh, you can’t do that, can you? And during the final clash, Doyle accidentally shoots a federal agent—seemingly fatally—and nothing happens.
So any nostalgia I might have enjoyed was undercut by very cringey moments. In this time of BLM and concern over police abuse, it’s tough to cheer for Popeye and overlook his excesses. But reconnecting—or disconnecting—with this movie put me on a Gene Hackman jag. Soon afterward, I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, the 1974 film in which Hackman stars as a privacy-obsessed surveillance consultant whose snooping leads to the discovery of a murder plot. The film—shot while Coppola was also working on The Godfather Part II—is a marvelous exploration of the moral implications of the burgeoning surveillance state, and it remains sharply relevant decades later. The Conversation is relatively free of scenes that today provoke a wince. Although, like many past and present movies, it fails the Bechdel test, which measures the substantive representation of women in a film.
Was I being too hard on The French Connection? Have I become a caricature of a squeamish liberal, too eager to overemphasize anachronistic moments at the expense of the grander artistic picture? As our culture changes, how we perceive—and enjoy—highly acclaimed works of the past changes. There’s nothing wrong with that, though some conservatives decry this as PCish canceling. But, of course, there are no rules for these ongoing examinations, and reevaluations can be tricky and contentious. (Huckleberry Finn, anyone?) Look at the BS debate the Republicans tried to orchestrate when the publisher of Dr. Seuss discontinued several books that contained racist imagery that once was routine. Even more recent content has come under what-do-we-think-now scrutiny. “In light of all the upheaval over workplace harassment, with people (in some industries, sometimes) finally having the courage to come forward and name abusers, I have to say The Office is hard to watch,” Jaya Saxena wrote in GQ in 2018. “Whereas it was once seen as exaggeration, it’s now run up against Poe’s Law: too close to be satire.”
Some movies and shows certainly deserve to be trash-canned. When my kids were young, our family went on a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers spree. After running through most of their films, I turned to Holiday Inn, which stars Astaire and Bing Crosby and features the tune “White Christmas.” I didn’t realize the 1942 movie includes an infamous scene with Crosby performing in blackface. Bye-bye, Bing. I tossed the DVD in the garbage. (In 2018, then–British Prime Minister Theresa May named Holiday Inn as her favorite Christmas flick and was justifiably slammed for that.)
When the talented Charles Grodin died recently, I felt a pang of sadness at the passing of another actor whose work I’ve relished. In his honor, I put on his 1988 film Midnight Run, another of my old favorites. It’s an exhilarating, feel-good on-the-road buddy picture, with Grodin playing an accountant for the Mafia who stole from his boss and gave the loot to charities. Robert De Niro co-stars as a down-on-his-luck bounty hunter who must get the accountant to a court appearance while they’re being pursued by mobsters. Wonderful cross-country hijinks ensue. What’s most notable is the fabulous repartee between Grodin and De Niro, which shines for its timing, its nuance, and the obvious respect each actor has for the other. No one is trying to steal a scene here. Their back-and-forth dialogue should be taught in acting and screenwriting classes.
As I watched Midnight Run, my college-age daughter joined me, and initially I was glad for the company. Then came a stab of anxiety. “Oh shit,” I thought, “this movie must be full of problematic references to race and gender, and that’s not going to fly.” Yet it wasn’t. She liked the film so much that when it was over, she asked if there was a sequel. Unfortunately, no.
Midnight Run and The Conversation have staying power. And while film students should still learn from The French Connection, I don’t mind saying a fond adieu to it. Why be conflicted over an old film? After all, there’s plenty of past content that doesn’t weigh on current sensibilities—and far from enough time to enjoy it all.
Tell me which old favorite movies or television shows are tough for you to watch now. Email me at ourland@motherjones.com
