Movie: Gentleman's Agreement

I gave my new Roku box a go during the Saturday night busy period, and I'm glad to say it played very well. No delays, good picture quality. The movie I watched was, as insinuated by the post title, the 1947 "Gentleman's Agreement."

This movie was made with the main aim of being what I call "Hollywood Edgy". That's when a movie would have been very radical and edgy -- if it had been made 20 to 30 years earlier. By the time it is made, though, it's no longer really edgy; it just serves to show how many bigots are left (which, unfortunately, is usually a big number). For example, Brokeback Mountain. Gay cowboys exist! And it can be sweet and loving! 1975, or maybe even 1985, that would have been really edgy and radical. In 1995, it could maybe be at least progressive, riding the crest of the breaking wave. By 2005, this is not really edgy.

Older example: "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" about interracial marriages and anti-miscegenation laws. In 1947, this would have been really edgy. In 1957, cutting edge progressive. In 1967... the Supreme Court overturned the laws it was complaining about while it was still in the theaters. (And to make it even less edgy, they give viewers several big HUGE outs so they can disapprove of the marriage without feeling racist. The couple has only known each other 11 days and has a large age difference.)

Gentleman's Agreement was about the evils of antisemitism and how wrong it is to discriminate against Jews -- in 1947. Immediately after WWII and that pesky Holocaust thing, I'm not thinking this was an unpopular opinion.
However, I give it credit for a few moments -- a couple that were progressive for the time, and a couple we still don't do.
First, 1947, they do sneak in a few zingers towards oppression of African Americans. One point where they're listing off inappropriate racial slurs and include the word "nigger" in the list that is mostly pointed towards Jews. A second is when the movie exposes a "some of my best friends are" kind of racist, and another character says of him that he really does think he's all that and a bag of chips. "You should hear him rail against the poll tax." In 1947, I'd venture these were pretty progressive statements.

Second, the BFD of the movie is that racism is not the exclusive provenance of morons, rednecks, and other "those people". That there are tons of decent people, who disagree with the obvious but aren't real concerned about overturning it. It's really trying to show the insidiousness of it.

Frankly, the media doesn't go with that message very often. Seriously, I'm trying to think of a modern movie about racism were racists weren't "those people", and I'm failing. Take, for instance, Gran Torino, out just in the last year. Good movie, but the racist is a irascible old asshole that no one likes, and on top of that he also gets a little bit of an out as a veteran of the Korean war. And all of us in the audience can sit here and be assured that we're not like him.

All in all, it wasn't bad. It was what is was, nothing and nothing less, but it wasn't bad.