Warning vs Prohibition... and Other Stuff - Friday Video Distractions

 

A split post this week. First is more of a topic with some specific examples, then there are some more direct viewing items. If the topic doesn't interest you - it's potentially inflammatory - just roll past it. It's just a blog topic. Also, please note that I decided on the topic before the conceptually-related Dr. Seuss decisions announced this week -- which are their own issues, and a different medium, and which I'm not currently making any comment on. Also, to note how the universe seems to enjoy playing with me, I ended up including multiple items from Amazon Prime in the second section, only to find that overnight Thursday into Friday that many are pushing for a wave of planned protest (boycott) of all things Amazon for a week beginning this Sunday. Okay, end of the preamble.   

Warning! Danger!

Entertainment doesn't always age well, or at least not uniformly, as cultural mores shift over time in line with society's mix.

     Religion, gender, sexual preference, disabilities, ethnicity, etc. marginalization often resulted in humor that wasn't recognized at the time as punching down, or, worse, comes from a time when the group in question was overtly looked down on. I still commonly find myself revising notions of humor regarding things I saw forty or fifty years ago -- sometimes from much more recently. In childhood were were steeped in a cultural broth where foreigners had "funny" accents, and were objects of derision because their broken English suggested they were intrinsically inferior. We never paused to ask how much worse we'd sound trying to make ourselves understood in their native language.
     Alcoholics were another source of homestyle amusement, whether it was the routines of Foster Brooks or the antics of the nearly perpetually drunk Otis Campbell on the Andy Griffith Show. They existed for our entertainment.

     When Monty Python's Life of Brian arrived in 1979 nearly all of the controversy surrounding it had to do with it being too adjacent to Jesus of Nazareth, and the mythology of the Christ. This despite the fact that considerable pains were taken to show that this was telling the story of someone completely other, who just had the misfortune of being swept up in the same messianic prophecy-soaked times.
     In more recent years, though, the rise in prominence of gender identity, has made the humor concerning Eric Idle's character, Stan, a problem for some modern audiences.

     To be honest, that's still one I can't quite step away from as humor.
     At the least, though, it's enriching to revisit and reprocess old entertainments, seeing what holds up and what reveals itself as products of an earlier time.
     Two weeks ago, February 19th, The Muppet Show joined the streaming library of Disney+. I was in high school for much of the show's run, and at the time I wasn't inclined towards the musical variety

act format, so I largely ignored it. So, on the one hand I have no nostalgia for the show, but on the other I've now aged into being interested in it, including the wide array of guest stars, and the shows are all almost completely new to me. So far I've only watched the first one (with dancer Juliet Prowse as the guest), but am looking forward to slowly moving through the rest. (I suspect it will never be a binge-able show for me, as a little of the shtick goes a long way.)
     In the past couple weeks, unfortunately, most of the references I've come across for it have been about warning labels newly-attached to various episodes, as it has become the latest bone of contention in what (a disproportionately loud) some see as a culture war. Disney seems to be adjusting things as they go - they're constantly tweaking the service, generally for the better - but I believe there are sixteen of the episodes with the warning that they "include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people and cultures [which] were wrong then and are wrong now."
     My perspective on it is that the warning labels themselves are not offensive. They're signposts one can choose to ignore or note, and the degree of any noting is up to each of us. They're just signs posted on the way in, warning those who might be interested in such things that there may be elements they'll want to discuss with any children who may also be watching. Or even just take the time to roll over in their own minds as they consider a world that's larger than the one they knew. The only restrictions they pose in this case with Disney+ is that accounts set up specifically for children's use won't show them, assuring that a parent or guardian is making the decision.
     I often find such warnings funny - again, as an adult - between the increasingly ubiquitous "smoking" and the vague and probably always personally hilarious "language."
     It's important to distinguish this from any notions of censorship. This is not censorship. This is an added layer of wrapping, but it leaves the original content intact. No harm done. It's a value-added situation for those who will want to make use of it, and helps focus topics for discussion.
     Where I most definitely have a problem is with actual censorship done when the attention behind these warning labels goes that next, huge step to deciding that no one should see something. That's offensive to me. I understand that I'm not speaking for everyone.
     My go-to example of the above stripe of offense? Community, season two, episode 14 "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons."

     In the episode, Ben Chang (played by Ken Jeong) decides to cosplay when he joins in on a tabletop roleplaying game. Playing a dark elf, the Korean-American actor donned pointed ears, a white wig, and applied deep black makeup.
     Even casual viewers of the series know that Chang is a volatile, unstable, often unpleasant personality who tends to extremes. No one could mistake the action as coming from someone anyone would see as a role model, and the other characters are wincing at his decision. Indeed, generally speaking, if Chang does something it's a strong indication that it's not something anyone should do. In a group where most of the characters have their Goofus and Gallant aspects, Chang is one of those most commonly a Goofus.
     Some thin-skinned and dangerously hyper-vigilant gatekeepers decided for all of us - at least all of us accessing it via our paid streaming platforms of Netflix and Hulu - that none should see this. The episode was removed from the streaming platforms June 26, 2020, in a move that the PR dept. at Sony Pictures Television supported in a public statement. Hey, I guess it was some degree of win:win for them, as they're still making whatever they're making for having the incomplete series on the streaming platforms, while the omission has to have driven some sales of discs, and it's all done in a context of public action.

     This move was in line with similar moves made around the same time, as three episodes of Scrubs and four of 30 Rock had been removed because of characters appearing in blackface. In the case of Scrubs, the show's creator indicated they were thinking of editing the episodes and then rereleasing them. This is even more offensive to me than the initial reaction of having simply removed them. That's some Ministry of Truth-level action.
     So, I would suggest to those who are upset about simple warning labels - things they can breeze past, and are free to ignore or have a pearl-clutching laugh over on the way to seeing a show - that they're the ones being too sensitive. All would be better served if they chose their offenses and battles more carefully.
     The above mentioned episodes should have simply had a warning label placed ahead of them, and been left where they were. Again, all in my honest opinion. Obviously others, including various people involved heavily with some of these shows, believe differently.
     Community is fairly high on my list of beloved series, and despite being a sitcom (generally designed for casual, random episode access) it has distinct, long-term story arcs for each of the characters. Removing an episode removes a piece of all their stories.

     In the case of "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", the primary plot is driven by an act of compassion. The main characters, led by normally shallow, elitist Jeff (Joel McHale), take pity on a fellow student who is regularly degraded as "fat Neil," especially after getting a strong indication from Neil that he is contemplating suicide. As they know Dungeons & Dragons is something Neil enjoys, they organize a game and include him.
     So, we're all denied a piece of the story -- at least as part of our (paid) streaming experience. In general, if one wants to see any of the pulled episodes from the above mentioned series, they either have to find a pirated source or buy the discs. Possibly something to do sooner than later, for fear that the decision to alter the disc versions may be on the table.
     A less than sharp, slightly zoomed-in and image-reversed version (all of which I take to be intentional so as to prevent Sony or any other legally-interested party from seeing it as a financial threat) of this pulled Community episode is, at least as of this posting, available via Daily Motion. If it's still there, you can judge for yourself. (The numerous, crudely-placed ad breaks are, by far, the most offensive thing there.) It's a solid episode, and it bothers me that people who've come to the show via streaming services have gone through what they think is the entire series, but really haven't.
     Coming full circle to the recent arrival of The Muppet Show to Disney+, I'd casually noticed that the five seasons shown on the service added up to 118 episodes; it's the sort of detail that sticks in my mind. While looking at info on the show while writing this piece I saw that there were 120 episodes. As it turns out, for those of us here in the U.S. there are two episodes from season five not in the mix: Ones where the celebrity guest were Brooke Shields and Chris Langham.
     The latter appears to be because of Langham's 2007 child pornography conviction; as such, it's not an omission I approve of, as it's something from years later and wholly unconnected to the work done in the episode. That sort of move is wrong-headed IMHO, and I fear for what else might be done in that same mindset. The absence of the episode with Brooke Shields appears to revolve around musical copyrights for songs performed. That's also the reason that those watching in the European market are missing two other episodes; they haven't secured the song rights (paid whatever's being demanded) for rebroadcast.

     Onto other  things!
     First, a quick trio of entertaining, faux documentaries, all of which are currently part of Amazon Prime.
     The History of Time Travel (2014, 1hr 11 m) was written and directed by then film student Ricky Kennedy.

     It plays entertainingly with the concept of history as something open to editing, as it tells the tale of one family's obsession with mastering time travel. Much of the fun is in tracking the details.
     In a different, supernatural, vein is Fury of the Demon (1 hr), which concerns itself with a lost film from the very earliest days of silent cinema, a film with a menacing reputation for its affect on audiences.

     The third on my list today is proposes that there was a Martian invasion of Earth in 1900. War of the Worlds The True Story (1hr 37m) purports to be a mixture of actual footage and recreations, strung together by a 1965 interview with one of the last, involved survivors.

     This is the most uneven of the three, but it has its entertaining moments.
     Apologies to those who don't have Amazon Prime accounts. These just happened to be three items I found over there.

     Open to anyone who is reading this, though, DailyMotion has a 1967 horror film alternately called It!, Curse of the Golem or Anger of the Golem. (That link will open a new window to the film.) It involves a would-be museum curator (played by Roddy McDowell) with substantial momma issues (in an extremely derivative subplot) who discovers the secret of the golem. The movie's in color, but this production still was a black and white card.
     The first title often gets it confused with the 1958 sci-fi film It! The Terror From Beyond Space, which is in some significant ways the conceptual grandfather of 1979's Alien, as a predatory, stowaway stalks the crew returning from a trip to Mars. That one was a minor favorite when it would show up as a weekend creature feature. The 1967 film is one of those I remember catching on CBS late night some Friday, as I was up late, waiting for mom to come home from her evening shift at the IRS.

     Finally, launching this past Monday (10 PM Eastern, NBC), was Debris. Created by J.H. Wyman, who has been a producer, screenwriter, director and showrunner for Fringe and creator of the too-short-lived series Almost Human, each series one I greatly enjoyed. In this new series the action centers on the remains of a vast, mysterious, bit of space wreckage - an alien ship that's drifted into the Solar system and has begun raining the titular debris on the planet over the previous six months. The key element here is that these pieces have extremely peculiar, often dangerous, properties. A special, joint task force between MI6 and the CIA is charged with tracking down and investigating the objects, and more specifically with trying to get ahead of shady, apparently well-funded characters who are intent on acquiring and making immediate technical use of these bits and bobs of exotic matter.

     Having just launched, the series is in that honeymoon period where we're just getting to know the characters and what these alien artifacts are capable of, so they can throw ample amounts of the weird and mysterious at us with little to nothing already on the books to contradict any of it. Time will tell how well or poorly they have the details mapped out. The first episode was sufficiently engaging to get me to come back next week. I'm sure NBC's website will post them to viewing a day or so after they air, but as I have Hulu that's likely going to remain my go-to access, especially as I have a commercial-free account.
     That's more than enough for this week. I hope you found something of interest in the above. Me, I want to take a better look at this week's series wrapping 9th episode of WandaVision -- which I've largely avoided here because it's one of those shows with a high sensitivity level for many who are for various reasons saving it for later.   Enjoy the weekend! -- Mike