4/9/2023 0 Comments Tcm music tag editor![]() ![]() ![]() So if you’re a person of color who wants to see yourself represented in classic cinema, it’s very difficult. Not all classic films are that way, but there’s this heavy history of, this is what Hollywood spent a lot of those decades doing. “There’s the concept of: Older movies are racist, they’re misogynist and there’s no way I see myself in those movies,” Lopez said. Nearly all these movies are in black and white and I think for many, that’s the ultimate turnoff. That serendipity - of randomly catching a movie on TCM - now comes with an additional price tag. Plus, any film with Walter Matthau grumbling his way through his lines is worth your time. Patricia Neal plays the radio producer who discovers this rakish con man, only to regret sending him down this path, and the fact that a woman is playing this role in 1957 feels surprising in all the right ways. I remember maybe 10 or 15 years ago seeing 1957’s “A Face in the Crowd” for the first time - courtesy of TCM - and being blown back by how dark and cynical and disturbingly insightful it is, about a guy (Andy Griffith) who manages to exchange every ounce of integrity he might have once had for an empty life of celebrity, wealth and power. It seems odd to discount all of film history pre-1980, but Serrano is voicing something we’ve all heard before: The perception that films made during the first half of the 20th century are dull. Perceptions: As surreal as it is to hear him list those titles as “old” (he’s right “Raiders of the Lost Ark” came out nearly four decades ago), there’s room enough in the media landscape to like what you like and avoid the rest. Some of them, of course, were undeniable, like a ‘Jaws’ or ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Indiana Jones.’ You watch those and you go, ‘Oh, I see in this the bones of what eventually became whatever action franchise.’ Or ‘Alien.’ (But mostly), they’re just not that fun to watch.” ![]() It’s clear that they were still trying to figure out how to do things. I watch old movies and I’m like, ‘No thanks.’ They’re not fun. He was interviewed by Esquire’s politics editor Jack Holmes, who noted that Serrano’s book focuses on movies from the ’80s and beyond and asks: “Are you like me in that you don’t see a ton of appeal in movies older than that?” Serrano isn’t a film critic - he is best known for his writing about hip-hop and basketball - and it was specifically his comments about older films that touched a nerve on social media. And now they’re putting it behind an additional paywall, for lack of a better description.”Īppeal: I’ve been thinking about how people generally think and talk about classic films when earlier this month, an interview that ran in Esquire with pop culture writer Shea Serrano about his new book “Movies (And Other Things)” sparked some back and forth on the topic of these films and their value (or lack thereof). Longtime fans are always worried about things like, when are they going to start adding commercials? Or every time they do ‘31 Days of Oscar’ and they start showing Oscar-nominated movies from 2010 people are like, ‘This is proof that they’re going to start showing newer movies and it’s going to become like AMC, where you’re not going to be able to see anything classic?’ So people always get concerned. “It’s always very weird with TCM, which is commercial-free. “With classic film access already being so limited, TCM kind of remains this last bastion of classic film access for anyone who wants to discover these movies,” she said. Film critic Kristen Lopez, whose work appears in Forbes, Remezcla and other publications, writes specifically about older films at her website Journeys in Classic Film. ![]()
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