On The Not-So-High Art Of Viewing Movies (Or Anything Else) In Context

Filmmaking, like economics, sometimes pretends to be an objective science in order for reactionaries to advance their goals, but it is not a science. Birth of a Nation sucks and I wouldn't recommend dying on the hill that it's a great film unless you personally feel sympathetic to it. Broken Blossoms would be a much better example for your (tired) anti-PC screed, as that film is clearly not intended to send a racist message, but the exact opposite, even if its means of doing so are severely dated and fail both aesthetically and politically by today's standards. Nevertheless it is a beautiful film in many ways and one that could be understood differently in context of its original time. Whereas Birth... was genocidal in its original time and exactly the same today. Actually, it was much worse in its original time because it had a real effect on society. So if we see it "in context" we have to hate it even more.

/r/TrueFilm Thread