theficionado wrote:Honestly, I found Inglourious Basterds about as upsetting as A Clockwork Orange.
But what are you looking for?
Sexual violence? [spoiler]Antichrist, The Isle, Dogville, Irreversible.[/spoiler]
Incest? [spoiler]Dogtooth, Oldboy.[/spoiler]
Gore? With "torture porn" (god, I hate that name), there are whole new sub-genres dedicated it.
Nihilism's made a comeback.
These aren't all American films, but they're playing in American theatres.
What is off-limits these days that wasn't then? If these films are less objectionable than the ones you've mentioned, then maybe four decades of exposure to these themes have simply sapped their power to affect us in the same way.
And it's not as though I disagree with you that that era was the probably best in American film. But I would argue that's because filmmakers were influenced by the introduction of new technique and theory from the French New Wave that encouraged experimental new forms AND the cultural climate (overturning of old social orders, increase in radical politics, questioning of authority post-Watergate) was conducive to a politically aware cinema.
Personally, I think the 2000s was the best decade in film since the 1970s.
Except for that last sentence, I can't agree with this any harder.
In my opinion, the term "politically correct" became a target of hate for conservatives so quickly and so strongly that we've forgotten as a society what it referred to in the first place: not saying and doing things that you know offend people. The idea that American film has somehow become more PC than it was when the term was coined is sort of absurd to me. While there are now more films starring minorities and featuring characters who aren't heterosexual and a greater acceptance of alternative lifestyles and beliefs all around, there's an equally strong contingent of conservatives in this country who feel deeply offended by this; politics right now couldn't reflect that much more strongly, and in cinema I believe that this idealistic split can also be seen. Bill Maher makes Religulous, Ben Stein makes Expelled. African-Americans sweep the Oscars, Robert Downey Jr. gets nominated for a starring role in blackface. The issues of sexism/misogyny and sexual orientation are, frankly, a little too personal for me to try to sum up without ranting, but I can assure anyone who may have doubts that many women and gays feel that they aren't being depicted equally to hetero white men in film. Sexual violence, parodies of homosexuality and related epithets, while still prevalent in modern media, don't have to be portrayed in a positive light to be a detriment. It's offensive to a lot of women when the media goes nuts for a film like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which features misogyny and sexual violence so centrally that it's difficult to even sit through. It's offensive to a lot of gay people who are still fighting for their rights for a film like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry to make light of the situation. PC hasn't 'won' in any sense. The anti-PC contingent has just changed tactics.