"It Was of Its Time" Needs to Become a Red Flag

One of the weirder parts about being a critic is the issue of what to do about older media. The problem is that society has progressed; the casual racism, sexism, and homophobia of the past are just not as acceptable as they once were; let's just say that a lot of comics and movies from the WWII era have not aged well. Making it weirder, you even have movies or books that were behind the times even when they were published, such as "Birth of a Nation" or a lot of 1950s movies. Adding to the fun is that some movies or books even poke fun at some of those old-fashioned mores; giving them a proper critique can be difficult in and of itself.

However, a lot of critics will use the phrase "it was of its time" to justify these works. The problem is that this gives a lot of movies a second life; since the phrase gives them the veneer of being a classic when it's likely that the movie fared poorly when it was originally shown. This means that something that was likely racist, sexist, or even homophobic even by the standards of when it was released is now finding acceptability.

There is just something wrong with that.

Society Progresses; The Media Doesn't Always Follow

Part of the problem with Big Media is that it tends to be conservative: It's more interested in sure bets than taking chances, and that means kowtowing to the established paradigms rather than rock the boat. This was enforced in the 1940s and 1950s by the Hays Code of the 1940s and 1950s: Since movie studios needed to allow for the patchwork of censor boards in order to sell tickets; the solution was to put out the movies with as few challenging issues as possible.

With comics, we saw the elimination of horror comics and the establishment of the Comics Code Authority in the wake of the "Seduction of The Innocent." You saw it again in the conservative boycotts against heavy metal music, D&D, and various television shows of the 1980s. These were huge steps backward by the media when they capitulated to conservatives just to get movies made. This meant that while the independent studios had fun exploring more progressive themes, the Big Studios kept to movies based on the nuclear family, women as second-class citizens, and little to no diversity, such as musicals, dramas, and especially Westerns.

[It's sort of interesting that the movies everyone remembers from that era, usually the grindhouse epics and establishment-challenging movies, were put out by independent studios or were the end result of some interesting studio politics, and not usually the movies put out by the studios themselves.]

This means that the Big Studios were usually a decade behind society as a whole until at least the 1990s, while independent movies drove progress. While there were exceptions, the Big Studios were more interested in not ticking off conservatives than putting out great product. Some even created "independent studios" so they could keep some distance between their staid "Big Movies" and more topic-focused pictures. The obvious examples are Searchlight Pictures for Disney and Miramax for Weinstein Studios; this allowed studios to put out controversial movies without actually creating controversy.

The catch is that too many "cinephiles" cover them with the "but it was of its time" and treat them as classics. Most of these were mere pablum produced so the studios had something for the masses to keep the censor boards happy; there is nothing exceptional about most of them beyond how people still worship them. If we're going to move forward as a society then we need to recognize the issues some of these movies represent and just let them fall behind in the dust of history.

Then There Are the Sex Comedies

Sex comedies have always been an interesting genre in Hollywood. The problem is that they had to be on that rather thin line between "risque" and "too far"; this made "double entendre" a second language in Hollywood, with Mae West its mistress. However, when the movie ratings allowed studios to differentiate between movies meant for children and those meant for adults, you saw more graphic sex, nudity, and language. Not only did this allow studios to stop catering to its all-ages philosophy and present movies meant only for more mature audiences.

The problem with sex comedies and progress is that it's too easy to lump them together. While admittedly most are puerile and only good for grindhouse entertainment, you have also some great movies that show women taking the lead, diversity at its best, and even that both sexes have sexual desires. This is the difference between "Porky's" (which had women as raunchy as the men and had far more male nudity than female while taking on a conservative establishment) and "Revenge of the Nerds" (which featured lots of homophobia, one of the more interesting rape scenes, and even some racism).

The problem is that while you had plenty of movies that were solid movies taking on controversial topics and the changing relationship between men and women "The Last American Virgin" and even "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"), you had too many that were just straight exploitation ("Pom Pom Girls" and "Malibu High"). Unfortunately, the worst of the bunch didn't age well and too many creators of sex comedies use them as more reasons to exploit women while being homophobic rather than using them as fun movies with a serious message so their movies don't age well, even for movies that were made just a few years ago.

But…it's interesting that you see people using those older movies as justification for movie crimes against women and other groups with their "retro" stylings. Most of these movies need to stay in the dustbin of history rather than being resurrected as "classics"; we need to stop venerating the bad and start uplifting the good whenever we find it.

Where Does That Leave Us?

We obviously shouldn't discard every movie that doesn't fit with modern sensibilities; too many of those movies may have been bad movies, but we need to save them as relics of a past age to show that we have progressed. However, we need to realize that "it was of its time" is not a glowing recommendation but a condemnation of that movie. We need to start worrying about the future without being anchored to the past; while we need to recognize the mistakes of the past, we need to use it as a reason to do better and forge ahead.