Reply to What movie do you love which would never be made today?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Bad news bears.  I will also give an impassioned defense of the one really racist line in the movie—like blazing saddles, I think it is an incisive sendup of racist attitudes.  [/quote]

I was just talking about this with my buddies this weekend. Is the line you're talking about the one where Tanner says "Jews, ****s, ******s, and now a girl!?"

I agree the movie would never get made today. And when you get down to it, it has a really progressive message! A bunch of kids excluded because of their race, gender, socioeconomic status, and athletic ability band together and take down the athletic white boys. In part because the dad, steeped in all kinds of toxic masculinity,* completely alienates his son!

(*They wouldn't have used that phrase, of course. But that's basically what was going on.)  [/quote]

Yes, in context, I think the line is a send-up of all the discrimination and stereotypes that the kids face, and also of the human tendency to want to have someone that is lower on the power rung that you.  So even if they are generally excluded from and despised by dominant male culture, at least they are not girls -- back in a time when throw like a girl was the worst insult you could give an ballplayer..  And of course they bring her in anyway, and she's fabulous, and makes them all stronger.  It's really a beautiful story of society's downtrodden uniting to show the world that they are worth it, that they can compete, etc.  But they are SUCH anti-heroes -- they are terrible winners, terrible losers, they sort of bully each other in that accepted 1970s way, and they low-key cheat in the game (vaseline on the cap).  I love that they are not the "angels in the outfield" but I think that it does not fit neatly in the marketing categories that movie studios rely on today.  Is it a movie for kids?  Not really.  Is it a movie for adults?  Not really.   I think that's what makes it really unmakeable today -- not so much the adult drinking beer with kids as the fact that we can't give kids a movie with such terrible role models.  
But Walter Matthau is chef's kiss perfect in this role -- it's maybe his best. And one of the best uses of classical music in a movie EVER.  Can anyone in Gen-X hear Carmen and not think of the crack of a bat?
I also think of this movie whenever people complain that a-hole parents at youth sports event are a recent phenomenon.  We have cultural video that it was enough of a thing in the 70s that someone made a movie about it.[/quote]

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