Friday, September 30, 2005
Hollywood Slights Everybody
Flight attendant unions have called for boycotts of Jodie Foster's new film Flightplan. Seems the film portrays their profession in a negative light and they consider that an outrage.
But truly cannot any group find fault in their portrayal in fiction? Whether it be race, gender, occupation, or age, every segment of society has at one point or another been used as the antagonist in a film. What would the solution be - never having conflict in film?
This just brought to my attention a particularly nasty future for Disney. If The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe proves successful, and the subsequent books are made into films, what will Arab-American groups have to say about Calormen, the country that Narnia that finally goes to war with and is obviously a parallel of the middle eastern Caliphates? Given the furor that came from the depictions of Arabs in films as innocuous as Hidalgo, I can see Disney making sweeping changes to the plot to avoid that size of controversy.
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