Fond childhood memories horribly tainted.

[elfs]

The MST3K of the weekend was Jungle Goddess, an offensive little hunk of tripe from 1948, three years after World War II. The plot should be enough:

When a plane carrying the daughter of a millionaire crashes in an African jungle, two pilots set out to collect the reward. They discover that she has become the goddess of a primitive tribe. An insurgent witch doctor and fierce wild animals make escape from the jungle difficult for the trio.

Really though, that's not enough. Start with the idea that she's made a goddess because she's white. That's pretty rude, but then we get to her personality.

One of our protagonists shoots a tribesman. She goes through the motions, as village goddess, of condemning him to death in eight days, "when the full moon rises." The other protagonist goes to her to ask what will happen, and she assures him that she has no intention of doing as the local laws allow. There's this unstated "He only killed a native, it's not like he killed a white man or anything like that."

A real piece of 1940's racism. And what annoys me most is that when I was young, like nine or so (that would be 1975), I loved watching those old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies. They're much of the same flavor, terribly unenlightened products of a former age, but now those memories feel tainted and somewhat sickly.

Comments

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

The kids got a DVD of 40's Superman clips. They rock - not only are they 10 minutes long each (perfect for the "movie before bed?" requests), but Lois is downright aggressive, flying planes, hamstringing villain's cars, bullying her boss, etc.

Of course she does always need to be rescued by Superman, but my reaction to that is balanced by the frequency with which she gets herself all tied up...

There's even one episode where she kisses Clark Kent, thinking in the shadow that he's still Superman. That seems pretty progressive for the day, given there is no hint of matrimonial intent from anyone involved.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Odd. I just went through my memories of those old Tarzan movies. Not only can I not remember racist scenes of justice lacking when white folks are involved (except where the bad guys are concerned), I can remember a scene or two where white folks doing bad things were judged guilty over black people who were wrongly accused. That seems pretty progressive.

[alice-in-texas.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I *remember* seeing that movie back in the late 50's on a Saturday afternoon TV show called something like "Saturday Matinee Theater". At that time, I would not have caught the racism, being not over 10 years old at the time. Also, that aspect would not have caught my attention being from the South, but by the 60's my views had changed a LOT after I entered college regardless of what area of the country that I lived in. I'd like to see it now to see how I would view it. Tnen, it was just another neat jungle movie.