Today’s question comes from reader Dardo, who writes:
I always thought the first Narnia movie was one the most offensive movies ever made, with Santa Claus giving a knife to a six year old girl so she can go to war, and a group of children marching to war with no training or any military knowledge other that a prophesy, but no one ever mentions this…
What movie do you find offensive (but no one else seems to)?
Mine would be, of course, It’s a Wonderful Life, which I think sends a terrible message about perpetual self-sacrifice, which is not as noble a thing as the film wants us to believe it is.
Have fun storming the movies!
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me.)
Fight Club. That movie filled front front to back with sexist, Iron John-esque, men’s movent rhetorical crap. I really can’t stand it. Yeah, it is clever and well filmed…but the whole men’s movement thing about how men are being feminized and must get back to there violent caveman roots is sexist and classist and I can’t stand that movie.
The scene in Yes Man with the elderly woman offended me – our culture disrespects older people and especially women. Also – smoking seems to be making a comeback on film and filmmakers are pandering to the tobacco companies and glorifying smoking again. I sound like an old fogey but there you go. (I’m an ex-smoker so tend to avoid these movies – which means missing out on some good ones)).
American Beauty. It glorifies the Lester and Ricky characters and demonizes Carolyn, but the main reason it’s offensive is because it’s so damn tacky. Every other line is awkward and pretentious enough to make me cringe or chuckle derisively, and this is coming from a pretentious person who usually loves cornball moments in movies.
Honorable mention goes to 300, a confused soulless mix of xenophobia and homoerotic machismo that takes itself way too seriously. It’s Professional Wrestling with swords, and everyone who isn’t a straight, shaved, macho white dude is the enemy.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but if I remember correctly at the end of Top Gun they actually say something like “and nobody got hurt” when two MIGs were shot down. I guess the Russian pilots were either indestructible or nobodies. It’s not the most offensive thing in a movie, but it seems to me to be the most overlooked offensive thing.
The Dark Knight I wrote about what I didn’t like when it first came out: “Without the white knight, the voiceover said, we need the dark one. Oh, we’ll disavow the vigilante. We’ll hunt him. We’ll curse his disregard of civil rights, but this jurisdiction-less hero who operates in secrecy and beyond the law, he is just what we need.” Not in my book.
Anything by Kim Ki-duk, but especially Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring in which he demonises all three of the women on screen and gleefully punishes one of them with death immediately after her ‘crime’.
I have no problem with stoner, boys will be boys humor, but I thought Knocked Up was pretty lame. There’s always a cop-out moment at the end of any Apatow movie, where the regressive man-child “grows up” with help of some perfect hot babe way out of the said man-childs’ league. This justifies all the crude behavior displayed throughout the previous 2 hrs. I don’t mind vulgar or crude, just the cowardly attempt to have it both ways. Plus, Apatow movies are way too long. They should learn from other great comedies like Airplane, Blazing Saddles, or any Woody Allen classic; 90 minutes is just enough for comedy.
I am loathe to say it, because so much of the movie is wonderful/touching/funny, but The Philadelphia Story has one scene that makes me absolutly want to vomit. The best description including quotes can be found here (starts close to the bottom of the page, paragraph beginning “Her father remarks how Tracy has no heart or ability to understand his present major weakness: mild philandering with a pretty young dancer”):
http://www.filmsite.org/phil2.html
VOMIT.
I hate Sabrina, the old one and the remake.
david didn’t know Sabrina was alive while she was living under the same roof as him…but then she goes to Paris, gets a make-over, and he suddenly SEES her. Yippee! She’s pretty now, which means she has value now? The richy dude’s shallow reaction was totally romanticized.
Funny thing about the above posts…I thought Fight Club was actually kind of feminist. Yep, they dressed it up in macho clothing, but basically, I felt like the protagonists were talking about typicaly female issues. Like, having to look a certain way, having to live an Ikea perscribed existence….how all of that contributes to emotional numbness and so on.
Smoking in movies doesn’t bother me; people in the real world smoke.
Seven. It was number one at the box offices for weeks and weeks, made over $300 million, so it seems a lot of people liked it. I thought every moment of it was repulsive, from enduring the screaching of 9 Inch Nails through the opening credits to enduring them again at the closing credits. And in between just about the most perverse, cynical, sadistic and grim stories I’ve ever endured sitting through. Worst movie ever? It gets my vote.
What pisses me off the most (and probably because of some of my dating experiences when I was “the nice guy) comes from two completely different movies with similar themes. Dumb choices women make in love stories. The two films which I speak of is the Notebook and Wedding Crashers. I guess what makes it worse are that many of these are a case of film imitating life because I’ve seen so many examples between myself and friends I’ve had over the years, which is why it irritates me so much.
I have to distinguish myself between distasteful and offensive. There are two movies I found distasteful while at the same time admiring the acting, story or cinematography.
The aforementioned Seven is a movie I swore I’d never watch again. I also found Terry Gilliam’s Tidelands — a strange but disturbing film that I’d have to really work up the nerve to watch a second time.
Offensive? The Bone Thief. It lies to the audience, it presents characters for what they represent not who they are, and it treats everyone like idiots actors and audience combined.
My wife finds the movie Magnolia to be offensive in that it is manipulative in an unrealistic and unfair way.
I guess we don’t offend like most people.
Man on Fire. The “hero” goes on a murdering and torturing spree for revenge, and the cops sit back and love it. I guess Mexicans don’t care about civil order?
Well – there’s always Gigi…
Philadelphia Story is one of my absolute favourites – but I agree about that part of the film mentioned above about female “intolerance” for philandering and certainly it also minimizes and justifies male violence. It is certainly a product of it’s time. Also agree with MaryAnn about It’s a Wonderful Life – it does glorify self-sacrifice to a perhaps unhealthy degree – hadn’t thought of it that way before. Re: smoking – of course people in the real world smoke – but they are addicted – quitting was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It would be great if people’s well-being was more important than economic gain.
Now, my vote goes to a movie probably none of MaryAnn’s readers will know (those lucky ones), but I can’t help myself: I must name Keinohrhasen (Rabbits without ears) by writer, director, producer and star Til Schweiger, who among other things wrote dialogue for his female co-stars where his arse is described as really sexy and had a nude scene for the emale star which was plainly embarassing (she is naked while he is sleeping, has to go to the toilet, the door doesn’t close and he wakes up to see her urinating. Yuck.). It also features such wisdom as “women who say they only want some fun sex are lieing and secretly hoping that the man who proposes said fun will fall in love with her”, a sex scene where the woman suddenly vomits for no reason and an explanation about the different ways men suck at cunnilingus. It also has lots of cute children for the cuteness factor and the woman choosing the reformed jerkass in the end instead of the caring nice guy who has more charisma in his little finger than the main character in his whole body and is the really cool actor Jürgen Vogel.
And then, some months later, a feminist website praised the director/writer/producer/star of this misogyistic dreck, which even offended *my* feminist sensibilities, because he said that women should cheat as much as men do (well, I would say neither shuld cheat their partners) and that he made cunnilingus much more of a pleasure for German women because of his movie. Arrrgh!
I’d second Wedding Crashers, but for a different reason. I’m pretty amazed they didn’t get more flack for the character of the gay guy who becomes obsessed with Vince Vaughan, one of the creepiest, nastiest and most spiteful stereotypes I’ve seen in a long time. I remember feeling really uncomfortable in the theatre because the whole audience just roared with laughter the first time they saw him, before he even opened his mouth, because he was just made to look and act like such a hateful psychopath. Mark my words, we’re going to look back on that one in the same way that we look back on Mickey Rooney’s “Mistless Gorightry!” act in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
As for Fight Club, I have to agree that I thought it was lampooning feelings of male disenfranchisement, especially when you watch it a second time and realise that Marla Singer’s treatment of the Narrator, which may seem unjustifiably hostile and inconsistent on first viewing, is completely reasonable and appropriate throughout due to the twist.
KLW, Seven is a horror movie. It wouldn’t be doing it’s job if it hadn’t disgusted you. It’s about the worst side of huamnity, if not how it is, then how we feel it. The opening credits set the entire tone for the film. But I understand how you might have found it repulsive.
As for me, An American Carol. I don’t need to say much more, other than that the previews I saw on TV were enough to make my stomach feel funny. I can only thank Mary Ann’s bravery for watching the whole film and writting a review that states exactly why that film is…just… wrong.
I never watched The Notebook because I knew that at the end, for one moment, the woman would remember their epic love, despite her alzheimer’s or dementia, or whatever-it-is that she’s got, and I felt that it sent a really screwed-up message along the lines of “if you can’t make your elderly loved-one remember you, then that means you do not love them or have not loved them *ENOUGH* …” Now for two and a half years I’ve worked in a video-rental store, and at least once a week, but usually more often, someone has come in and told me how The Notebook is the best movie they’ve ever seen. Scads of people, loads and loads of people, usually women, usually young women who seemed a little naive, like maybe they’d never bother to stop and think about the deeper ramifications of the way the story ends and I shouldn’t ruin it for them. But ultimately the conclusion I’ve had to come to is that there are dozens of movies (not to mention books or political opinions) which I consider quite good but which other people will find offensive. And sometimes it’s worth it, trying to get two people who have strongly differing opinions to see eye-to-eye, but most of the time it’s not. MaryAnn, as the sayig goes, there is simply no accounting for taste.
Armageddon.
Aaaarrrgghharrgg!! I hate it with a passion beyond description, and yet everybody I ever mention this to reacts with surprise.
Grease
I’m male, and can’t understand why so many women seem to love this movie. Maybe the music and dancing is a distraction from the fact that to get the guy (who happens to treat her like crap, hides her from his friends, etc…), Newton-John has to utterly change who she is into his type. Not to mention that Travolta changes too but gets to immediately revert back when he sees that she changed. I got pissed when I saw my little sister (5 years younger) obsessing over it. Don’t worry ladies, just become exactly what your desired man wants you to be. Your identity isn’t important…
I would dispute calling “Seven” a horror film. “Halloween” and “Nightmare on Elm St.” are horror films, fantasies verging on ugly fairy tales. There’s a genre of mystery film plots maybe called “the cops/good guys pursuing the mystery psycho-killer before he kills again.” “Silence of the Lambs” and even “Speed” fall into that category, two films I enjoyed. “Seven” follows that line, but the addition of the moralistic element that all the victims deserved the grisly way they were killed because they commited one of the 7 deadly sins was so self-servingly added to allow for merely wallowing in gore. It just struck me as deeply perverse.
Fargo
While everyone was laughing at it, I was cringing. It was mean-spirited about every character, even Marge. And the scene with the woman, afraid for her life, running around with a bag over her head like a scene out of a Three Stooges comedy had me shaking my head, as the audience around me found it funny. All I could see was her fear.
I will second the loathing and offense at Grease. I have always hated that Sandy had to change for a creep like Danny.
On the other hand, I usually get the funniest reactions when I mention that Grease 2 is superior to the original because in that story, only perceptions of people are changed, the characters don’t have to change to fit in.
Kundun: I really wanted to like this movie, but the Philip Glass soundtrack was nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying!
“The Illusionist.”
– Spoilers – Unpleasant jerk gets between hero and heroine. Hero and heroine frame unpleasant jerk for heroine’s apparent murder. Resulting accusations and investigations drive despairing unpleasant jerk to commit suicide. Unpleasant jerk has unsavory personality but is, in the end, an innocent man. However, he is also dead, so hero and heroine (she’s alive!) are free to be together and live happily ever after.
Uh… yay?
I know I already gave one (Fight Club…which I still stand by as sexist). But someone mentioned Sabrina…which I also found offensive…and that reminded me of…
My Best Friend’s Wedding.
What was that? I couldn’t stand that movie. Julia Robert’s character is a terrible, terrible person. She is not cute. She is horrible. And it bothered me that the move didn’t seem to know it.
And on romantic comedies in general (this goes back to Sabrina)…any movie where Person A, treats Person B (regardless of gender presentation or identity) like crap for then entire movie, then near the end changes their mind and says…nevermind, I love you! And Person B goes for it rather than says, “Screw you, I’m going out with Person C who is actually nice to me” — I haaaate.
I’m offended by Pretty Woman, too.
And although *some* people consider it a lesbian classic I am terribly offended at how embarrassingly bad Clarie of the Moon is.
I was more annoyed than offended, but I believe there was a movie called “A Sure Thing” where the main character turns a woman who is just shy of being my dream girlfriend into a beer guzzling flasher, after which she dumps her boyfriend who was a lot like me if I’d been played by Christopher Reeves in the movie.
My Mom often points out that “A Wonderful Life” is much darker than most people realize. After all, the villian gets away with everything he does and keeps the extra $5000, which I suppose used to be a lot of money.
It also annoys me that Jack could have survived Titantic if only Rose had stayed in the damn lifeboat, because then he would have had the table to himself and could have floated until rescued.
There was also a Robin Williams movie about Robin’s character going to Heaven and then goes to Hell to rescue his exwife. Now, the general plot I’m on board with, but there is a subtext that the only way Robin can save her is to also lose his mind with her. I know from experience this is called being an enabler and not generally recommended.
And in “Lord of the Rings,” Jackson changed the dwarven nature so he could make more fun of them. Nor do I like it when SF movies have anti-science themes.
Anyway, the only movies that flat out offend me tend to offend lots of people, and I can usually avoid watching them in the first place. I just get annoyed a lot.
My vote for the most offensive film in recent years has to go to this spring’s box-office hit Taken, which seemed like a Dirty Harry film as written by Donald Rumsfeld. I don’t mind a guilty-pleasure vigilante thriller every now and then, but I was disgusted with the way our “hero” got away with murder, torture, and all-around depraved behavior all in the name of preserving the purity of his white virginal American daughter from scary foreign baddies. I nearly walked out during the scene where Neeson shoots an innocent woman in the arm simply to intimidate her husband. Good thing there weren’t any F-bombs or naked breasts though, or this wholesome piece of PG-13 entertainment wouldn’t have been able to make millions from teenage moviegoers.
Offensive: The Cell. Oooh, so artsy and fartsy and cerebral! Misogynistic to the core with physical and pychological torture everywhere.
Annoying: My Big, Fat Greek Wedding. I didn’t see this until it was available on DVD, so perhaps I was jaded by all the hype (I doubt it). Ooooh, are different ethnicities so charming?
(And to add insult to insult, there’s a Greek chain in Arizona now by the name of My Big, Fat Greek Restaurant. During the evening hours, every 15 minutes, the staff is required to line dance through the restaurant (yeah, guess what song is always played) and finish by breaking a dish. It’s just like being in Greece, I’ll bet!
I’ll second My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Don’t get me wrong, I love it for many reasons, but the fate of John Corbett’s character is just sad. If a WOMAN had to change her behavior to placate clearly insane in-laws, convert to a different religion, and then be forced to live next door to said insane in-laws…it would never be seen as a happy ending. Poor guy.
Rob Roy…I haven’t seen a lot of movies with an explicit rape scene, thankfully, but I think the rape scene in this movie disgusted me more than anything I’ve seen or read in a long time. I was angry, not at Tim Roth’s character, but at the cast and crew for filming the scene. Blech…I’m angry now. / (angry eyes)
I’d second that Robin Williams ‘Heaven’ movie, but for a different reason: the notion that all people who died by their own hand are stuck in some horrible, torturous purgatory state and ‘no one ever got out’. What the hell did they think people who lost loved ones to suicide were going to feel when they saw that scene? Did they think at all?? Unbelievable.
Also: Driving Miss Daisy. Oh yes, i said it. It’s one of those examples where a character is literally nothing but nasty. The entire movie through, every time she opens her mouth, something nasty, mean and hurtful comes out. And in the story, that was decades worth! Then waay at the end, when she’s old, almost dead and half crazy, she utters one single friendly line and I’m supposed to be all touched?? Puh-lease. I need a little more kindness in a character than that. Sorry.
Million Dollar Baby (or Thelma and Louise II)
I’m not absolutely sure I know the difference between a horrible movie and an offensive one, but this was both.
This was so bad I walked out.
So, the female fighter gets her comeuppance for being successful by being paralyzed and forced to choose to die. It reminded me of Thelma and Louise (which I otherwise loved) where the female leads have to die at the end.
In some ways it also fits the manipulative tearjerker mode, like “Steel Magnolias” which I am also offended by.
I could go on and on….
I’m sorry–I tried to put the word “Spoilers” in that last comment, but I must have done something wierd with formatting cause it disappeared.
Okay, I gotta say something here:
Seven: It’s SUPPOSED to be about the dark underbelly of our world, how much darkness there is and what we can do about it. Just because the killer felt those people deserved to die like that for their ‘sins’ doesn’t mean the makers of the film think so or that you should think so! He is a crazy killer. And he is presented at such!
American beauty: No one is glorified and no one is demonized. All characters are shown their side of things without judgment. That is up to the viewer. I mainly felt pity for all of them.
Rob Roy: The rape scene was disgusting?? Yes. It was a RAPE SCENE! What, were they supposed to film it in a nice way? So that it was a nice and friendly rape scene? Seriously???
I guess my suggestion was well received
but I think some people didn’t get it, fight club and seven are meant to be “offensive” or at least present some sort of shock value
the question is about movies that on the surface appear to be just regular mainstream fare but they hide (sometimes without realizing it) a terrible lesson or message
the person who said Armaggedon was spot on, also that’s George W. Bush favorite movie (for real)
the gay guy from wedding crashers was pretty offensive too
while reading the comments I remembered one movie that I found offensive, or at least offensive in it’s stupidity
it’s “along came a spider”, it’s a unusual movie to offend you but bear with me
the bad guy kidnaps a senator’s daughter as part some crazy plan, during the pursue lead by morgan freeman the bad guy kills about 12 people because they almost caught him or they were witness to something he did or they just got on he’s way, he kills two cops, a teacher, a guy on a beach and more
then at the end of the movie morgan rescues the little girl and everything is supposed to be fine
wouldn’t it better if the bad guy had won? he would probably have killed the little girl but that would’ve been much better than what happened
one that some people find offensive but most people don’t: “the patriot”
IMO is one of the more disgusting and offensive movies of all time, I could mention dozens of things offesive about it but I’ll just mention one
two white soldiers on the army are mocking and insulting a black guy fighting on their side because he’s force to fight because he’s a slave, not like them who are free
then on the final battle the white guys ask the black guy why he’s still figting with them now that he’s free, he says somethying about being the right thing and the white guys say that it’s an honor to fight next to him
I’m not the kind of person who shouts things at the screen but I really wanted to tell those guys that they don’t know a shit about honor and they should be ashamed to be near the guy they were mocking a few scenes earlier
Why is Armageddon offensive? So far, two people have mentioned being offended by that movie, but have neglected to explain why. This makes me curious to learn what their reasons were. (I’m assuming that in both cases there is a more detailed explanation than “because George W. Bush liked it.”)
Don’t get me wrong here. I can think of plenty of reasons a person might be offended by that movie. The trouble is, I know a wide variety of extremely hypersensitive people with a broad spectrum of ideologies. I could find something offensive to at least one of those people in just about every movie ever made.
Knowing you were offended is not nearly as interesting as finding out WHY you were offended.
how armegeddon is offensive?
how about the scene where bruce willis fires his shotgun several times at ben afflect and actually hits him because he had sex with his daughter and he does it on the narrow corridors of a small and crowded oil rig?
how about the offensive russian stereotype on the space station?
how about liv tyler mocking the japanese guys?
there are many many more examples, it happens on every Michael Bay movie
someone mentioned movies that want to have it both ways and I agree it’s very offensive
for example on “zack and miri make a porno” the female title character is willing to have sex with strangers on camera but not to appear naked, she even tells seth rogen’s character, whom she has agreed to have sex with to make money “I’m not letting you see my ass”, on their filmed sex scene she’s not even on her underwear, she’s fully clothed
that sure makes a lot of sense Kevin, if Elizabeth Banks didn’t want to get naked you should’ve hired a different actress, it’s not that people wanted to see her naked (most people didn’t know her before that movie), it’s that the plot called for it and you chickened out
another example is the latest Rambo movie, Stallone wants us to know he’s a badass in front and behind the camera, so we get to see the most extreme violence
the bad guys raid a town and killed everyone and within minutes we see them raping the women, then they have a mass orgy on their lair
but when they kidnap a white/blonde/beautiful american woman they don’t rape her, they put her in cage, they wait more than a week to try to rape her, just enough time for Rambo to save her at the last minute, it just a big cop out, it’s not that the movie needed a rape scene, they could just implied that it happened, but what did happen makes no sense, it’s taboo to have an american woman raped on a movie by a bunch of evil bastards but the plot called for it, there was no way around that fact, they had her in captivity amd they were seen raping other local women, but showing a guy being decapitaded with a knife it’s just fine
say what you want about george lucas but he doesn’t chicken out when the plot takes him to dark corners: on episode 2 the plot called for a group of outlaws to kidnap a woman a keep her with them for some time, so when anakin finally finds his mother it is strongly implied that she was raped and tortured. On episode 3 the plot called for the jedi order to be wiped out and that meant that children had to die, so we see anakin firing up his light sword in front a group of them, not to mention the children would’ve been having it both ways like stallone and kevin smith
Arco:
So that makes it ok?
Wayne’s World – because the female character is an entirely passive prize for whichever man does more impressive stuff for her. The idea that she might have feelings or preferences of her own is simply unthinkable in the context of the film.
Regarding Armageddon – all female characters are bitches or whores, except for the Liv Tyler one.
First off, Fight Club was deconstructing the idea of “men finding purpose through violence” — showing how empty it was by having them all turn into “space monkeys”. That is, they were supposedly being freed, but to do so, they gave up their identity and were cut off from women, rather than finding a way to have healthy relationships with women. This movie doesn’t propose a solution, it shows that violence doesn’t work, and then dumps the problem back in your lap: what are *you* going to do about it?
But, offensive movies? Gosh, there are so many. Where do you even start? I’ll pick Forrest Gump. Everyone seemed to love that movie (up to and including the acadamy award for best picture), but what I saw was the most anti-intellectual, misogynist tripe I’ve seen in a while on screen. When the (only) woman character tries to head out on her own, be independent, and explore life, she is mercilessly beaten down, until she accepts her bliss by embracing her domestic role. And then they kill her with AIDS, just to drive the point home: stay in the kitchen ladies — it’s safer. Blech.
I’m glad someone else mentioned Titanic. I’ve had people actually threaten me when I said I hated this movie. To me, it’s the height of offensivness to boil down a tragedy of such immense proportions to the fates of two characters, especially two characters I didn’t like or believe. Kate Winslett is one of my favorite actresses, and yet the dialogue seemed off through the entire movie and I couldn’t find anyway to feel any sympathy for her character as written. Leo’s character at least had some nice traits, but I just didn’t believe the preformance, though again, I’ve liked him in other films. The fact that there were flashes where the scope of the larger tragedy was apparent just served to underscore why the focus was on one selfish, cheating gold-digger who ended up killing her lover because of a congenital disablity to think of anything other than her own whims from moment to moment.
I find ‘Being John Malkovich’ simultaneously dazzling and nauseating. I may be a confirmed cynic, but even I can’t stomach Kaufman’s despairing message that most of us would be mind-rapists if only we had the opportunity.
@t6 I gotta go with some others here and say that Fight Club decries that very form of release you think it celebrates. I thought that by what happens to Bob and how the film ends, it points out just how ineffective a lifestyle of violence and isolationism really is. I always felt it pointed out the obvious numbing that a materialized culture has had on men, but then went on to explore how the emotional draw of a “caveman” life was misleading and that such a life is, in the end, not the answer. Both from reading the book and seeing the movie I felt the sexism we are presented with is meant to underscore the flawed logic of Tyler.
KLW, fair enough to your reaction to Seven, however it’s David Bowie playing in the end credits, not Nine Inch Nails (who did indeed play at the start).
I’d have to say X-Men 3 offended me. The first two films featured a subtext that suggested the mutants are the oppressed minority (thus could be black, gay, Jewish, whatever…) which was a clever spin on the superhero genre.
Then the third film comes along and features Rogue getting herself ‘fixed’ so that she’d become like everyone else. It’s almost like it condoned someone going off to ‘straight camp’, or Michael Jackson’s surgery… I found it really repulsive.
Rogue didn’t get herself “fixed” so that she could be like everyone else, but in order to be able to kiss/touch other people without nearly killing them.
The notion that some people (in-universe, and possibly out-universe) assume she did it just because her boyfriend finally wanted to have sex with her is more offensive, I think.
PS: I understand that I am talking about the “text” and am ignoring the “subtext”; but I really think the subtext already suffered from Rogue’s being really suffering from her mutation, no matter how other people treat her because of it.