Hollywood Horrors

It's been a scant 45 years since we all happily accepted child pornography and as perfectly OK in the movies. A couple of TCM movies brought that depressingly home recently: 'Clambake' with Elvis and 'The Sand Pebbles' with Steve McQueen. In the Elvis movie, our hero is seen romping seductively with sexilly-clad little girls and engaging in a myriad of suggestive activities. So cute! Hey, wait a minute, isn't that just like today's 'Toddlers and Tiaras'? Dead on. Not much has changed.

In the McQueen movie it goes much further. Here we have a crew of American sailors stationed in somewhere like Hong Kong visiting brothels and hiring young teens for drinks and sex. Just like Thailand today, only in this movie it's all very OK. In fact it even allows tough guy Steve to morph into a tender and compassionate hero, as he tries to "protect" the young girl (presumably so he can steal her away have her himself) before offering her to his one riteous pal, played by a very young Richard Attenborough . We see the sailors grabbing the girls and laughing drunkenly as they drag them upstairs. As things escalate, we are next treated to an auction of one of the girls, standing on a table as her clothes are stripped off, upping the ante. Again, more drunken hooting and hollering. All this is accompanied by loud complaining about the $200 they will have to fork over for a first-time girl. But the madame -- her caring mother -- insists and prevails. Hey, isn't this exactly like the country peasants who continue to sell their virgin daughters to the highest bidders in Asia for the pleasure of the modern tourist? Dead on. Not much has changed.

In these movies ethnic stereotyping and appalling slurs are rampant, with the Chinese workers on the ship called "coolies". Yes, folks, in a big-budget "respectable" Hollywood box-offfice hit, directed by Robert Wise and starring other outspoken liberated luminaries like Candice Bergen, our Steve called one of his shipmates....that.

Tuning into an old Clint Eastwood movie the other day, it was clear our tough guy was not to be outdone. In one forgettable scene, Clint turns on a black female detective who had the gall to disagree with him and says, "Listen (insert the name of the woman on a famous pancake mix logo)......" Sorry dear readers, I missed the rest of the sentence because I was on the floor reeling in shock after hearing Clint deliver that heart stopper!!!!!! Mr. McQueen mercifully is dead, but you gotta wonder what Ms. Bergen and Mr. Eastwood think when they look back at some of their work. It is to cringe.

Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.