"I say ........" How things change......

Dominic

Was talking this morning about the old Elstree films whilst in Borehamwood /Elstree and how they were composed of caricatures .....we mentioned George Cole from his StTrinians days as the cockney sparrow spiv ' Flash Harry '
  Somebody then mentioned the smooth old Lounge Lizard Leslie Phillips ( I say , Ding Dong ! )
They were all pretty harmless / vanilla but can you imagine the Me Too / Wokie outrage and the unfeesibilty of a load of gym slip 16 year olds getting saucy in a girls boarding school ......it would be seen as a Paedo's Picnic 
Or , the sexist ,lechy Leslie !
 I still thought he was great ........just off to tie my Cravat........toodle pip !

WiresDreamDisasters

viz

The thing is, it WAS a ‘paedo’s picnic’ as you call it, so thank God change has happened. Real bad behaviour that these films mimic and celebrate has been called out, perpetrators have been brought to court, and so the characters and caricatures have lost their appeal and relevance. Youngsters today don’t find them funny or inspirational, they just find them creepy. 

Edit - whoever lolled me, I don’t think what I said was funny. There was a culture then that things that we rightly see as abhorrent now were deemed acceptable, and that may have emboldened a lot of awful behaviour. 

proggy

I love those old films. Terry Thomas was my favourite. Such a cad.

axisus

The old films were great, although many could not be made in the same way now. I still love Carry on films, but they were of their time. I'm not offended in the least by some of the suspect stuff in them, but I think that it is good that things have changed.

Although the Woke brigade can be annoying, there is a spark of truth in every OTT reaction. 

WiresDreamDisasters

viz said:

The thing is, it WAS a ‘paedo’s picnic’ as you call it, so thank God change has happened. Real bad behaviour that these films mimic and celebrate has been called out, perpetrators have been brought to court, and so the characters and caricatures have lost their appeal and relevance. Youngsters today don’t find them funny or inspirational, they just find them creepy. 

Edit - whoever lolled me, I don’t think what I said was funny. There was a culture then that things that we rightly see as abhorrent now were deemed acceptable, and that may have emboldened a lot of awful behaviour. 

I lol'd you.

I do quite often.

Your pearl-clutching makes me laugh a lot. I find it hilarious considering you have a quote about pretentious wank in your signature.

Dominic

proggy said:

I love those old films. Terry Thomas was my favourite. Such a cad.

He was indeed.........we mentioned him in that discussion.
He was the Role model for both Basil Brush AND  Dick Dastardly .
  " Hard Cheese Old Boy ! "

proggy

Dominic said:

proggy said:

I love those old films. Terry Thomas was my favourite. Such a cad.

He was indeed.........we mentioned him in that discussion.
He was the Role model for both Basil Brush AND  Dick Dastardly .
  " Hard Cheese Old Boy ! "

Brilliant. Basil and DD, two other characters I loved.

Sassafras

Who's Lechy Leslie?

Dominic

viz said:

The thing is, it WAS a ‘paedo’s picnic’ as you call it, so thank God change has happened. Real bad behaviour that these films mimic and celebrate has been called out, perpetrators have been brought to court, and so the characters and caricatures have lost their appeal and relevance. Youngsters today don’t find them funny or inspirational, they just find them creepy. 

Edit - whoever lolled me, I don’t think what I said was funny. There was a culture then that things that we rightly see as abhorrent now were deemed acceptable, and that may have emboldened a lot of awful behaviour. 

No doubt . Sadly, the emboldened bit is probably not the case ;the weirdo pervert that finds a 15 year old girl in stockings,suspenders and a school uniform of interest wouldn't need to be emboldened as they are probably knee deep in far more explicit and shocking images within a few clicks of a PC in today's world . It's more a case of not condoning even in the comical black and white Slapstick .
 The far more disturbing image of Humbert Humbert as portrayed by Nabokov is still very much a prevalent tragi-comical figure as a literary motif of the Nymphette ......an extension of the female Trope ( the lover,the mother,the witch,the whore )
Not forgetting the Caricature element ;I do think the Leslie Philips persona was no more offensive than the shock of the contemporaneous mini-skirt of the late 60's . As fr as I know he was all talk and no suggestion of enforced Amour .....probably as harmless as Kenny Everetts old roue " Marcel " from the 80's.

EricTheWeary

St Trinian's started as a comic strip. As understand it had very few adults, none of the sexualised behaviour. I think the spiv characters and short skirts were added to the films to give a broader appeal and more complex story arcs. I haven't seen one for a long time but I think it's probably less of a paedo's picnic than we seen to imagine. 
I have seen the 2007 reboot and I have no idea who that was aimed at. I'm not big on revisionist views of past behaviour, films from the 1950s carried with them the attitudes of the times and I'm sure films made in 2021 will seem horrendously dated in 70 years. Why a film with 1950s values was made in 2007 seems more of a mystery. 

Kilgore

proggy said:

I love those old films. Terry Thomas was my favourite. Such a cad.

Bloody hell, I thought to have a little YouTube nostalgia trip and came across this. 

WiresDreamDisasters

@Kilgore ;
That is really sad and depressing to see.  

Dominic

I'm not a fan of any remakes .........rather like re-painting the Cistine Chapel because Michelangelo is a bit dated.
They are best left as a Momento Mori of their time.
I was outraged by the abomination of Depp's Wonka .........Gene Wilder was unsurpassable in that role.
Gads, they are remaking it again now with the recently trending Timothy Chalamet as Willy Wonka .

You have to leave these as a relic......can you imagine a remake of Brief Encounter ( ' I do so terribly love you ') ....they would be shagging on the train whilst being filmed on an iphone and uploaded to Tik Tok by Karen from Crydon.

EricTheWeary

Dominic said:

I'm not a fan of any remakes .........rather like re-painting the Cistine Chapel because Michelangelo is a bit dated.
They are best left as a Momento Mori of their time.
I was outraged by the abomination of Depp's Wonka .........Gene Wilder was unsurpassable in that role.
Gads, they are remaking it again now with the recently trending Timothy Chalamet as Willy Wonka .

You have to leave these as a relic......can you imagine a remake of Brief Encounter ( ' I do so terribly love you ') ....they would be shagging on the train whilst being filmed on an iphone and uploaded to Tik Tok by Karen from Crydon.

Hollywood/ film remakes do seem to suggest a struggle for new ideas. Although I guess it's also if this made money 30 years ago we can make money on it now and there is also an audience that simply sees old films as old and would like them more with colour and modern music and current actors and modern CGI. 
People like Joe Bonamassa because they can go see him live and buy his new album. You can't do that with dead rock stars even if he is mostly just reinventing the wheel. People want their generation's take on something. 

thecolourbox

My opinion is probably invalid because I like the Depp version of Wonka much more than the creepy Gene Wilder version

But with things like the "ding dong" guy and Carry On films and St Trinian's my view is that they have largely remained in the past for good reason - you don't need the so called "woke brigade" to cancel them because history and good taste has already done so.

I do like the idea of there being a brigade to join though, is that only for Teenagers like scouts or cadets or can a thirty something join in?

WiresDreamDisasters

Depp really lowered himself for those last few Burton movies imo - I thought Sweeney Todd was dreadful, and the half of the Wonka movie I saw had me wanting to murder my family with how utterly cringe and devoid of artistry it was.

When I watch a Carry On movie, they don't seem exploitative to me and they don't seem to denigrate the human soul as much as people profess they do. They remind me of my grandad, and my dad, and the youthful chortles and frollicks from everyone I ever watched them with as a child. They're a pretty key part of my psyche now, and make me who I am as a person. To reject those movies is to reject my personhood, and my individuality, and my very being.

I feel that way about a lot of older movies; Papillion, Ernest Goes To Camp, Harry & The Hendersons, Predator, Polanski's version of MacBeth. The list goes on.

And I will go to my grave loving those movies, and won't give a single solitary shit if anyone disagrees with me or looks down upon me because of it.

Chortle away lads and laddettes. Whilst you still can.

thecolourbox

^^ nothing wrong with that in my book, liking the old films is not the same as wishing they were still being made today

WiresDreamDisasters

thecolourbox said:

^^ nothing wrong with that in my book, liking the old films is not the same as wishing they were still being made today

I wish for a lot of things for today.

If there were a modern day Carry On equivalent, I'd watch it. You never know, it might be a breath of fresh air from tired superhero movies that everyone seems so fond of.

axisus

thecolourbox said:

My opinion is probably invalid because I like the Depp version of Wonka much more than the creepy Gene Wilder version

I'm shocked! The original is one of the all time great films of my childhood. Gene Wilder plays the role of his life.

The Depp one is utter sh*te through and through. I actually like the way Depp plays the role but everything else is garbage - the story, the actors, the sets, the songs, the Ooompa loompas. Surely a candidate for the worst, most misjudged remake ever. 

Philly_Q

Gosh, that clip of Terry-Thomas from Thames News was very sad.