The “woke” left can never be satisfied.
Yesterday’s “progressive” content will be deemed “problematic” by the current leftists.
But a Hollywood actor pushed back against liberals who bad-mouthed one hit movie.
Leftists have a terrible habit of judging history through a current-day lens.
That’s why the nineties hit sitcom Friends was smeared as “racist” and “transphobic” for not looking 25 years into the future and knowing what leftists would find offensive.
Leftists also tried to slam the classic 1984 film The Karate Kid, but lead actor Ralph Macchio wasn’t having it.
Macchio challenged the narrative that the first film was “too white.”
From Fox News:
“Responding to recent criticism that 1984’s ‘Karate Kid’ was ‘too White’ and didn’t delve into the Japanese cultural aspects of the discipline enough, the film’s star Ralph Macchio last week called the coming-of-age story ‘ahead of its time.’”
Macchio explained, “People have said it’s a very white cast, that it didn’t dive into the Asian story…But I always say this: The film was ahead of its time because it was a popcorn movie that talked about Japanese internment camps during World War II.”
Fox News continued:
“The former child actor, who is promoting his new memoir ‘Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me,’ added that late co-star Noriyuki ‘Pat’ Morita had said he earned his Academy Award nomination for the movie because of the scene in which it’s revealed he lost his wife and son in one of the camps.”
Macchio revealed, “Pat himself spent two years in the camps…So it had double meaning and some depth.”
The scene almost ended up on the cutting room floor because of concerns about run time.
Macchio elaborated, “The studio’s main concern was that with the movie running over two hours, they would lose a daily screening time, and essentially, money in the process…They all shut up once we screened it for them with an audience.”
The demands of the “woke” left have moved deep into insanity territory.
For example, transgender activists bullied actress Scarlett Johansson to drop out of a role where she was set to play a female-to-male transgender person.
But because Johansson is not transgender in real life, the left felt she was not qualified to play the role.
The same mob retroactively went after the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry for the same reason.
The “outrage” over the film triggered liberal screenwriter John August to tell the woke activists, “How f*cking dare you?”
They only want gay actors in gay roles, deaf actors in deaf roles, etc…
Of course, it never works in the opposite direction.
If there were a policy against casting gay men to play non-gay characters, the left would be absolutely apoplectic.
The recent backlash to The Karate Kid, a film that’s 38 years old, has to do with the success of the sequel series Cobra Kai.
Leftists never waste an opportunity to find something popular and attack it in any way possible.