50 Racist Movies

Dashing Fellows friend Thea Lim at Racialicious posted this list of The 50 Most Racist Movies You Didn’t Know Were Racist, compiled by Complex.

There are some obvious ones like The Love Guru (2008), and less obvious ones like Scarface (1983), and ones that are clearly reaching like Planet of the Apes (1968):

“"No, no," they say, "it's a deep allegory about race, politics, and power! It's not racist!" Right. We see light-skinned apes commanding thuggish dark-skinned apes as fearful whiteys cower in terror.”

(Forgive me, but aren’t we pushing the race card a bit hard when even chimps and gorillas are seen as substitutes for whites and blacks? Or were they substitutes for light and dark-skinned blacks? Wait, maybe it is racist… But they have British accents… I’m confused.)

Notably missing are Monster’s Ball, Lost In Translation, Avatar and The Blind Side.

Also on the list is this long-forgotten Denzel Washington/Bob Hoskins buddy-movie, Heart Condition. The poster is hilarious (see above), as is this trailer:

Makes you wonder why Denzel hasn’t appeared in many comedies since (no it doesn’t).

The list is informative, but has several flaws.

1) No movie from before 1965 should be included (the date is arbitrary, but basically any movie pre-civil rights movement). Social mores were still in flux and racism far more out in the open than it is now. Is it really fair to include a movie like Song Of The South (1946) given the time it was made?

2) As Thea pointed out, how do you rank racism? What makes Pulp Fiction (#39) more racist than The Air Up There (#48), but less racist than Krippendorf’s Tribe (#12)?
    
Wait, maybe it’s the poster: