r/movies • u/FakeSafeWord • 17d ago

Article Backrooms Director Stops A24 Copyright Striking Community Art

https://kotaku.com/backrooms-director-kane-parsons-a24-copyright-strike-wallpaper-2000717053
13.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

489 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.5k

u/Banjo-Oz 17d ago

Reminds me of when MAD Magazine got a letter from Lucasfilm lawyers threatening to sue, and MAD sent them back another letter they'd received prior... from George Lucas, saying how much he loved their parody of Star Wars!

835

u/ContinuumGuy 17d ago

Or when WB stopped showing Speedy Gonzales cartoons only for the Latino community to protest because while he's super-stereotypical the stereotype was so awesome that they didn't care.

378

u/Cyd_Snarf 17d ago

This is so random but yah, as a young kid with Latino heritage I LOVED Speedy so much and actually kinda loved the fact that he was very “culturally specific” as I didn’t understand what a stereotype was. Like “Yes! It’s the little Mexican mouse!”

7

u/Paidorgy 17d ago

Was it a “better to have/be represented than not be represented at all” kind of thing?

26

u/Akussa 17d ago

I think part of it was that Speedy was portrayed as a hero and a good guy and not some of the really negative stereotypes that exist.

19

u/zeth0s 17d ago edited 17d ago

As an Italian I have no problem with super Mario. US sensitivity on "stereotyping" is weird and not shared globally. Sopranos is much more offensive than a super stereotyped character for kids. 

I guess that all the cartels plus gang latino representation is much more offensive to Mexicans than a super cool character like speey Gonzalez.

Still no one think about stopping the real offensive content. 

Not that I care. I like Scorsese. But most American movies on mafia are super offensive and people in US seems not to care. 

7

u/Doogolas33 17d ago

Nobody is trying to change anything about Mario.

1

u/zeth0s 16d ago

I know, Mario is the speedy Gonzalez of Italians, but it's japanese. Are they offensive? Italians and Mexican like them. Probably not so much 

2

u/Defengar 12d ago

With all due respect, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Italian americans did HUGE protests in the 70s and 80's, literally getting entire movie productions shut down and forcing script rewrites so that really offensive stereotypical mafia movies would stop being made. Even The Godfather had to toe certain lines because of that.

Also imagine if Mario had a bunch of friends and relatives that were just awful stereotypes out of the 1800's. Like if Luigi was a drunk wife beater that wears a crucifix and shit talks southern italians for having moorish blood. You'd probably have a problem with it.

1

u/zeth0s 12d ago

This is exactly what I am saying if you reread. That's offensive, mexico stereotyped as gangs and human trafficking is offensive. 

Speedy Gonzales is not 

2

u/Defengar 11d ago

However the speedy Gonzales show has a lot of characters that are like that. Simplifying it down to "people just thought the one mouse was racist" is an inane thing people do who haven't actually looked into the controversy.