Posted by Fred Goodwin, CMA on 07/14/06 02:38

The 10 least politically correct movies ever

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13805019/

>From 'Blazing Saddles' to 'Team America,' these films take no
prisoners

COMMENTARY
By Michael Ventre
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 3:54 p.m. CT July 11, 2006

Many believe political correctness is good. It keeps us in line. It
reminds us that almost all segments of society should be treated with
dignity and respect. A joke at the expense of someone's gender, race
or ethnic background has no place in movies today.

Of course, there are those who disagree, who believe political
correctness is wrong, who feel that it only creates resentment toward
the offended parties. A PC world is a world of oppression, they say,
where freedom of speech is allowed in theory, but not in practice.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel. Ideally, I'd like to straddle
the line between both so as not to offend anyone.

But it's safe to say that comedies are the targets of most PC
discussions when it comes to movies. That's because comedies have to
make fun of something, and many times that something has to do with the
differences in people. The movie business has a rich history of
creating humor from the very essences of who people are, for better or
worse.

That trend has slowed down considerably in recent years. They just
don't make racial, ethnic or sex jokes like they used to in motion
pictures, although occasionally they still try. Again, some feel
that's the way it should be. Others disagree. But it's undeniable
that these are different times - PC times - and students of comedy
surely can appreciate the evolution of the genre to today's more
sanitized state.

The following is a list of 10 comedies that really went to the
precipice of good taste and decorum in the quest for laughs. Most are
older, but a few were made fairly recently. Viewed now, many will still
create laughter while others might meet with disgust. Of course, in
most cases that was the reaction when they were first released:

"Blazing Saddles"

The granddaddy of them all when it comes to language and situations
that wouldn't fly today. Mel Brooks' Western spoof came out in
1974, when certain indelicate references to race and womanhood could
still elicit guffaws rather than protests. Cleavon Little plays Bart,
an African-American who is assigned by evil politician Hedley Lamaar
(Harvey Korman) to serve as the new sheriff of a town in the hopes his
presence will so offend the citizens that he'll drive them out so
Lamaar can grab their land. Because the townspeople apparently were
expecting a white man, Bart isn't exactly embraced. A particular slur
that starts with the letter that comes after "M" is sprinkled
liberally throughout, but there are also plenty of sexual references as
well, including the scene soon after Bart arrives and the folks dive
for cover when he reaches into his pants to retrieve a document and
says, "Excuse me while I whip this out." Since Brooks is an
equal-opportunity offender, he assaults the sensibilities of
Native-Americans, Jews, Chinese, Irish, women, horses, the handicapped
and others. If "Blazing Saddles" were pitched in Hollywood today,
Brooks would have been hastily escorted off the lot, and executives
would quickly issue a statement that the move had nothing to do with
him being short and Jewish.

"Airplane!"

Directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker skewered the
disaster genre in this 1980 release that hurled one gag after another
at audiences without the slightest regard to whether it rubbed anyone
the wrong way. There was the bit with the two black gentlemen seated
together whose speech is incomprehensible to the flight attendant until
Barbara Billingsley of "Leave It To Beaver" fame offers to
translate, explaining, "I speak jive." There was Peter Graves'
Captain Oveur, who makes suggestive remarks to a young boy visiting the
cockpit including, "Do you like gladiator movies?" There was the
little boy who asks a little girl seated next to him how she likes her
coffee: "Black, like my men." There were the repeated drug
references by Lloyd Bridges ("Looks like I picked the wrong week to
give up sniffing glue.") There was the Air Israel plane wearing a
yarmulke. And on and on. Today the PC police would have to hire extra
help in order to monitor this one picture.


"There's Something About Mary"

An argument can be made that brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly should
be honored in the politically incorrect category for their entire body
of work rather than just one picture. But "Mary" is not only the
brothers at their tasteless best, but also at their funniest. The hair
gel scene is probably the one Farrelly brothers moment that is most
famous, and the one that generated enough good word of mouth to make
this a big hit. But they also create laughter with men surprised at a
rest area pursuing their feelings for each other. And when Matt Dillon
jump-starts a dead dog. And when Ben Stiller gets his zipper caught in
an area where no man should get his zipper caught. And when Dillon
tries to impress Cameron Diaz by boasting about his "work with
retards." The film is a sweet romantic comedy that is drenched in
crude humor, creating a rare and hilarious subgenre.

"Caddyshack"

Probably more in the gross-out category than politically incorrect,
this 1980 laugher starring Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield
and Ted Knight nevertheless had enough moments that would make a censor
cringe to qualify here. For instance, early in the film Rodney shows up
at Bushwood Country Club with an older Asian gentleman who has a camera
around his neck and is taking pictures of everything. Dangerfield
implores, "Hey Wang, c'mon. It's a parking lot!" He also tells
Wang: "This place is restricted, Wang, so don't tell 'em you're
Jewish." The nephew of Knight's Judge Smails explains that his
marijuana must be good because "I bought it off a Negro." Chase's
Ty Webb asks young Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe) whether he takes
drugs. "Every day," answers Danny. "Good," replies Ty, although
that was later cleaned up for some TV showings. Don't forget Murray
undressing the female golfers with his eyes and mumbling dirty talk to
himself. And of course, there's the Baby Ruth at the bottom of the
swimming pool, which Murray chomps on. Enough non-PC moments mixed with
revolting jokes to satisfy anyone's inner slob.

"Love and Death"

This 1975 historical romp is a takeoff on epic Russian novels and
explores the deeper questions of life via slapstick humor and
pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo. It was Woody Allen's last film done
strictly for yuks, until he segued into more serious fare with "Annie
Hall" two years later. It has unforgettable moments of offensiveness,
like when Diane Keaton's character Sonja explains to Father Andre
that Woody's Boris had contemplated committing suicide "by inhaling
next to an Armenian." In the same scene, the holy man tells Sonja
that he has discovered over many years that the secret to life is
"blond 12-year-old girls. Two of them, whenever possible." Woody
also slips in a Polish joke with this line: "My brother was killed in
the line of duty, bayoneted to death by a Polish conscientious
objector." In most of Woody's earlier funny films, he managed to
poke fun at just about everybody, but "Love and Death" is one of
his more potent efforts.


"Kentucky Fried Movie"

The "Airplane!" team of Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker scripted this
1977 exercise in comic lunacy, but John Landis handled the directing
chores. Whereas "Airplane!" was a series of sketches and bits
attached to the spine of an absurd story derived from old airplane and
disaster flicks, KFM really has no story at all. It jumps around from
one zany situation to another, making sure to pierce society's
taboos. Who can forget "Catholic High School Girls In Trouble,"
with its revealing shower sequence? Or "A Fistful of Yen," the
chopsocky spoof where one prisoner is killed by an evil emperor, and
then his partner is condemned as well: "And as for you ... send him
to Detroit!" The prisoner is then led away, pleading, "No, no! Not
Detroit!" How about the game show announcer who mentions contestants
named Hung Well, Long Wang and Enormous Genitals? And there's Rex
Kramer, Danger Seeker, a daredevil who puts on a helmet, approaches a
group of African-American men shooting dice against a wall, yells the
"N" word and runs away with them hot on his heels. Today the FCC
could double its annual revenue from fines with one showing of KFM on
network TV.

"Team America: World Police"

Few political satires exist at all. Fewer still jab the right and the
left equally hard, and do so using marionettes and extremely bad taste.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of "South Park," made this
2004 parody of the old "Thunderbirds" TV series with the intent of
ridiculing all elements of the war on terror. It includes a reference
to the Film Actors Guild by showing a news clip with the words "Alec
Baldwin - F.A.G." They make fun of the Broadway show "Rent"
with their own called "Lease" that includes the song, "Everyone
Has AIDS." The film ridicules foreign languages like Spanish, French
and Arabic by boiling them down to caricature levels; Kim Jong-il, the
bad guy in the movie as in real life, greets people with "Herro"
and calls weapons inspector Hans Blix "Hans Brix." This picture is
politically incorrect in the most virulent manner because it exists not
to express a point of view, but rather to harpoon a broad section of
the famous and powerful while offending as many as possible.

"Porky's"

In 1982, "Porky's" was trashed by critics and gobbled up by
audiences. It is a simple tale of simple high school boys in Florida
who set out to lose their virginity at a bar/brothel called Porky's,
get humiliated and kicked out, and then plot their revenge. The
controversy here was over a series of infantile jokes at the expense of
women. If you were a young man, you laughed. If you were a young woman,
you probably laughed too, but insisted later to your feminist theory
professor that you didn't. There is a memorable shower scene with an
unwanted intruder, and a woman (Kim Cattrall, laying the steamy
groundwork for "Sex and the City" much later) known as Lassie
because she howls during orgasm. The raunchy humor is counterbalanced a
bit by a message against anti-Semitism, but only a bit. Mostly this is
about penis jokes and naked women, taken to the Nth degree.

"Song of the South"

This mixture of live action and animation probably doesn't fit snugly
into the category of politically incorrect comedies, simply because it
isn't a straight comedy but more a lighthearted family picture. Also,
the depictions of African-Americans here weren't mean to elicit
laughs, but were done in earnest in an attempt to portray life in a
particular time period, right after the Civil War. But there's no
doubt this could never be made today the same way. In fact, Disney has
refused to even release the film on home video in the United States
(although it is available overseas) because the portrayals of
African-Americans would create a firestorm today. Uncle Remus, a wise
old black man, tells the story of Brer Rabbit and his pals to cheer up
little Johnny, a white kid. But most of the black people are shown as
subservient to whites. This isn't exactly "Birth of a Nation,"
but in terms of racial stereotypes, it's in that ballpark.
"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song.

"Bad Santa"

Proving that even in these politically correct times a film can sneak
through the studio filters and offend just about everybody, "Bad
Santa" is probably the filthiest comedy produced in the last 10
years, and certainly it is the dirtiest Christmas film of all time. The
2003 release stars Billy Bob Thornton as Willie T. Stokes, a drunken,
lecherous, mean-spirited department store St. Nick who never met a
bottle of booze he wouldn't guzzle or a women's body he wouldn't
plunder. On top of all that, he continually curses out the sweet little
boy who adores him. It takes most movie-goers about a half hour or so
until the shock wears off, the story gets going and it becomes clear
that director Terry Zwigoff is going somewhere besides the toilet.

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