So Racist!!! - The Lost World (1925) Discussion

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] SirusX11 18 years ago

Wow. Its amazing how hypocritical people are. Its a shame that such technically groundbreaking films such as these are filled with such garbage.

Just say no...to being a D-bag.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] owmyheadhurts 18 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but was Zambo even in the book? I read it a couple years ago and I don't remember him being in it at all..or anyone like him for that matter..maybe I just forgot but I'm pretty sure he wasn't in it.

As far as the film being racist..by today's standards it does look racist (especially with the way he talks)...but I've seen other films from even slightly later than that (1930s) that had black people portrayed that way so it wasn't unusual for the black people in films around that era to be treated "racist"...well, as far as I've seen anyway. But that's probably how black people were thought of back then...which in my oppinion is wrong, although I still think it was a pretty good movie besides that.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] Koosh_King01 11 years ago

He is in the book, but he's not portrayed as broadly as he is in this film. His dialog isn't the same as in this film; it's clear from the novel English isn't his first language, but he's portrayed much more fairly.

The book is still pretty racist, though. Challenger determines Malone is Irish by suggesting his skull shape is "negroid" (!), and Doyle also seems to have a thing against people of mixed race, since Roxton's backstory involves him killing a slaver named Pedro Lopez, who, we're told, was explicitly a "half-breed." Lopez's vengeful brother Gomez and his sidekick who appear midway through the story and are the ones who trap the party on the plateau, are also both half-breeds. In fact, every half-breed in the story is evil. More oddly, Zambo is said to hate Gomez instinctively because apparently all fully black people hate biracial people (!!!). And yes, this is outright stated.

So apparently, while Doyle didn't have much of a problem with black people (no moreso than anyone else in his time), he did seem to think lowly of Irish people, South Americans, and people of mixed races. They never do say exactly what Lopez and Gomez are, though. Their names are very Spanish so I assume half European Spanish and half something else, likely either black or native South American.

Having said that, I never picked up any actual vitriol against these people. There's a difference between thinking someone inferior and actively hating them. It's clear that although Doyle looked down on people of other races, he didn't advocate mistreating them, considering Roxton's backstory where he is a huge crusader against slavery in South America. Doyle himself even spoke out against what the Belgians were doing in the Congo at the time.

"I mean, really, how many times will you look under Jabba's manboobs?"

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[–] joe_538 11 years ago

One person doesn't represent everyone. Doyle also made Gladys fickle, that didn't necessarily mean he meant to convey all women are. Challenger is clearly obsessive, violent, and a control freak, not a great role model either.

It stands to reason if Pedro was a half-breed, his brother would be too. But, yes. This was written at the turn of the 20th century when technology was progressing rapidly and the English were feeling a little superior to everyone. Particularly, people who lived in a jungle.

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[–] sawyertom 18 years ago

It just goes to show how far we've come. Just remember that the Klan int he 1920's was a major political force as sad as that was. The again, what is a worse racial stereotype, all of these movies with a Boyz in the Hood and Gangsta type stuff with violence, drug dealing, pimping and whoring and just being a general criminal or this from another era?

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[–] Big G-2 18 years ago

In the restored version (from Image Entertainment), all of Zambo’s lines were redone, and he now spoke properly. However, I’ve actually have encountered some who think that was cowering to political correctness and that it should have been left as it was.

Certainly, it’s an awful stereotype, and you can’t help but to notice, but luckily Zambo was not one of the main characters, and it shouldn’t stop from enjoying the other aspects of the movie.

Worse yet, if you didn't catch it, Bull Montana (Zambo) is actually a white guy in "black face."

Sky, I believe Bull played the ape-man, not Zambo.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] MaximusXXX 17 years ago

Racism in the 1920s was as common as ice cream.

It's not a lie if you believe it.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] richard-III 15 years ago

Kongologic wrote: "I hate this word racism. It is racist in itself, the word 'racism'.
Maybe if we were talking about dinosaurs, or birds, or deer or fish in a hostile way we would be racist.
But aint we people all just one? One people? One nation? One color of blood? One united soul?
We are the human race."

Kongologic, methinks you are right.

"The Beamer Xperience: 9 feet wide home cinema bliss."

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[–] 15 years ago

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[–] nick_nora_charles-1 15 years ago

Absolutely right Skye.

To change the cards IS to lie about the past.

So the past wasn't politically correct? So what?

If you're going to change cards to pander to today's sensibilites, then what's next?

Editing all Hollywood films to cut out people smoking?

Editing out 1930s news reel footage to stop the depiction of Nazis?

Editing films showing fat people?

To do any of these things makes all of us no better than those in "The Ministry Of Truth" in George Orwell's 1984.

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[–] 15 years ago

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[–] shandy8 14 years ago

I can't believe that someone had the nerve to tamper with the dialogue of "The Lost World". My DVD is intact, but I shudder to think that someone from our era has the right to alter a piece of art merely because it doesn't conform to our current tastes. I wonder if anyone will go in an change Jim's lines in "Huckleberry Finn" or Eliza and Alfred's lines in "Pygmalion"!

The makers of the movie wrote it that way because it was a silent picture, and they were trying to approximate the way Zambo talked. He was a step-and-fetch-it stereotype which were considered very amusing in that era. "Amos n' Andy" also featured white actors in Black roles. That is the way it was in those days.

"What do you want me to do, draw a picture? Spell it out!"

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[–] 14 years ago

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[–] Gloede_The_Saint 14 years ago

It is kinda realistic for the time though. Blacks didn't exactly get the best education back then.

Somebody here has been drinking and I'm sad to say it ain't me - Allan Francis Doyle

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[–] 14 years ago

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[–] skiddoo 13 years ago

There's a tremendous amount of difference between someone who wasn't educated and someone being portrayed as a moron. A lot of uneducated people are intelligent and have learned much in life.

Louis Armstrong was controversial in later years for putting on a stereotypical act to appease the white folks but if he hadn't done it in his early career he wouldn't have gotten as much work. Black men in particular had to act in certain ways to seem unintimidating to whites. My father in Ohio in the era of this movie had no idea that the black man digging ditches in his town was putting on an act to keep from being tormented by the white boys. The man did the whole eye-rolling southern drawl thing when he said that possums "make mahty fahn eatin'"--which struck my father as so funny he remembered it for many years. My father had no intention of harming the man but he was with other kids and the man wanted to be sure he was safe then, and wasn't beaten up later by someone angered by something the kids had said about the encounter. So he played the clown, the buffoon.

In my father's town, black and white kids were in school together, segregation not having gotten a real foothold yet, but they didn't go to each other's homes after school. The black kids tried to be normal and not talk about the terrible tension and fear they lived with every day, something the white kids didn't know existed because their parents hid it from them as much as they could. My great grandfather had a cross burned on his lawn because he refused to knuckle under to the KKK! Some whites did oppose what was going on.

My mother in the 30s in Indiana was let out of the car outside the black area by the black woman who was driving because she knew, although my mother didn't, that a black and a white in a car could lead to the black person being hauled out and beaten up or killed, even if they were two women.

That was a particularly violently racist era in American history, when Jim Crow laws were designed to put blacks back in their place as much as possible even with freedom from slavery. Indiana, for instance, had a state government dominated by the KKK. It's horrible and ugly but it happened and we must not try to rewrite history and say it wasn't so bad. Yes, it was that bad. And lynchings went on with no investigation by law enforcement and the blacks who had served in WWI who had seen a far less racist way of life in Paris were forcibly, even lethally, reintroduced to how vicious things were here when they came home. Voting rights were stripped away, too. It was a steady descent into cultural madness, debasing blacks as much as possible through laws and killing black leadership. That's why everything erupted into national fury. There is no way of exaggerating how evil it was. Whatever you think, it was worse than that.

The good old days were NOT a gentler simpler time, nor were they good. They were ghastly.

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] MrBook_ 13 years ago

Brilliant post, skiddoo. So many people need to read what you've written here.

Get on up.

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[–] Jake-219 11 years ago

One thing I don't get, is why, the moment a black person (yes, even someone in blackface) shows up onscreen from back then, it becomes an automatic call to arms for people to shout "racism!"

Admittedly it's kind of embarrassing nowadays to see that Zambo was played by a white actor in makeup, but that was just a case of First National having to deal with the times. In and of itself it's no more racist than having Charlie Chan played by non-orientals (or having Anna May Wong lose out to Louise Rainer for the lead in "God's Little Acre," for that matter...which was practically criminal, except that Rainer did a great job, from what I've heard. Gotta get around to watching that some day...)

Seems to me that what matters isn't who's playing the role, but what role it is that they're playing.

So...Zambo has stuck around (along with his cockney partner, whose dialog has also been "fixed" in some editions), comes up with the notion of having Jocko climb the plateau, assists in building the rope ladder...

Pray enlighten me: just where, exactly, do you guys see anything "racist" in any of that?

About the only possible thing racist about his character (at least of the extant footage; I suspect that there was at least some more character development for him that's gone now) is the dialect that's been "corrected." And what's so racist about protraying someone using a different dialect? People DO use different dialects, all the time. Yes, I'll grant that it wasn't absolutely necessary...but was it really so terribly racist? (And what about that of the cockney?)

People nowadays are way too guilty of overreacting to things, and some of the results have been to deprive us of some wonderful stuff, or spoil it for us.

(Examples: "Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs" is considered by a lot of people who know a lot more about the subject than most of us do to be a masterpiece of animation, yet, because it's considered racist today--even though Bob Clampett was inspired to create it by being urged to do so from black musicians he knew, and even though black audiences of the time loved it--we're forbidden from seeing it.

"Song of the South" is perceived now to be terribly racist...usually by people who've never seen it, and Disney refuses to ever release it again.

"Amos and Andy" is now constantly taken to task for being racist, yet its creators insisted upon hiring blacks for the show, and it was as much loved by black audiences as white ones.

And a true comedy genius like Manton Moreland is considered by many to be little more than another Uncle Tom caricature, even though he'd been using a lot of those same comedy bits for years...in front of black audiences.)

Sure, for many of the things back then, people would do well to be ashamed of themselves or their progenitors.

But for having taken things way too far the other way, to the point where the world is little more than one hot button after another that invites the cry of "Racist!" we've got a lot to be ashamed of nowadays, too.

Losing your virginity, burying your pet and killing your sister...can take a lot out of a girl!

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[–] Isopod 9 years ago

When I first saw him in black-face I just laughed.
Why do something controversial like hire a black guy when you can just rub some charcoal on someone and be done with it.
It seemed more lazy than racist at first, but then when he dives into the tent and cowers for no good reason, combined with him generally acting like a moron, it started to seem like he was being portrayed in a stereotypical and ignorant way. But that's history and a lot of people didn't know any better. It's like a window into the mindset and perceptions people had back then.

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