While I concede they have the right to choose any review they like for the front page review, I would have thought that the editors of IMDB might have chosen one which a) doesn't contain the phrase 'murderous homosoexual' (as if the two things had something to do with each other), and b) which contains some actual commentary of any sort about the damn movie.
shareAlas political correctness.
This is one of the major reasons why entertainment is so bland and non-entertaining.
People are people.
If we were perfect and had 0 biases then we would be angels.
I found the comment to be hilarious.
Not because of the term that was used, but rather because of the idiot who used it.
As Malcolm X used to say. "I'm glad you're a racist and I know it, because I can see who I'm fighting."
If we don't have the information, how can we tell.
So sensitivity requires therapy, not a change in the entire world around us.
"Quid Pro Quo"
Also, the review is accurate:
- he was murderous
- he was homosexual
Would you take offense if I said Ted Bundy was a "murderous heterosexual"? Of course not, because it's true.
I was always under the impression that he wasn't. Gay, I mean. Went to prison in the first place for killing a guy in a fight in Alaska over a prostitute Stroud was going with at the time. According to the lady this other fella beat her and I guess he got tired of it. Not to wax poetic on the guy, far from it, just that til just now I'd never heard that.
shareWould you take offense if I said Ted Bundy was a "murderous heterosexual"?
So does the phrase (in reference to a green circle) "green circle" imply that all circles are in fact green, or in any way implicitly related??
Yes, comments should only pertain to the movie here, so correct that by actually commenting on the movie; extremely oversensitive PC crusades more than permeate society as it is, leave them out of film disucssion.
Original poster, please give yourself a spanking. A good hard one.
shareWho - me, or the guy who wrote the review?
I'm rather amazed people are getting upset about some sort of political correctness crusade implicit in my comment. I was merely suggesting that if someone is actually selecting the review on the front page for a film, they ought to select one which critiques the movie, rather than just drawing some oblique connection between homosexuality and murder. I mean, if that's a bad idea, then newspapers should fire film critics and just hire people who do things like review 'Passion of the Christ' before they've seen it.
If OTOH the front page review just rotates randomly, fair enough.
[deleted]
the IMDb doesn't chose the comments which appear at the main page, it's random. at the time only "3 out of 7 people found the following comment useful" so it won't be randomly chosen anymore.
but i didn't find the phrase offensive at all. you seem to be a little biased as well or would you say "murderous man" is offensive (as if those two are closely related)?
>>>drawing some oblique connection between homosexuality and murder.
Maybe you ought to learn the English language first. As a previous guy said the phrase "green circle" doesn't automatically means all circles are green. Like "murderous homosexual" doesn't mean all homosexuals are murders. Ajd "homosexual murderer" doesn't mean all murderers all homosexuals.
You draw a connection that does not exist, because you don't understand the language you are reading.
You argue with a false dilemma; which is why political correctness gets the better of us. Green Circle does not imply all circles are green, but it does imply SOME circles are green. The proportion of "circles that are green" is not discussed and hence is left to the individual to decide upon.
If said individual only hears about "green circles" she would come to believe that MOST circles are green.
But the real issue is less about pairing it, than the label in the first place.
"Go issue a BOLO on a white homosexual", of this, only the race can actually be "observed" leaving the question why the term "homosexual" is there in the first place.
If we use the term "Radical Muslims / Islam", you have to ask why the best way to describe the people who dislike Israel's Inception is to use the native religion and throw an adjective in front of it. Why, "Radical Christians" have an absurdly large amount of murders attributed to them. Normally, we wouldn't even recognize the EXISTENCE of "Radical Christians" and instead call it a cult. (And what about those "Radical Americans" going around and raping our children and wives.)
But what is happening here, why is "Political Correctness" gaining ground?
Soundbites.
There IS no way to describe "dissenters of Israel's creation and the U.S.A. continued interference with middle-eastern affairs" in a soundbite. You could, of course, just use the group's name but it isn't as hip as making up a "cool phrase" to call them.
Worse is that when people USE soundbites they're often complete misrepresentations of what was intended. All those "Quotes" we have on our forefathers are generally out of context and when read with an understanding of the times take on a very different meaning.
So again, what does the sexual orientation of a muderer have to do with the review; and why doesn't his race, ethnicity and creed be as important as him being gay.
I didn't think anyone at IMDb chose which review appeared at the top of the User Comments section. I thought either they just popped up at random, or the most recent comment was the one that appeared.
I have to say that, while I agree with Lupercali that that reviewers comment seemed to imply a connection between homosexuality and "quintessentially evil" acts, I would rather IMDb not take the time to pick and choose which reviews appear where. It should be a random system. Besides, most of us are wise enough to spot a bad review when we see one.
P.S. I hope people don't still think all Germans are prejudiced, or use that review to lend validity to such a bias.
I haven't seen the review in question, but I'm confused as to who's supposed to be offended by the remark - the homosexuals, or the murderers.
shareRobert Stroud did murder a man in Alaska. This man had beaten and raped the woman with whom Stroud was living. When Stroud found out what had taken place he walked to the man's house and shot him dead. He murdered another man in prison in an altercation in the dining hall over a remark the guard made about Stroud's brother. Stroud killed the guard with a prison shiv. Considering the circumstances in both cases, neither crime merited the punishment Stroud was given. His sentence was, in fact, a violation of his civil rights as it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Was Stroud a homosexual? He wasn't when he first entered prison. Over several years he learned to accept homosexual activity, just a many long-term prisoners do. That doesn't mean he was a homosexual, he was a heterosexual man who accepted homosexual activities as unavoidable.
[deleted]
Not to worry. IMDB dropped the reference. The time has arrived when both people and institutions are mortally fearful to offend or even fail to express support for anything homosexual.
Who knows - my comment may get me removed from this service or assigned to a re-education camp.
More to the point Stroud was a pedophile who was unable to act on his compulsion because of his incarceration. He wrote several lude and lascivious stories about young boys.
Stroud was a psychopath got what he deserved and as a result never had the chance to violate some young boy.
Doug
To say he got what he deserved for killing two men is one thing, and I can go along with that, but to say he got what he deserved for writing lewd stories? Sounds like thought crime to me. Let anyone who has never had fantasies about socially unacceptable behaviour cast the first stone.
Furthermore, it's not unreasonable to argue that his fantasies were precisely the result of his lengthy solitary confinement, not the motivation or justification for it.
Most confined men dream of women, or possibly other men, not little boys. Pedophilia is not socially unacceptable, its a felony.
Doug
The act, yes. But not the fantasy or the thought. As much as I hate pedophiles, what scares me more are laws prohibiting freedom of speech or criminializing ideas and thoughts.
Think of all the movies where a criminal is the protagonist, should we sentence the script writer, director, actor for felonies they didn't commit but thought or acted out?
The prisons would be overcrowded with authors if that was the case.
I find it odd that the people who are most scared of being persecuted for "thought crimes" are those who would never be charged with them to begin with.
What is a "thought crime" anyways?
Is writing a book on how you're going to rape and kill a child a thought crime?
Is calling a reporter and explaining how you vividly detailed in your book how you plan to rape and kill a child a thought crime?
Is calling the police and saying that you "really" are going to go rape and kill a child a thought crime?
Is thinking said thought moments before you rape and kill a child a thought crime?
Or is raping and killing a child the only way you can stopped from... raping and killing a child?
Is that too extreme? How about this.
Is hanging out in chatrooms and talking about sex with kids a 'thought crime'?
Is cybering out with a person who claims to be a kid a "thought crime"?
Is going to said person's home who says their parents are out a "thought crime"?
Does that mean that all the people "Caught" on "To Catch a Predator" are falsely convicted of "thought crimes"?
Why is the life of the victim worth LESS than the life of the criminal? Why must a victim be harmed before we can bring a person to justice... because of childish fears of censorship? You don't even know what the word means, you know what people tell you it means, you know what the opinions of wikipedians believe it means... but you have never lived under it and know nothing about it.
If we talk of SOPA, how many people actually read the unannotated version of the proposal? How many even bothered to try to understand what any of it meant? And how many just listened when "Major Corporations with Commercial Interests" said "this is bad, we stand to lose money, you must dissent!"
And then we argue "a single word censored is an injustice for all." Claiming that allowing censorship would cause a complete dystopia **because it will**.
We live in times where the average citizen is an idiot. Drinking and driving IS NOT SAFE, and if a police officer decides to hang outside bars to save lives because you refuse to obey the law, you should not be fighting a ticket that was issued with the intent of SAVING PEOPLES LIVES. But noooo, You have the RIGHT to kill people, you're an AMERICAN!
And this nonsense against allowing police officers to crack down on texting and driving by looking in windows at stoplights. It isn't going to stop once the vehicle starts moving, and even if it does you'll just be waiting for the vehicle to stop. It is a pointless lie that gets through just because I'M AMERICAN!
We cannot even convict someone for going into a dark alley and shooting someone. Not because of lack of evidence, but because in the lack of any witnesses; the prosecution has to prove that "The victims right to live was more than the defendants." You have to PROVE self-defense, and you have to PROVE that you did not intentionally place yourself into harms way to justify murder, and then you have to prove that there was nothing else that could have been done to prevent a loss of life.
Firing a gun has a responsibility, and trying to be John Wayne about it and "shoot first ask questions later" creates these situations. People love citing the whole "I'm being robbed" as a perfect excuse to go kill people, it isn't protecting anyone when you try taking control of a tense situation with extreme hostility.
But then we again complain about the police; as if we're not pissing on them all the time, refusing to co-operate, yelling about our taxes that are used to pay their pittance of a salary.
This is utter childishness. This whole self-entitled trash that is being spewed is tiresome; constant bombardment from people who have known nothing but privilege.
Calling Stroud a murderous homosexual does not imply that homosexuals are murderous, any more than calling someone a liberal idiot implies that all idiots are liberal.
shareGreat movie but the title should have been Birdman Of "Leavenworth"
shareyeah but it implies homosexual is bad , because its included in the list of adjectives describing stroud.
Hollywood biographical movies, especially in the past, always ignored the truth of the character they were portraying. Such is the case here. You really have to watch this as a fictional movie loosely based on real events. True for every Hollywood bio really. Good movie, not history in any sense.
sharemam13143,
yes I agree!
I don't know that "every" Hollywood bio could classify as such. "Coal Miner's Daughter" and, perhaps, "Raging Bull" might be exceptions.
"Victor, what are we going to do to stop this fiendish tit?"