Sunday, February 23, 2014

Leave It To Beaver, Circa 2013

So last night, a couple of residents of the Catican Compound watched Dallas Buyers Club. It starts with a redneck having sex with a prostitute. Shortly thereafter, said redneck discovers he has contracted AIDS, upon learning which he launches into all kinds of anti-gay profanity. Here's how the description at IMDb starts:
Dallas 1985. Electrician and sometimes rodeo bull rider Ron Woodroof lives hard, which includes heavy smoking, drinking, drug use (primarily cocaine) and casual sex. He is a stereotypical redneck: racist and homophobic.
I checked out at that point and wandered off to watch some soccer-on-demand. Specifically, Tottenham vs. Dnipro in the Europa Cup competition. It was pretty poor stuff as the Dnipro pitch looked like they'd be grazing cows on it right before game time.

Still, watching the cows graze would have been more interesting than one more Hollywood production where the Redneck Encounters Diversity The Hard Way. A few minutes in and you could tell where it was going with the same accuracy as a Leave It To Beaver episode. I popped my head back in briefly to see a scene where a gay dude with AIDS was talking to a nurse. Unlike Nasty Redneck, he was charming and clever. Well, OK then.

So in the end, Wally and Beaver realize that lying about breaking Mrs. Johnson's mailbox wasn't a good idea and they pool their paper route money to replace it. Well, either that or the redneck learns about open mindedness and brings medicine to everyone. It's a true story, so it's all OK that it plays perfectly into the stereotypes of rednecks quoted above.

Of course, Camden is a true story, too, but that's something way too icky to show in the movies. No, we'd better stick to explicit redneck-prostitute sex scenes so we don't offend our viewers.

Right, Beav?

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