[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by sabotai

I also watched College, a 1927 Buster Keaton comedy. A good comedy. I'd give it a solid 7/10. Not among my favorite Buster Keaton comedies, but it was a fun movie...except it did have one scene that has not aged well and made it very awkward for awhile...

But that's part of the dilemma with rating a really old movie. On one hand "It was a different time, and if someone wasn't outright racist, they were at least incredibly ignorant. It was 1927 after all and we can't hold them to a standard set nearly 100 years later." .....vs.... "Jesus fucking Christ, sab, , it's Buster Keaton in blackface swinging his arms exaggeratedly, obviously imitating a monkey, as he pretends to be a 'colored waiter'. That's not okay and you can't possibly give a movie with such a racist portrayal of black people a good rating! WTF!"

Without that scene, it's a 7/10 movie. With it...ugh, yeah, that scene is really bad.

Glad to see this get bumped!

Aside from the controversy, I liked College much less than you did, mainly because it felt like a mediocre copy of Harold Lloyd's The Freshman.

As for the controversy, I'd end up on the latter part of that debate. That scene is ridiculously racist. It doesn't matter what people might've thought in 1927. It offends me now and that makes it a worse movie.

Also, I'd argue that not everyone was okay with stuff like that in 1927. Just like there were protests of Birth of a Nation in 1919, there were certainly people who were offended by that scene in 1927. So I think you can hold the movie accountable even using many people's 1927 standards.