This story is over a week old, but too delicious not to share:
Holiday classic ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ has ‘dangerous’ capitalist message: professorThe classic Thanksgiving film “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” contains a “dangerous” pro-capitalist message, a State University of New York professor said Monday on a “radical” left podcast.
SUNY Purchase College Professor Mtume Gant analyzed the film on the podcast “Millennials are Killing Capitalism” with host Jared Ware.
They discussed their belief that the comedy normalizes classism through the main characters’ disastrous travel experiences as they attempt to go home for the holiday.
The podcast, which frequently features leftist academics, describes itself as a “platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world.”
Gant criticized the main character, a grumpy, uptight upper middle class marketing executive played by Steve Martin, and his family-focused goal of trying to get home for Thanksgiving.
He said the film uses family as an excuse for Martin’s and other capitalist bourgeois’s poor treatment of the working class, including the lower class main character played by John Candy.
“If your executive boss is a little bit of an a–hole, just know that he can’t see his family that much. So, you shouldn’t be that pissed that he’s exploiting you, possibly harassing you in various ways … It’s just the stress of not seeing his family,” Gant said.
He also attacked the idea of family and home being portrayed as “wholesome.”
“You get this idea that because [the main character is] not at home that kind of wholesome side of him gets destroyed by modernity,” not by his “really terrible” capitalist ideology, he said.
At another point in the podcast, the professor pointed out the contrast between how the two main characters are portrayed, despite having similar jobs. One is an upper level marketing executive who is clean, organized, and physically fit, while the other is a lower class salesman who is sloppy, “unscrupulous,” and overweight.
The director is “constantly reinforcing these really terrible tropes that have become so normalized in our society around class,” Gant said.
Gant said the film’s focus on work travel also is part of a larger capitalist and imperialist agenda that puts the burden on the worker for the benefit of the bourgeois.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey "professor"! Eat a big sack of shut the **** up.
