Sailer: I Spoke Too Soon About How Scorsese Seems Immune to Cancel Culture
11/07/2019
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From my Taki’s Magazine review of The Irishman:

The Irishman is unusual in the Current Year for nobody insisting that Scorsese be canceled for making a 99 percent white movie. (The only nonwhite role is a Puerto Rican nurse in 2003 who has no clue who Jimmy Hoffa was.) So far, at least, nobody, not even The New Yorker, is demanding to know why Scorsese cast in the Hoffa role Al Pacino instead of, say, Gugu Mbatha-Raw.(Right.)

But now from The Guardian:

Seen but not heard: why don’t women speak in The Irishman?

Scorsese has created provocative roles for women. But with only six words in his latest film, Anna Paquin’s moral spectre is a sign of a troubling trend in Hollywood

In The Irishman, Anna Paquin plays in the coda the grown version of Robert De Niro’s untalkative but observant little girl. She is shown, as a child, instinctively loathing her godfather (played by Joe Pesci) because he is also a professional godfather. In contrast, she adores her father’s friend Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino).

Why doesn’t this important character have many lines?

Uh … because why she never speaks to her father again after July 30, 1975 is the whole point of the movie?

But that’s so Not Current Year. Today, directors are supposed to Tell, Not Show. Communicating visually rather than verbally is Over. What matters now is providing tons of lines for the Intersectional.

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