Pardon Us

Pardon Usⁱ is an important film, not necessarily because "it's funny". It's not really that funnyⁱⁱ, Stan&Bran definitely have better draughts on tap. It is instead important because... well... have you ever seen genuine cotton picking ? Because it's in this film, you can watch black people sing while they derp about the field, and then quit working and sing some more ; and alongside me wonder in wonderment that absolutely nothing has changed in a full century, the unyielding idiocy of the inferior African race has not budged one single iota for all the efforts of their own топорищеⁱⁱⁱ intermingled as you please with all the efforts of those of the whites that could summon any interest in the matter. It's like watching bees and grasshoppers trying to move a boulder over the years, nothing less.

But have you ever seen a prison and prison process cca 1930s ever before ? Because it's interesting even to the untrained eye (and the caustic irony at the pantsuit antecessor there depicted as a Unitarian fucktard in a position of unearned authority quite biting if you've the knowledge to support interpretation of what's being said). Moreover, can you even begin to believe how free of meta minds were a century ago ? Getting in trouble with the guard is nothing to be anxious about, being put in the cell with "oh no, not the Tiger!!1" is nothing to be woried about, in fact fellows back then are so mentally simple such a thing as an addition table actually exists. Six and six is twelve, seven and seven is fourteen, eight and eight is sixteen, sing it with me bitch!

It may not be a good film, it may not be enjoyable, or funny, or what you want to do. No matter -- it's an important film, and you must see it anyway.

1. 1931, by James Parrott, with Stanley Laurel, Oliver Nowell (yes, that's right, you didn't know this -- but he says so himself!) Hardy, June Marlowe. Written by Harley M. "Beanie" Walker -- born in 1878, you understand, and nobody ever found out what the Mortimer stood for. [↩]
2. Mostly owing to Walker's heavy involvement in the writing. This is a talkie, the man did punched cards, it's not the same dynamic and this just never worked out for him. Unwieldy dialogue, nonsensical and out of character behaviours, it's just not there. [↩]
3. All of Morgan Freeman's self-important "o look, white man lets me in white man places like expensive hotels and shit doing white man things like being scientist!!!" and all of Bill Cosby's "time to try and rise the porch monkeys like they were actual people" do not, in the end, amount to any sort of substantive change whatsoever -- the nigglet of today's still "tryna make it in this game" in the specific sort of way that resulted in his ancestors being best employed as chattels for sale on Portuguese & Genovese ships. [↩]