Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is in the process of financially gutting Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and I can’t say that I care.
The TCM that mattered died long ago.
According to some reports, WBD slashed TCM’s staff from 90 people to 20. What we do know is that the 29-year-old cable channel has new leadership, and the staff cuts have been severe enough to alarm Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson into having an emergency meeting with WBD chief David Zaslav. The director-trio said they came out of the meeting “heartened,” but they also want to make movies with Zaslav, so no one knows the truth. In Hollywood, it’s every man for himself. No one in that mercenary town puts principle ahead of status … and there is no higher status than a studio greenlight.
— Jim Cummings (@jimmycthatsme) June 22, 2023
So, who knows what’s happening.
And who cares?
I don’t.
Not anymore.
There was a time when I would have cared, cared a great deal, but TCM is woke-stained now… It’s just not what it was.
This has nothing to do with me cutting the cable cord about eight years ago. The fact that I no longer watch TCM is not the issue. This isn’t personal. TCM was once good for the American culture. There they were, the greatest movies, movie stars, directors, screenwriters, and producers, running 24/7 in about a hundred million homes. Best of all, all of that unequaled Golden-era art and talent was presented in the appropriate way: unedited, uncut, commercial-free, and introduced by a fan. God bless Robert Osborne. There was no equal. There never will be.
Actress Ann Rutherford, host of TCM Robert Osborne and actress Anne Jeffreys attend the TCM Classic Film Festival Vanity Fair after party held at Kress on April 22, 2010, in Hollywood, California.
My affection for TCM was so great that for years I published a daily recommendation of what to watch on the network. What’s more, I DVD-recorded hundreds and hundreds of movies off of TCM. My wife and I still watch those. In fact, we’re watching them on our current camping trip. What a thrill to come across a Robert Osborne introduction. What a gut punch to remember the purity that once defined TCM.
You see, that’s what made TCM unique and uniquely important — its purity. TCM didn’t just love movies; TCM loved art and understood that the only way to respect art, to give art the justice it deserved was through purity. Regardless of the title — whether it was Casablanca (1942) or Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) — TCM presented each title within its particular context as art.
That was good for the culture.
But that’s gone now.
TCM is no longer pure.
Instead, TCM is broadcasting a censored version of a Best Picture Oscar winner, The French Connection (1971). Who knows what else is being censored that we don’t know about. The trust is gone.
The French Connection, Gene Hackman (screenshot 20th Century Fox)
Instead, TCM is now telling viewers what to think about a Best Picture Oscar winner, Gone with the Wind (1939).
Instead, TCM is smearing certain classic films as “problematic.”
Censorship? Telling people what to think? Shaming? Attacking timeless art as “problematic?” There’s a word for that, and the word is McCarthyism.
Generally, demanding purity is stupid and self-defeating, but not in the case of art. Without purity, art ceases to be art and instead becomes someone else’s propaganda. Sure, I’m guilty of interpreting art. I talk about movies through my own worldview all the time. But interpreting art is my job, and it’s my favorite part of this job. TCM is different. TCM is supposed to act as a museum, as a curator. Here’s the art, they once said. Here’s the story and history behind the art… From there, we took over. It was our job and pleasure to interpret what we saw through our own experience.
Once you strip away the individual’s right to interpret art, you deny them art’s greatest pleasure: how it stays with us as we think over what we saw and what it meant. These complicated emotions are healthy for the culture and human spirit. Whether it’s in our own lives or through a story we’ve been told, grappling with complicated emotions matures us, thickens our skin, and makes us wiser.
Let me put it this way…
How long would you stare at the Mona Lisa after someone told you the reason behind her smile? Not long. There’s no reason to stare. The mystery has been solved, and, along with it, the pleasure that comes from savoring that mystery.
How long would you stare at the Mona Lisa after someone told you the woman in the painting was racist?
The moment TCM started dictating interpretations, shaming, censoring, and labeling art, the network went from being presenters to propagandists, from curators to authoritarian scolds… This approach is un-American, immoral, insulting. and off-putting.
We once counted on TCM. We can’t anymore. The only answer is to buy hard copies of your favorite films. Become your own museum. Curate your own collection. Do this before the Woke Reich eliminates hard copies. Once everything goes digital, the Woke Nazis have and will sneak into your collection and defile away. And if you don’t think that’s the goal, you haven’t been paying attention.
Turner Classic Movies died years ago, and that’s the shame, not what’s happening today to the husk of what once was.
For those who think I’m being too hard on TCM, remember this: within my world of right-of-center media, I’m a unicorn, a dead-ender; a traditional conservative and Christian who loves movies and who never wished ill on the movie industry — until the Woke Reich took over, until the fascist censoring and grooming began. I held on longer than most.
Oliver Stone is the greatest director of his era. Jane Fonda is one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history. Here are my 25 greatest left-wing movies of all time [link fixed]. Steven Soderbergh’s Che is a masterpiece. I love the art. I’m a purist.
I didn’t leave TCM. TCM left me.