Hacker Cinema
Meet the Parents
2000 · Film · 108 min
Part of Meet the Parents Collection
Directed by Jay Roach
Greg Focker is ready to marry his girlfriend, Pam, but before he pops the question, he must win over her formidable father, humorless former CIA agent Jack Byrnes, at the wedding of Pam's sister. As Greg bends over backward to make a good impression, his visit to the Byrnes home turns into a hilarious series of disasters, and everything that can go wrong does, all under Jack's critical, hawklike gaze.
1 positive7 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
> Who is saying this, and what is their point of reference?
That's an interesting question. The people who most commonly say this are not WASPs and probably were a rival of the WASPs at the time WASPs ran the country. My personal view of this is that prior to Kennedy, the WASPs were more insular and more elitist and actively discriminated. This is based on reading various things. I will give some examples. The Ivies probably all had a Jew quota. We know Harvard certainly did and from what I remember they instituted it in the 1920s when the Jewish population of the school was as high as 25% at that time. I believe I saw recently that even Stanford admitted to having one as recently as the 50s. In fact, Leland Stanford had made some derogatory comments about the Chinese in his constituency which is not so WASPy now. I know also that you find a number of powerful WASPs during the time of WWII were neutral or even slightly in favor of Hitler but not all of them maybe not even most but some definitely were. There is also a history of "white shoe" law firms that were made up of all WASPs that did not allow Jews in. I think books like the Great Gatsby kind of comment on them as well.
It's not surprising to me that two different members of the Roosevelt family were presidents. WASPs also implemented anti-miscegenation laws. As well, the immigration system allegedly preferred white protestants over others. This motivated the 1965 immigration Act (look at background of who sponsored it, I think this is significant in that time)
Kennedy was the first Irish and Catholic president. Post Kennedy I think what you are talking about is how they are now. I am not trying to argue they are evil, much less so relatively speaking. What I am trying to say is kind of nuanced.
I think very implicitly, they are kind of the group everyone thinks of when we think of elitism in the US right? You usually find institutions they founded apologizing for things WASPs did ages ago. Law suits at elite schools seem to imply that admissions policies are displaying nepotism of old family scion WASPs who are undeserving into the schools at the expense of others. You see movies where the antagonists are WASPy elites like in Meet the Parents or Scent of a Woman.
The bizarre thing about it is that more and more stories are coming out of Asians with super rich families who gave large donations to the schools and their children are being accepted in spite of the lawsuits and the public apologies for the previous nepotism and quotas. Even situations like with Jared Kushner's father who made a large donation just before Jared was accepted at Harvard. But there are disproportionately high numbers of Jews and Asians in the schools and this is said to be a result of hard work and not nepotism. One or two stories do not prove anything of course but likewise I would not say that everything WASPs did was undeserved.
This isn't to say that there aren't undeserving WASPs in high positions or very talented minorities but no one is perfect. What I am saying is that I see a setup here where elitism, discrimination, and nepotism were shunned when done by one group but humans being humans, the new elite who surpassed the old does the same things. I am not very optimistic about it either. I predict things will become very tribal.
As a fan of post-modern movies, I would love if this was the case. However I’m afraid that you are misremembering history a bit here. Postmodern movies heydays have long passed. I’m afraid the reached their peak in the 90s with e.g. the Danish dogma movies (pun intended), independent American movies like Clerks, etc. In fact Pulp fiction was a counter punch to the scene by taking elements of postmodern movies, telling a pulp story and dressing it in a Hollywood film. Ironically it is a long running joke among postmodernists to over-analyze Pulp Fiction with a postmodern reading.
Postmodern films got a tiny resurgence around 2007, but never with the same popularity as the pomo scene of the 90s.
So Lord of the Rings is made between those two modes. The movie industry is living in the wake of the unexpected Titanic success, and the studios are trying to create the next big hit. Movies like Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, Cast Away, Meet the Parents, The Mummy, Moulin Rouge! or Chicken Run etc. is what most people are seeing. The themes of the post modern movies is indeed far away.
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book) * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original) * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake) * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book) * What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) * Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book) * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) * Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5 (original) * Stir Crazy (original) * Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel) * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel) * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
Watch the movie "Meet the Parents" ("dinner scene"). It's funny, but you can skip to 2:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pctsr5jf0Pw
> Meet the Parents
Ah yeah, isn't the stern father in that movie supposed to be ex-CIA or something?
As of 2009 Fox News indicated that the DoD has over 27,000 "recruitment, advertsing , and public relations" employees. Even the Fox writer back then seems slightly perturbed by the bursting-at-the-seams state of the war industry.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/05/pentagon-spending-billions-pr-sway-world-opinion.html
There is also good evidence from the Stratfor hacks that the DoD is engaging in astroturfing.
And if you're younger they come to your school and speak at assemblies, call your home phone every few months (at least in my time), etc. I once humored the army recruitment guys by talking on the phone for about 2 minutes, but I was absolutely clear that I had no interest in joining before hanging up. A day later though, two soldiers in uniform showed up at my parent's house and demanded to see me!
according to the article the involvement includes such "military movies" as Meet the Parents, America’s Got Talent, Oprah and Jay Leno to Cupcake Wars.
It's like High Fructose Corn Syrup -- in everything whether you expect it or not.
Sorry it's just funny. 99% of people reading your post telling the other poster not to feel inadequate would feel inadequate. Reminds me of the film Meet the Parents where Owen Wilson is the ex boyfriend who trades commodities and does carpentry in his spare time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETC82KEplac
Apologies, but I did just find it funny. You can't help being good at things and nice enough to post encouraging replies!
I wonder at what point you can give the police a pass for missing something? What is the threshold of reasonable? Based on this article, I guess we are at a point now where there is no threshld. Everything is a serious security threat. Rather scary.
Edit: This also reminds me of the "You can't say bomb on an airplane." scene in the movie Meet the Parents.