Hacker Cinema
The Heat Is On: The Making of Miss Saigon
1989 · Film · documentary · 75 min
Directed by David Wright
A behind-the-scenes look at the putting on of the successful West End stage musical, including footage of the cast rehearsing and the triumphant first night.
2 neutralfrom 2 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
3 comments on Hacker News
Different how? Like Lolita (1962) ? All the President's Men (1976)? Miss Saigon (1989, a play I admit, but a controversial one): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Saigon_controversy
??
I don't even know what decade you're referring to. Movies, plays, and other forms of entertainment always had politics. Some of them (like Lolita) explicitly tried to court controversy.
Or do you mean like Disney movies, like how Peter Pan (1953 Disney cartoon) has great, "non political" songs like "What makes the red man red" ??
Like, you can't escape politics. Even when you're trying to be politically neutral (like a Disney cartoon aimed at children in the 1950s), these sorts of political issues just come up... because our base assumptions of life are in fact political.
Whether we court politics on purpose (Dr. Strangelove, Lolita), or accidentally (Peter Pan 1953, "What Makes the Red Man Red?"), these sorts of things have been going on since the dawn of movies and cartoons.
Lemme leave things off with this 1940s comic by Dr. Seuss: https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb3618599q/_2.jpg
>because of cultural significance and whatnot.
No, because Miss Saigon is a fictional piece of work, as is Lolita. Committing a crime in a piece of fiction is obviously not equivalent to actual child pornography, just like showing an action movie isn't equivalent to footage of actual violent crime.
There is no blurry line here. Child abuse and child pornography are clearly defined terms. Justifying child abuse in a novel might be morally offensive, but is not a crime, abusing an actual child however, and publishing footage of it, is.
You'd be surprised.
The exact line gets blurry with various media. Kim, the female protagonist in the Broadway Musical "Miss Saigon" is a 17-year old whore. There's implied sex, as well as multiple stripper-dances throughout the musical to hammer in the sexual issues that Kim faces.
Something like Miss Saigon is allowed and not CP (despite being below the age of 18) because of cultural significance and whatnot.
There are clear cut cases of CP of course. But when musicals / movies / various media toy with the idea of 16-year-old or 17-year-old girls who are exploring their sexuality... where do you draw the line? What should get censored?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita
Lolita the novel + movie also gets brought up a lot. As it is explicitly a story about a middle-age man exploring sexuality / erotic elements with an underage girl. It toes the line and never becomes sexually explicit, but its clear from the context what the novel is pushing.