An English Patient, Best Years of Our Lives, Pocohantas, foreign films with a "message", documentaries, movies about the icons of the cultured class, The Bostonians, movies that people brag about seeing even if they didn't understand one whit of what it was about, movies that might be considered artsy fartsy, movies that contain terms that are only used recently but take place in the far past that eliminate certain racial points of view common in the time the movie is taking place, movies that impart a sense of style that makes them attempt to be taken more seriously than what the circumstances at the time would have warranted, movies with sticks up their butts, movies that have had their soul ripped from them by studios or standards and practices, movies where the characters are so righteous, they even pee in black and white, movies that are devoid of anything that would be offensive to ANYONE.
An example: take To Kill A Mockingbird. The n***** word is used constantly in the book--it would be, considering the plot, and the era it was originally written for. Can you imagine them making the film, now, substituting the word used then with "black" or "African-American"? It would negate the whole meaning of the film!
Or if they remade the Wizard of Oz, and the witch didn't have the black hat and outfit, substituting it with emblems of real Wicca or paganism? It would turn what is a fairy tale into something which it is not--a politically correct and inaffective film!
It's a Wonderful Life--add in the fact that suicide is against the moral code, add in the perils of the modern world, with slick investors messing with marshland and wetlands, adding in the environmental groups screaming for Environmental Impact Reports, add in the FDIC insuring everyone for up to $100,000 and the Savings and Loan rejecting people for bad credit, and you would have a mess of a film. While the original is politically correct (and a fable) for its own era, it is considered a fairy tale now and a "feel good" film that is made legendary because of George Bailey's kind-heartedness and strength of character. He doesn't exist anymore, nor should he, but it would certainly not be the same movie if made now.
Someone pointed to Finding Neverland as being PC--there is nothing to offend anyone in it, and it is touted as a G movie because it's so goshdarn sedated it would never let an adult see it without falling asleep!
From Wiki-pedia, a paragraph discussing the great extent that "PC" is exaggerated oftentimes to the point of superfluousness:
The practice of satirizing so-called politically correct speech took on a life of its own in the 1990s, though its popularity in today's media has largely declined. Part of what it is to understand the meaning of political language modification is to be familiar with satirical portrayals of political correctness. Such portrayals are generally exaggerations of what actual language modification looks like. For example, in a satirical example of so-called political correctness speech, the sentence "The fireman put a ladder up against the tree, climbed it, and rescued the cat" might look like this:
The firefighter (who happened to be male, but could just as easily have been female) abridged the rights of the cat to determine for itself where it wanted to walk, climb, or rest, and inflicted his own value judgements in determining that it needed to be 'rescued' from its chosen perch. In callous disregard for the well-being of the environment, and this one tree in particular, he thrust the mobility-disadvantaged unfriendly means of ascent known as a 'ladder' carelessly up against the tree, marring its bark, and unfeelingly climbed it, unconcerned how his display of physical prowess might injure the self-esteem of those differently-abled. He kidnapped and unjustly restrained the innocent feline with the intention of returning it to the person who claimed to 'own' the naturally free animal.
link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_correctTake your pick: PC is a challenge, because it can be the heart and soul of something which shows intolerance, bigotry and prejudice to its nth degree, or it can be what redeems something which might be offensive to too many. The Color Purple was a good example of a film which strove to be as "gentle" as possible for the subject matter, but didn't, in one second, shield people from the attitudes and mores of the people it told about.
Does that help? :)
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