by John Walters

Propel Culture

Last night I was watching The Defiant Ones, a 1958 film starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in which they portray a pair of escaped convicts chained together at the wrists. This was racy stuff in the late Fifties.

I’m just glad the Cancel Culture Warriors are still too busy working up a lather about Gone With The Wind to have noticed this film. In the very first line, Curtis uses the “N-word” to address Poitier’s character. And not for the last time.

The script is incredible and the more I watch Poitier—this is the third 1950s film of his I’ve seen in the past six weeks—the more I’m wowed. To have such presence and confidence as a black man in the movies in that age, well, he was a generation or two ahead of his time. Most people know him for Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner or In The Heat of The Night, both from 1967. But watch this or No Way Out (where he’s also called the N-word), from 1950, to see how just how much of a rising star it was easy to see he was.

Anyway, no one should ever touch a slide of these films (or Gone With The Wind). Because these films depict how Americans felt about race in general at the time they were made, even if Gone With The Wind is a 1939 depiction of a time nearly 80 years earlier. As such, each of these films are historical documents. We can learn from them. Only true ignorance hopes to conceal something that is the truth. And the truth here is that in 1958 The Defiant Ones accurately portrayed the racial divide, otherwise it would never have resonated with so many.

Also: The final scene of this film is pretty much perfect, no?

Musk-Have Apparel

You have to love this. Elon Musk, trolling the haters, is now selling short shorts on the Tesla website. The appearance of the shorts yesterday caused the Tesla site to crash (and, we assume, burst into flames).

“Run like the wind or entertain like Liberace with our red satin and gold trim design. Relax poolside or lounge indoors year-round with our limited-edition Tesla Short Shorts, featuring our signature Tesla logo in front with “S3XY” across the back. Enjoy exceptional comfort from the closing bell.“

The price: $69.420, which is pretty much a triple-entendre. Genius.

The next step, we assume, will be a Tesla robe for consumers to “cover their shorts.”