I think the review was pretty clear that the problem was with its treatment of "natives" as being primitive and savage--and so inferior to white people. Which seems highly problematic, even by 30's era standards.
Brett, you've definitely got Elysia's number. You've described the film I saw. I prefer it to Unashamed, because it's coherently nudist, exploitive maybe, definitely racist, but informed and believable. It is a product of its time, one when filmmakers were preposterously coy about genital nudity, and when you should expect any educated white Protestant to have been a eugenicist. (The Unashamed filmmakers seem to have had an anti-racist agenda, which is remarkable and laudable, but I wish I'd had the chance to give the screenwriters notes. Unashamed gets tedious, and the ending is incredibly grim for a movie that ostensibly wants to promote frolicking naked in the sun.) Elysia's like Thomas Jefferson. He used a slave as a sexual convenience, but wrote a seminal essay about American Independence.
I think the review was pretty clear that the problem was with its treatment of "natives" as being primitive and savage--and so inferior to white people. Which seems highly problematic, even by 30's era standards.
Brett, you've definitely got Elysia's number. You've described the film I saw. I prefer it to Unashamed, because it's coherently nudist, exploitive maybe, definitely racist, but informed and believable. It is a product of its time, one when filmmakers were preposterously coy about genital nudity, and when you should expect any educated white Protestant to have been a eugenicist. (The Unashamed filmmakers seem to have had an anti-racist agenda, which is remarkable and laudable, but I wish I'd had the chance to give the screenwriters notes. Unashamed gets tedious, and the ending is incredibly grim for a movie that ostensibly wants to promote frolicking naked in the sun.) Elysia's like Thomas Jefferson. He used a slave as a sexual convenience, but wrote a seminal essay about American Independence.