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Be Kind Rewind

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Be Kind Rewind (Web Video)

Be Kind Rewind is a YouTube channel chronicling the history of Hollywood, the Academy Awards and various starlets throughout the years.

BKR began chronicling the stories and circumstances leading up to specific winners for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, initially those in the The Golden Age of Hollywood, but has since covered the winners up until The New '20s. Despite this, she's maintained that she's actually not that big an enthusiast about the Oscars.

Outside of this, she has also examined why certain actresses never won, how certain actresses' careers were shaped and developed, and simply the making of certain classic films. Sometimes all of the above.

Not to be confused with the 2006 movie with the same name.

Tropes:

  • The '60s: Her video on Julie Christie discusses how she seemed to embody The Theme Park Version of the 'Swinging 60s' that Hollywood loved during that period.
  • The '90s: She's often quite disdainful of the 90s, being particularly critical of it being the so called 'Girl Power Era'.
  • Aborted Arc:
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality: While discussing The Wizard of Oz, she compares Dorothy's original look of a blonde wig and more bombshell makeup to her more subtle one in the finished film; that even if the latter is still very obviously a Hollywood makeup job, it at least allows you to believe that she was a simple farm girl from Kansas.
  • Action Girl: When discussing Michelle Yeoh, she talks about how the hype surrounding her as simply a female action star allowed her no growth or narrative as an actress.
  • Ambiguously Brown: A video on Rita Moreno discusses how she played pretty much every ethnicity early in her career, with the same generic 'foreign' accent that was enough to code her as 'other'.
  • Anvilicious:invoked Discussed when mentioning the symbolism in The Misfits.
    "Arthur Miller was not a subtle man."
  • Arch-Enemy: Archbishop Francis Spellman, whom she has described as a "recurring enemy on this channel" for his role in repeated censorships in the days of the Hays Code.
  • Author Appeal:
    • Izzy is part Brazilian herself, and thus is able to explain a lot about Brazilian culture when doing a video on Carmen Miranda.
    • She is a huge Judy Garland fan, and has devoted three specific videos to her, as well as videos on all the adaptations of A Star is Born, The Wizard of Oz and a two parter on Valley of the Dolls, so she's naturally discussed in great detail there too.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Her Casting the Women of Valley of the Dolls has a section on the male actors of the film that simply has the line listing their names and that they're "in the movie" before cutting to the next section.
  • Beauty Inversion: Talked about frequently, considering the Academy's very blatant preference for actresses "de-glamming" for serious roles.
  • Black Jezebel Stereotype: Discussed in her video on Halle Berry's Oscar win for Monster's Ball, pointing out that Black actresses often had to deal with extremely sexualised roles, and Halle in particular was typecast as a Ms. Fanservice with very little else.
  • But Not Too Black: A video discussing Carmen Miranda's career first notes that her style of dancing came from the black communities in Brazil, and of course got more attention when a white woman started doing it.
  • Career Resurrection:invoked Often discussed.
    • One video is devoted to Lee Grant, who was blacklisted in the 1950s, but overcame the blacklist and eventually won an Oscar.
    • Ingrid Bergman and her Oscar win for Anastasia is discussed, and how the press loved the narrative that it was the actress's comeback after being exiled from Hollywood, when in reality she had simply moved to Europe to do something different in terms of filmmaking.
    • Michelle Yeoh's win for Everything Everywhere All at Once and how representation of Asians in Hollywood had changed to allow that narrative.
  • Chronically Killed Actor:invoked In a video on Greta Garbo's career, she produces a chart of her filmography that indicates how many ended with her characters dying.
  • Compassionate Critic: All in all, it's clear she loves film and film history, and any criticism she makes are coming from a constructive point of view. Even in a video comparing all four Hollywood adaptations of Little Women, she finds things to love about all of them.
  • Consolation Award:invoked
    • When discussing Geraldine Page's Oscar win and how she won over Whoopi Goldberg for The Color Purple, she notes that the former's narrative of having been a Hollywood veteran who never won is what made her seem like a safer option than the latter's of being in a controversially received film.note 
    • Played with when it comes to Julie Andrews winning an Oscar for Mary Poppins rather than The Sound of Music. On the one hand, she is iconic in the former. But on the other, she put up a poll asking her followers which one she should have won for, and The Sound of Music won out, and a narrative did form around her that she won out of sympathy for not being cast in My Fair Lady.
    • She does a video on The Blind Side and how Sandra Bullock's win was mostly recognition for a consistently liked and successful performer who had otherwise never been nominated before.
  • Cross-Referenced Titles: Her video Chloe Zhao's Win - Moment or Movement? comes from her one on Halle Berry's win, in which she references a quote from who said not to mistake "a moment for a movement".
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?:
    • A video discussing The Misfits has a significant section devoted to Marilyn Monroe's work and her talents as an actress, and how she got so little respect from her contemporaries.
    • While choosing not to take a side in the matter of Mommie Dearest, she uses her video on Joan Crawford's Oscar win for Mildred Pierce to remind people of the woman's accomplishments as an actress who was able to reinvent herself several times over throughout nearly four decades in Hollywood.
  • Fandom Heresy: Invoked. She mentions how Alfred Hitchcock disliked Vivien Leigh's screen test for Rebecca, and admits she has an unpopular opinion on thinking he "made a mistake".
  • Hollywood Old: Discussed in a video on Cloris Leachman's career, where the actress pivoted into playing old women in comedies when she was only in her 40s. She also takes a shot at Peter Bogdonovich for talking about the actresses playing the thirty-something characters as "older".
  • In Name Only: She devotes a video to the film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's vastly differs from the Truman Capote book it was adapted from, and the circumstances surrounding why that was.
  • Irony: When talking about Judy Garland not winning for A Star Is Born (1954), BKR suggests that the irony of her playing a character who has to deal with a performer's substance abuse and their subsequent downfall when she herself was known for such things on set may have been a factor in the snub.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:invoked Admits that she's run afoul of this with The Wizard of Oz, stating that it's almost "too beloved" that makes her forget how good it actually is.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: She discusses how The Misfits was heavily paralleling Roslyn's life with that of Marilyn Monroe (to the point where some of her lines were taken from her and Arthur Miller's real life conversations) and also had some with Montgomery Clift.
  • Madonna-Whore Complex: In a video on Deborah Kerr, she highlights how the actress resented her Proper Lady image and envied the likes of Marilyn Monroe, wishing she were seen as sexy in that way.
  • Mammy: Discussed about how this was the most readily available role for Black actresses to play in the early days of Hollywood, since it was considered "acceptable" to white audiences.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
    • Includes a caption confirming that the NAACP's president was indeed called Walter White.
    • Is audibly incredulous when reading a review of Sayonara that describes Miyoshi Umeki as "a lovely bit of Japanese porcelain".
  • Pun: She takes the time in her video on Julie Christie to note how young people possibly only know her from being mentioned by Robyn in Stranger Things and says...
    BKR: "I mean, come on guys. Couldn't some of you have stopped running up that hill for a few seconds to make Doctor Zhivago trend?"
    Cue the "Running Up That Hill" scene with the Dr Zhivago theme over it.
  • One-Steve Limit: Embraced in a video focusing on how Julie Christie and Julie Andrews were both nominated the same year, and focused on why Christie won for Doctor Zhivago instead of Andrews for The Sound of Music.
  • Sci-Fi Ghetto:invoked
    • Discussed multiple times about how the Oscars rarely recognise performances in the horror genre, suggesting that the stylised nature of some of the performances (such as Toni Collette in Hereditary) make them unappealing. She also notes that Ruth Gordon's performance in Rosemary's Baby pointedly wasn't like that, and that's probably why she won Best Supporting Actress.
    • She also devotes a video on the lack of respect that Fay Wray would get as an actress because she only did horror films.
  • Some of My Best Friends Are X: Criticises the Academy for insisting they couldn't be racist because Whoopi Goldberg was hosting the ceremony that year.
  • Spicy Latina: Draws a distinction between Dolores Del Rio - who was promoted as an Anglo upper class leading lady - and Lupe Velez, whose hot temper and foreign accent saw her being promoted as a Funny Foreigner.
  • Troubled Production:invoked She's discussed many of these in her videos - such as The Misfits, The Wizard of Oz, Two-Faced Woman, Valley of the Dolls and Grace of Monaco.
  • The Voice: She prefers to only do voiceover in her videos to maintain some anonymity. It came as quite a surprise to her subscribers when she appeared on camera for a Q&A video.
  • Wham Line: When talking about the plot and backstory of the film Julia and how it was Based on a True Story of something Lillian Hellman wrote in her memoir, she first notes that a lot of reviews said that the Julia character seemed more like a cypher and perhaps not realistic. And then she adds in that's probably "because she wasn't"...and then the next part of the video is about how the Julia section of Lillian Hellman's memoir was actually Based on a Great Big Lie.
  • World's Most Beautiful Woman: Discussed in a video on Greta Garbo and the mystique she seemed to have, and how that persona was ruined by attempting to rebrand her in Two-Faced Woman.

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