Friday, January 06, 2006

Wal-mart Planet

A weird Wal-Mart story about how the company's website recommends movies:

Wal-Mart said Thursday it had removed what it called the "offensive combinations" from a walmart.com page advertising a boxed DVD set, "Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series."
Under a "similar items" section, the DVD set's page linked shoppers to four films about the lives of King, actress Dorothy Dandridge, boxer Jack Johnson and singer Tina Turner. Wal-Mart later altered the page to link with television show DVDs.


Actually the book Planet of the Apes by French writer Pierre Boulle was an allegory about the fall of western civilization and did not say blacks were like apes. Later, the film series, made during the height of the Civil Rights movement borrowed heavily from race riots of the era, especially the theme that America had became cruel and decadent.