Balls. I’ve been a black man for 45 years, and I’ve always loved Daisy and her cousins. And I’m fairly sure that I’d my sister T had met John Schneider back in the day, she’d have boinked him senseless.
Just a minor factoid: Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke) is from my state of South Dakota.
You are welcome.
ETA: So is Cheryl Ladd. So you are doubly welcome.
Whatever point you think you’re trying to make, you’re only serving to further illustrate my point.
The fact that Coy and Vance felt no need to own their own muscle car further differentiates them from Bo and Luke. The vehicle sharing green-minded thinking of Coy and Vance paved the way toward innovations like ZipCar and Citi Bike.
I don’t think anyone here actually cares about Dukes of Hazzard. But if people were watching it before, I think it’s a poor decision to remove it just because it’s controversial. You seem hung up on things that have nothing to do with what is being said. I’d agree with your point if people were saying “TV Land has to keep this on the air.” No one is saying that, we’re saying it’s not a good policy to just remove everything from the past that offends people. Dukes of Hazzard is a very small thing. But stupid sanitization of the media happens by a thousand cuts, and when the media is nigh 100% owned by private companies the more self-censorship of the past we have the more we get to a place where we essentially act like we can’t show or talk about our past in public. The “go buy the DVDs” argument is irrelevant and frankly stupid.
The concern isn’t about access to Dukes of Hazzard, it’s about the general presence of controversial information and media, particularly from our past. The media absolutely controls what people see because that’s the way the world works, and if the media sanitizes everything a large portion of people lose exposure to stuff that frankly, we shouldn’t be afraid to air.
Shouldn’t that be “quadruply welcome?”
Cultural artifacts of genuine value can be lost through self-censorship. Disney’s “Song of the South” is damn near impossible for anyone to legally find in America in 2015.
Context is really important. When you have a person like Donald Trump who is actively involved in currently running television, who makes racist statements in public, I support a company distancing themselves from him and taking him off their airwaves. To not do so would be a tacit endorsement. But allowing shows like Dukes of Hazzard or releasing films like “Song of the South” do not represent the same thing, they represent small pieces of American media history. Due to the extremely long (and frankly unreasonably long) copyrights on American media when companies decide to self-censor this stuff is functionally lost forever.
Like I said, it’s a death from a thousand cuts. I could see arguments about pretty much every major television series that aired from 1950 to 1980, for example. How many feature women in a “traditional family role” that is “not empowering” for women? How many feature Native Americans as villains, or Mexicans? (Hint: almost all Westerns of that era.) We could quite easily get to a place where for all intents and purposes the average viewer will have no meaningful access to anything released before the late 20th century.
Four-play, anyone?
Huh. I went to South High in Denver. “The Rebels” Very diverse school and still is. Confederate flags where common on kids cars and stuff. Just identified you as a South High Rebel. The yearbook was the Johnny Reb. The cheerleaders where rebel rousers.
Do you agree with “OMG Soviet style purges!!”?
Because that’s what is being said and it’s just stupid and hyperbolic.
Nonsense. Market forces took the Dukes out of your living room and market forces can have it playing there again 24/7. There’s no “purge”, Soviet style or otherwise. No censorship, no one keeping you down and refusing to let you see the General Lee.
That media is available to you at this very second if you only decide to go purchase it. It’s not TV Land’s duty to curate the past to your liking or approval.
Yeah, he was definitely in an enviable position. She is the major reason I watched the show.
When did TV Land ever play Dukes of Hazard? I never ever saw this in my TVLand schedule, unless during the workday? Or, is programming by geographic demographics?
Exactly this. I used to have the battle flag hanging in my dorm room in college. I was displaying it as a marker of my Southern identity, and in honor of my Confederate Army veteran great-great-great grandfather. My black roommate never complained about it. And I was then as I am now a flaming pro-civil rights pro-LGBT equality liberal.
As I grew up a bit, and my “Southernness” stopped being so important to my identity, I recognized that that symbol has become so tainted by connotations of racism and hatred that it is impossible for it to convey a neutral or positive meaning. I wouldn’t be upset if the battle flag disappeared forever. But at one time, people did use it for non-racist meanings.
I always did hate the The Dukes of Hazzard, because it depicted Southerners as a huntin’, fishin’, and moonshinin’ peckerwoods. (Catherine Bach in a pair of jean shorts did offer some redemption, though. Since Bo and Luke lived every other redneck stereotype, I don’t see why they didn’t go for cousin-diddlin’ as well. )
I.e, fucking stupid.
If enough people were watching it before then they wouldn’t be removing it from the current schedule. Its a tautology but true.
Dukes was a mindless stupid show that was an enjoyable empty confection like something you might buy at some county fair but with less substance, more guilty of promulgating various stereotypes about rural White Southerners than anything else. In the context of the time it originally aired the Confederate flag was not too offensive to the mainstream and its being so prominently featured on that show likely contributed to the mainstream accepting it, in that time, as an innocent symbol of rural Southern hick good ole boy-ness.
Yeah the flag symbol on that car was …
Just’a good ol’ boys
Never meanin’ no harm …
Fast forward. Today that symbol’s other connotations prevail and the symbol offends many people, some quite deeply. Today running shows featuring the Confederate flag as just an innocent good ole boy thing is doing something that is offensive to the mainstream. If the ratings were high enough they’d show it anyway but the wind aint blowin’ that way on the county line.
Them fictional Duke boys, never meanin’ no harm, would probably have painted the roof and renamed that Charger after last week, after learning that it’s insulting to a whole bunch o folk they see no cause to insult.
And the pro golfer who owns (what is probably just one of) the original Dukes of Hazzard car is painting over the roof with a US flag.
The descent into madness is complete.
Your chosen name of “anus” suits you well.
Really. I don’t think anyone can defend DOH as anything but bottom-tier, slack-jawed cartoon entertainment for the undiscriminating. Even without any of the overall racism issues, it’s a stupid, stupid show. Its only redeeming quality was the opening credits and song; as a country-crossover video, that worked.
They went through roughly two Chargers an episode, totalling (heh) about 300. But that one might be the one in that article as the others were usually painted over and used as prop cars.
Yeah, I would assume there was one, or a very few, “hero” cars. That’s how it’s usually done, no matter how many prop-laden or stunt cars might be used.
There was a “Knight Rider” car, for example, that was completely stripped out and built to do nothing but long jumps with little damage. I seem to recall quite a few DOH jumps in which you could see the poor car crumple on impact, only to be seen heroically driving away in the next shot.
DOH wasn’t high-brow entertainment but at least it isn’t a Kardashian or Bachelor show. The Dukes were honest and cared about each other and their neighbors. The boys worked on the farm and helped old ladies and fought against whatever schemes Boss Hogg came up with. There were car chases and fist fights, some great musical guests, and a great narrator. It wasn’t intended to be Shakespeare and didn’t take itself too seriously. I can name 50 shows that were worse than DOH. I remember it fondly and it still holds up decently today, especially the somewhat grittier first season.