The Sanford and Son episodes aired on network TV substituted “brothers” for the N word. Only with their reissue on DVD did I first hear the N word there.
Well, surely there’s a difference between a heterosexual man retching at the thought of having kissed a trans-woman (who we nowadays understand to properly treat like a woman in all ways) than at the thought of having kissed a man. We understand to treat homosexuals with respect, but since when does that mean that heterosexuals have to be mentally OK with having been duped into some degree of homosexual experience?
Sure. Why not?
It’s not as if they made any binding commitments to each other.
I don’t think such subtle distinctions makes much of a difference to modern audiences. It still plays into some pretty negative stereotypes regarding transgender women such as a propensity for “tricking” men, that they’re actually men, and that they’re mentally deranged.
And yet Jim Carrey is a really good actor, as seen in his few straight roles. If only his skills could have been used for good instead of evil …
I think you’re excluding a remarkable amount of middle ground between “being mentally okay” and “uncontrollable retching.”
Also, the scene I specifically referenced didn’t have anything to do with any sort of “homosexual experience.” Jim Carrey’s character stripped a woman (against her will) in front of a SWAT team, who were so revolted by the sight of someone female-presenting who also had a penis, that they were all violently ill.
There’s not really a way to justify that that doesn’t make it hugely transphobic.
The thing is, in the 1970s it was was not quite yet considered an unutterable near-obscenity, that even in reference must be referred to as “n-word” or “n-bomb” – just very very rude and inappropriate and only useable in certain context. So, Red Foxx as Fred Sanford? Yeah, that worked. White guy on SNL after 11:30 pm? In a very special case, with Richard Pryor’s blessing (and part of the SNL skit impact comes when the audience begins to anticipate if it’s going to escalate there).
I’m reading this thread and wondering if it’s the audience that has just grown up.
And, who watches humour now? Teenage boys? They are at home making stupid offensive jokes in their massively social on-line games.
The only acceptable humor now apparently is finding just how many ways you can say Donald Trump’s name and not actually say it
“So the Orange Cheeto today claimed that he, the Tan God, was responsible for the peace deal with the Taliban that Binden bungled. Rump the other day also said he WASN’T responsible for the peace deal. So what is it President Crybaby?”
Yeah. His work in the Truman Show was very good.
There are at least 2 types of not aging well. The first being that general trends in humor have change. The second being that what we know about a person has changed.
I remember reading an article at some point about people that did rape jokes well. One example was Louis CK: “there’s no reason to rape someone, ever. Unless you have a good reason, like you want to have sex with them and they won’t let you.” Where the article explained that he’s mocking the minimization of sexual assault, which is how I felt at the time too. Subsequent revelations about how Louis didn’t understand why that joke was ok and about his personal behavior sure put all his sexual gross out jokes in new light.
That brings up the question of whether humor in general ages faster than it did in the past. Entertainment Weekly in the 90s published a debate about whether a comedy generation gap had developed between age groups. The argument in favor contended that what people thought was hysterical 30 or more years prior would be met with stone silence by their children later. Now, not only does it seem there is a comedy generation gap but the average shelf life for most humor has decreased to 20 years. Between shifting social sensibilities and once-funny jokes being done to death online, it seems comedy has become increasingly ephemeral.
That humor is more ephemeral these days is an example of the survivors fallacy. The Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges are rare examples of 30s comedians being remembered. And the Stooges got famous totally by the accident that their shorts were good for television. The vast majority of 30s comedians are totally forgotten. Wheeler and Woolsey anyone? S. J. Perelman wrote for them. Who? He was once the premiere prose humorist in the country. Charlie Chaplin was once possibly the most famous person in the world. His humor was forgotten in his lifetime. Try reading the Harvard Lampoon from that era.
Humor has always been ephemeral. Mark Twain complained about it. A few tiny examples last, but its normal shelf life is somewhere between a carton of milk and a mayfly.
I gotta disagree about Carson: he was dry funny. It’s not necessarily the stuff that’s going to make you clutch your stomach, but he was funny. My local shows reruns of the Tonight Show and I still laugh at Carson.
Eddie did a LOT of pretty nasty stuff on gays, which got a free pass back in the 80s. I think Delirious was even worse. It was my first adult-themed comedy tape that I ever listened to, which acculturated me to think that homophobia was normal. I cringe when I think of that.
A lot of Bill Cosby’s comedy still holds up—well, it would, if what we know about Bill Cosby hadn’t changed.
I lost interest in Carson in the 1970s, thinking his schtick was irrelevant, but then saw him in a rare “live” performance in Las Vegas around 1977. He did 90 minutes and he was hilarious. He was never thought of as one of the greats but I gained a whole new respect for him after that.
I think what put off some people was that some of his jokes seemed a little canned, and maybe they were, but he had a way of being funny in the moment as well. He wasn’t brilliantly witty, but he was funny
Ah, ok. I watched S&S sometimes and didn’t remember the N bomb at all. Other African American programs of that era (Jeffersons, What’s Happening!, Good Times) didn’t appeal to us. True there’s a cultural element, but there were others we didn’t watch: One Day at a Time, Maude, Barney Miller. I later went on to never watch a single episode of Friends. David Schwimmer especially turned me off.
There’s also the question of who controls the channels. I can’t read the stuff about the Festrunks without remembering how they incensed and offended Mama L (RIP).
Of course, but it’s an over-the-top comedy. Reactions are going to be very exaggerated by the nature of the film.
I could have sworn it had been implied that Finkel/Einhorn had been very affectionate with the men under “her” command. Certainly Ventura’s own, similar reaction in the earlier scene when he realized the truth was (it seemed to me) more over the fact that he had been french-kissed and fondled by someone whose “gun sticking into his hip” was not, in fact, a gun and not merely over the fact that Einhorn was a man in disguise absent that encounter.