# If TCM had a marathon of dated movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 1, 2017, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729 "2017-02-01T04:44:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/41 "2017-02-02T00:19:22Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > That’s only one scene in the whole four hour movie, for cryin’ out loud. And if somebody released a movie with that scene in it today, he’d be burned at the stake. I nominate _Blazing Saddles,_ because people are not comfortable with that much use of the n-word in movies today (hence the need for the word “n-word”…). ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/42 "2017-02-02T01:56:04Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > And if somebody released a movie with that scene in it today, he’d be burned at the stake. > > I nominate _Blazing Saddles,_ because people are not comfortable with that much use of the n-word in movies today (hence the need for the word “n-word”…). Which n-word? [That man is a ni?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQzI3k39Cfw) I nominate The Carey Treatment, which revolves around which doctor performed an illegal abortion, back when all abortions were illegal (in many states). ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/43 "2017-02-02T02:46:24Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > _Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner_ is stale, though, because paradigms around mixed-race relationships have shifted light years since the mid-sixties. Not only that, the target audience practically no longer exists. What happens is that white liberals who have always given money and lip-service to equality of race relations, and raised their daughter to be a “color-blind” liberal, and now she has brought home a black man and announced that she wants to marry him, and suddenly they feel all sorts of negative feelings they didn’t even know they harbored. > > There might be people who have actually been through that, and now their grandchildren are in high school who might find it interesting, and there might be people who are biracial adults who never knew their liberal grandparents struggled with anything, who might have an emotional reaction to it, but all the liberals who were being invited to search their souls in 1967 are mostly no longer with us, or at least don’t need a movie to prod them to their real feelings about mixed race relationships. > > So that’s the difference, IMO, between truly dated movies, and movies that are just old. I finally saw this movie within the past couple of years, and my take on it was (spoilered for anyone who hasn’t seen it; I didn’t know about this aspect of it beforehand) if my son or daughter came home from vacation and announced that s/he was going to marry someone s/he had known for 10 days, I’d be mighty upset too. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/44 "2017-02-02T02:48:03Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > I nominate _Blazing Saddles,_ because people are not comfortable with that much use of the n-word in movies today (hence the need for the word “n-word”…). Have you seen “42”? The movie would probably have been rated G were it not for this. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_John\_Marcej](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Richard\_John\_Marcej](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_John_Marcej)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/45 "2017-02-02T03:05:32Z")
> [@Spit](#): > > _Big_. I watched this again at Christmas, and it is so 80’s that it’s painful. Still a great movie, but holy shoulderpads, Batman. I wouldn’t say that the clothes/fashion makes it dated though. If you made a film that takes place in the 1920’s wouldn’t you have the characters wearing the fashions of the 1920’s? Couldn’t _ **Big** _ simply be a movie that takes place in the 1980’s? (I was working in the toy industry when the film came out and while it wasn’t exactly a documentary, there were many similarities to the real thing). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/46 "2017-02-02T03:29:28Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Don’t think they’ll ever be extinct until someone invents a cellphone that doesn’t need charging. I can’t tell you where a payphone is anymore, much less an actual phone booth. They’re up there with coelacanths as far as things that are still alive, but rarely seen. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/47 "2017-02-02T05:52:58Z")
Most of these examples don’t actually make the movie dated. If the movie is set in the 1980s, and the people dress in 80s styles and speak in 80s slang and exhibit 80s social attitudes, that doesn’t make it dated. Same if it’s set in the 30s, and the people dress in 30s styles and so on. You wouldn’t call a movie set in WWII dated because the US army doesn’t have ICMBs and Abrams tanks and M-16 rifles and F-15 fighters, right? You’d expect characters who are supposed to be fighting WWII to use the weapons actually used in WWII. And if those characters have the sorts of social attitudes that real people did in the 1940s, that doesn’t make the movie dated either. What makes a movie dated is when the characters don’t actually act realistically for the time the movie is set in. So a movie made in the 1950s and set in the old west, but the characters act like 1950s suburbanites is dated. If the movie was made in the 1950s and set in the old west and the characters believably act like people from the old west, then it isn’t dated, even though the characters don’t act like people from 2017. And a movie made in the 50s that depicts people wearing 50s hairstyles and acting like people from the 1950s is not dated either. But that movie can be dated when it portrays those contemporary people in ways that people didn’t actually act. Married couples never slept in separate twin beds in the 50s, that was just something they did for TV. So a show made in the 1950s that is set in the 1950s and shows a married couple sleeping in separate twin beds is dated, because that never actually existed. Or take another example, “Cool as Ice”. Yeah, it was made in 1991, and portrays people living in 1991. And it has the very 90s Vanilla Ice. And he’s supposed to be cool, with his 90s fashion, and 90s white rap music, and 90s in your face attitude. Except he’s not cool. And the movie is extremely dated, because of that. But you could make a movie about a guy in the 90s who is in to 90s fashion and 90s white rap and 90s attitude, and it wouldn’t be dated, if you portrayed this 90s loser douche realistically. To give an example, American Graffiti. It’s about 50s kids being very 50s with their 50s music and 50s fashion and 50s attitudes. But it’s not dated, even though it’s all about the 50s, and kids today aren’t anything like those kids. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/48 "2017-02-02T06:33:55Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > To give an example, American Graffiti. It’s about 50s kids being very 50s with their 50s music and 50s fashion and 50s attitudes. But it’s not dated, even though it’s all about the 50s, and kids today aren’t anything like those kids. Nitpick: _American Graffiti_ was set in 1962. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/49 "2017-02-02T08:32:42Z")
How about _Grease_? Is Rizzo the only girl who’s not a virgin, or who has a negative reputation for not being one? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/50 "2017-02-02T08:53:04Z")
> [@Richard\_John\_Marcej](#): > > I wouldn’t say that the clothes/fashion makes it dated though. No, that would be the statutory rape. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/51 "2017-02-02T13:12:06Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I can’t tell you where a payphone is anymore, much less an actual phone booth. They’re up there with coelacanths as far as things that are still alive, but rarely seen. Public libraries usually have pay phones. I can only assume because they see themselves as hubs of public services, as much as book repositories. Homeless people, people who can’t otherwise afford phones, and people whose phones break, or who need to call tech serve and don’t have another phone or place to do it can go to the library. Service stations still frequently have one, so they can tell stranded motorists to use it. If your car has broken down on a trip, there is a chance your phone hasn’t been charged. If they don’t have one, then they have customers asking to use the house phone for what may be long distance calls, and often very long calls (and while they may not get charged more for them, dialing out for one may be a complicated process that requires someone to disrupt an employee’s work to explain it), or multiple calls, if they have to make arrangements for picking up kids, say. Other than that, I can’t remember seeing one. However, I know of a university library that took the payphones out of their booths, but kept the booths, and asks that you make voice calls on your cell phones in the booths; otherwise, texting only in other parts of the library. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/52 "2017-02-02T18:09:56Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Most of these examples don’t actually make the movie dated. If the movie is set in the 1980s, and the people dress in 80s styles and speak in 80s slang and exhibit 80s social attitudes, that doesn’t make it dated. Same if it’s set in the 30s, and the people dress in 30s styles and so on. > > You wouldn’t call a movie set in WWII dated because the US army doesn’t have ICMBs and Abrams tanks and M-16 rifles and F-15 fighters, right? You’d expect characters who are supposed to be fighting WWII to use the weapons actually used in WWII. And if those characters have the sorts of social attitudes that real people did in the 1940s, that doesn’t make the movie dated either. Well, yes, I expect the fashions and slang (and hairstyles, and cars…) to be different, but there’s more to it. War movies made back in the '40s and '50s seem sanitized, somehow; full of clean-shaven, matinee-idol soldiers who never swear or bleed and write a letter every day to their girl back home. It’s like something out of Life magazine, or a recruitment poster. Compare that to something like _Saving Private Ryan_. I can’t really say which is more accurate, but the older ones are dated. I mentioned _My Man Godfrey_ earlier. It starts with Irene going to the city dump to look for a “forgotten man” for a scavenger hunt, and the men who live there speak like they’re in an Oscar Wilde play. It’s a fabulous movie, but the attitudes and manners are incredibly dated. I don’t think it was even intended to be realistic when it was made in the '30s. It was escapism then; it’s dated now because it carries such a strong sense of what people then went to the movies to escape from. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/53 "2017-02-03T17:34:34Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Well, yes, I expect the fashions and slang (and hairstyles, and cars…) to be different, but there’s more to it. War movies made back in the '40s and '50s seem sanitized, somehow; full of clean-shaven, matinee-idol soldiers who never swear or bleed and write a letter every day to their girl back home. It’s like something out of Life magazine, or a recruitment poster. Compare that to something like _Saving Private Ryan_. I can’t really say which is more accurate, but the older ones are dated. Right- it’s when the movie’s portrayal pins the movie within the time period of the movie’s release, not in the time period as described within the movie itself. So a 1950s-1960s war movie set in WWII might seem dated, because there’s a very 1950s-1960s sensibility to the way things are portrayed that wasn’t necessarily so in the actual war. But there’s a similar phenomenon that happens when a movie is such a product of its time that no longer appropriate cultural mores and attitudes of the time shine through and make the movie clearly a product of a different time and place. For example, the Louis Skolnick/Betty Grable rape scene in “Revenge of the Nerds”, or the tension, etc… of “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” are movies which are dated, in that the attitudes in the movie are pretty far removed from today’s attitudes. I mean, if you were to refilm “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, you couldn’t play it for laughs like the original; the parents would have to be unreformed racists for the premise to even be valid. Similarly, having the nerdy hero of the story have sex with the head cheerleader while wearing her boyfriend’s Halloween costume as a ruse would be entirely unacceptable today. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2017, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/54 "2017-02-03T18:28:16Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > You wouldn’t call a movie set in WWII dated because the US army doesn’t have ICMBs and Abrams tanks and M-16 rifles and F-15 fighters, right? You’d expect characters who are supposed to be fighting WWII to use the weapons actually used in WWII. And if those characters have the sorts of social attitudes that real people did in the 1940s, that doesn’t make the movie dated either. > > What makes a movie dated is when the characters don’t actually act realistically for the time the movie is set in. So a movie made in the 1950s and set in the old west, but the characters act like 1950s suburbanites is dated. If the movie was made in the 1950s and set in the old west and the characters believably act like people from the old west, then it isn’t dated, even though the characters don’t act like people from 2017. And a movie made in the 50s that depicts people wearing 50s hairstyles and acting like people from the 1950s is not dated either. You’re talking about _Kelly’s Heroes_, which inexplicably had a bunch of hippies in the middle of World War II. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2017, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/55 "2017-02-03T19:30:00Z")
> [@bump](#): > > But there’s a similar phenomenon that happens when a movie is such a product of its time that no longer appropriate cultural mores and attitudes of the time shine through and make the movie clearly a product of a different time and place. For example, the Louis Skolnick/Betty Grable rape scene in “Revenge of the Nerds”, or the tension, etc… of “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” are movies which are dated, in that the attitudes in the movie are pretty far removed from today’s attitudes. Wait, what? Betty Grable died in 1973, and was not in _Revenge of the Nerds_. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2017, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/56 "2017-02-03T20:52:18Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Wait, what? Betty Grable died in 1973, and was not in _Revenge of the Nerds_. Crap… got my character names mixed up… the character was “Betty Childs”, and Ted McGinley’s was ‘Stan Gable’ ,and I somehow combined them into “Betty Grable” ---
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2017, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/57 "2017-02-04T01:42:57Z")
Any pretentious art film from the late-60s through early 80s. Bonus points if it includes a cringe-inducing “intellectual” treatment of some sleazy sexual situation. Characteristic examples: Persona by Ingmar Bergman Heart of Glass by Werner Herzog The Night Porter Swept Away Play it Again Sam by Woody Allen Fellini’s Casanova etc, etc. Somehow movies like this suckered a generation of critics and film students. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2017, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/58 "2017-02-04T03:18:09Z")
Very entertaining thread, folks! Nothing else to add…except 1930’s Walt Disney short cartoons. In contemporary times, we know that animals don’t wear gloves. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2017, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/59 "2017-02-04T06:00:05Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > _American Beauty_ is completely dated throughout, especially Chris Cooper’s subplot as the homophobic Marine. I never really liked the movie much, but dated in what way? A repressed, violent, homophobic, gay marine doesn’t seem an outre thing to me in 2017, let alone 1999. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Holly’s a hooker that doesn’t go all the way. According to Capote, Holly was a not-quite-call girl - a professional date for “gifts” ( not necessarily cash ), who’d sleep with you if she felt like it. But she did go all the way, just on her own terms. A fine distinction perhaps. ETA: Oh and I’n another who doesn’t think _Ordinary People_ is all that dated. Didn’t deserve Best Picture, but it’s a solid movie about a family disintegrating over a tragedy. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2017, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729/60 "2017-02-04T06:29:58Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I never really liked the movie much, but dated in what way? A repressed, violent, homophobic, gay marine doesn’t seem an outre thing to me in 2017, let alone 1999. I didn’t see “American Beauty” until a few years after it was in theaters, in large part because so many people said they didn’t like it. When I saw it, I found out why they didn’t like it. It’s because far too many of them were living it themselves. ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-tcm-had-a-marathon-of-dated-movies/778729.md?page=4)