I cannot think of a specific example now, but how about some of those old 50’s movies where the leading man will take a woman and spank her. A while back, while flipping through the channel I saw one of those scenes and I could just hear Tom Servo and Crow cracking up over it.
I suppose what really seems dated to me is how futuristic technology was portrayed in various movies. Sci-fi from the 50’s and 60’s always had space ships with fins on them, while in the 70’s, it was all about space ships in strange shapes. In the 80’s, it seemed like everything electronic or mechaical had to be in the shape of a cube. And let’s not forget those super-computers sci-fi movies were always showing, those giant silver filing cabinets with flashing red lights on them. And the HUGE display screens.
I guess what really makes movies and TV shows dated is how big everything seems- look at the cutting edge cellular phones from the late 80’s- they weigh about 10 pounds. Cars were huge, hair was huge. Sometime in the early 90’s people figured out the wave of the future was to make everything smaller, not bigger. Now in movies you see tiny computers, tiny spy devices. Even old James Bond gadgets seem clunky compared to today. I imagine in twenty years we’ll be having this discussion again and everything will still seem to be the wrong size in old movies and TV shows, either too big or small.
Social conventions can be jaw-droppingly dated, as well. Look at the crinoline ‘house dresses’ in shows like Donna Reed and Leave It To Beaver. It would have been sort of shocking to see women in pants on television then, I suppose. And the seperate beds for married couples! They were all over TV and movies until maybe the late 60’s. The crazy thing is, nobody in real life who was married actually had double beds. But I guess seeing even straight, married couples with children in the same bed would have offended some people and been called ‘indecent’.
And the racist stereotypes! Holy shit! They were not only completely acceptable, they were believed! The madness! Things that many people would find utterly offensive today were displayed openly and without any reservation. Remember Three’s Company? The whole premise of the show was John Ritter pretending to be gay so he could stay in the apartment with two women. And this was hilarious. Because being gay was so weird for mainstream America. It was so unheard of in mainstream circles that the show didn’t even know how to stereotype gay people. (Which may actually have been a good thing.)
It seems like TV and movies made a complete reversal somewhere in the early 90’s- sex, violence, and profanity became acceptable, but any sort of racial/religious/gender-based/sexual-orientation-based/ethnic stereotyping or mocking were completely unallowed. (Well, basically unallowed. I don’t watch much TV anymore, but I’m sure there are stil offensive shows of this ilk out there somewhere.) It kind of boggles the mind. I wonder what will seem dated in five, ten, and twenty years?
TV Land had a mini Soap marathon on last night and it was pretty funny to realize that when it was originally on, some stations refused to air it because it was so shocking. A gay man! People having sex when they’re not married! A woman having an affair with a priest!
Seeing it now, it’s just so tame.
Along similar lines, I was just watching a Simpsons episode that had a KnightRider gag in it and I was thinking you’d never get a premise that stupid on TV today, no matter how badass the car. (Please, please tell me it’d never make it to TV today.) Yet at the time it was so wild and different and the car was so “cutting edge.”
One of the coolest examples of this is the film Silent Running. The effects are amazing, then you see the huge computers that Bruce Dern at one point reprograms using punch cards, and you laugh at the silliness of such ancient computers… until you realise that means the awesome effects you’ve been seeing were all done by hand!
Not really. Lucy Ricardo wore pants often enough. And she smoked, too – because Phillip Morris was their sponsor.
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And the racist stereotypes! . . . Remember Three’s Company? The whole premise of the show was John Ritter pretending to be gay so he could stay in the apartment with two women.
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Gays are a race?
Along the lines of the gay thing…an episode of “Cheers” was actually really well done, and it portrays Norm pretending to be gay so that people will take him seriously as an interior decorator. Although they don’t really come out and use the word “gay” until the end…something I was sort of wondering about. They’re a lot more subtle about it than they would be on a TV episode around now. It wasn’t offensive, just again, more subtle.
You got a lot of Moxie to be jumping on this guy like he’s a Trampoline. Did someone put Vaseline in your Cornflakes or Heroin in your Granola? Don’t act like you got your Zipper caught in an Escalator. Take some Aspirin, slap on a Band-Aid and cry into a Kleenex, you Pablum puking Yo-Yo. Otherwise, I’ll Mace you, beat you with a Phillips Screw driver, wrap you in Cellophane and Scotch Tape, dunk you in Kerosene, toss you into a Sytrofoam container with Dry Ice in the back on my Jeep and leave you in a Dumpster with some Sheetrock. Then we’ll read about how you were turned into a Popsicle in some Tabloid.
[sub]No actual hositility is intended, I’ve just always wanted to do that. :)[/sub]
Back on topic, Hawaii Five-O is a gold mine for dated material. I always enjoyed the scene where one of McGarrett’s underlings was tailing a bad guy. When asked for an update he replied, in all seriousness: “He was last seen with three chicks. They were both very foxy.” There was no charming pimp-like inflection to his voice. It was stated as if this was legitimate technical law-enforcement terminology that would stand the test of time.
I don’t watch a lot of old TV, but I do like watching the old game shows on Game Show Network. Match Game in particular – I don’t know what’s funnier, the outlandish 70’s clothes or the porno theme music.
There was one question that literally made my jaw drop: “Max thinks his wife is a rug. Every night, he takes here out and _____'s her.” The contestant’s answer was “beat.” Not only did this get a HUGE laugh from the crowd, but he matched 4 out of 6 panelists, who all made jokes about it! Man, that would NEVER fly today!!
Also on GSN, I saw an episode of the Dating Game with 3 pre-teen “bachelorettes” and a young Celebrity Bachelor, Danny Bonaduce (from the “Partridge Family” era.) Oh how cute, I thought – until Danny started asking questions like, “If we were alone in your parents house and I wanted to make out, would you stop me?” :eek:
In the British version, the contestant would have said “shag”.
Or maybe not . . .
Has it already been 5 years since Team Knight Rider.
Not just TRON but almost anything with computers in it like Max Headroom. And anything where men wear little bitty shorts.
This reminds me of something that always makes me laugh in The Day the Earth Stood Still: After Klaatu is shot near the beginning, he is taken to a hospital. Two doctors who have just examined him are standing around, talking about the alien’s incredible health; one of them says something like, “His life-span must be twice as long as ours,”–and they both light up cigarettes!
A couple of TV examples that make me think about how much things have changed sociologically:
There’s an episode of Bewitched where a woman moves in next door to the Stevenses; she’s moved to the suburbs to get away from her extremely jealous football-player boyfriend, who has threatened her if he ever sees her with another man. Darren expresses concern, but no one else seems worried, even the police, even when the football player shows up and finds Darren in her living room. It’s all played for laughs, and in the end the woman goes back to her boyfriend.
On the Mary Tyler Moore show, there’s an episode where Murray’s 15-year-old daughter is working at the station. A college student (played by Bruce Boxleitner!) who also works there wants to date her. Murray is upset when the two go out, but this is seen as his being an overprotective worry-wart, and everyone else laughs off his concerns.
Another Telephone Moment
In the movie In and Out, “Cameron” (the Matt Dillon character) leaves his anorexic model girlfriend in a small motel in a mid-American town in Indiana. She threatens to call her agent and goes to the phone and stares at the rotary dial in perplexity, then makes ineffective button-pushing motions at the numbers in the holes and starts to cry. Cute and funny but ony to an audience that would know and appreciate that there was a time when the modern coastal cities and business establishments had push-button phones while homes and smaller-town businesses still had rotary phones, and that therefore the cosmpolitan-but-dumb city model wouldn’t know how to operate a rotary phone…
Fashion is different. In 2011, audiences will rent old DVDs from the turn of the century and laugh their heads off to see guys wearing shorts and cutoff jeans and swim trunks where the legs go nearly down to their knees. No one would be caught dead in anything so old-fashioned in 2011, except maybe Grandpa. And don’t even get me started on those baggy-ass jeans!
Um, three and both?
I saw Wall Street a few months ago and it looked very dated to me–Michael Douglas’ clothes, and the cordless phone on the beach that was the size of a toaster oven, not to mention the gargantuan computer in his office…
You reminded me of one that I’ve mentioned before in another thread: Card Sharks. You remember, the game where they surveyed 100 people, and you had to guess how many agreed or disagreed with the statement? Well, before they would make their guesses, the contestants were, I guess, encouraged to milk it a little and talk about why they’re choosing the number they’re choosing.
So, the question is, “How many people out of 100 said that they had slapped their own face?” And the contestant says, “Well, I know sometimes when you’ve been drinking you do that to wake yourself up before you drive home…” And no one was one bit shocked!
The other night, I caught the tail end of a movie on TCM called something like “First Yank into Tokyo.” It was a very obvious propaganda film made in 1945 about, I don’t know, the need to bomb the hell out of the Japanese. Even though I know we were at war with Japan and they committed atrocities in China, blah blah blah, it was still shocking how hateful and racist the movie was.
The lead character was an American spy who’d supposedly undergone extensive plastic surgery to look Japanese. Funny thing is, the first time I saw him on the screen I said, “Look, it’s a guy in yellow face!” I still can’t believe anyone would honestly think he’d fool anyone. Yet not only did he supposedly fool all his dumb gaijin compatriots (his girlfriend, played by Perry Mason’s Barbara Hale, refused to believe it was him until he gave details of their history together that only he would know), but the Japanese General he was working under only recognized him as his old college roommate(!) because of his habit of clenching his fist when he was angry. And he tried so hard to have a “Japanese” accent, including mispronouncing all his Ls as Rs. But none of the real Japanese actors talked like that!
Speaking of the real Japanese actors, I can’t believe the lines they were made to spout! Like ranting about how the Americans promulgate such backward ideas that women have value and are equal to men! And the General’s description of a female American prisoner (Hale) whom he intended to have his way with, “She has the face of a gazelle, and the skin of a peach blossom.” The only word of Japanese any of them spoke was “Bonsai!!!”
Really, it was hilarious, and very easy to MST, too. But it was still shocking and cringe-inducing. It’s hard to imagine Hollywood churning out obvious, stereotype filled war-mongering pieces like that today, even about Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. Maybe if Ann Coulter ran Hollywood 
During my college days, Max, that’s exactly what I had to do some times.
I used to love watching Match Game '77, which specialized in risque humor. I don’t think it was only indicative of the times – spousal abuse didn’t have as high a profile in the media then – as it was also a way of getting a rise out of the audience. It was a linear descendent of “The Newlywed Game,” “The Dating Game,” and a foreshadowing of “The Gong Show.”
– pesch
game-show authority
Pre-teen?!
I am pretty sure that was considered kind of weird even then.
That reminded me of The Pink Panther (already mentioned by someone). Not sure which film it was but Peter Seller’s character Inspector Clouseau (sory, Chief Inspector) says “My little yellow friend”, referring to his Japanese manservant Kato!
An example from a TV show that springs to mind is the episode The Germans from Fawlty Towers . Theres a piece of dialogue between Basil Fawlty and the Major about Indians and West Indians. Suffice to say the word “Ni—rs” was used. This would be unthinkable now.