And the 'comedic explosion" in general, that seems like it would cause horrific burns and trauma, but just leaves the main character with a blackened face, torn and blackened clothing, and a chagrined look on their face. Sometimes accompanied by a sad “WAH-wah-wah” style sound effect.
Sadly, I am afraid this trope is still alive and well.
The one time I ever got “audited” was the first time I claimed to be in school for all 12 months, instead of just 8. I had just started grad school, so it was just a matter of sending them the official forms from the school showing I was really attending classes all year.
Pizza Hut in Canada definitely had anchovies in the late 80s, when I worked there. We got very few orders, though. We’d open an industrial size can for one order, put the can into the fridge for the next use, then toss it out after a few days when no one else ordered any. That happened about every other month. I’m pretty sure we trashed about 90% of the anchovies that ever passed through the kitchen.
The Man in the Street interview is a dead device. If it was ever legitimate it was so back in the golden age of radio and movie newsreels, aided by how easily faked (most egregiously in the anti-Upton Sinclair campaign for California governorship).
Once TV arrived it was mostly fodder for parody by Steve Allen and Bob & Ray. Jay Leno finalized the subversion of “seeking the common wisdom” for “people are idiots.”
The modern version is TV presenters reading people’s emails and tweets that they send in, which has already been mocked in comedy shows.
My father-in-law, brother-in-law and I all like anchovies, and at family get-togethers where there’s take-out pizza there’s often anchovies. At least one, local Michigan-based chain (Jet’s Pizza) has anchovies available, and I’ve sometimes wondered how long an opened can of them sat around before it got to us.
Not that it matters too much-- they’re so saturated in salt, and submerged in oil, they probably would last forever even at room temp.
Haven’t seen this for a while but I recall it used to be that sitcoms would have the cast putting on some kind of talent show. Only one that I can definitely remember was One Day at a Time but I’m sure that it was fairly common.
Yeah, pretty common. I remember it as late as the early 1990s, in Major Dad, but the cast putting on an amateur show of some sort was a big deal in the 1970s.
The Dick Van Dyke Show did this regularly when the cast had to help a friend out of a jam, fill in for a cancelled act, or entertain guests at a cocktail party. I’ve always thought it was very amateurish. How many times can you listen to “I Am a Fine Musician” before you start tuning it out?
Yeah, but when the cast sang a song tribute to Alan Brady it was a classic.
Feuding roommates tape a line down the middle of the room to define their respective territories.
Bobby and Peter Brady did this, as well as Arnold and Willis on Diff’rent Strokes, and (I think) Herman and Grandpa Munster. Probably a bunch more.
“Ha! The bathroom is on my side!”
Didn’t Friends use that one once? It seems like I can picture Joey and Chandler doing that. That might be one of the last times that trope got used.
I always thought this was specifically sci fi (and it was just that in a sci fi film, the black guy always dies, not that they die first) Off the top of my head:
Terminator 2
Alien
Aliens
Predator
They Live
Escape from New York
I can’t think of a major 1980/90s sci fi film with a black character who survives (with the exception of Lando in Empire Strikes Back)
The “Magical Negro” trope is different; it’s not about whether the Black character survives or not, it’s about a wise Black character who only exists in the plot to assist and advise a younger white person who is the ‘hero’ of the story, and they have no agency of their own beyond that. They may magically disappear when their work is done at the end of the movie, but don’t usually die. ‘the Legend of Bagger Vance’ being a prime example.
Here’s a funny send-up the Black sketch group "The Astronomy Club’ did - Magical Negro Rehab:
You evidently didn’t see Deep Blue Sea (1999), which subverted a lot of tropes. Despite a rather famous loss of a black character at the beginning, the two survivors are both black guys.
Besides that, the black guy is the only survivor of the Zombie attach in the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) until the very end, when he’s shot by the people who should be rescuing him.
And there’s Brother from Another Planet
The original The Matrix was also pretty famous for subverting the “Magic Negro” trope, with not only Laurence Fishburne, but almost all the black characters surviving.
There’s also Harry Belafonte surviving at the end of the post-apocalyptic film The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959)
and Denzel Washington surviving the post-apocalyptic film The Book of Eli (2010).
A Maori is among the survivors at the end of The Quiet Earth(1985)
Chiwitel Ejiofor is one of the survivors at the end of Z for Zachariah (2015), yet another post-apocalyptic film.
Actually, black actors have a pretty good track record in 1950-1960s post-apocalyptic films. as long as you don’t count Arch Oboler’s Five (1951), where Charles Lampkin’s character gets stabbed.
Yes, but one of the problems with the Magic Negro has been that, once he’s exhausted his usefulness, the filmmakers often kill him off, thus giving you a bit of drama over losing what appeared to be a main character. Morbius, though, didn’t die.
I’m not sure how naming movies from the 21st century, or the 1960s, really pushes back against the claim that movies from the '80s and '90s tended to kill of Black characters.
That being said, Blade.
I was going to say prior to the late 90s where this became well known enough in mainstream culture to be commented on and actively avoided.