# Scenes that were serious back then but risible now **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 25, 2022, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223 "2022-09-25T21:57:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/41 "2022-09-27T19:01:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Similarly, one line that was _meant_ to be funny was, when I saw it, much more hilarious, for a completely different reason. In **Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home** the Enterprise Bridge crew has time-traveled back to the 20th century and Kirk, trying to account for Spock’s apparently eccentric behavior, explains to their 20th Century contact that “I think he did a little too much LDS” > > Of course, Kirk meant “LSD”, so it’s funny that he screwed up the familiar initials. > > But I saw this at the premiere in Salt Lake City, the heart of the Mormon world. Except that they prefer the term “Latter Day Saints”, commonly abbreviated “LDS”. > > So when Kirk explains to Gillian Spock’s weird behavior by saying it’s because he did a little too much LDS, it was right on the mark. The theater erupted with howls of laughter, and you could hear any of the lines for a couple of minutes. Gillian’s rejoinder (“A little too much LDS?”, said in a skeptical tone) was lost in the roar. I witnessed a memorable geography based reaction as well. It happened during this scene: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VEgu7jdc_fs/hqdefault.jpg "Lloyd Dobler explains what he wants to do with his life") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEgu7jdc_fs) Probably the most throwaway line in the speech is, “My father is in the Army and he wants me to join but I could never work for that corporation.” When I saw the movie it got the biggest reaction in the entire movie. I was watching it in the Fort Rucker theater. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/42 "2022-09-27T19:30:14Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > A lot of The Godfather I’d say qualifies now. “I gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” and “Luca Brasci sleeps with the fishes” have been parodied and referenced so often they are part of the language. When I was in high school, there was a theatrical re-release of The Godfather. I saw it with some friends, and when they got to the “sleeps with the fishes” line, one of them groaned, “I can’t believe they used that cliche!” ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/43 "2022-09-27T19:38:07Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > In the early Woody Allen movie **Bananas** a gang of thugs comes into the subway car and start threatening people, including a Little Old Lady. Nobody interferes, including Allen’s character, until they come to a stop and Allen gets up and pushes them out at the last moment. Only it isn’t the last moment – the doors re-open, and they come for him. > > **The thug attack isn’t meant to be funny** – it’s serious until the pushing-out-the-door scene occurs. Is the tinkly piano in the original movie _Bananas_? I’ve never seen it, but that music saps a lot of seriousness out of the subway scene with Stallone. Also: Allen burying his face further and further into the magazine, and kicking the crutch out of the way? Darkly funny, I think. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6X-oNeZ07fA/hqdefault.jpg "Bananas 1971 full Stallone episode") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X-oNeZ07fA) ---
**Author:** ![ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chockfullofheadygoodness/32/511_2.png) [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/44 "2022-09-27T19:38:25Z")
Sam Fuller’s **Shock Corridor** is about a reporter who fakes mental illness to go undercover and investigate a murder in an insane asylum. At one point he finds himself in the nymphomaniac ward, and on realizing where he is, mutters a low, horrified “Nymphos!” I don’t know how it played in 1960, but a mid-1990s college film school audience erupted in laughter. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/45 "2022-09-27T19:39:01Z")
This doesn’t quite fit the premise because virtually no time had passed but…I saw Wayne’s World on opening weekend, a totally wild time as it hit during reading week that year. There’s an exchange in which Cassandra says “II’ve been so busy with my band, I thought I was getting meningitis.” Something like a week earlier, a high school kid in Ottawa had gone home at lunch because he wasn’t feeling well, went to bed and died from a particularly nasty strain of meningitis. That line landed…shall we say, uneasily. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/46 "2022-09-27T20:01:32Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > When I see _The Maltese Falcon_ now, I’m amused that Wilmer, Cairo, and Guttman are all clearly meant to be gay. I remember being aware of it the first time I saw it (in high school) in 1968. I guess it’s kinda subtle? ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/47 "2022-09-27T20:17:35Z")
Pretty much anything Leslie Nielsen was in prior to _Airplane!_ is hard to take seriously now, since he became so associated with deadpan comedy in the 1980s. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/48 "2022-09-27T20:58:31Z")
James Bond disguising himself as a Japanese man in You Only Live Twice seems pretty silly nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2022, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/49 "2022-09-27T21:29:35Z")
In _From Here to Eternity_ (set in Hawaii) someone talks on the phone and moves to reveal a calendar page saying “December 6, 1941.” It was probably a chilling reveal when the movie was released, but the obviousness of it is very heavy-handed today. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/50 "2022-09-28T02:30:43Z")
Similarly one of the few things about _Rebel Without a Cause_ that I find distracting is that James Dean’s father is played by Jim Backus and all can think about when seeing him is Thurston Howell III from _Gilligan’s Island._ ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/51 "2022-09-28T12:44:58Z")
The entirety of _Reefer Madness._ ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/52 "2022-09-28T17:35:35Z")
I was playing _Mafia: Definitive Edition_ the other day, and there’s a bridge in their faux-Chicago setting called the “Giuliani Bridge.” Which I suspect landed a lot differently when the game originally came out in 2002, than it did when the remaster came out 2020. ---
**Author:** ![Pazu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pazu/32/15522_2.png) [@Pazu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pazu)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/53 "2022-09-28T20:02:42Z")
There’s an early scene in _The Exorcist_ in which the possessed girl’s mother is talking with a psychiatrist about Regan’s peculiar symptoms, and the doctor says very seriously, _“There’s a new medicine I’d like to try… it’s called Ritalin.”_ The late ‘90s crowd watching the special Extended Edition in the theater (the Coronet in San Francisco, if anyone remembers that place) laughed uproariously. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/54 "2022-09-28T20:09:16Z")
> [@Pazu](#): > > There’s an early scene in _The Exorcist_ in which the possessed girl’s mother is talking with a psychiatrist about Regan’s peculiar symptoms, and the doctor says very seriously, > > _“There’s a new medicine I’d like to try… it’s called Ritalin.”_ Well, of course they laughed. Demonic possession calls for an anxiolytic. Any idiot knows that. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/55 "2022-09-28T20:18:32Z")
It’s pretty horrifying still, at least it was the last time I saw it. Lots of memed lines and scenes aren’t actually that meme worthy when actually seen in full context. For a less errr…horrific example, Anakin’s “I hate sand” line from the prequels is perfectly fine when said in context. (It was in response to Padme recalling that she had enjoyed lying on the beach sand as a kid). ---
**Author:** ![phs3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8491ac/32.png) [@phs3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phs3)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/56 "2022-09-28T21:08:49Z")
Not precisely “serious back then”, but in _Annie Hall_, when she says she’s thinking of going back to school, Alvy says, “Just don’t take anything where they make you read Beowulf”. My father spent 1964-1967 creating an early [concordance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_(publishing)) of Beowulf, starting with renting a keypunch for the house and my mother inputting the text. So we lived with that book for years. As a result, my family finds that line inordinately funny; for anyone else, it’s a slight grin at best, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/57 "2022-09-29T05:50:11Z")
She’s my sister! Slap She’s my daughter! Slap She’s my sister! Slap She’s my daughter! ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/58 "2022-09-29T16:08:10Z")
(_Chinatown_, 1974) ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/59 "2022-09-29T16:55:56Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > _Rebel Without a Cause_ Jim Carrey’s character (an alien) in _Earth Girls are Easy_ watches _Rebel_ and then quotes the line “You’re tearing me apart!” completely out of context. After watching that, the original by James Dean seems pretty hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2022, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223/60 "2022-09-29T17:33:15Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > Jim Carrey’s character (an alien) in _Earth Girls are Easy_ watches _Rebel_ and then quotes the line “You’re tearing me apart!” completely out of context. After watching that, the original by James Dean seems pretty hilarious. I haven’t seen that one, but _The Room_ uses that line as well. Actually I haven’t seen The Room either, but I’ve seen clips of it, and I’ve seen _The Disaster Artist_. For those not familiar with it, _The Room_ is widely considered to to be one of the worst movies ever made. While it’s trying to be a drama, it falls into the “so bad it’s funny” category. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-were-serious-back-then-but-risible-now/972223.md?page=4)