To start with, John Belushi’s samurai skits. Too yellowface.
I would add “Amos and Andy.” I’ve heard a couple of clips and to me it sounds about as racist as “Sanford and Son” or “Good Times” – but, I get that the problem here was minstrelsy, white actors playing comical black stereotypes.
I recall an episode of “The Jetsons” when Jane wanted her own car. She went for driving lessons and the instructor gulped, pressed a button and changed his “STUDENT DRIVER” sign to “WOMAN STUDENT DRIVER.” She fulfilled all his worst expectations, too – e.g., being utterly careless and scatterbrained (not much like how she was in other episodes of the show), and too easily distracted by ads for clothing sales. This was the 1960s, you could get away with women-driver jokes.
“That’s not a woman. That’s a man, baby!”
Sorry, don’t get the reference. Though I can see how it would apply here. “Austin Powers”?
Ever see an old cartoon where a character gets a face covered with ash and a bar of “Swanee River” plays? That’s because – as the audience at the time would have known – it was originally a minstrel-show tune.
How about the phrase “non-union Mexican equivalent” from this sequence on the Simpsons?:
Similarly, Bob Newhart’s “Driving Instructor” monologue, where he’s teaching a woman driver. Though it would work fine if he didn’t specify that and told it as though the student were male.
The Austin Powers joke is still acceptable. The initial joke was about a male spy disguising himself as a woman; it was a comment on the absurdity of the spy genre where such disguises are often depicted as being effective. The later joke was about Austin beating up an old woman because he thought she was a man; this was a comment on Austin being clueless. Neither joke depicted the character in question as being transgendered.
If you want an offensive joke that was aimed at a transgendered person, you can find it in Crocodile Dundee.
Several things come to mind. First, the “lovable drunk,” the “town drunk,” drunk acts (like Foster Brooks) or drunk jokes in general. (Johnny Carson used to do a lot of these.) “Arthur” was a very popular movie in the 1980s, but it doesn’t hold up very well now. “Otis” was the town drunk in Mayberry. Now he just seems pathetic.
Second: Comedians who did “ethnic” acts. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese…name it. They were all stereotypes. Chico Marx did an Italian act. This was very popular in Vaudeville, movies and early television.
Third: Making sport of the mentally disabled. Anyone remember Jackie Gleason’s variety show on CBS in the 1960s? He did a bit as “Joe the Bartender.” One of Joe’s regular patrons was a guy called “Crazy Guggenheim.” Crazy, as I recall, was a former boxer who had apparently taken too many punches to the head. He was barely coherent. He would tell some goofy story, then Joe would ask Crazy to sing a song. The joke was that Frank Fontaine (who played Crazy) had a beautiful singing voice, and Crazy would sing some old favorite absolutely straight with no affectations. Like Jim Nabors would later do as Gomer Pyle. I’ve read that “Crazy” was actually supposed to be a drunk, not mentally disabled, but that doesn’t make it any better.
The 1961 movie ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ where Mickey Rooney plays a “Japanese” neighbor that is a dead ringer for every cartoonish figure of WW2 propaganda.
The original Arthur is as funny as ever. Dudley Moore is so natural and funny playing drunk.
Really NSFW or anywhere else really
Howard Sterns Hollyweird Squares from 2003. On the radio and the E channel. Heads would explode today.
I doubt a comedy song about the joys of leering at nude Girl Scouts would win a Grammy nowadays.
Julian and Sandy – you couldn’t get away with them now and, bizarrely, you couldn’t get away with them then either, but somehow they did.
Julian and Sandy featured in a series of sketches on the huge BBC (radio) 1960’s hit series Round the Horne (starring Kenneth Horne). They were performed by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, two gay men performing as two screamingly camp gay men:
Julian and Sandy were notable for being two stereotypical camp homosexual characters in mainstream entertainment at a time when homosexual acts between men were illegal in the United Kingdom……Their use of Polari in sketches introduced the gay cant to a mass audience, and identified them as gay to those in the know.
And this was a colossal hit. It seems to have had two audiences – the innocents who just thought that J & S were just amusing characters (it was the ‘60s, remember); and those who were in on the joke. Done today it would appear caricaturish and gross; but the originals, looking back, are fascinating and in their way still very funny. This is Bona Law* about J & S setting up a firm of solicitors - note the in-joke: “We’ve got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time.” Huge wink; slow realisation.
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(*) – Bona being a polari word: good.
But is the character actually transgender? Maybe a crossdresser or a drag queen? Part of the joke is that Dundee has never heard of such. Remember, the cabbie refers to Gwendoline as a fag. The other bar patrons obviously know who Gwendoline is.
Years ago Danny Thomas’ daughter had a sitcom That Girl. In one episode she got a bowling ball stuck on her hand on the same day she and her boyfriend had to go to some big corporate banquet. So they went to the doctor who gave her muscle relaxants.
The bowling ball did not come off, but she was knocked loopy. So her boyfriend took her to the party a la Weekend at Bernie’s. I recall them trying to hide the bowling ball under a napkin.
I could not have been ten years old. Maybe 1968. Even I found the whole thing medically dangerous and exploitative as hell. After all, I only saw it once and I still remember it.
Sounds just like this English classic:
I have that song on one of my Dr Demento tapes. It’s from the point of view of Boy Scouts at camp. There is one line about the boys catching a glimpse of Girl Scouts swimming in the “well now”. I don’t see the problem.
Back To The OP
The song The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun. Back then, it seemed (to me anyway) such an odd and thoroughly unlikely premise. Today, the idea of the homecoming queen going on a shooting spree doesn’t seem funny at all.
