Out of curiosity: what would you say about Vicious, with Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi?
“We stayed real still and we kept our eyes a-glued,
We saw how they were dressed, they were swimming in the, well, now…”
The words “well, now” were clearly replacements for “nude”.
This was sung by the Boy Scouts portrayed by Homer and Jethro, but the last verse describes the Girl Scouts being “captured by a company of United States Marines”. So yeah, not cool by today’s standards.
I’ve been re-watching Futurama and there are a couple of episodes that would probably not be done the same way nowadays:
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“Amazon Women in the Mood” – the male crew is sentenced to be raped to death by horny amazons. I’m not sure rape is still a rich vein of comedy, but I’m sure others will disagree.
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“Bend Her” – Bender gets a sex change to compete in the (wimpy) women’s events in the Olympics.
I know that “well now” is a replacement for nude. That’s my point. The song is so innocent they don’t even say nude.
Re Futurama And Bend Her
As a card carrying member of the offenderati, I thought this episode was well done. Certainly, it starts off with the cliched argument of ‘I would just say I am a woman and compete as a woman and easily win gold’. But Bender’s transformation ends up asking real questions about gender, identity and sexuality. At least, in my opinion.
But they can talk about chasing after nude girls who are trying to escape and “rubbing girls together”, which is just good clean fun.
“Rubbing girls together” are not in the lyrics, nor does it make any sense. They were Boy Scouts who “learned to make sparks by rubbing sticks together.”
Go to 2:10 in the video above.
I guess few people enjoyed the song hard enough to reach the funny part.
I stand corrected for this live version (where one singer either misspoke or was ad-libbing). It’s not in the official recorded version that was on the Dr. Demento album.
Good question, I suspect, but I’ve let you down here - I didn’t see Vicious. I don’t watch that much TV, and the trailers looked pretty unfunny to me. I was aware (after the fact, I think) that the full intended title was to be Vicious Old Queens, so I think I see where you’re heading. The full title, if I remember correctly, was itself judged unacceptable, hence the shortening.
So I assume, from your question, Vicious was along the lines of:
The wiki suggests there wasn’t all-round approval. Did you have a view yourself?
j
Finding it hilarious, I enjoyed it wholeheartedly and unironically.
OK, if I can find it streaming, maybe I’ll take a look.
j
If it helps, I first found it on Tubi.
Speaking of campy gay men, I love those parody David Blane videos, but the two guys are probably too offensive to some.
There are quite a few gags on South Park that haven’t aged particularly well. Granted they’ve always reveled in being politically incorrect, but one that really stands out is the episode where Garrison gets sex reassignment surgery and they seem to suggest that he/she is not a real woman. To drive home the point, they also do a bit about Gerald becoming a dolphin. The episode, though, still pops regularly in reruns, though I can’t imagine it would go over well if it were made today.
The episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and George are mistaken for a gay couple was actually considered pretty progressive at the time, and even won an award from GLAAD. But it gets a lot of flack nowadays for seemingly making light of gay panic.
Um–South Park was doing jokes like that last season.
I am reminded of an early episode of Cheers in which the guys are terrified that Cheers is becoming a gay bar and try to drive out the offending patrons.
This episode also won a GLAAD award, so I guess it was pretty daring for the 80s, but I found it quite cringeworthy on a recent viewing. Lots of homophobic euphemisms like “fairies” and “cream puffs” and “light in the loafers” get tossed around.
The guys end up looking foolish, of course, so I guess that made it all ok.
Well, the discussion begs the question of what does ‘couldn’t get away with them now’ actually mean? Like people have pointed out, Southpark hasn’t stopped doing transphobic jokes, Howard Stern’s show is a lot cleaner now but he has not lost his show, there have been multiple popular tiktok challenges mocking disabled people, Shane Gillis lost his specific gig at SNL for racist comments but is still a successful comedian, and there are plenty of comics with various bigoted jokes still working professionally. Certainly, the biggest mainstream shows have decided that airing shows that feature a white dude running around in blackface (Hey Jimmy!) or where ‘Gary the Retard’ shows up to argue with the host (Howdy Howard!) isn’t good for their bottom line, but people can still make that kind of humor, it’s just significantly less popular than it used to be.
I think the ‘can’t get away with it’ isn’t really a good line to draw, because it’s pretty clear that people do still get away with it.
Tim Conway had a short-lived variety show in the 1960s. One of the recurring sketches was set aboard a Japanese submarine where everyone spoke pseudo-Oriental gibberish.
Once he was a guest on Merv Griffin’s talk show, along with (Japanese) Miyoshi Umeki (“The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”). He mentioned the sketch to her and asked her if any of the gibberish they made up had real Japanese words, and he gave her a sampling. After hearing it, seeming somewhat nonplussed, with a straight face she said, “That sounds like Chinese.”