The Muppet Show similarly had a gibberish-spouting character known as the “Swedish Chef.” ISTR at some point some magazine [ETA Slate] interviewed some Swedes about it, and the ones who had heard of the character were naturally not amused. One said with a straight face, “He sounds like he could be Norwegian.”
The last two posts remind me of ‘Gerhard Renke’s Wanderlust’ (silly show on Comedy Central). The main character travels around to places and interacts with the locals in really bad ways. One episode, he is talking to some guy, and they are just slagging the Finns. “Ah! Those Finns! They are filthy Beasts!”
It’s actually pretty damn funny.
The Chinese restaurant scene in A Christmas Story definitely wouldn’t be done today, with the gag basically being “Chinese people talk funny”. When they did the live broadcast remake a few years ago they subverted that by making the gag be the fact that the Chinese waiters sang surprisingly well, and when the family acted surprised the owner was like “What? How were you expecting them to sing?”
To all those saying that you can’t have the “loveable drunk” any more, what about Homer Simpson? I mean, he’s functional: He has a job and a family and so on. But he’s also pretty clearly an alcoholic.
But Homer’s alcoholism is a small part of him and not the major part of his personality. Compare him to Barney, who was a classic comic drunk until they decided to stop portraying him that way.
And to think Foster Brooks made a career out of it.
The TV show had black actors playing black roles. Mind you, today, many of the lines would be politically incorrect, sure, and cringe worthy. But for it time, having black actors in a black show, with jobs and families and such- ahead of it’s time. The TV show should be praised not condemned .
If you want an offensive joke that was aimed at a transgendered person, you can find it in Crocodile Dundee.
And Ace Ventura: Pet Detective- even worse, IMHO.
There actually was a show where the Swedish Chef got called out on this and was ordered to speak in his “real” language.
Turns out it was Mock Japanese.
I didn’t think “Arthur” was funny when it came out, and didn’t like it either when I tried to watch it again a few years ago.
When I was a kid, there was a cartoon show on a local TV station every day, and we thought this one was hilarious. Holy smokes, that wouldn’t fly now.
Lots of those old Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons had terrible animal abuse as well, among other things.
True. I had forgotten about that movie.
It’s been forever since I watched Ace Ventura but I thought the idea was the character wasn’t transgender, they were just so dead-set on revenge they dressed up and posed as a woman to kill people that wronged him, remember he still had “Mister Winky” so it seemed like this was all an elaborate plot to kill.
Granted make the crazy killer a crossdresser is it’s own set of problems.
As far as offensive jokes based on transgender characters, there’s the “gender-challenged male” in Dude, Where’s My Car?, which is a movie that I love, actually. And my dad is trans. I don’t find that particular part of the film all that funny, though, and it makes me feel guilty about liking the film at all.
Is it okay to like Mrs. Doubtfire still? I should ask her.
I feel Mrs Doubtfire is different. The dad isn’t trans. It’s simply that he loves his children so much he’s willing to dress as an elderly British woman to be near them. Frankly, I feel if you aren’t willing to dress in drag, wear a latex face and make up, and put on an accent to be near your kids- you shouldn’t have kids.
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is considered one of the greatest cartoons of all time. it also looks embarrassingly racist. The intention was to celebrate Black culture, but it’s clearly using racist imagery throughout.
Another example was Ebony White from the Spirit. Eisner intended him to be a fully formed character, but drew him as the common stereotype.
The Swedish Chef reminded me of the ads for a local car dealership when I was a kid. Their ads always ended with a group of Muppet-style puppets singing their jingle: “Griffin Motor Company; Pontiac, Buick, GMC.” When the dealership began carrying Isuzu as well, they added a new puppet. He was a complete Japanese caricature who would pop in at the end of the jingle and say “Isuzu too!” in a mock Japanese accent.
Thorne Smith is most well known for Topper. When I was young my favorite book of his was Night Lives of the Gods. As I grew older I realized that the main joke in this story was their drunken hijinks. I doubt anyone could continue to be popular if they wrote a book like that now.
This was from just a few years ago, but on Modern Family there was an ep where Mitch and Cam were competing for adopted, Asian daughter Lily’s affection. Cam buys here a battery operated car which she crashes. One of the guys says “well we knew there’d be a good chance of that” or something like it. Bad enough if they were talking about women drivers but the first thing I thought of was the stereotype about Asian drivers. At the time I remember being surprised they went there.
If your point is that nobody laughs at drunken hijinks in today’s world, well, I’m not sure I want to live in that world*. But also, looking around this world, I think people DO laugh.
*Though I’m pretty much a tee-totaller, I can still laugh at the loss of control and the over-inflated faith in one’s expertise. I mean, where would “FAIL” videos be without alcohol?
The saying is “Hold my beer!” Not “Ok, watch me totally nail this. Here, hold my Diet Sun-Drop Cola…”
Isn’t that an anti-trans stereotype? That transgendered women aren’t “real women”; they’re men because they have a penis so they’re just pretending to be women. With the element we saw in Ace Ventura and Crocodile Dundee of it being intentional deceit and we should be cheering for the protagonists when they figure out the deceit and reveal the truth.