Remove the white guy and racist/sexist humor, and that’s essentially the plot of Battle Royale.
Thought of a few more:
I don’t want to watch anything having to do with cancer and/or a terminally ill main character. You couldn’t drag me to The Fault In Our Stars, for example.
On that note, I don’t want to watch anything that you know from the get-go is going to be a weapons-grade tearjerker. Especially can’t stand when the terrible sadness hinges on a misunderstanding or an accident, like, “John’s dying father wrote him a letter in which he finally pours out his heart, but then a gust of wind blows it into the fireplace, so now John will never know his father loves him. Roll credits.”
Or The Grave of the Fireflies. No way, man.
Nthing humiliation humor.
No talking babies.
Unless the blood and violence is gratuitous, of course.
In Fascist Italy these were called White Telephone movies. In Nazi Germany, Goebbels decreed a lot of escapist fluff featuring dancers and cheerful fraulein copied from Busby Berkley. Of course I’m Godwinizing, but it was no coincidence that the Hays Code forbade messages in films that would stir up the unhappy people, and conservative movie moguls went right along (Mayer to a greater extent; Warners less so), at the same time the economy tanked.
Pre-code movies like Min and Bill, One Man’s Castle, The Champ, etc. showed poor people’s actual problems, and how they tried to enjoy their lives nonetheless. Fearing that could inspire riots, movies shifted to distraction.
“It is a splendid thing that for just fifteen cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”(FDR speaking about Shirley Temple).
I’ve read that Harold Lloyd is the equal to Charlie Chaplin, unrecognized only because Lloyd was too stingy to re-release his movies during the nostalgia boom at any but his asking price. But Chaplin’s movies were often about “where is my next meal coming from,” while Lloyd’s was “how can I win the girl?”
One of the reasons I love the quirky little Big Trouble in Little China is how it slyly subverts the big, white hero meme. The plucky little asian sidekick turns out to be the bigger badass and the actual hero of the story, while the full-of-himself white “hero” really is de facto the half-competent sidekick.
I spent entirely too much time in hospitals as a patient to have any tolerance for medical dramas. Except Scrubs, and even that only in small doses.
Anything where vulnerable characters are treated cruelly by peers (especially when the vulnerable one is a kid or teen) bother me. I wasn’t bullied bigtime as a kid, but as a smart nerdy girl who didn’t fit the gender-role suit, I got my share.
Also, anything other than nature shows where animals are harmed, and particularly when it’s to prove some sort of point or spur the hero to action.
Can’t stand shows or movies where the whole point is the relationship. Something else has to be going on. This goes double if the characters are shallow, vapid, and/or stupid.
“Dumb-guy” comedies featuring drunken “humor,” body-function jokes, and general “dudebro-ness.”
(I avoid dudebros and vapid pretty people in real life, so why would I want to pay money to see them on screen?)
Generally speaking, the only two genres that I can’t watch are the aforementioned humiliation humor; I’ve done enough awkward and painful things in my day that I can’t really find watching a scripted version of someone else doing it as funny. Larry David comedies are probably the best example of what I can’t stand. For some reason, more slapstick examples like Mr. Bean don’t bother me so much- probably because it’s all comically exaggerated.
The other one is a more professional one; computer technology based shows. They’re usually SO wrong that it’s not even funny or watchable. I tend to get annoyed when on shows like NCIS, they go and search a suspect’s unencrypted hard drive in an hour, and find what they’re looking for. It doesn’t work that way- it takes a lot longer just to index the dumb thing, and at that point, you start looking for the needle in the haystack. Then you have all the stupidity surrounding encryption. Even the stuff that can be broken isn’t generally the kind of thing a bright guy with a PC is going to crack in a couple of hours, without access to NSA resources anyway.
That’s sort of like my son’s pet peeve. He can’t watch shows in which friends fall out and get mad at each other, or where some kid is bullied.
He can happily watch shows in which people shoot at each other, or hack each other up with swords - that doesn’t bother him in the slightest.
I think it is because he can more readily identify with the first issues than with the second - he has zero experience with physical death or mutilation, but emotional trauma he can empathize with.
Did you ever see the show where they have TWO people start typing on the same keyboard to get something done? Hang on…
I can’t watch videos from here but I think this is it:
Exactly. A relationship should be centered around something more important than either of the characters.
I hate when sex can’t be anything but a plot point to ensure someone ends up pregnant or dying. It’s actually possible to have sex and not ruin your life. Honest.
I was bitching about this so much the other day. I saw Shame, with Michael Fassbender, and in it he is this sexaholic with a compulsive addiction. Anyway in it, Fassbender is naked more than once, and I find him pretty damn hot. But it was really annoying me that they couldn’t present it as such. Oh no! They had to call it “Shame” and make it so awful that he was having all this sex all over the place. He was ruining his life with all of this anonymous, emotion-free sex, and I’m sitting here going “No strings attached sex with Fassy? Sign me up!”
But it would have been just fine if there was lots of bloody violence I am sure. :rolleyes:
Of course! Anyone who has casual sex will enter a downward spiral of depravity and will eventually be a dead but magically pregnant (yes, even if you’re a man!) drug-addicted prostitute with bad hair.
You folks just aren’t watching enough porn. According to porn, sex has no consequences at all. The pizza delivery guy is hot? Have sex with him for a tip! 
Or even if he’s not hot. coughRonJeremycough
Drunks are funny, etc. Including having characters that are clearly alcoholics but aren’t treated as such in show. (E.g., Penny on The Big Bang Theory.)
Also, emotional manipulation, spoiled attitudes or passive-aggressive behavior being celebrated. I dislike manipulative people in my life and don’t want to see it praised in movies.
The rich guy is the murderer. It’s kinda overdone.
[quote=“Anaamika, post:70, topic:716988”]
Did you ever see the show where they have TWO people start typing on the same keyboard to get something done? Hang on…
I can’t watch videos from here but I think this is it:
That clip was just painful. I want to slap both of them with a fish.