Works rendered unwatchable/unlistenable by events

Cafe Society
1

Not sure how best to title this, but the idea is that some movies, books, sings, etc. make reference to something current that picks up associations later on that make it unpopular.

What made me think of this was when I had a long car trip over the weekend and listened to som of our old Christine Lavin recordings. (If you haven’t heard of Lavin, I highly recommend her – a folksinger with a weird and sometimes twisted sense of humor). The recordings I was listening to were from 1988 and 1993.

They included Prince Charles, a ditty she wrote in 1981 when he got engaged to Diana, and lamenting that she wouldn’t get a chance to be Queen of England now. She revived it because of the divorce, but Diana’s death afterwards probably wiped this one off her playlist.

Another was Doris and Edwin: The Movie, about an introverted woman working in the basement of a large building who is smitten when she sees an accountant who works on the 37th floor. There’s a fire in the building, and Edwin falls on her after jumping out the window, resulting in a literal “crush”. I think the images of people falling from the World Trade Center in 2001 would have killed any interest in this (although you can find the song and its lyrics online).

Her song about The Dakota is properly somber, considering that it’s inspired by the shooting of John Lennon, but I suspect some would find her offhand comments about Woody Allen and Mia Farrow bothering.

Another example is Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys (1996), which contains a section where he’s talking about a Guy who sublimates his love of blowing things up by playing with pyrotechnics of increasing size. He says, at one point, that “If the terrorists had had him on their side, today we would have the World Trade Hole.” He was referring to the Feb 26 1993 attempt to get the WTC by setting off a bomb enclosed in a moving van in the underground garage there, which succeeded in creating destruction over several parking levels, but failed to topple the buildings. Of course, it’s impossible to read that now and not think of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The book is still available for sale, and I see they recorded an audiobook version in 2002. I wonder if they took that line out.

I know of cases where things like this almost happened in the movies, but were caught in time:

-- There was supposed to be a “pie fight” in the War Room/Situation Room in Dr. Strangelove, ending with the death of the President. Because of the assassination of Kennedy, the ending was changed.

-- The original trailer for the first Spider Man movie was to have a helicopter caught in a web stretching between the World Trade Center Towers. Tha was changed before release.

-- The ending of Men in Black II was supposed to be at the World Trade Center, but they changed that one, too.

2

Vaughn Meader’s 1962 comedy album The First Family, lampooning the Kennedys, dropped precipitously out of favor following certain events the following year.

3

The first episode of The Lone Gunmen (the short-lived X-Files spinoff) was about a plot to remotely highjack an airliner and fly it into the World Trade Center. That episode aired on March 4, 2001.

The Lone Gunmen only ran for 13 episodes, so it’s very unlikely to ever end up in syndication. I don’t know if it’s streaming anywhere. If it were, I wonder if they would include that episode, or add a disclaimer, or something like that.

4

I remember this – should’ve thought of it. An excellent addition.

5

I’m surprised that they aired it.

They kept in the bit about the plane crashing into the building at the end of the 2025 The Running Man (although they changed things), but after a quarter of a century, I’m not that surprised. I was, however, genuinely concerned that they might change the title of Tolkien’s The Two Towers for its 2002c release.

6

It aired on March 4. That is, six months before the World Trade Center attack. At the time, it seemed like wild fantasy. When the actual attack happened, my mind immediately flashed to that episode.

7

The CSNY song Ohio upsets me because we have learned nothing since then. The answer to the line How many more? is unnerving.

8

Bill Cosby’s bits about Spanish Fly, the elixir that makes women desperate to be with you, isn’t so funny anymore.

9

Louis CK has some similarly uncomfortable bits that I thought were pretty funny at the time but are completely unwatchable now.

I find watching some of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s characters very difficult now, but perhaps that is a different thing.

10

He even worked that into an episode of ‘The Cosby Show’. It’s been awhile, but IIRC, Dr. Cosby had a cookout where he had put some unnamed substance in his homemade BBQ sauce that was supposed to get the adults all hot and bothered. There was some concern and commotion when the kids got into, or tried to get into, the ‘adult’ BBQ sauce.

I think of a couple action movies that took on an ironic tone later on-- I was watching Rambo III a few years ago, where Rambo fights evil Russians in Afghanistan. There was a scene where Rambo is hanging out among the Afghanistani freedom fighters in their camp, and having a bit of a soliloquy about what what good, simple, virtuous people they were. And I thought “many, if not all of those freedom fighters, later became the Taliban. Osama Bin Laden could have been one of the camp members there”.

The other was the original Red Dawn, where a couple of the ‘Wolverine’ girls had gone into a store in town that had been taken over as a clubhouse or meeting place by the occupying army, pretending to flirt with the soldiers. They secretly planted an IED that went off when they left, killing soldiers and possibly innocent civilians alike. And on a more modern viewing I thought wow, that scene hits different after all the reports of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan being wounded and killed by IEDs.

Now, I’m not making any political or moral value judgements in either of these cases, just pointing out the irony of how a hero in one scenario can easily become a villain, given a change of circumstance or perspective.

11

Another Cosby routine that’s uncomfortable for a different reason is “Kill That Boy,” which is about his wife telling him to punish their son Ennis for some bad behavior. She expresses this as “I want you to go upstairs and kill that boy!”

Became very hard to listen to after Ennis Cosby was, in fact, murdered.

12

Interesting thread and comments. I actually like that stuff because it shows how things were socially, politically, economically, etc. at that time. I understand that there are definitely some uncomfortable exceptions to my basic rule, though.

13

This was the case with the 1987 James Bond movie The Living Daylights, where Bond teams up with the Afghani Mujahidin, who look an awful lot like Taliban, and which probably evolved from the groups the US (and Britain) were supporting against the Russian back then.

14

Mad Magazine published an article in the late 90s consisting of “strange but true historical facts.” One of the “facts” didn’t appear in reprints: “There used to be at least a 5-minute gap between a major tragedy and the first tasteless joke about it,” illustrated by a scene of a panicked crowd fleeing a building with the smoking fuselage of an airplane sticking out of it, and one of the evacuees gleefully asking another “Didja hear the one about the 747 that slammed into the condo tower?”

15

For us luddites, it is included in the DVD set.

Even more than Bond working with the Taliban, (who I guess were our friends because they fought the Soviets) was them showing up in London in full battle dress, with weapons (IIRC) at the formal party. What, they couldn’t shower first? Did they take those weapons on the plane, land in London, and hop the first cab? Still, I like everything about the movie except that.

16

There was an episode of Barney Miller where a woman came in, wanting her husband arrested for beating her. The detectives just let her rant about it and took their time helping her, then typed a report and asked her to sign it. She left without doing so.

Were we really that tolerant of wife battering until a few decades ago?

17

Sadly, we were. And “we” were even worse with women who abused their husbands. Obviously a man can’t be abused by a “mere girl”.

How many times did Alice/Wilma bean Ralph/Fred on the head with a fry pan/rolling pin? What lesson did that teach us?

18

Alice never did that. She beat Ralph with a withering look and a hand on her hip.

19

That’s true, of course, but if you had that album before November 22nd 1963 (and just about everyone did) and thought it was funny then, you’ll find it’s still funny.

I bought a copy for a dollar at a garage sale a few years back, took it home and listened to it, and laughed just about as much as I did back in the day. It was just so well-written and well-performed by Vaughn Meader and everyone involved. I haven’t listened to it since though.

Poor Vaughn Meader. When he got up the morning of 11/22/63 he was on top of the entertainment world, and when we went to bed that night, his career was finished.

20

See how pernicious the idea is! I would have sworn. Maybe she implied…?