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Currently rewatching Gilmore Girls with my fiancée and we have the same reaction when there’s a hint of homophobia or fat jokes in some of the jokes. We usually just give each other a look and roll our eyes but yea, it was just a different time
I had a similar reaction to seeing brown face in Ben Hur (1959). The character itself was a positive depiction, so there’s that I guess. It could have easily ruined the whole movie.
I’m surprised how many people seem offended by this comic. I found it pretty relatable. That doesn’t mean I “don’t understand context”, or think the writers were bad people, or that the shows aren’t worth watching. It just means I find it personally unpleasant to find these jokes in a work I’m otherwise enjoying.
When kids study older literature and media in school, generally when there’s a slur or racist reference or joke, the teacher will stop and explain the context and get the kids to reflect on it and why it’s probably not acceptable today. Even though I understand this and know it going in, I’m still kind of doing an abridged version of that in my head when something like this comes up in a show – I’ve been following along, laughing with the writers, and then suddenly I’m backing up and distancing myself from one joke or idea. It’s jarring, it pulls me out of the show, and it’s just not fun.
In some cases it also comes across as incredibly lazy and unoriginal. So many sitcoms from that era have “the trans episode”, “the gay episode”, “the lecherous character” – and they all make the same unfunny jokes, and it’s a reminder than a lot of these shows, even in their time, were just not that creative. Plenty of modern shows have the same problem, but they don’t draw attention to it by having large classes of “stock jokes” that simply do not land today.
When kids study older literature and media in school, generally when there’s a slur or racist reference or joke, the teacher will stop and explain the context and get the kids to reflect on it and why it’s probably not acceptable today.
I still remember how my English teacher gave context on usage of the n-word in Huckleberry Finn and how insightful it was for us at that age.
Comicstrips has oddly enough the most reactionary community out of anywhere on Lemmy that I’ve discovered. Often full of the worst takes from commentors outraged at decency.
That’s when I laugh harder.
Tired of this neutered/sterilized “comedy” the average idiot is into these days.
Thing is it has to be done in an actually funny way, while many of these old shows just throw in a “fuck <group of people>” as the entire joke
Same, ain’t no idea in this world beyond humor.
The one that still gets me, and mostly because in this day and age of 2026 it still doesn’t get as much homophobic backlash as I feel it clearly deserves is the pejorative: cocksucker.
In my anecdotal experience, 99.55% of the time, it’s leveraged against men and used as a homophobic slur.
But even so, is sucking cock really that terrible of a thing to do? The vast majority of people with a cock enjoy the service. We literally celebrate the people who do it well for us personally, in most cases.
Why is it used as a slur?
Anyway, I’m off to suck some cock, see ya’ll later.
Motherfucker - Includes (Most) dads of 2 or more kids.
Why two or more?
Do you think people with only one child no longer have sex?
The first time she’s not yet a mother
I’m not excluding them.
It’s that I can’t prove that a 1 child father is a Motherfucker.
2 kids from the same mother? Someone is a Motherfucker.
It usually implies that whoever is giving head is being taken advantage of.
i.e. They got swindled by some shitty male into pleasing said male at the cost of their own dignity.
It doesn’t happen always, but it happens often enough for the act to be seen as degrading.
I took it to mean that the person referred to is an opportunist of sorts. A man who will perform said act on another man for some kind of benefit, despite being straight or disliking that man.
There goes my hero, watch him as he goes.
Safe travels, cocksucker!
(Mods, please don’t ban me. Please observe the context. Oh my god please jesus don’t do it)
That was pretty funny…safe travels indeed.
George Carlin (who is idolized and rightly so, mostly) had a line in one of his standup specials where he said “you show me a tropical fruit and I’ll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala”. Homophobia was just so normalized back then (this was the ‘80s). Eddie Murphy had a whole routine (which he has since apologized for, to his credit) imagining Mr. T as a homosexual ("Hey boy you lookin’ mighty cute in them jeans!"). Robin Williams (also idolized here) routinely acted gay for the humor value of it (such as it was).
Yep! And that’s part of the culture I grew up in and came to age in. Media that demonized and mocked gay men (and really all gay people), even otherwise progressive and lighthearted media.
It was damaging to me as a child. More so than a lot of people could ever realize.
Also disheartening is that a lot of my super religious family will use the term cocksucker as a derogatory statement right in front of me, knowing I’m gay. These are the same exact people who literally freak out and act like you’ve shot their mother in front of them if you say the word “fuck” or “god damn”.
Cocksucker is just a good word to say; in my language the word for Cancer (yes we curse with that) is used in the same way and is also very controversial.
I’m interested in the viewpoints of gay men on this. I’m happy to retire the term (I don’t even know if I’ve ever actually used it), but it would be good to know if folks are actually getting offended by it.
In modern times I take it to be derogatory in an “involuntary submissive” context. One who sucks cock not because they want to, but because they are in some situation where they must.
Why is it used as a slur?
Easiest way to push their buttons. One may not care if another sucks cock, but if they’re insecure like these folks, then it is very effective.
Growing up, the worst thing you could be was a guy who liked other dudes. Being called a fag and cocksucker was just like “casual” insults, the way Australians call someone a cunt.
I kind of like when it’s reclaimed. Like someone calling themselves a fag or a whore.
Because usually the bully ends up getting even more mad.
A mouth is a mouth so you might be onto something
The vast majority of people with a cock enjoy the service.
And likely figured out they aren’t as flexible as they’d like.
interestingly, it’s less about flexibility and more about ‘strength.’ There was a how-to guide a while ago that emphasized the method of ‘hands behind thighs’ to pull oneself to that point. Leverage and body mechanics make it pretty difficult, and flexibility isn’t even half of the battle.
While the issue you bring up is legit…what sitcom ever used that word? I feel like that would only ever be in an R rated movie
All over Deadwood.
But being called a Cocksucker by a wild West brothel owner may be historically accurate.
Sopranos is pretty funny I guess
But it’s the wrong hole! >:V
90s? I went into my rewatch of How I Met Your Mother knowing it was problematic, but the entire show is basically just one long sexist joke with a disappointing ending.
Don’t forget the sexual violence too
yeah i watched this show as kid with my dad and we both enjoyed it a lot (and i idolized Barney, although mostly his suits) but looking back theres so much sexual coercion and blatant lying for sex that idk if i could stomach the show nowadays
Think this is a great example of overton window shifting
“Overtone” is a thing in audio processing. You’re thinking of Zip-a-tone.
big in music performance, composition, physical instrument design, etc as well
i would be surprised if there are more than a few musicians above a typical high school level that don’t have at least a surface level understanding of overtones
at least in wind/percussion instruments, i have no idea about vocal people as i’ve never done any of that
No no, Zip-A-Tone is a brand of adhesive-backed screentone sheets for artists. You’re thinking of Acetone.
No, Acetone is paint remover. You’re thinking of Italian cake in a box.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
I did have a typo on my comment. Fixed
Only a Ginger can call another Ginger, Ginger. https://youtu.be/KVN_0qvuhhw
What’s up my G-word!
90’s
'90s
#weDoNotPluraliseWithApostrophes
That’s like, your opinion, man. It’s not a universally agreed-on rule.
New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (1999):
decades should usually be given in numerals: the 1990’s; the mid-1970’s; the 90’s. But when a decade begins a sentence it must be spelled out.
The Chicago Manual of Style (2003):
9.37 Decades. Decades are either spelled out (as long as the century is clear) and lowercased or expressed in numerals. No apostrophe appears between the year and the s.
Same goes for initialisms, e.g. CDs vs CD’s.
The CD’s (singular) tracks and the CDs’ (plural) tracks. Or would it be CD’s’? That’s my one gripe with putting the apostrophe s for acronyms.
But then when talking about someone getting “all As” in school, it’s easy there to realize what’s being said, but when someone asks “What grades did you get in school?” And you respond “As,” now it’s just the word as.
Grammarizing spoken word is a major part of my job and I think about this shit all the time, and sometimes things conflict, and it’s dumb, it’s all dumb! That’s it!
But then when talking about someone getting “all As” in school, it’s easy there to realize what’s being said
Some would think that there is supposed to be a ’ in there but no, the additional “s” is simply missing.
'90’s’thn’t
but it belongs to the 90s! 👀
So it should be 90s’.
9’0s
,06
deleted by creator
Posting this here because this is the most recent instance: every time I see deleted by creator on Lemmy, my first thought is always “damn, God REALLY did not like that comment.”
I thought Tyler the Creator had better shit to do than this.
I’m gonna say something bold:
Surprisingly not a problem for some shows, good example is Simpson golden age.
There is a gay episode but it’s mostly about Homer overreacting.
A lot of the satire of Simpson is trying to be functional in a dysfunctional system, which has aged like the greatest wine that frank grimes can’t afford.
Apu has entered the chat.
Apu is tough because I know at least a dozen people just like him who own their own store and are somehow behind the counter every single time I walk in.
I think a lot of the time it’s Gen Z not understanding context. There was overt racism, but a lot of media that is considered racist now was either depicting the experience of people at the time or making fun of racists.
Blazing Saddles. Took me a bit to understand this when I was younger. When I first saw it, I thought it was simply outdated humor. Then I thought it was edgy. Then I finally grasped that the whole joke is actually directed at racist white folks and that their racism just makes them look really stupid.
The quintessential example. Rocky Horror is another.
I’d also include the controversy around “Baby It’s Cold Outside”.
If I stay people will think we had sex!
OMG! He’s pressuring her into sex!
The song has a line where the girl asks what’s in her drink. You can interpret that however you want.
Now multiply that misunderstanding by 1 billion.
Yeah, if you find an overly racist character then the joke is probably directed at them being racist.
It’s amazing how many people are offended by Uncle Ruckus. Like, way more than are offended by Uncle Remus, incredibly enough.
The Boondocks just isn’t a show for the emasculated generation.
It wouldn’t have gotten made if they were in charge.
I’d say that’s mostly true for comedy. But some of the earlier stuff was definitely like “point and laugh at this race”. Like the original looney tunes and stuff had some that were rough. They got better about it later but those early episodes had a few that were a little…close lol
But that wasn’t in the '90s. The last thing I can actually think of as an example of point-and-laugh at a race was Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). In the '80s there was Dukes of Hazzard, but it wasn’t overtly racist, they just only had black people as bad guys in the deep South. As a kid that went right over my head.
I think most examples in the '90s would be stereotyping races but not making fun of them. Overtly. Kind of like the token Asian or the token black guy to fill out a group of friends. I guess I want more examples to be given because when you’re younger a lot of that stuff goes of your head compared to when you’re older.
they just only had black people as bad guys in the deep South
Boss Hogg and Cletus were white villains.
Sorry my statement wasn’t that the only villains were black people, but rather that when black people were on the show they were always villains.
I’ll take your word on that.
Separate but related. I just looked at the cast from the 80s. There is a distinct lack of black actors in general.
Oh yea some of it was definitely just overt racism.
Id be careful blaming the newer generation. That’s what those snowflake boomers did, saying shit like, “Oh those millennials… We can’t even make a joke anymore” because their jokes suck ass, those little bitches.
Well Gen Z is quite young. Children understand trigger-words more, subtle context less so.
Ageism on Lemmy, impossible.
As the other commenter has said, the youngest gen z aren’t children anymore - they’re teens.
The very youngest of gen z is 15 right now, and the majority is adults
I’m only just beginning to understand what L.P Hartley meant when he said “The past is a foreign country”
We can put King of the Hill in that camp as well I think.
I think it’s a better and more rounded show than any of them.
It’s a bit awkward, because Kahn was Toby Huss doing a problematic accent, but is also generally praised for representation of SEA culture.
Oh yeah, I love that one! It makes fun of everybody! In good taste too. XD
Sorry Mr. Burns, but I don’t go in for these backdoor shenanigans. Sure, I’m flattered - maybe even a little curious… but the answer is no!
It was the best of times; it was the ~ B L U R S T ~ O F ~ T I M E S ~
The Simpsons was pretty progressive though
Most people don’t recognize how the Simpsons was satire.
Yeah, GrandWolf319 was commending the show. :)
I heard Frank Grimes didn’t even go to space
I feel like every time I tried watching Big Bang Theory, I got this vibe.
“haha that guy is such a fucking nerd!” was virtually every laugh-track riddled joke.
You’re just not the target audience, as shown in this handy diagram:
I think Breaking Bad belongs in the middle one with Futurama because I don’t think it required intelligence to be entertained.
My first watch through was purely a “watch Hal do some crazy shit” where the action entertained and everything else was just an annoyance. I just didn’t care about the moral implications or whatever message the show was trying to make, I was happy watching an “outsider enters dangerous world he knows little about and fucks shit up”.
Second watch through I stopped seeing him as Hal and disliked him before the end of the first episode. If anything, he was more like Malcolm (book smart but otherwise dumb and entitled).
Though maybe that’s more just about BB being entertaining even if you aren’t the target audience.
Well god dammit I don’t know where I fall.
Hey that’s not fair to BBT, half of those jokes were “Sheldon is neurodiverse”
No! Stop! He’s not! - The showrunner for some reason
Because if you acknowledge that he’s autistic, then a LOT of the series becomes “laugh at a nasty charicature of a disabled person.”
That’s how the representation should be handled.
This guy is awkward but has all these friends, they laugh and sometimes don’t understand him but they’re still friends.
If the show could be that progressive about neurodivergence then it might actually be good.
He said hello hahahahhahahaa…hahahahahaha omg omg bro omg he said- he said hahaha he said HELLO hahahaha
I read your comment with a laugh track!
I will always defend BBT as 6 seasons of a great show dragged out and dumbed down for prime time. I think if someone went through it and discarded the filler jokes, arcs that go nowhere and excessive laugh track it could have been really good.
My wife likes the show as background noise and I’ve studied it. Theres some real relationship writing and some genuinely good character growth, some of the non “Ha! Nerds!” Jokes are actually pretty funny.
I wish I could get people to care about health care and wages as much as they care about mean words. So many seemingly don’t mind being robbed blind as long as our ruling parties using the correct terminology.
The same people who care more about mean words than reducing the disparity in the wealth are the ones profiting off of the disparity in wealth.
Everyone loves money, including gays, blacks, and women.
White American liberals in a nutshell
What, and give up purity testing? That would eliminate 90% of our recreational outrage and give us time and energy to actually do something. Can’t have that.
Without my sexual identity and virtue signaling I wouldn’t have any personality at all.
What’s funny is it’s literally a shared behavior across the entire political spectrum in America but each side pretends it’s only the other side doing it.
Pretty sure you’ve described neoliberalism in a nutshell.
As Talleyrand once said: “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.”
You make a good point. I don’t give them enough credit for their performative politics.
God, this is cringe. Like, it’s embarrassing to be on the same team as them.
I know, right?
Why are democrats so proud to be the lesser evil? Why can’t we just be the good guys?
It’s because we aren’t on the same team
That’s also the conclusion I’ve reached.
Yeah, yeah.
Did they all just do a superhero landing? That shit is hard on the knees.
Honestly a little impressed they were all able to kneel and get back up at all.
Yeah, all the word policing kinda feels like a psyop because it’s stirring up a lot of conflict without any real benefit. Controlling what words are ok doesn’t make people respect the ones hurt by the words, and ultimately it’s the disrespect that causes the hurt, the words are just the manifestation of that.
Like with disabled people, pretty much every word used to describe them has become an insult and any new word will just suffer the same fate pretty much the same day it gets popularized.
But the argument itself is polarizing, though in a way that makes the other side shut up about it until they can find like minded people. And might end up joining MAGA because they think it’s about trolling people policing language and words like “woke” end up having very different meanings to the different groups (one side sees it as a respect for all regardless of background or capabilities, the other sees it as a drive for censorship) to the point where people supporting the other side seem “evil”, which then means that as MAGAs wake up and see it is about more than just policing words, their opponents are more likely to tell them to fuck off than.
And that’s not even mentioning the people who take the stance “my racism/sexism is ok because it’s against the race/gender with more power”, and the people who treat non-malicious acknowledgement of differences between genders/races/cultures the same as malicious ones and no fucking wonder there’s strong opposition.
Were the “mean words” ever used against you?
Yes. Now get over it.
Bzzzt. Rhetoric.
Those topics are simple and easy to understand.
Understanding the long arc of the oppression of the labor class and the systemic design failures of US Healthcare is hard and the explanation won’t fit in a TikTok.
Do they still call this thread-jacking?
Don’t be the vegan at the party, dude.
Nah, this is why it’s important to make sure “vegans” are at your parties.
Early 2000s entertainment too. A good portion of the edgy jokes could be considered funny because they were made on the assumption that “We can laugh about this, because we all know racism and sexism is bad, right?”.
And then 2015ish happened and it became obvious that a lot of people weren’t laughing AT the -isms but rather WITH.
EDIT: Which slur did Ross use, BTW? I haven’t watched that show in eons, and I don’t remember any.
Thats the same reason I hate Trailer Park Boys.
So much of it is laughing at the poors. I know people who are so sheltered and middleclass they think “LoL can you imagine if people lived like this”
Bruh, you ever known people born into generatiknal poverty?
Round of applause to Deep Space 9 for holding up after all these years, half that station was bi at the very least.
The alternate universe on that show was the horniest thing in TV for decades.
I see you never watched Farscape and its BDSM space muppets.
There is absolutely no inaccuracy in that description of that frelling show.
It doesn’t matter who you are, Evil Kira wants you lol
Horniest? I mean, DS9 did run concurrently with Lexx…
Never heard of this before. Google tells me it was only available in the US on Showtime and later the SciFi channel, neither of which I had access to.
it’s on YouTube for free
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZVMGCh7sZUjUiCdLnH2koZbTpTM5wp9m
Season 2 is peak Lexx
It’s one of my favorite tv shows.
It was even licensed and translated for broadcast in other countries, but I concur that Lexx is a bit obscure one
Lexx was a British-German-Canadian production.
Lexx is a British-Canadian-German production.
Season 1 Bashir probably needed an HR meeting abput his continued sexual advances on Jadzia.
Thats why we have Garak
Don’t worry, Garak was working on fixing him.
haven’t seen friends but as someone familiar with the zeitgeist it’s almost certainly “retarded”
which was also all over adult swim at the time and is recently having its renaissance
Ah, the infamous hard R
I’ve noticed that lately. It went from being everywhere to nowhere and now it’s creeping back up. I’ll be honest here, I miss the word but if it’s hurting that many people who haven’t done anything then you’re a fucking piece of shit if you use it.
I was rooting for the “gay” renaissance where people talked about how gay everything was but changed it to mean awesome instead of shitty.
That would be pretty gay
Yeah that this is just how millennials talked in high school and we’re entering into that “old person stops caring” phase of life about now?
We’re not that old yet ffs.
There are none of us in our 20s anymore.
Last time I checked old didn’t cover 30s+ even 50+ is still middle aged.
Who’ve you checked with? Boomers or Zoomers?
I was rooting for the “gay” renaissance where people talked about how gay everything was but changed it to mean awesome instead of shitty.
wait you too?
Absolutely. I’m still rooting for it but it seems to be kind of petering out here.
Mibber
I…I fear the purity bot. Please don’t take my face.
I have collected so many of the movies I remember fondly as a Gen X’er. From the ‘70s to the ‘90s. Holy shit the stuff I’d forgotten that was in them. Rape-y stuff, comments about underage girls and basically leering at them with tbe camera, suicides, misogyny, women as sexual objects and nothing else, racism… It’s bad. I’d started a movie or two with my kids and had a “oh no” moment when a part started that I’d completely forgotten about. Some of that still exists, but it’s there as a narrative and plot point about the character doing the shitty things rather than the casual and institutional way it was played before. Just goes to show you how times and people (can; some don’t) change. Some of that stuff was not unusual in life for me back then, I wouldn’t dream of it today.
Yeah I was pretty sure the key master/gatekeeper stuff would go over my kids’ heads but I forgot about the ghost-sex scene.
Ironically, other stuff with a high rating is actually due to blood/gore but the other content is pretty low-key. I’d rather they watch Terminator than a lot of the “funny” stuff
What we consider funny has shifted quite a bit, at least publicly and for decent people. There are still plenty who are perfectly fine with lowbrow racism and all that as far as what constitutes humor.
Check out “Fiend Without A Face 1958”. You’ll thank me. I don’t care about the precise context of this reply.
This is an important point.
But what if the racism etc makes the joke. And it’s a funny joke.That makes it ok. Because humor trumps that other stuff.
Seinfeld is in the top of my list. Kramer can show up in black face and they left the episode in but someone can’t be a dark elf in Community.
They also had Kramer making the Native American noises and stomping the Puerto Rican flag. Basically anything racist, they had the racist guy do. And it was okay because he looked like he had mental health issues.
Huh? The whole joke with Chang going as a dark elf was that it was blackface and it made Shirley uncomfortable. I don’t think it should’ve been removed because Chang was the punchline and not black people, but it was definitely about blackface. (I’ve also not heard anyone complain about that joke)
Remember when references substituted for humor? I think the same thing happened for moralness or something. The symbol became accepted as being as real as the actual thing. Which is completely psychotic of course.
That flag episode the joke was that everything he was doing was taken the wrong way. He had accidentally set on fire a flag that was behind him and tried to put out the fire, then someone shouts “Hey, there’s a guy stomping the Puerto Rican flag!” and he is chased by a mob…
It’s like that Monk episode where he has to shake hands with a lot of people from a group and the last one is black, and right after shaking hands with the black person he cleans his hands with rubbing alcohol, so everyone thinks he is racist and everything he does in the episode just makes him look even worse - because it was taken out of context (he is a germophobe, he cleans his hands with rubbing alcohol after touching anything and anyone).
The episode where he was in black face was also Kramer having an “accident”. Kramer is a device the writers’ had to make racist jokes.
If you want to do something racist just go backwards. For example, “Let’s have Kramer be in black face during a Martin Luther King walk! It’s okay becuse he didn’t do it on purpose!”
The writers created the situation. You can’t just say anything was accidental. That’s like those comedians that just keep saying, “It’s just a joke.” I mean look at Michael Richards’ infamous standup. Perfect example.
I don’t think I watched the blackface episode, but if it was an accident that caused a misunderstanding (basic comedy trope) the joke was on people being over sensitive and raging without knowing and/or purposely ignoring context of a situation (I could as easily say “if you want to do something racist, just claim it was a dark elf”). What was being criticized there became the norm, and the consequences are in this thread - people can’t say the name of that Agatha Christie’s work in the comments, nor you can have a dark elf in Community, because context doesn’t matter.
If i remember Cramer accidentally had to much tanning spray on his face(and didn’t look in the mirror I think) or something like that then went to meet his girlfriends black family.
Yes that was the black face episode I was referring to.
Chill out, it is just a joke. One you failed to understand.
So you’re accusing him of suffering from slowed-down mental development.
The entire point of a reality sitcom is that it takes place in reality.
Reality has racists. Racism is part of life. There is a difference between a racist character doing a bit because that is what the character would do. Vs a show that is racist because the writers and directors are racist.
Comedy has done dark humor and racist humor for 1000 years. If you stop allowing it, then you unironically actually just empower actual racists because your now removing a tool to undermine the racism.
Yeah it sucks when the racist joke or bit is done poorly and lacks the context or nuance to either shine a light on a problem, subvert expections or point out a flaw in society. Thus coming across as just crass.
But not every attempt is going to land.
What if we just, as a society, accepted racism as a valid expression? Not literal truth but metaphorical and figurative. Could we do that and avoid offending everybody? Because, as you say, it would help us do humor. And humor is important.
This is the point cancel culture misses (and I absolutely support some cancellations).
Throwing it back even further, Blazing Saddles is a great example of a writer/director and some of the best comedy actors of all time using racism to undermine racism.
I agree with you. I don’t believe in canceling shows. That why I don’t think removing the dark elf episode on Community should have been allowed.
But at the same time as allowing what was considered socially acceptable, I should be able to express my discomfort with content.
