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Only a Ginger can call another Ginger, Ginger. https://youtu.be/KVN_0qvuhhw
What’s up my G-word!
And transphobic episodes of Family Guy and NCIS where Glenn’s ‘dad’ is a woman and Tony finds out on a date that she’s ‘a man’ and is speechless, disgusted and coworkers jibe him for it
Notably, the plot for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
I legitimately just went “Ace Ventura’s plot was transphobic? Ace Ventura had a plot? Oh yeah! Oh, yeah.”
My memory of Ace Ventura has boiled down to a few quick catchphrases and sight gags, I almost forgot it was a movie.
The ending scene is so rough these days. Kills the movie for me. The premise is “trans is disgusting” which is so much different than, say, the situation with Kramer stomping the Puerto Rican flag as an accident and being perceived as a racist. Context matters. And Ace Ventura really aged like milk.
Well, specifically the plot is that she was gender surprising everyone on the force. The ending reveals that her gun had dug into everyones hip at one point it would seem.
Writing her as that kind of person is definitely demonizing trans, but their reactions were the normal overblown homophobia of the time. Not trans specific. It wasn’t just the idea of her being trans causing the reaction.
The joke isn’t so much that ‘trans is gross’ but that he thought he was kissing a girl but kissed a man instead? And then he completely overreacted. Used a plunger on his face, which is obviously grosser than kissing a man. That’s the joke.
Also, the implication at the end is that she had been fooling around with many of them and they were all just realising her gun wasn’t digging into their hips either. It’s not just recoiling at the thought of a trans-gender person.
In real life, it’s normal to not ‘surprise’ someone with your gender. They should know full well and be accepting of what they are going to find long before it is revealed.
Of course writing her as having tried to trick most of the police force with her gender is for sure demonizing trans, and was also a ‘fear’ at the time. Like somehow trans people are doing it to ruin other peoples lives, instead of stop their own from being ruined.
Outside of that, it was the normal overblown reaction to homosexuality that was common at the time. Just in real-life cartoon style, which was Jim Carreys shtick. Plunger to the face is very much how a cartoon character would try to clean something off their face. Except it would probably pull their whole face off leaving it blank and they’d have a floating pencil draw a fresh one on.
“We made a joke about how the main character should date people of their own gender, which is very, very funny!”
Typical 90’s experience…
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
Now you can laugh about politically correct jokes, like if you have a lamp why do you need shade?
The world is my safe space.
“What’s the deal with lampshades? If you have a lamp, why do you need a shade?”
Meanwhile, Kramer backstage yelling out hard-N-word.
Then a half-assed apology on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
It was a simpler time… 2006.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Chill out, it is just a joke. One you failed to understand.
So you’re accusing him of suffering from slowed-down mental development.
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.
editing a day later: This was a half-assed argument, the shows did it just because it was funny. In all the cases people jumped to conclusions that were completely fair, people should be shooed for doing what the main characters were doing, but it was funny because it wasn’t on purpose, they got in a bad situation by mistake. However, the critique on this kinda of humor, and also satires and parodies that humorously references problematic stuff, because “offensive” is absolute value, is what led to “people can’t say the name of that Agatha Christie’s work in the comments, nor you can have a dark elf in Community”.
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.
How thin the skin? I’ve noticed stuff like that my whole life. You can’t pretend it all away. No matter how much you want it to not exist it will. It moves and changes but the inherent human tendency to take a dig at someone or something you don’t like will always be with us. Its the slurs you use personally without thought that you should worry about. Don’t think you have never done it.
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 saw a black and white performance of blackface on youtube, I think in the context of looking it up for a college course. I don’t really understand the concept or why it’s supposed to be funny. In the performance, the two white actors painted their faces as they performed, and when they were done painting themselves, they didn’t look like black guys. Before I saw this clip, I thought that blackface existed becasue black people weren’t allowed on stage, like how Shakespearean plays had young boys play the female roles because they weren’t allowed to include women.
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.
Were the “mean words” ever used against you?
Bzzzt. Rhetoric.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You make a good point. I don’t give them enough credit for their performative politics.
Did they all just do a superhero landing? That shit is hard on the knees.
I thought they were Teebowing
Honestly a little impressed they were all able to kneel and get back up at all.
God, this is cringe. Like, it’s embarrassing to be on the same team as them.
It’s because we aren’t on the same team
Yeah, yeah.
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.”
White American liberals in a nutshell
most of these shows are unwatchable, better left in the past
It works because everybody hates Ross.
Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five?
Comedies are supposed to be edgy. Things age differently. There would be no comedy if you weren’t allowed to make edgy jokes.
If you were offended by Ross making up a rumor about Rachel, then wow I can’t imagine how you’d feel about Archie Bunker. Or Eric Cartman. Or literally any comedy ever?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Indiana Jones is a tough watch. Had to turn it off after 30 minutes or so
Edit: Since a lot of people misunderstand me here.
This is Indiana Jones, something I watch purely for entertainment, its not very entertaining to watch him berate and belittle a overly hysterical depiction of a woman for a full length movie. It’s not as if this is the absolute pinnacle of human culture, its a movie series made for entertainment. It still was an important part of the human experience for many. If my goal is to get a glimpse into how culture was earlier, then sure, but that was not my goal when I watched Indiana Jones.
I loved Indiana Jones as a child, and wanted to introduce it to my wife as ENTERTAINMENT, not as an important cultural event that forever changed human culture.
Sexism, homophobia, transphobia and racism was normal in older movies, and one should not dismiss old culture based solely on that. Many films are too great to pass up, Indiana Jones is not what I would prioritize to watch despite these issues.
Yeah, also Indy canonically had sex with a 15 year old when he was 27.
No kidding! I see you’re getting down voted since it was a beloved classic, but I encourage people to rewatch it. And Temple of Doom was so much worse. My whole family was blown away by the sexism and racism when we watched it again last year.
He’s getting down voted cause judging past eras by modern standards. Is about as brain dead fucking stupid as you can get.
The majority of all works are sexist, racist or have some form of hate in them. Because that’s just history. People were what they were and the faults of the past or the failure is of the writers who created those works. Do not make the works lesser.
Indiana jones is factually still one of the most defining films in history. While it’s entirely their right to not watch it because they find it not palatable. That is a personal opinion and choice.
But to say the movie is bad because it contains things that they cannot stomach is just not accurate. The movie is accurate and true to the era. It takes place in if it did not contain sexism or racism in instances and circumstances where they would be in fact called for given the time frame. And the movie would just be bad.
People were different in the past. People of today. Need to get the f*** over that.
This is Indiana Jones, something I watch purely for entertainment, its not very entertaining to watch him berate and belittle a overly hysterical depiction of a woman for a full length movie. It’s not as if this is the pinnacle of human culture, its a movie series made for entertainment. If my goal is to get a glimpse into how culture was earlier, then sure, but that is not my goal when I watch Indiana Jones.
I agree.
When we were a young married couple decades ago, we’d check out movies from the library on VHS tape. One we loved was Topper. In the VHS transfer, there was a line from the protagonist giving “good advice” to another main character: “You haven’t lived until you’ve beat your wife.” In all earnestness.
That line was mysteriously missing from the DVD and all subsequent versions I’ve seen.
I think it is detrimental to society to whitewash shameful past behavior. We need to acknowledge it, remember how bad things have been, and respect the progress that has been made. It also helps us reflect on ways we might be acting now that could be viewed as horrific or backwards in the future. It helps drive continuing progress.
Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” has a couple lines that often aren’t broadcast.
That’s interesting, just looked it up assuming I had likely heard the uncensored version at least once in my life, curious what could be removed from it. But yeah, turns out I have never once heard the full version. That is a very good example.
Temple of Doom/Indiana Jones is sorta loosely based on the TinTin comics, which Spielberg later made a movie of also. The whole thing seemingly takes place in the 1920’s when those comics did, and that depiction of India is right in line with the 1920’s and how it would have been depicted then.
Hopefully your don’t take that approach to everything cause being unable to mentally get over the fact people were different at different points in history. Sure makes it damn well near impossible to be well read or learned.
You basically are willfully ignorant and blind to history. If you just can’t read or watch anything that doesn’t perfectly match modern sensibilities.
The sheer glut of fiction that is so unbelievably foundational to modern literature that is beyond racist and sexist. Is uncountable.
Of course not. This is Indiana Jones, something I watch purely for entertainment, its not very entertaining to watch him berate and belittle a overly hysterical depiction of a woman for a full length movie. It’s not as if this is the pinnacle of human culture, its a movie series made for entertainment. If my goal is to get a glimpse into how culture was earlier, then sure, but that is not my goal when I watch Indiana Jones.
It’s not even a good movie to begin with, no need to give it a pass on the sexism and other issues
What did Ross say?
Nothing, it’s just a title based on the iconic friends episode naming format.
I’m wondering too. I saw an article saying that he said Rachel was a hermaphrodite but I dunno if that’s it
Is that an offensive term now?
Any term is offensive if it’s used with malicious intent.
But people forget about the malicious intent part a lot.
But does that “malicious intent” apply to staged comedy?
I would think the term used is offensive, not the contrived intent.
No, that’s what I was meaning. People ignoring intent is an issue.
When offensive viewpoints are used in comedy it’s almost always with the intent that you laugh at the person with the offensive viewpoint.
I 100% disagree. If I say “go back to your station, you cogswallow” that could be offensive. You should be offended by that. If I say “haha, you cogswallow, that’s an amazing painting” its no longer offensive. I am showing appreciation of your painting.
What does cogswallow mean? I have no idea, I just made it up.
I don’t know any other languages but if someone is insulting me in French or praising me in French I could tell the difference based on context and body language. Did they just catch me stealing an apple? Did they just watch a presentation I did with a smile on their face?
Words are used to express an emotion. The emotion is what matters. Back decades ago retard wasn’t an offensive term, it was used to describe people with a specific condition. It was used because “imbecile” and “invalid” were seen as offensive. Yes, some people have severely limited mental capabilities. Sometimes combined with limited physical capabilities. We need a word to express I mean them. That could be “flogtrough”. I could offend you with that word or I could praise you. I just made it up.
I will say in text communication like commonly used on the internet it’s hard to express context so people rely on previous context of usage of that word. If a person has been exposed to cogswallow or flogtrough previously, first get out of my brain, but seriously that impacts their interpretation of the word relative to given context.
It was Brad Pitt’s character in a Thanksgiving episode, but Ross, as member of the “I hate Rachel” club help spread the rumour in high school to stop jocks dating her.
I’d argue their intent was malicious, but not outside the norms for 80’s high school kids.
I had a hardcover book sitting on my shelf. Got it at a yard sale a while back. “The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction,” it was published in 1979 and most of the stories are much older.
The level of racism was pretty amazing. One story referred to a mugger as a ‘black buck’ Another was set centuries in the future and had an anthropologist keeping some ‘primitive’ people in high tech chains and cages.
Agatha Christie is probably one of the most popular writers of the 20th Century, and one of her classics is now published under the title “And Then, There Were None.”
If you’ve ever seen a movie, play, or game where a group of people are invited to a house only to be killed off one by one, you’ve seen something influenced by “And Then, There Were None”.
Generally the victims are symbolized by figurines on the mantelpiece which get gradually destroyed one by one as the murders progress, eventually leaving “none”.
The previously published title was the incredibly culturally insensitive “Ten Little Indians”, and the figurines were just that.
The original published title, in the UK, in 1939 - an era when we DID IN FACT KNOW BETTER was “Ten Little removeds”.
They did not change the title in the UK until 1985(!)
Worth noting that the original n-word version is the title was taken from a popular song at the time the book was published.
I point this out to demonstrate that this book title wasn’t a weird cultural aberration, it was plugging directly into popular culture of its era.
It’s even worse in French: I read it in the early 2000s in high school and the title was “10 petits n*gres”. It seems they only changed it in 2020 😬
That book was translated to Finnish in 1940 with name “eikä yksikään pelastunut” (and no one survived), and it was renamed to literal translation to the ten little nwords in 1968!!! Until in 2003 they changed it back to the original
Is quoting Wikipedia now banned on Lemmy? I was under impression arsehole censoring mods here were mostly focused on removing mentions of Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
Bots will automatically remove certain words regardless of context.
I used to see this all the time in the old Sega game “Phantasy Star Online” where objectionable chat was replaced with “*”.
So “Nice shoes!” became “Nice s****!”
You couldn’t arrange to play a game on “Sa****ay”.
And god help you if you lived in a “ba*****t”.
Or if your name was Nasser…
Same problem but when I migrated from Black Ops 1 to Modern Warfare 2 or something similar - couldn’t name my class containing assault rifles “assault”
I love how your experience with regex censoring comes down to Phantasy Star Online. It’s so on the money for you to use as a reference.
Truly king of the neckbeards.
Dark Souls would do something similar with names in PvP. For the most part it wasn’t a huge deal but being a medieval fantasy game, a lot of players you’d face would be called “___ K***ht”.
“Ten Little removeds”.
so for anyone else confused…
“Content not viewable in your region”?
Now I’m more confused.
There you go. This censorship is getting ridiculous. Next time people born in Fucking, Austria won’t be able to explain where they are from.
Chuds not being able to post the N word for a day — challenge level: impossible.
Like, we all knew what the book was, but it was still SO important for you to post this. It was life or death for you. Not saying slurs physically makes your skin crawl. You cannot help but be a racist sack of shit.
I would personally send you to the gulag.
As an Australian who has never studied Agatha Christie in any context, I literally had no clue what the censored word was. I was, and am, appreciative of the context that was provided by other commenters. Be careful when you make blanket statements like “we all knew what the book was”, because you’ll almost always be confidently incorrect.
10 little subsets of the the human species with really high level of melanin in their skin.
the screenshot is hosted on imgur.com, do you generally have problems with that one? it was just a screenshot of mentioned wiki article.
Got you. Imgur is now completely blocked in the UK after the “Online Safety Act”, “to protect the children”, because maybe one of the pictures hosted on it is some boobs or something?
I had no idea. Time to search for replacement.
It’s automated. Instances can setup a list of words that will automatically get removed. Has nothing to do where it comes from.
Also, jordanlund is a mod himself, so…
What’s wrong with the last one? Seems like a pretty standard critique of “science” as evil destroying humanity. In Brave New World they had reservations for the savages who still had religious beliefs, and it was a touristic attraction.
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.
watching “scary movie” in 2025 makes you appreciate how much society has progressed in the past 25 years
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.
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.
Only in very, very limited context. A minority can make fun of their own group all they want, and an “outsider” can do so but can’t really be punching down and it can’t be making someone less because of their ethnicity. Painting outside those lines is risky at the very least.
