You are missing the point. This thread is about bad behaviour that is portrayed a good behaviour because of the cultural norms at the time.
Nobody is saying characters can’t act badly.
Yes, it’s more about is the movie self-aware of the character’s behavior, regardless of what it is, or does the movie think there’s nothing abnormal about the behavior and does it make the bad behavior rewarded (we’re not talking about crime films as this is almost always specific to comedy films)? The better stuff like that is handled the better it is and having bad characters makes movies three dimensional (Leave It to Beaver is the best subversive sitcom in history about this and early Married…with Children was very good at this as well). That’s why BTTF is a great example of handling it well. The character is grossed out by every nasty bit in it, but the writer…well…probably wasn’t.
One semi-serious answer is that they don’t seem to make dumb, silly, low-budget sex comedies like they did in the 70s, I mean your movies like Eating Raul or whatever, I don’t think the economics of those movies makes any sense anymore, there aren’t enough perverts these days, or else the perverts are all watching anime.
In exactly the same form, maybe not quite, but it could get done in some form with the right personnel attached to it, maybe in a Bottoms-like wrapper.
Like Netflix would def not Greenlight 16 Candles in its same form today. Lionsgate might. Studios like A24 don’t count because thats their whole raison d’etre. Disney wouldnt look at it all but Universal and Paramount also might let it go unchanged. If you make it R-rated you can be as offensive as you want, but studios traditionally hate R-rated comedies due to a large loss of income stream. That’s more the discussion at hand from my perspective.
I have no problem conceding there is less of a chance of it getting made. Some people prefer to treat highly unlikely as functionally equivalent to zero chance, while I tend to see those as very distinct probabilities.
Another interesting angle is films made today that would never be made in the 90s. Pretty much anything with a positive view of queer culture comes to mind.
When did you last watch it? I watched it on a plane recently for background while I worked and was pretty surprised about how hard it goes. Lots of scenes are not cool at all by today’s standards, and the character ark of the bad boy is atrocious.
For my submission: Forrest Gump.
Haven’t watched it in ages so maybe it’snot as problematoc as I recall, but I feel like this Disney(!) movie might not be too well received in 2024.
It’s Always Sunny has everything people itt have mentioned as problematic and more throughout its history. Obviously it’s satire and they are making it very obvious that all of the characters are deeply flawed/awful. The streaming services have removed some episodes that i guess they thought went too far, unfortunately a couple of those are top tier episodes.
I’m curious which ones. The two that pop to mind are the DENNIS system and the implication.
Ironically Birth of a Nation is the only movie mentioned that could be made today. The rest would be clear copyright violations.
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Removed episodes are:
The 2 episodes where the gang makes Lethal Weapon 5 and 6, Lethal Weapon 5 was an amazing one but Dennis and Mac both play Danny Glover’s character in blackface. They switch halfway through the movie which was a great gag. Don’t remember much about LW6 but it was more of the same.
A couple episodes where Dee does extremely stereotypical/racist latin and asian characters (which include brownface type makeup) for a filmed comedy show she came up with. Last one is Dee Day where she has other members of the gang play those same characters.
Dennis system and the gang buys a boat (implications one) are still available. Dennis has a bunch of episodes where they basically confirm or heavily imply he’s rapist/possible sleeps with underage girls.
There is an episode where Frank has sex with his niece and propositions his dead wife’s sister for sex. A Jihad episode where they pretent to be Islamic terrorists in order to try and scare off an Israeli guy who is developing land next to the bar. Sweet Dee is Dating a Retarded Person. Bunch of blatantly misogynistic and rasict behavior, incest, molestation/pedophilia, abortion and a whole bunch of other topics.
Whenever I hear some shitbag comedian complaining about cancel culture or how they can’t say things they used to be able to say I’d point to Sunny and be like, you sure about that.
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This thread is an opportunity for open-minded liberal people to thoughtfully and compassionately discuss how cancel culture has gone too far
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The line that Sunny walks, and on many occasions crosses, is that it hints at a bigoted joke in the name of satire, but in cases where the veil is too thin, it’s just the bigoted joke. Sweet Dee is Dating a Retarded Person is a good example: the satirical level is about the gang torturing Sweet Dee, but a shitbag 14 year old watching will surely view this episode as making a bunch of jokes at the expense of the target out group–and they’re not really wrong in that assessment. The lesson being you can get away with it as long as there’s a veneer of satire.
The censorship, as it were, of things like blackface is probably then reasonable–basically setting a boundary and it doesn’t matter much how it’s presented.
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I remember that one as being in dubious taste when it aired, although the show operates with a heavy dose of edgy/shock humor, so it’s not surprising if they occasionally take a joke too far.
Yeah, this is a much smarter way of putting it. South Park kind of runs into the same problem sometimes. The title “Sweet Dee is Dating a Retarded Person” isn’t even operating on the level of “oh, it’s funny because we’re mocking the kinds of people who say terrible things,” it’s just using the word “retard” as an edgy joke.
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Yes, but again, that’s indie you can do anything. You’d never see that even on the big 4. Fox has always pushed the envelope on sitcoms and The Mick was by far the most insane show I’ve seen on network TV. So when you see something new and aggressive they’ll roll it out on FXX first. If it does well enough it coud get promoted to FX but that’s rare. Breeders and Archer are as far as you can go on FX.
No True Scotsman would say retard on tv
Nikki Glaser said her team had discussion on whether it was better to say Gronk put the “tard” in “retard” or “retarded” at the Tom Brady roast.