8 ms·
Relatedly, I have certainly had the experience of remembering something as being hilarious only now to be turned off by how clearly sexist it is (which I never
by jacobkg 9y ago
Relatedly, I have certainly had the experience of remembering something as being hilarious only now to be turned off by how clearly sexist it is (which I never noticed at the time). This is especially uncomfortable when recommending content to a friend that I haven’t watched in a long time.
- dogruck 9y agoWhat are the odds that after several additional years you will look back at today and think, "wow, how was I so overly sensitive to humor?"
- oddlyaromatic 9y agoThis is life. We should do our best to be right even though we are probably not. It's that or throw our hands up and quit trying.
- dogruck 9y agoI agree. But it's also folly to have the too-common attitude of "wow, that thing I did in the past was wrong -- and I know it because today I'm 100% correct."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mintplant 9y agoOkay, but if I find something I enjoyed in the past now makes me uncomfortable, I'm not going to force myself to feel comfortable with it out of some sense of pride. Similarly, I would likely be bored today by many of the TV shows I used to watch as a kid. Tastes change.
- CydeWeys 9y agoI rewatched the original Blade Runner earlier this week in preparation for the new movie and the love scene between Deckard and Rachael is surprisingly rapey (he overpowers her). It doesn't hold up well over time, and wouldn't be written like that today. Totally agreed that societal mores change over time and you can retroactively realize that something wasn't OK.
- rbanffy 9y agoThe reason he overpowers her is because she's a thing, not a person. Deckard doesn't kill replicants, he retires them. The guilt, along with his confrontation with the other Nexuses and the (ambiguous) realization he's the one doing the dangerous work because he too is not a person, is what changes him.
- dogruck 9y agoOne possible introspection is to ask what fundamental change happened between then and now. The difference can help amplify life's progress. Just a thought.
- pfarrell 9y agoWhoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it. - Thomas Carlyle
- mattmanser 9y agoIronically, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/05/matt-lucas-little-britain-black-up-society-empathetic https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/05/matt-l... The comedians themselves are contradicting you. Re-watch many comedians from the 80s and 90s and they're just being close-minded rather than actually being funny. The worst I remember was when in the office we'd all call each other gay for silly things. "You not coming out tonight drinking? Are you gay?". Then we hired a homosexual. For months we still all made 'gay' jokes. He said he didn't mind. They would just slip out, that's how we talked to each other. "ah man, who would write a function like that? It's so gay!". I still feel ashamed today thinking back on actually how hostile that workplace actually was to him. Even if he really didn't care, we were still basically constantly saying Gay Is Wrong. We were idiots. We were wrong. It's not being sensitive, it's simply being close-minded.
- colllectorof 9y agoThere is a lot of irony in accusations of close-mindedness when they come from people who think all the past generations and everyone outside of Western middle-class left-wing cultural sphere are "wrong" about humor.
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago>Re-watch many comedians from the 80s and 90s and they're just being close-minded rather than actually being funny. Obviously not a Carlin fan! Its very easy to be open-minded and completely insensitive. Emotional sensitivity is not a desirable attribute, despite its current popularity.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jimmywanger 9y agoRemember, in King Lear the Fool was the only one able to speak truth to the King. You're allowed to try to be funny about anything. Whether or not you succeed is dependent on how good you are. A non-funny joke is not funny. However, any joke is funny depending on how you execute it. If you don't like a game, stop playing. If you don't like a TV show, stop watching.
- tptacek 9y agoIt is not in fact generally the accepted standard among professional comedians than it's legitimate to attempt to be funny "about anything" so long as you have a decent chance of getting a laugh.
- alanbernstein 9y agoReally? I'm not sure if I could think of a single off-limits topic in standup comedy.
- enraged_camel 9y agoThere are many. The Holocaust is definitely off-limits. That's just one example.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kbenson 9y agoReally? Tell that to Mel Brooks and Sarah Silverman. [1][2] Comedians routinely joke about the holocaust, and have for decades. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/the-thing-about-a-joke-about-the-holocaust-is-jewish-comedians-on-the-darkest-comedy/2017/04/21/b16dc8b6-26d9-11e7-928e-3624539060e8_video.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/the-thing-abou... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8z5wBwY5Zw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8z5wBwY5Zw
- coldtea 9y ago>Relatedly, I have certainly had the experience of remembering something as being hilarious only now to be turned off by how clearly sexist it is That's part of the humor. Plus a lot of people conflate sexual with sexist -- thinking about sex and working towards humping is considered automatically sexist in protestant-derived cultures (who'd rather we were all asexual and only interested in sex and in the other sex under very specific situations -- marriage, back in the day, a relationship, today).
- eli 9y agoAgreed, though the game is quite sexist and not merely sexual.
- otempomores 9y agoI look so forward to humilate all those culture warriors with there unripe opinions on cartoonish over the top humor. If history taught us one thing it's that those without humor are bad company
- cyphar 9y agoIt is about someone who is sleazy. I don't really understand the modern trend that if story that is about (or includes) a character that is sexist/racist/etc, that then makes the story or it's creator sexist/racist/etc. It's quite absurd. Lolita is about a pedophile, does that make Vladimir Nabokov a pedophile? Othello's Iago was incredibly racist, does that make Shakespeare racist? That's not to say this game is on the same level as Shakespeare, but the point applies to any number of movies that include contentious character motivations.
- ineptech 9y agoI have this feeling too, especially around the sci-fi of my teenaged years (Niven, et al). It's important to remember that this is the expected result of progress; it would probably be worrisome if middle-brow media from a generation ago didn't seem sexist. It also seems like we apply current-generation standards most acutely to the N-1 generation. Somehow, a 1980 novel where a woman needs a man to save her from a monster is more offensive than a 1780 novel where a woman needs a man to have an identity or own property or leave the house. Perhaps that's just a matter of emotional distance.
- Tossrock 9y agoI remember after reading Ringworld on a friend's recommendation, saying that it had one too many alien species with non-sentient females for me. One, okay, interesting idea I guess, two, now you're doing a thing.
- egypturnash 9y agoRingworld: Adventurer Louis Wu visits the titular megastructure along with three amazing aliens - Nessus, the two-headed Puppeteer, Speaker-to-Animals, the felinoid Kzin, and Teela Brown, the Wo-Man.
- klipt 9y agoFor the Puppeteers, both the sperm and egg producing sexes are sapient, it's their surrogates (a different species) that are non-sapient. Doesn't seem much different to humans hypothetically developing artificial wombs and losing much of our sexual dimorphism over time. If humans gestate their young in non-sapient artificial wombs in the future, would that make us sexist?
- Tossrock 9y agoWell, except they explicitly call the non-sentient ones female (also stupid, and property), and the sentient ones are both referred to as male.
- vm 9y agoI recently had to turn off Eddie Murphy's stand up special and a series of Norm MacDonald SNL skits because of how homophobic and sexist they were. They were iconic when they were made so I tuned in expecting some laughs. Comedy keeps pulse of social norms. We've made progress over the past 30 years.
- KekDemaga 9y agoEddie Murphy was considered offensive back then as well the only thing that changed is a different group of people are offended for different reasons. That's why its art.
- S_A_P 9y agoThis. Eddie was never mainstream but he was not offensive for the homophobia jokes. He was offensive because he said shit fuck pussy in a time this was not considered socially appropriate. It wasn’t until this became more “normal” that the underlying message could be considered offensive.
- tclancy 9y ago>Eddie was never mainstream Oh please. I had a "Raw" poster on my closet door I got from the video rental place in Portsmouth, Rhode Island in the '80s. He was pretty mainstream at that point. It's hard to tease apart the fact some of "Delirious" is about how crappy he was as a comedian at the start because he just made poop jokes vs. him talking about Mr. T rodgering people.
- gnaritas 9y agoEddie was as mainstream as mainstream can get, how old are you?
- S_A_P 9y agoNot really in his prime. You are conflating popular and mainstream. I’m old enough to have watched delirious and raw when it was released on video. Eddie was popular but the mainstream didn’t embrace him until the dr Doolittle years. That’s well beyond his prime.
- kilceem 9y agoHe's a sleazy dude trying to get a date. As others have said it is part of the humor and part of the difficulty.
- rhcom2 9y agoThe rape-by-deception scene in Revenge of the Nerds immediately springs to mind.
- philwelch 9y agoThis is an interesting subthread. Humor and social taboos have a fascinating relationship. A lot of old Monty Python sketches spoofed British uptightness and reverence towards Queen and country in a way that may have been somewhat subversive at the time, but the taboos have disappeared to some extent. Meanwhile, other taboos have been introduced into our society that make humor from previous times more uncomfortable. We’re also developing bubbles, to the point where a comedian like Dave Chappelle, whom no one would consider to be on the right hand side of the spectrum, releases a comedy special that’s uncomfortable to watch for those of us who grimace at rape jokes. Maybe we just need to forgive creative works that came from less enlightened times, and realize that we ourselves are in a less enlightened time than someone else will possibly be.
- erikb 9y agoAs long as the friend you suggest it to isn't actively discriminated in the content you suggest there shouldn't be problem big enough to bother. Are you this kind of person who likes to overthink things?