5 ms·

Compared to our current politics, John Waters is kinda respectable. I saw him at a university auditorium a couple years ago. Entertaining. Plus he was grea

Compared to our current politics, John Waters is kinda respectable. I saw him at a university auditorium a couple years ago. Entertaining. Plus he was great on the Simpsons. Time seems to take the shock out of things. Maybe its the non-stop access to interesting things on the internet and photos and videos of everything taking the rumor and imagination out of things. GWAR's shows were mythic but now we have a nice wikipedia entry explaining it all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar.

jedberg 7y ago
It's funny that you mention the Simpsons, which itself used to be so counterculture that you were a bad parent if you let your kid watch it. Now it's so mainstream that they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, not so much because they toned it down, but because society caught up to the Simpsons.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  First that job went to Southpark, then Family Guy. Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it "reality TV"
  - taneq 7y ago
    > Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it “the news”
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  >they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, I doubt that is true. I bet that it is more like the people they offended could not really do much about that offense other than yell about it which just made the sows writers more popular in Hollywood. Now, if they come up with a plot that offends, they are likely to get de-platformed and lose their ability to find a job in Hollywood.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    Do people not get your point or are they proving it with the downvotes? Just the thought of poking fun at any modern movement enough to cause anger?
    - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
      Yes. Even a distant hint of thoughtcrime must be punished.
    - tomhoward 7y ago
      The comment isn't downvoted. I'm sure it was when you commented, but this is why the guidelines ask us not to go on about downvotes; a downvoted state of a comment is often temporary, whereas comments it are permanent, and always uninteresting.
- weberc2 7y ago
  Didn’t people recently freak out about the ethnicity of the convenience store owner?
  - slg 7y ago
    The controversy wasn't the ethnicity of the character, it was that the character was portrayed in a stereotypical manner by a white guy no less. It is basically the audio equivalent of blackface. The Simpsons debuted 30 years ago this year and there are plenty of 30 year old comedies that are extremely objectionable by current standards. It isn't always fair to criticize that comedy since it is important to always judge art in the context in which it was originally created. However, The Simpsons is still running and therefore needs to continue to justify these decisions today and into the future. No one was suggesting that the character should be edited out of past shows or anything, but the show shouldn't be immune to present criticisms about shows created in the present just because the mistake originated 30 years ago.
    - duncan-donuts 7y ago
      Well said. I watched Blazing Saddles last night and that film flat out couldn’t be made today.
      - jedberg 7y ago
        Mel Brooks said as much himself. He said, "I could never get away with the 'N' word or the 'C' word today".
      - masonic 7y ago
        Yet Blazing Saddles used epithets and parody as weapons against racism, ultimately, with all races unifying to fight the racists and building a new town together.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        Much like Huckleberry Finn and that is similarly thrown down the memory hole
- therealcamino 7y ago
  "Fox turned into a hardcore porn channel so gradually I didn't even notice."
- pessimizer 7y ago
  I see it contrapositively; that they're now so mainstream that they can't find a plot that offends people anymore that they are not also offended by enough to not produce. It's not that society has somehow become unoffendable, but that the people who produce the Simpsons are either 1) people who were hired because they are extremely successful establishment writers, or 2) leftovers from an earlier era of the show who are far more wealthy and establishment than they were then. It's not completely fair to say they toned it down (although they absolutely did to some extent), it's more that they fell into a establishment rut and repeated themselves endlessly. You could effortlessly write a humanistic/heartwarming, funny script every week that would deeply offend the powerful. The network that airs the Simpsons wouldn't air them, though. That's not what they're paying for.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
  Wasn't there a huge fuss about one of the Simpsons characters last year?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    It wasn't about anything new about the show, though, nor about anything meant to shock.
m463 7y ago
I first learned of gwar from beavis and butthead.
pessimizer 7y ago
Time takes the shock out of things because people compartmentalize things that they don't think of as recent. I feel like people right now, at least in the anglo-american orbit, are constantly shocked about almost everything, or when not actually shocked, pretending to be.
chrisdhoover 7y ago
I knew Dave Brockie. We both went to the same school, parties, and stickball games. Death Piggy played at my birthday party. We both had studio space in the Dairy. I saw the first GWAR show at Shafer Court. I finally got around to watching Lord of the Rings. I was struck by how the costume design was nearly identical to GWAR’s. It made me wonder if or even how a self proclaimed cartoonist could have influenced someone on the other side of the world. Its sad that he died; I’m losing all my old friends, Adam, Mike, John, my older brother. Jim Carroll was funny to us way back when. Not so funny now.
- chrisdhoover 7y ago
  One other thing I thought of. Our neighborhood had its own Divine wannabe. Donnie, aka Dirt Woman, was a kindred spirit with John Waters and Divine.
cm2187 7y ago
I don’t know. The dog scene in Pink Flamingos still feels a bit on the edge to me.

jedberg 7y ago

It's funny that you mention the Simpsons, which itself used to be so counterculture that you were a bad parent if you let your kid watch it. Now it's so mainstream that they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, not so much because they toned it down, but because society caught up to the Simpsons.

ticmasta 7y ago
First that job went to Southpark, then Family Guy. Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it "reality TV"
- taneq 7y ago
  > Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it “the news”
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
>they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, I doubt that is true. I bet that it is more like the people they offended could not really do much about that offense other than yell about it which just made the sows writers more popular in Hollywood. Now, if they come up with a plot that offends, they are likely to get de-platformed and lose their ability to find a job in Hollywood.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  Do people not get your point or are they proving it with the downvotes? Just the thought of poking fun at any modern movement enough to cause anger?
  - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
    Yes. Even a distant hint of thoughtcrime must be punished.
  - tomhoward 7y ago
    The comment isn't downvoted. I'm sure it was when you commented, but this is why the guidelines ask us not to go on about downvotes; a downvoted state of a comment is often temporary, whereas comments it are permanent, and always uninteresting.
weberc2 7y ago
Didn’t people recently freak out about the ethnicity of the convenience store owner?
- slg 7y ago
  The controversy wasn't the ethnicity of the character, it was that the character was portrayed in a stereotypical manner by a white guy no less. It is basically the audio equivalent of blackface. The Simpsons debuted 30 years ago this year and there are plenty of 30 year old comedies that are extremely objectionable by current standards. It isn't always fair to criticize that comedy since it is important to always judge art in the context in which it was originally created. However, The Simpsons is still running and therefore needs to continue to justify these decisions today and into the future. No one was suggesting that the character should be edited out of past shows or anything, but the show shouldn't be immune to present criticisms about shows created in the present just because the mistake originated 30 years ago.
  - duncan-donuts 7y ago
    Well said. I watched Blazing Saddles last night and that film flat out couldn’t be made today.
    - jedberg 7y ago
      Mel Brooks said as much himself. He said, "I could never get away with the 'N' word or the 'C' word today".
    - masonic 7y ago
      Yet Blazing Saddles used epithets and parody as weapons against racism, ultimately, with all races unifying to fight the racists and building a new town together.
      - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        Much like Huckleberry Finn and that is similarly thrown down the memory hole
therealcamino 7y ago
"Fox turned into a hardcore porn channel so gradually I didn't even notice."
pessimizer 7y ago
I see it contrapositively; that they're now so mainstream that they can't find a plot that offends people anymore that they are not also offended by enough to not produce. It's not that society has somehow become unoffendable, but that the people who produce the Simpsons are either 1) people who were hired because they are extremely successful establishment writers, or 2) leftovers from an earlier era of the show who are far more wealthy and establishment than they were then. It's not completely fair to say they toned it down (although they absolutely did to some extent), it's more that they fell into a establishment rut and repeated themselves endlessly. You could effortlessly write a humanistic/heartwarming, funny script every week that would deeply offend the powerful. The network that airs the Simpsons wouldn't air them, though. That's not what they're paying for.
hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
Wasn't there a huge fuss about one of the Simpsons characters last year?
- icebraining 7y ago
  It wasn't about anything new about the show, though, nor about anything meant to shock.

m463 7y ago

I first learned of gwar from beavis and butthead.

pessimizer 7y ago

Time takes the shock out of things because people compartmentalize things that they don't think of as recent. I feel like people right now, at least in the anglo-american orbit, are constantly shocked about almost everything, or when not actually shocked, pretending to be.

chrisdhoover 7y ago

I knew Dave Brockie. We both went to the same school, parties, and stickball games. Death Piggy played at my birthday party. We both had studio space in the Dairy. I saw the first GWAR show at Shafer Court. I finally got around to watching Lord of the Rings. I was struck by how the costume design was nearly identical to GWAR’s. It made me wonder if or even how a self proclaimed cartoonist could have influenced someone on the other side of the world. Its sad that he died; I’m losing all my old friends, Adam, Mike, John, my older brother. Jim Carroll was funny to us way back when. Not so funny now.

chrisdhoover 7y ago
One other thing I thought of. Our neighborhood had its own Divine wannabe. Donnie, aka Dirt Woman, was a kindred spirit with John Waters and Divine.

cm2187 7y ago

I don’t know. The dog scene in Pink Flamingos still feels a bit on the edge to me.