8 ms·

Why would you choose Borat as the kind of comedy which "isn't allowed to be made today" when you know you're going to have to contrive a reason for the existenc

Why would you choose Borat as the kind of comedy which "isn't allowed to be made today" when you know you're going to have to contrive a reason for the existence of a sequel which was near enough made today in a footnote...? Most of the points express a disappointment with mainstream Hollywood movies, which if you don't broaden your horizons is eventually going to lead to disappointment for any cinephile. "The sitcom-and-laugh-track era appears to be over, thank heavens" I would agree about the laugh-track era being over - but thats hardly a new development. I've been watching the Larry Sanders show from the early 90s which was a landmark show without a laughter track. But to say the era of the sitcom is over is nonsense? There are so many great recent ones. The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon Prime / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience Otherwise, I don't know... I've been watching movies at varying frequencies for decades and I certainly don't feel I've come close to even really tapping the surface, don't feel like I can guess immediately where the director will take me & don't feel really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about there only being six types of story.

postsantum 5y ago
It's not hard to notice that the two Borat movies are very different in style Who is ridiculed in the subsequent moviefilm? Orange man, anti-abortion activists, libertarians, holocaust deniers - they are all safe to laught at. Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. That wouldn't fly today
- Tenoke 5y ago
  So the acceptable targets have just changed. I don't think the complaint was that you can't make fun of jews (or whoever) specifically but about whether comedies of that general type are being made. Sacha Baron Cohen has changed targets 6+ times in his carrer so there's nothing new there.
- taneq 5y ago
  > Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. If you think the first Borat movie was laughing at any of those groups then you have seriously misunderstood the movie.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    It's been shown time and time again that a lot of cult movies are popular less for their satirical bent and more for the shock value and edgy premises in which the satire plays out. That's why there are innumerable comments of the "They wouldn't be allowed to make this today" variety. Shock first, nuance second (if at all).
  - postsantum 5y ago
    No, I understand that the movie was about common americans as the name suggests. But now, even using these groups as props for jokes will get you bombarded with thousands of angry tweets starting with the word "Normalizing"
torcete 5y ago
Airplane! is another movie that "wouldn't be allowed to be made today" The line "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" would be a scandal today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgO90yGusI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgO90yGusI
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  The best example of the "wouldn't be allowed to be made today" is Tropic Thunder.
  - matthewh806 5y ago
    Yawn, everyone always uses this film as a "prime" example. I don't even think it's true. This film (like Borat) was clearly satirical and the real targets of the jokes quite obvious... I think a better example of movies which "wouldn't be allowed today" is probably something like the Hangover, which just mines outdated stereotypes & slurs for laughs. Just a sign of society moving on really (as much as Todd Phillips likes to cry about it, I feel his inability to adapt to the comedy landscape is really just a failure of the imagination). I thought the 21 / 22 Jump Street movie addressed this issue quite well it seems the shift took place sometime between the two releases
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I'm pretty skeptical of the "couldn't be made today" tropes. Some types of films have gone out of style. And there probably are cultural/ethnic stereotypes that would have been mostly considered funny by many audiences that would be more broadly seen as just offensive today. But I'm not sure how many things are really outright taboo. For example, I've also heard people say that Heathers couldn't be made today--can't be threatening to blow up a school--but it was actually staged as an off-Broadway musical not all that long ago.
    - aaron695 5y ago
      The 22 Jump Street movie kiss/fight scene could never be done today, nor could the other kissing scenes, but the kiss/fight scene was a pivotal part of the movie. Borat is racist, it's not 'satirical' and that's ok, the world's complicated. It's also ok to hide behind 'satirical' as everyone does, except when you get picky on movies you personally don't think are 'satirical' Hollywood's inability to deal with kissing is academically interesting. Currently combining sarcasm with the 'correct' actions they are told to follow. It's a dangerous path towards the religious moralism we left behind in the 60's, but perhaps I fear change. The idea nothing is happening is incorrect.
PaulHoule 5y ago
Personally I like (mainland) Chinese movies and TV. It boggles my mind that I had to get a bootleg copy of the 2010 Three Kingdoms TV series.
symlinkk 5y ago
The two Borat movies were completely different. The first movie made fun of everyone, the second movie made fun of the political right.
- bingidingi 5y ago
  to be fair a lot of the “making fun” was self-inflicted
austincheney 5y ago
Yeah, Tropic Thunder, is a much better example of a recent movie that could never be made just a few later because somebody might be offended.
mitjak 5y ago
agreed. shortage of comedies like Hangover and Borat is to me progress on a societal level.
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
> The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon Prime / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience But not (only) because they lack a good catalog. It's mainly because they don't (want you to) have the tools to find content you'd truly like. They're focused on promoting new and trending content. The proper approach is to have a list outside content providers and not use providers as discovery tools. (Edited a typo.)
- xemdetia 5y ago
  You need an external list anyway just to keep track of where things moved around to across subscription services. I wouldn't mind the current segmented streaming market as much if the people that are selling their media rights around provider to provider would do any effort to guide your eyeballs to their work, but they don't seem to be incentivized to do that and would rather direct you to a buy/rent situation instead which makes the whole streaming subscription piece redundant. Right now nobody's running the job as the promoter where they do an end to end hype train, it feels like everyone's just leaning on passive advertising and waiting to sell media rights to the next group. With the direct to consumer digital media purchase option only becoming more prevalent it seems like the subscription movies are going to be in purgatory for a very long time.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  This is why I believe it should be a legal requirement for digital storefronts to have an API that allows 3rd parties to create custom UI for them. I understand that they want to have marketing control over their content, but as a result we're creating an objectively worse experience for customers with no way for competition to step in a solve it.
- kej 5y ago
  >The proper approach is to have a list outside content providers and use not use providers as discovery tools. As an aside, justwatch.com (and their mobile app) do a good job of filling this role. They have the same "promote the stuff that's already trending" problem, but will recommend things across services or that aren't available for streaming but you might want to track down anyway. (No affiliation beyond being a happy user)
bmitc 5y ago
> don't feel really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about there only being six types of story I mentioned this elsewhere, but I am not aware of any such theory by Vonnegut. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748327
- matthewh806 5y ago
  Yeah, you're right - I hadn't seen the shapes of stories video in quite a while, i was just taking the authors comment about it. I think if you watch that Vonnegut video and come away with the conclusion that there are only "x" ways to tell the story then you've missed the point entirely, agreed with your post basically. There is infinite space to explore within those 'story shapes' (like how we still get fresh + unique takes on the Heroes Journey for example) that it doesn't really matter

postsantum 5y ago

It's not hard to notice that the two Borat movies are very different in style Who is ridiculed in the subsequent moviefilm? Orange man, anti-abortion activists, libertarians, holocaust deniers - they are all safe to laught at. Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. That wouldn't fly today

Tenoke 5y ago
So the acceptable targets have just changed. I don't think the complaint was that you can't make fun of jews (or whoever) specifically but about whether comedies of that general type are being made. Sacha Baron Cohen has changed targets 6+ times in his carrer so there's nothing new there.
taneq 5y ago
> Just compare with who was the laughing stock at the original one - feminists, blacks, gays, jews. If you think the first Borat movie was laughing at any of those groups then you have seriously misunderstood the movie.
- rchaud 5y ago
  It's been shown time and time again that a lot of cult movies are popular less for their satirical bent and more for the shock value and edgy premises in which the satire plays out. That's why there are innumerable comments of the "They wouldn't be allowed to make this today" variety. Shock first, nuance second (if at all).
- postsantum 5y ago
  No, I understand that the movie was about common americans as the name suggests. But now, even using these groups as props for jokes will get you bombarded with thousands of angry tweets starting with the word "Normalizing"

torcete 5y ago

Airplane! is another movie that "wouldn't be allowed to be made today" The line "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" would be a scandal today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgO90yGusI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgO90yGusI

dimitrios1 5y ago
The best example of the "wouldn't be allowed to be made today" is Tropic Thunder.
- matthewh806 5y ago
  Yawn, everyone always uses this film as a "prime" example. I don't even think it's true. This film (like Borat) was clearly satirical and the real targets of the jokes quite obvious... I think a better example of movies which "wouldn't be allowed today" is probably something like the Hangover, which just mines outdated stereotypes & slurs for laughs. Just a sign of society moving on really (as much as Todd Phillips likes to cry about it, I feel his inability to adapt to the comedy landscape is really just a failure of the imagination). I thought the 21 / 22 Jump Street movie addressed this issue quite well it seems the shift took place sometime between the two releases
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I'm pretty skeptical of the "couldn't be made today" tropes. Some types of films have gone out of style. And there probably are cultural/ethnic stereotypes that would have been mostly considered funny by many audiences that would be more broadly seen as just offensive today. But I'm not sure how many things are really outright taboo. For example, I've also heard people say that Heathers couldn't be made today--can't be threatening to blow up a school--but it was actually staged as an off-Broadway musical not all that long ago.
  - aaron695 5y ago
    The 22 Jump Street movie kiss/fight scene could never be done today, nor could the other kissing scenes, but the kiss/fight scene was a pivotal part of the movie. Borat is racist, it's not 'satirical' and that's ok, the world's complicated. It's also ok to hide behind 'satirical' as everyone does, except when you get picky on movies you personally don't think are 'satirical' Hollywood's inability to deal with kissing is academically interesting. Currently combining sarcasm with the 'correct' actions they are told to follow. It's a dangerous path towards the religious moralism we left behind in the 60's, but perhaps I fear change. The idea nothing is happening is incorrect.

PaulHoule 5y ago

Personally I like (mainland) Chinese movies and TV. It boggles my mind that I had to get a bootleg copy of the 2010 Three Kingdoms TV series.

symlinkk 5y ago

The two Borat movies were completely different. The first movie made fun of everyone, the second movie made fun of the political right.

bingidingi 5y ago
to be fair a lot of the “making fun” was self-inflicted

austincheney 5y ago

Yeah, Tropic Thunder, is a much better example of a recent movie that could never be made just a few later because somebody might be offended.

mitjak 5y ago

agreed. shortage of comedies like Hangover and Borat is to me progress on a societal level.

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago

> The one thing I agree with is that scrolling through Amazon Prime / Netflix is a draining & dissatisfying experience But not (only) because they lack a good catalog. It's mainly because they don't (want you to) have the tools to find content you'd truly like. They're focused on promoting new and trending content. The proper approach is to have a list outside content providers and not use providers as discovery tools. (Edited a typo.)

xemdetia 5y ago
You need an external list anyway just to keep track of where things moved around to across subscription services. I wouldn't mind the current segmented streaming market as much if the people that are selling their media rights around provider to provider would do any effort to guide your eyeballs to their work, but they don't seem to be incentivized to do that and would rather direct you to a buy/rent situation instead which makes the whole streaming subscription piece redundant. Right now nobody's running the job as the promoter where they do an end to end hype train, it feels like everyone's just leaning on passive advertising and waiting to sell media rights to the next group. With the direct to consumer digital media purchase option only becoming more prevalent it seems like the subscription movies are going to be in purgatory for a very long time.
teawrecks 5y ago
This is why I believe it should be a legal requirement for digital storefronts to have an API that allows 3rd parties to create custom UI for them. I understand that they want to have marketing control over their content, but as a result we're creating an objectively worse experience for customers with no way for competition to step in a solve it.
kej 5y ago
>The proper approach is to have a list outside content providers and use not use providers as discovery tools. As an aside, justwatch.com (and their mobile app) do a good job of filling this role. They have the same "promote the stuff that's already trending" problem, but will recommend things across services or that aren't available for streaming but you might want to track down anyway. (No affiliation beyond being a happy user)

bmitc 5y ago

> don't feel really constrained by Vonnegut's theory about there only being six types of story I mentioned this elsewhere, but I am not aware of any such theory by Vonnegut. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748327

matthewh806 5y ago
Yeah, you're right - I hadn't seen the shapes of stories video in quite a while, i was just taking the authors comment about it. I think if you watch that Vonnegut video and come away with the conclusion that there are only "x" ways to tell the story then you've missed the point entirely, agreed with your post basically. There is infinite space to explore within those 'story shapes' (like how we still get fresh + unique takes on the Heroes Journey for example) that it doesn't really matter