4 ms·

Attendant: Can I get you something? Jiveman #2: S'mo fo butter layin' to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly. Attendant: I'm sorry I don't understand. Jiveman #

Attendant: Can I get you something? Jiveman #2: S'mo fo butter layin' to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly. Attendant: I'm sorry I don't understand. Jiveman #1: Cutty say he cant hang. Woman: Oh stewardess, I speak jive. Attendant: Ohhhh, good.

seldo 17y ago
I love Airplane, though in retrospect that little exchange seems horrifyingly racist.
- puredemo 17y ago
  The stereotyping is basically what makes it satire.
- hughprime 17y ago
  How so? The jive-talking men are incomprehensible due to their subculture, not their race.
  - raganwald 17y ago
    Right, so what I say in follow-up it that it IS offensive stereotyping, but it's stereotyping a subculture almost entirely confined to inner-city african-americans of the 1970s and not to any particular "race" in general (whatever that word means). My personal impression is that most people are quite blind to these subtleties. That's what prejudice is: Seeing something like this and assuming it applies to everyone with the same skin tones whether they are a wealthy, LSE-educated Ghanaian businessman or a crack dealer raised in the inner city. The people making the movie may or may not have such prejudices, but certainly stuff like this doesn't help. Then again, the movie probably wasn't trying to make fun of african-americans. My guess is that the movie was probably spoofing was the genre of Blaxploitation films that were popular at the time.
- gojomo 17y ago
  The punchlines are all in inversions of 'jive' stereotypes, however. The men are not dressed per 'jive'-speaker steretypes. The 'translator' is an elderly white woman. The men take umbrage at her implying they didn't understand the stewardess's English, and then she keeps telling them off in jive even after it's unnecessary. Sure, a racist could laugh at that piece, but only at the very superficial level at which they can take anything to confirm their prior prejudices. The drivers of the humor are all anti-racist: calling attention to unconscious stereotypes and challenging them; presenting the idea that a subculture dialect may be treated respectfully as a distinct language (compare 'ebonics'); portraying the native speakers sympathetically and the out-of-culture translator a bit pissy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZwMcoDVJM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZwMcoDVJM

seldo 17y ago

I love Airplane, though in retrospect that little exchange seems horrifyingly racist.

puredemo 17y ago
The stereotyping is basically what makes it satire.
hughprime 17y ago
How so? The jive-talking men are incomprehensible due to their subculture, not their race.
- raganwald 17y ago
  Right, so what I say in follow-up it that it IS offensive stereotyping, but it's stereotyping a subculture almost entirely confined to inner-city african-americans of the 1970s and not to any particular "race" in general (whatever that word means). My personal impression is that most people are quite blind to these subtleties. That's what prejudice is: Seeing something like this and assuming it applies to everyone with the same skin tones whether they are a wealthy, LSE-educated Ghanaian businessman or a crack dealer raised in the inner city. The people making the movie may or may not have such prejudices, but certainly stuff like this doesn't help. Then again, the movie probably wasn't trying to make fun of african-americans. My guess is that the movie was probably spoofing was the genre of Blaxploitation films that were popular at the time.
gojomo 17y ago
The punchlines are all in inversions of 'jive' stereotypes, however. The men are not dressed per 'jive'-speaker steretypes. The 'translator' is an elderly white woman. The men take umbrage at her implying they didn't understand the stewardess's English, and then she keeps telling them off in jive even after it's unnecessary. Sure, a racist could laugh at that piece, but only at the very superficial level at which they can take anything to confirm their prior prejudices. The drivers of the humor are all anti-racist: calling attention to unconscious stereotypes and challenging them; presenting the idea that a subculture dialect may be treated respectfully as a distinct language (compare 'ebonics'); portraying the native speakers sympathetically and the out-of-culture translator a bit pissy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZwMcoDVJM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZwMcoDVJM