Films and shows that COULD NEVER Be Made Today!

[LizzieMaine]

What have they got against Nova Scotians anyway?

 

[Nobert]

I've always maintained that those who are entitled to the greatest outrage over stereotypes on that show are those whose religious, racial, or ethnic group have never been lampooned. It's almost like saying, "Well, your people really are not important enough to poke fun at."

Don't even get me started on those backward, rustic, religious-nut Moravians.

 

[BlueTrain]

Usually, the ones who make the most fun of a stereotyped group of people, like Southerners, for instance, are members of that group. They understand what makes it different, what makes it tick and perhaps, know you can get away with more when you're really making fun of yourself. In other words, the people who know the best jokes about Jews are--Jews.

I always thought that the Simpsons took religion (but not the church) more seriously than most television shows. And in a strange way, they were a good family. Not a great family, but good.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Simpsons" has run longer than any other situation comedy in the history of broadcasting. They must be doing something right.

 

[3fingers]

I think other parts of the country have the equivalent of a hillbilly, from Swamp Yankee to whatever they call a Cajun living on the bayou.

That would be a coonass. However, in our present environment some folks have taken offense to the term. It seems about evenly split between the offended and those who are proud of and embrace the term.

 

[BlueTrain]

That sounds like a term that if someone else used the expression to describe a Cajun, it would be offensive but not if a Cajun used it, assuming for the moment that "Cajun" is not considered offensive. It probably is, though.

It's well to keep in mind that in the movies and on television, the people you see portraying hillbillies, country bumpkins, hicks, rural types generally and Southerners broadly are actors and just as likely are from somewhere else. Percy Kilbride (Pa Kettle) was born in San Francisco, most, but not all, of the cast of Dukes of Hazzard were not from the South at all. But they weren't the same kind of hillbillies that the Kettles were and hardly like the Clampetts. That's okay, though. It's just entertainment. I will say, though, being a city-bred (population 7,500) hillbilly myself, they got most things right in all those movies, from the values to the accents. But I don't remember any comedy TV shows or movies featuring coal miners.

There was a country and western string band that appeared in a few movies in the 1940s that were called "The Beverly Hills Billies."

 

[LizzieMaine]

The main exception was Lum and Abner, who really were from Arkansas -- Mena, to be exact. But they were both highly educated men -- college graduates in an era when that actually meant something -- and had very little in common with the characters they portrayed.

They never used the word "hillbilly" in their programs. When they were talking about a character who was excessively rural, they'd call him "real backwoodsy," but never a "hillbilly."

 

[Harp]

That would be a coonass. However, in our present environment some folks have taken offense to the term. It seems about evenly split between the offended and those who are proud of and embrace the term.

I took basic training during Vietnam at Ft Polk, Louisiana, and one morning while pulling company KP I was tasked with peeling
a thousand spuds outside the mess hall. I spotted the mess sergeant's pickup truck license plate advertisement "proud Coonass"-while knifing spuds,
wondering at the term.

 

[BlueTrain]

Perhaps you'd like to read that over and think about what you're suggesting. And while you're at it, perhaps you'd like to explain how government help for college expenses is "not that hard to get."

 

[Fading Fast]

Perhaps you'd like to read that over and think about what you're suggesting. And while you're at it, perhaps you'd like to explain how government help for college expenses is "not that hard to get."

My mistake - too political. I've deleted the post.

 

[HudsonHawk]

There is certainly no shortage of exaggerated backward Southern stereotypes out there, much of it self-inflicted. But it does irritate me when it's done by others to get a laugh. The biggest culprit is Larry the Cable Guy. It would be bad enough if the character he portrayed was actually him, but his act is essentially no different than a white performer in black face. I guess some people find it funny, but I find it highly offensive.

 

[BlueTrain]

I don't find it offensive; I just don't find it funny. But it is typical that stereotypical and ethnic humor is both most employed by and most enjoyed by members of the subset of society that the humor is about, be it Southern rednecks or New York Jews and everything in between. It is people making fun of themselves, not other people. They understand the jokes. It would be the same all over the world. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of comedy done at someone else's expense, making fun of someone you don't really know much about, even if it might be mostly accurate. To make fun of other people can be mean and hurtful and unfortunately, that is sometimes the intent. The thing being made fun of becomes a caricature that is an exaggerated image of something. It can be done in the context of discrimination and has been frequently both here and abroad. Of course, on the other hand, sometimes noble and admirable qualities and characteristics are applied to a group or even to individuals that in real life, are no more common in that group than any other. That can even be done while at the same time ascribing negative characteristics. One expression that comes to mind is "the noble savage."

 

[LizzieMaine]

The "noble savage" who must nevertheless be civilized and "Christianized" by the Anglo-Saxon white man. That trope was very very common in 19th and early 20th Century popular culture, to say nothing of social science, as, essentially, a justification for imperialism.

There were also some pretty lacerating parodies of that stereotype in the Era. Eddie Cantor's stage musical and film "Whoopee!" is full of suble but sarcastic commentary on the "Noble Savage" idea, and the racism behind it. "I've tried to learn your ways! I've even gone to your schools!" "What? An Indian in a Hebrew school? Oy!"

Or there's Groucho's take in "Go West:" "Who swindled you out of Manhattan Island for 24 dollars?" "White man!" "Who turned you into wood and stuck you in front of a cigar store?" "White man!" "Who put your face on a nickel, and then took the nickel away?" "Slot machine!"

 

[BlueTrain]

Those are good examples of a line of comedy which turns out with the punch line being entirely unexpected, like the one about the slot machine.

Still, I think it's funny (in a curious way) how we can be surrounded by so many things, which can be so threatening to some people, yet which most people accept completely without a second thought. They might or might not be really part of our lives in any real way, but they are all part of our visible world. By "visible world," I mean the world as we physically and visually experience--in real life--not through television or the movies. Of course, that isn't the same for everyone by a long shot, even in the same family.

What I'm referring to is anything and anyone who is different from ourselves, both above and below our place in the order of things, if you want to admit that such an order exists. Where I live, it means, mostly, people from other countries as well as, sometimes, homeless people, motorcyclists, bicyclists, black people, and so on and so forth. And they all get made fun of, too. And sometimes they are included in something for the irony.

In some movie made decades ago, which one I don't remember, the main character somehow needed to hitch a ride and the only person who stopped to offer a lift was a Hispanic person with his whole family and a load of chickens in cages. In my own little world, I have twice broken down on a major highway (including running out of gas). The only people who stopped to offer help were immigrants and one was a woman.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The parabale of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. Pity so few today understand its lesson.

I once had a rather disastrous side-of-the-road breakdown, and all sorts of "nice people" drove by oblivious -- but a rough-looking biker gang stopped and helped.

 

[Fading Fast]

The parabale of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. Pity so few today understand its lesson.

I once had a rather disastrous side-of-the-road breakdown, and all sorts of "nice people" drove by oblivious -- but a rough-looking biker gang stopped and helped.

I had the same experience with a flat tire where the only one who stopped was a van that looked as if it had been through a war and the three guys who got out looked tough and not like good samaritans. I was nervous as heck at first, but they couldn't have been nicer, insisted on helping me change the tire and that was that.

However, it's not easy to blame people for not stopping as growing up in the '70s, there were stories - in local papers - of people faking breakdowns to rob / kidnap / hurt those who stopped to help them. Having lived in big cities since, I don't really know what goes on anymore, but when I got my license, schools and parents were telling new drivers not to stop to help unless you knew the car you were stopping for.

 

[Just Jim]

However, it's not easy to blame people for not stopping as growing up in the '70s, there were stories - in local papers - of people faking breakdowns to rob / kidnap / hurt those who stopped to help them. Having lived in big cities since, I don't really know what goes on anymore, but when I got my license, schools and parents were telling new drivers not to stop to help unless you knew the car you were stopping for.

On the other hand, for some of us it is difficult to not stop: leaving someone by the side of the road is something you just don't do. That may well be a regional thing. In parts of the country, folks are aware that someone else may not be along for a while. In west TX about ten years ago, I stopped at an apparent breakdown. The driver had tried to change a tire and the jack shifted, pinning his leg under the truck. He said I was the first person to drive down the road in more than a day.

 

[3fingers]

I grew up along a major highway in a rural area. Stopping to help was a normal thing for us. Changing tires and simple things we did regularly or we made phone calls to get people off of the roadside. My grandparents had wintertime guests pretty routinely while they waited for help to arrive. The people from large cities were generally stunned at the appearance of a farmer at their window offering assistance.

 

[Worf]

Whoa, as the original poster, I mentioned the Beverly Hillbillies because I didn't think that kind of broad farce could be carried off today. Also I'm not sure all Southerners would appreciate their depiction. I can't speak for them, only for myself.

Worf

 

[redlinerobert]

This world has become waaay too politically correct for my taste.

A few nights ago my wife and I watched Safari with Victor Mature, Janet Leigh and others. A solid movie from the era. During one of the scenes while on a big game hunt they shoot and drop an elephant. Now me being a hunter, I thought it was an awesome scene. The caption, "No animals were hurt during the making of this movie" definitely doesn't fit here.