> In 2014, when my son, Charles, then a 14-year-old, wanted to attend a party unsupervised, my wife wanted to know whether there would be parents present. “You’re not going to take drugs or drink alcohol, right?” she asked. “You know, there’s going to be peer pressure.”
> I couldn’t help myself. I jumped in immediately. “Charles, for example, you’re at this party and everyone is sucking d—k. What are you going to do? You have to resist the temptation.”
> Charles laughed. His mom shook her head. And I found a way to not be bored.
This strikes a cord with me. As a kid/teenager I learned some lessons a lot better because they came in the form of offensive humor. I still remember some of them word for word 20+ years later. I worry about this in the context of current day puritanism a lot more that I care about movies, TV, social media, etc. I think we're raising generations of stuck up people who will fall even harder in puritan extreme.
Also, there is a number of people (some documented) that cannot understand jokes, and not even rhetoric (irony, references, acting etc.): is it possible they were not exposed in their formative years? It is, symmetrically, quite bewildering to see those people unable to manage the non-literal. This is a lack in intellectual formation, and it sticks to some - similarly to the lasting effects of not having been "exposed to mathematics" (a number of articles emerged in the recent times).
Edit: in fact, there is much more to that, now that I think about it: in the past few years, I have met a large number of people who, somehow, basically cannot read: they have the text in front of them, but cannot interpret it, if it is not literal. It surely must be lack of exposure to intellectual challenge, even to phenomena that some would have called "normal daily experience". And they have degrees. How did those "cannot make any sense of it" people emerge? Lack of exposure to differentiated stimula is certainly part of it.
> As a kid/teenager I learned some lessons a lot better because they came in the form of offensive humor. I still remember some of them word for word 20+ years later. I worry about this in the context of current day puritanism a lot more that I care about movies, TV, social media, etc. I think we're raising generations of stuck up people who will fall even harder in puritan extreme
Amen, brother!
As a parent of a middle schooler, I have this exact worry. At his age, I was much more offensive and crude, but I like to think I turned out ok. Meanwhile he’s growing up in an era where the language has been ultra gentrified.I went to school in the 90s, when professors cursed freely & wrote “shaft the customer!” on the blackboard to express their solidarity with Alan Perlis, with no consequence of repercussion. No way you can get away with that today in a CS class. These days there are actual rooms called Salesforce Lab & Infosys Building in a university nearby, because of the funders. When I worked at Sun, Scott McNealy sent an email that said “we are at war” and pointed out it took 13 bytes to send those utf8 chars as a txt file on unix but 1.5MB to do the same as a doc file on Windows. It got a lot of offensive “fucking micro$oft” replies & forwards complete with the dollar sign throughout the company wide network - imagine if such a thing is possible today.
I took my kid to the hospital for the flu shot & routine annual. So the doc walks up to him with a very serious expression and tells him in a somber voice - “Now I am going to take a look at your private parts, and that’s ok only because your dad is here, otherwise we both know nobody is supposed to look at your private parts. ok ? “ I was drinking a cup of starbucks & spilt coffee all over the fucking floor doubling in laughter. He was not amused. Afterwards, he said, in my time we’d just say drop your pants & show me your dick motherfucker. But those days are gone :(
I think it's also some circular reinforcing, like Hollywood trying their hardest to ride every wave (perceived as) trend and milk it dry, so they'll get to lead that wave - in the minds of some viewers at least. On the other hand, do we see that over-puritanism also in the daily lives? Or it's just on the screen and we mistake that for real life? Bear in mind that there's also a world outside the US too, and both humor and sensitivities vary a lot.
Fun Fact: Airplane! is a spoof of the Paramount film Zero Hour (1957) which is itself a clone of the wildly famous John Wayne Classic "The High and Mighty" (1954), which was the first disaster film and a breakout hit. Robert Stack, who plays the captain in The High and Mighty, also plays the captain in Airplane, as a parody of his previous role.
It's pretty cool to watch The High and Mighty after Airplane and recognize so many of the scenes, including the sweating pilot, the little life stories of the characters, the operations manager (Regis Toomey) pacing back and forth in the control room, etc.
I remember many years ago when I watched it with Turkish subtitles (or dubs, can't remember) that they translated the line "Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?" to Greek prison :D
as a native english speaker and fluent german speaker... airplane is the only movie that is even BETTER in the dubbed version. The bavarian scene absolutely kills me.
For context for those unfamiliar with German dialects: dubbing a stereotypical Black person with a Bavarian accent in German is the cultural equivalent of dubbing them with a German or Swedish accent in English.
Of course the joke mostly works because it lampshades bigoted cultural assumptions about race in Germany: a lot of Germans in the 1990s said "Afro-Amerikaner" when they meant Black (regardless of nationality, even Germans) because they thought it was more "politically correct" and the thought a Black person might be a native citizen never occurred to them. This has improved somewhat over the years but since the film was originally released in 1980, I doubt the cultural awareness was any better at the time.
To be clear: I'm not saying the joke is bigoted, I'm saying the joke worked because it played off bigoted assumptions.
Aside note: since they have been less available to some, it is possible that some may have missed the Police Squad! (ZAZ 1982) series or The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis 1977). I must recommend to those who only know the prominent works (Airplane!, Naked Gun etc.) to find and try the preparatory works.
I have been cracking up everytime I see Martin Short walk into any scene on Only Murders in Buildings.
Just watching his facial expressions as his character tries to make sense of things, he has no capacity to process is priceless. Then ofcourse he proceeds to come up with the most ludicrous answers to whatever problem with all the overconfidence in the world. That routine has me literally rolling on the floor.
I dont think the woke/anti woke bs matters. There are really lots of ways to make people laugh if you really want too imho.
'Airplane!' is something like 'Family Guy' - and please note, for cartoon fans; I'm not saying 'South Park', here.
There's an episode called '200'; (or something) where 'Family Guy' creator Seth MacFarlane discusses the show along with many of its voice actors, producers, etc.
He mentions that 'Family Guy' is absolutely not meant to be a high-brow humour show; and that part of the technique of the writing of 'Family Guy' is, in his own words; guided by how many jokes a minute they can get - how many times they can make the audience laugh.
If we have a casual pause in a show; someone looks to the camera, dead-pan, and just, quite seriously - says, 'penis' - out of the blue - I'm gonna laugh my ass off. I love intelligent humour as much as the next girl, but there is a nuance to some of the low-brow humour in 'Airplane!' that is just as complex to pull off effectively as a well-told and intelligent joke by Bill Maher, Norm MacDonald, or George Carlin.
We are talking about a 41-year-old film, in a genre (comedy) that famously doesn't age well. 'Airplane!' probably shouldn't come off well today, if it follows our previously established rules of comedy.
I recently watched it with my 15 years old son. He laughed a lot and at the same he was surprised how they dare to make some of the jokes, he thought some were really wild.
> I’m the guy who, on a soundstage, yelled, “Who’s blocking the camera?! I can’t see what’s on the monitor!” The assistant director replied, “It’s you, sir, you’re standing in front of the lens.”
This is amazing. I have to imagine this inspired one of my favorite jokes from Naked Gun:
> Frank: [looking into microscope] I-I can't see anything.
He's right that mainstream comedy is going through a period of self-sanitising but there's plenty of good stuff to find outside of Hollywood. Maybe even today you couldn't make Seinfeld.
>Without trust, audiences begin to question the intentions behind every joke, they take jokes literally, and they use their collective voices to bully comedians and pressure studios against taking any comedic risk.
This is the meaty bit right here. Because you have people who tell jokes that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist (normally wouldn't include that but I gotta play to the HN crowd), etc. and either 1) go out and actually do bigoted things/maintain relationships with outwardly bigoted people, or 2) the people who enjoy the jokes go out and do bigoted things and use the joke as cover.
If you want to test this, go on 4chan right now and ask people how they feel about the difference between "black people and niggas" (Chris Rock) or "how white people are better" (Louis C.K.). (If you argue that 4chan isn't representative of the general public, you can try Facebook, but, uh, you're taking your life into your own hands with that crowd.)
The problem may very well be less that people won't tolerate transgressive humor today, as it is that people can't be trusted with transgressive humor today. Some people see it as rhetoric, not humor.
I love this movie, I feel it defined the whole spoof/slapstick genre. The bar scene with the girl scouts fighting and then everyone starts disco dancing is great. “… it was worse than Detroit!” Haha
The genre was really defined by Young Frankenstein a few years earlier, but arguably Airplane! is funnier (faster and even more absurd in gags). The decade 1974-1984 was a fantastic period for comedy.
The one-minute courtroom drama "Over Macho Grande" from Airplane II, while not a Zucker credit, is worth a mention here because it's so immaculate => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JswFF2dKiLM
Airplane
Space Balls
Eddie Murphy RAW
Monty Python
GhostBusters
Man, I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and bring back comedy everybody is offended by (in equal doses) and laughs at honestly. Hollywood has to go un-woke first, though.
The first 30 minutes of Airplane are absolutely incredible. Frankly, I am surprised the "Joey" jokes made the cut even back then. They surely don't make them like they used to. Maybe in 10-15 years the cycle would start over.
This movie simply hasn't aged very well. The jokes are pedestrian. Many of them take aim at people's sex or race, but not in a challenging way.
I'm not offended by any of the jokes, and I still laugh at some of them, but mostly because of nostalgia. If you're reacting poorly to people being offended by some of the crude race/sex based humor, I hate to break it to you, but you're getting offended in an even worse way than them.
> Many of them take aim at people's sex or race, but not in a challenging way.
Interesting, I wouldn't summarise it that way at all.
If I had to characterise it so succinctly I'd say many of them play on language, and I think it's as funny now as when I first saw it (probably early 2000s).
"How soon can we land?"
"I can't tell."
"You can tell me, I'm a doctor."
As you said in another comment I suppose, it's a lot of 'dad jokes', but I don't know why you think it hasn't aged well.
Slapstick, highly visual comedy, and 'dad jokes' is hardly a massive on-screen genre; I might agree it hasn't done well over time if there was more of it, modern stuff, more developed somehow. But it's still so unlike most comedy films to me that I think it'll always make me laugh.
I've seen it a few times over the years. So many classic jokes. Last time, on Australian TV, before it started, there was a voice-over and onscreen warning "Recommended for Mature Audiences". That was (unintentionally) funnier to me than anything in the movie!
Not true. Go on Youtube and look at the number of people (a lot of them younger) that still enjoy the movie thoroughly.
There are a few scenes that no longer hit as well as they did 30 years ago, but the majority still works.
I have to disagree, sure some jokes are about sex and race but its not the majority by far. And some of those jokes are actually good. Even when it came out, some jokes fell flat.
What about the architecture? The alternative world drawn? The originality of the whole product?
You look at the pebbles and have not spotted the cathedral. You overworked the left analytic hemisphere and left the right synthetic one bumping for attention, you "I will only do pecs at the gym because legs are for losers" pedestrian you, comma slash jay.
The architecture is pure genius, the jokes serve it.
Making people constantly worry that what they're doing could be "bullying", could also be bullying. It doesn't eradicate the core problem, it exacerbates it.
Society is a messy place - and has and always will have roughness where its edges meet. Some entertain an understandable fantasy that a perfect one-size-fits-all solution to this problem, that will make the messiness go away, is to be found in trying to force other people to do something different. Ie, by bullying them.
That's not where the solution is found. It's just the same problem repeated back.
I've been bullied, and it absolutely does not happen anymore. The bullies didn't change - I did, and I'm much better off for it. To put it another way: I hold the power.
When enough people realise that, that's when these problems end. If you look throughout history, nothing else works - it just leads to more bullying back and forth, and eventually, war.
Zucker is right, one component of this is not taking ones-self too seriously - the one thing uniting all bullies, all those who commit atrocities, is they take themselves too seriously. They are incapable of accepting the possibility they could be wrong. So high they elevate themselves on a pedestal of self-righteousness in service of some ideal utopian vision that they eventually lose all compassion and ability to empathise. This prevents the realisation of any such vision.
If anything, it's laughable.
Being able to laugh at ourselves is not just important, its essential. The current state of the world is testament to that. Granted, at the other extreme, where comedy knows no bounds and anything can be called funny - even watching people suffer - is just as bad.
And it's a domain entered by those who didn't check themselves at bullying, and went on to atrocity, and progressed to the final stage - sadism - as they push toward an ideal dream of a future perfect, above the reality of the dysfunction that push is creating right in front of them.
1) Replace "joke that gets a laugh" with "art". Enriching intellectual experience.
0) «bullying»?! A joke - irony, something intended not to actually state the literally expressed? You really should explain yourself. That idea of bullying is unclear.
> The root of the problem is a loss of trust. Comedy is ultimately about trust. The TreePeople audience laughed at my joke because they trusted that I hadn’t actually molested young boys. My kids laughed at my jokes because they love me, and they know they’ll be beaten senseless if they don’t. Without trust, audiences begin to question the intentions behind every joke, they take jokes literally, and they use their collective voices to bully comedians and pressure studios against taking any comedic risk.
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] trabant00|4 years ago|reply
> I couldn’t help myself. I jumped in immediately. “Charles, for example, you’re at this party and everyone is sucking d—k. What are you going to do? You have to resist the temptation.”
> Charles laughed. His mom shook her head. And I found a way to not be bored.
This strikes a cord with me. As a kid/teenager I learned some lessons a lot better because they came in the form of offensive humor. I still remember some of them word for word 20+ years later. I worry about this in the context of current day puritanism a lot more that I care about movies, TV, social media, etc. I think we're raising generations of stuck up people who will fall even harder in puritan extreme.
[+] [-] mdp2021|4 years ago|reply
Edit: in fact, there is much more to that, now that I think about it: in the past few years, I have met a large number of people who, somehow, basically cannot read: they have the text in front of them, but cannot interpret it, if it is not literal. It surely must be lack of exposure to intellectual challenge, even to phenomena that some would have called "normal daily experience". And they have degrees. How did those "cannot make any sense of it" people emerge? Lack of exposure to differentiated stimula is certainly part of it.
[+] [-] dxbydt|4 years ago|reply
Amen, brother! As a parent of a middle schooler, I have this exact worry. At his age, I was much more offensive and crude, but I like to think I turned out ok. Meanwhile he’s growing up in an era where the language has been ultra gentrified.I went to school in the 90s, when professors cursed freely & wrote “shaft the customer!” on the blackboard to express their solidarity with Alan Perlis, with no consequence of repercussion. No way you can get away with that today in a CS class. These days there are actual rooms called Salesforce Lab & Infosys Building in a university nearby, because of the funders. When I worked at Sun, Scott McNealy sent an email that said “we are at war” and pointed out it took 13 bytes to send those utf8 chars as a txt file on unix but 1.5MB to do the same as a doc file on Windows. It got a lot of offensive “fucking micro$oft” replies & forwards complete with the dollar sign throughout the company wide network - imagine if such a thing is possible today. I took my kid to the hospital for the flu shot & routine annual. So the doc walks up to him with a very serious expression and tells him in a somber voice - “Now I am going to take a look at your private parts, and that’s ok only because your dad is here, otherwise we both know nobody is supposed to look at your private parts. ok ? “ I was drinking a cup of starbucks & spilt coffee all over the fucking floor doubling in laughter. He was not amused. Afterwards, he said, in my time we’d just say drop your pants & show me your dick motherfucker. But those days are gone :(
[+] [-] soco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsj_hn|4 years ago|reply
It's pretty cool to watch The High and Mighty after Airplane and recognize so many of the scenes, including the sweating pilot, the little life stories of the characters, the operations manager (Regis Toomey) pacing back and forth in the control room, etc.
[+] [-] newsbinator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikusR|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelgrafl|4 years ago|reply
So they made them talk in a very thick Bavarian dialect, which made the whole thing absurd on a higher level.
The 70s and 80s had some great talent behind German dubs.
[+] [-] huseyinkeles|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohthehugemanate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnbad|4 years ago|reply
Of course the joke mostly works because it lampshades bigoted cultural assumptions about race in Germany: a lot of Germans in the 1990s said "Afro-Amerikaner" when they meant Black (regardless of nationality, even Germans) because they thought it was more "politically correct" and the thought a Black person might be a native citizen never occurred to them. This has improved somewhat over the years but since the film was originally released in 1980, I doubt the cultural awareness was any better at the time.
To be clear: I'm not saying the joke is bigoted, I'm saying the joke worked because it played off bigoted assumptions.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] caminante|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4
[+] [-] mdp2021|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AZ8244|4 years ago|reply
Just watching his facial expressions as his character tries to make sense of things, he has no capacity to process is priceless. Then ofcourse he proceeds to come up with the most ludicrous answers to whatever problem with all the overconfidence in the world. That routine has me literally rolling on the floor.
I dont think the woke/anti woke bs matters. There are really lots of ways to make people laugh if you really want too imho.
[+] [-] flanbiscuit|4 years ago|reply
Martin Short is amazing in this series! Actually all 3 of the main characters are great
[+] [-] lostgame|4 years ago|reply
There's an episode called '200'; (or something) where 'Family Guy' creator Seth MacFarlane discusses the show along with many of its voice actors, producers, etc.
He mentions that 'Family Guy' is absolutely not meant to be a high-brow humour show; and that part of the technique of the writing of 'Family Guy' is, in his own words; guided by how many jokes a minute they can get - how many times they can make the audience laugh.
If we have a casual pause in a show; someone looks to the camera, dead-pan, and just, quite seriously - says, 'penis' - out of the blue - I'm gonna laugh my ass off. I love intelligent humour as much as the next girl, but there is a nuance to some of the low-brow humour in 'Airplane!' that is just as complex to pull off effectively as a well-told and intelligent joke by Bill Maher, Norm MacDonald, or George Carlin.
We are talking about a 41-year-old film, in a genre (comedy) that famously doesn't age well. 'Airplane!' probably shouldn't come off well today, if it follows our previously established rules of comedy.
That being said, it's still hella funny.
[+] [-] ghostDancer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blitzar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d23|4 years ago|reply
This is amazing. I have to imagine this inspired one of my favorite jokes from Naked Gun:
> Frank: [looking into microscope] I-I can't see anything.
> Ed: Use your open eye, Frank.
[+] [-] telesilla|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nineteen999|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsanr2|4 years ago|reply
This is the meaty bit right here. Because you have people who tell jokes that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist (normally wouldn't include that but I gotta play to the HN crowd), etc. and either 1) go out and actually do bigoted things/maintain relationships with outwardly bigoted people, or 2) the people who enjoy the jokes go out and do bigoted things and use the joke as cover.
If you want to test this, go on 4chan right now and ask people how they feel about the difference between "black people and niggas" (Chris Rock) or "how white people are better" (Louis C.K.). (If you argue that 4chan isn't representative of the general public, you can try Facebook, but, uh, you're taking your life into your own hands with that crowd.)
The problem may very well be less that people won't tolerate transgressive humor today, as it is that people can't be trusted with transgressive humor today. Some people see it as rhetoric, not humor.
[+] [-] chasd00|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smitty1e|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickJWagner|4 years ago|reply
Man, I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and bring back comedy everybody is offended by (in equal doses) and laughs at honestly. Hollywood has to go un-woke first, though.
[+] [-] beebeepka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryan_lane|4 years ago|reply
I'm not offended by any of the jokes, and I still laugh at some of them, but mostly because of nostalgia. If you're reacting poorly to people being offended by some of the crude race/sex based humor, I hate to break it to you, but you're getting offended in an even worse way than them.
[+] [-] OJFord|4 years ago|reply
Interesting, I wouldn't summarise it that way at all.
If I had to characterise it so succinctly I'd say many of them play on language, and I think it's as funny now as when I first saw it (probably early 2000s).
"How soon can we land?"
"I can't tell."
"You can tell me, I'm a doctor."
As you said in another comment I suppose, it's a lot of 'dad jokes', but I don't know why you think it hasn't aged well.
Slapstick, highly visual comedy, and 'dad jokes' is hardly a massive on-screen genre; I might agree it hasn't done well over time if there was more of it, modern stuff, more developed somehow. But it's still so unlike most comedy films to me that I think it'll always make me laugh.
[+] [-] yesenadam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namdnay|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legostormtroopr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lqet|4 years ago|reply
That's the joke.
[+] [-] animal531|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AussieWog93|4 years ago|reply
I don't think you have to be too challenging funny.
This scene still makes me smile a decade later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9lYVwNEf48
[+] [-] panick21_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdp2021|4 years ago|reply
You look at the pebbles and have not spotted the cathedral. You overworked the left analytic hemisphere and left the right synthetic one bumping for attention, you "I will only do pecs at the gym because legs are for losers" pedestrian you, comma slash jay.
The architecture is pure genius, the jokes serve it.
[+] [-] thih9|4 years ago|reply
Because it could be bullying.
[+] [-] argvargc|4 years ago|reply
Society is a messy place - and has and always will have roughness where its edges meet. Some entertain an understandable fantasy that a perfect one-size-fits-all solution to this problem, that will make the messiness go away, is to be found in trying to force other people to do something different. Ie, by bullying them.
That's not where the solution is found. It's just the same problem repeated back.
I've been bullied, and it absolutely does not happen anymore. The bullies didn't change - I did, and I'm much better off for it. To put it another way: I hold the power.
When enough people realise that, that's when these problems end. If you look throughout history, nothing else works - it just leads to more bullying back and forth, and eventually, war.
Zucker is right, one component of this is not taking ones-self too seriously - the one thing uniting all bullies, all those who commit atrocities, is they take themselves too seriously. They are incapable of accepting the possibility they could be wrong. So high they elevate themselves on a pedestal of self-righteousness in service of some ideal utopian vision that they eventually lose all compassion and ability to empathise. This prevents the realisation of any such vision.
If anything, it's laughable.
Being able to laugh at ourselves is not just important, its essential. The current state of the world is testament to that. Granted, at the other extreme, where comedy knows no bounds and anything can be called funny - even watching people suffer - is just as bad.
And it's a domain entered by those who didn't check themselves at bullying, and went on to atrocity, and progressed to the final stage - sadism - as they push toward an ideal dream of a future perfect, above the reality of the dysfunction that push is creating right in front of them.
[+] [-] JohnWhigham|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdp2021|4 years ago|reply
0) «bullying»?! A joke - irony, something intended not to actually state the literally expressed? You really should explain yourself. That idea of bullying is unclear.
[+] [-] JimmyAxod|4 years ago|reply
Damn you my chicken just died! Offensive!
3 men walk into a bar.
Damn you my son died in a bar brawl. Offensive!
If you do, or say anything, ever, someone will be offended. It’s really best to ignore them.
Saying some general, non-specific words, is not “bullying”.
[+] [-] jacquesm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superduperuser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] base698|4 years ago|reply
> The root of the problem is a loss of trust. Comedy is ultimately about trust. The TreePeople audience laughed at my joke because they trusted that I hadn’t actually molested young boys. My kids laughed at my jokes because they love me, and they know they’ll be beaten senseless if they don’t. Without trust, audiences begin to question the intentions behind every joke, they take jokes literally, and they use their collective voices to bully comedians and pressure studios against taking any comedic risk.
[+] [-] tomohawk|4 years ago|reply