Thought Police: Are we allowed to query 'woke'?

[Greg M.]

Given its tendency to tackle racial prejudice, homophobia and the treatment of natives by American armed forces, there is little that would be overly problematic to a modern audience.  Possibly the objectification of women, but even there that is called out for what it is.

Interesting to note that although Alan Alda brought elements of his own political ideals to Hawkeye, he's always said he didn't see Hawkeye as left-wing. He had Hawkeye pegged as a libertarian - someone who wants to keep the government out of his drinks cabinet.

[TordelBack]

Good question, Jayzus!  I'm guessing the unfortunately enduring currency of the format and its fake-news theme would make it an easy transition for today's kids - The Day Today even moreso. Maybe I'm not quite ready to try it on mine yet, though.

Coincidentally, I'd just decided to give the new Spitting Image a miss as far as family viewing goes, despite the original (along with Black Adder) being the ne plus ultra of comedy for me when I was the age my eldest is now. Who's the cool Dad now, huh?

[radiator]

I wonder how Brass Eye, for my money the funniest comedy programme ever*, would appear to the younger generation.  There are some very, very non-PC (hate to use that expression, but I can't think of another one) scenes there, but clearly made by snowflake (well, I'm on a roll now) liberals. Quite a few of the
celebrities being made idiots of are no longer with us, so it's clearly lost that bit of its bite, and one of them was Rolf Harris.

*I will post this then immediately remember a funnier one.

It wouldn't work now. Modern news coverage is almost indistinguishable from satire, in some cases the reality is crazier and darker than anything Chris Morris could come up with.



I think what irritates me more than anything when it comes to 'PC' culture is when people are incapable of discerning (or in some cases willfully choose to misconstrue) context and authorial intent.

This video review of Jojo Rabbit is a classic example of this sort of thing. Just a completely braindead critique and/or a disingenuous misreading of a film that is pretty obviously an anti-fascist work (and one that was made by a person of Jewish descent):

https://themuse.jezebel.com/i-would-like-to-never-think-about-jojo-rabbit-ever-agai-1841328185

You see this sort of thing a lot where rightwingers say things like 'You couldn't make The Producers or Blazing Saddles these days because Political Correctness'. Well, yes you completely could. Just because a piece of art deals with troubling themes and contains offensive language doesn't mean that the filmmakers are condoning those things, ffs. I remember a lot of people saying The Hateful Eight was a misogynist film that glorified violence against women, and I can only assume that I watched an entirely different version of the movie to these people.

[Funt Solo]

I have to self-center my current affairs consumption (comedy or not) at the moment for the preservation of sanity. I glanced at the BBC front page yesterday to see Trump standing in front of some flames with the headline: "No need to panic!" and it was like I'd accidentally stumbled into the 7th circle of hell.

When will it end?

---

Oh, sorry - we were talking about comedy. Ha!

[Professor Bear]

No-one is "against comedy", they're against how some jokes are used to launder ideological assertions, IE: how Paddy Irishman jokes reinforce ethnic supremacy narratives, or "I identify as an attack helicopter" jokes reinforce that the person saying them is an unfunny twat.
A call for a moment's thought about who the target of your humor might be is not too much to ask.  If kids can manage the most basic empathy checks, then so can old farts like us.

[TordelBack]

You see this sort of thing a lot where rightwingers say things like 'You couldn't make The Producers or Blazing Saddles these days because Political Correctness'. Well, yes you completely could.

This is my (otherwise perfectly decent, forward-thinking) father-in-law's favourite line in conversation, a long list of 'things they wouldn't let you do nowadays', despite his own son working in the telly & film industry making things that are as strong or stronger.

I really do think it's largely a matter of age conferring a particular perspective, with opportunist blabbermouths and pretend journos exploiting that demographic for clicks.

[CalHab]

I think for the most part this is quite true.  I would like to stick my neck out, my head in the lion's jaw, above the parapet and so forth and suggest MASH as a possible exception.  I'm currently on a re-viewing at about season 4. 

Given its tendency to tackle racial prejudice, homophobia and the treatment of natives by American armed forces, there is little that would be overly problematic to a modern audience.  Possibly the objectification of women, but even there that is called out for what it is.

Can't think of many others that can make such a claim.

The treatment of "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the film is certainly an issue. I don't think the TV series was nearly as bad, though. You'll know better, though, it's ages since I watched it!

[Barrington Boots]

I always think for jokes one should punch up rather than punch down.

I don't watch a lot of sitcoms so my reference is primarily ones when I was a kid, but I'm willing to bet stuff like Terry and June has aged badly. I reckon though that a really good comedy show should capture a bit of zeitgiest, so they're bound to wind up out of date as societal attitudes change.

Sometimes it's context. My wife had never watched the film Trading Places and when I showed it to her last new years I was rather embarrassed to find it contained a number of homphobic comments - but they're completely superflous to the context of the film and you can still enjoy it with little more than a wince about how things were in the 80s.

Generally though I think the idea of 'cancel culture' doesn't really exist outside the minds of objectionable sorts who don't like being told they can't enjoy their casual racism anymore, and I think a lot of the stuff they hate is driven by corporate box ticking exercises. A lot of us lefties want to see a better society but I'm pretty sure BLM protestors don't care about Fawlty Towers being taken off Amazon Prime.

[Rately]

I see that one of the biggest arseholes on Twitter, b-list Actor and "Fierce Liberal" and all round racist arsehole who rails against the 'woke' among us is reaching the end of what appears to be a very self-destructive period with litigation after throwing Paedophile around as an insult.

[repoman]

Frankly, I find most sit-coms date very badly. Friends is cringeworthy now, and so so white (not least given where it's set). I don't see much in the way of cancelling—it's just people saying they don't want to give any time to a specific thing, and people who like that specific thing getting in a huff. (Front vs. Fox shows this in microcosm.)

As for woke, I got called it on Facebook. Someone was thinking of subscribing to The Beano. Some bloke said it's rubbish now, and not a patch on the GOOD OLD DAYS. I noted that I thought the modern Beano was far superior in writing and I also liked the fact it's inclusive. For that, I was branded woke. Apparently, I deserve that for being happy my daughter has a comic to read where Dennis isn't a massive arsehole (and is instead streetwise), there are actual girls in it, there are a few (although not many) people of more diverse backgrounds, and where some of the extremely problematic characterisation of e.g. Walter has been replaced by something a lot smarter.

It depends on the sit-com.  I mean shit like Fresh Fields was dated then but things like The Young Ones, The New Statesman and so on, they definitely are of a time but they are still funny.

I was never a fan of Friends but I don't think it being white is a problem in the same way Seinfeld isn't.  That's just what the show was at the time.  But people did try to cancel it (in that ineffective Twitter kind of way) a year or two ago and if they could have had it banned somehow, they would.  They don't have the power but maybe one day they will.  Eventually enough people moan and comedy disappears.

I just watched a film yesterday that was an allegory for the white middle classes gentrifying black neighbourhoods.  The black kids in the film were the heroes, the whites were literally blood sucking vampires.  It was a brilliant film though so I'm not going to start thinking it was anti-white.  It's just what worked for the story.

Friends was about six friends.  Not six klan members.  They made some dated gay jokes and yeah, that's just the tax you pay mentally to watch old comedy but it doesn't make the comedy worse.  David Schwimmer might have made the comedy worse though.

Things just get analysed a bit too much these days.  I recently watched Lethal Weapon and it had two really out of place anti-gay comments, almost throwaway.  Didn't help or add to the story in any way. I don't want the film cut and I don't want it cancelled but it just tells me that the '80s were different.  In the same way that people in the '80s apparently smoked in offices.  Weird, not the way to do it now but that's just how it was.

I don't support cancelling the film from all existence but I'm happy that we won't see the likes of that in a film going forward although I do think we'll start to see more moments in films that put in the opposite like a gay kiss or a pop at the 'fragile white, male ego' in a similarly throwaway way but I'm sure that in a few decades time that'll be seen as weird and everyone will have found a balance where everyone is cool and sex/race doesn't matter.

[Modern Panther]

one of the biggest arseholes on Twitter

Said arsehole has managed to get himself represented by a rather big PR firm with contacts in government and major media outlets, resulting in a few too many articles.  The money is coming from somewhere.

[Professor Bear]

Didn't "ban Friends" turn out to be a bunch of right-wing shit-stirring, though?  The critiques I've seen from the left actually defend the show's lack of diversity as a commentary on New York's racially-segregated housing policies that guaranteed that up to a certain generation, races didn't mix socially in the city as a matter of geography rather than ideology.  Later attempts at diversity on the show were actually critiqued pretty harshly because they reinforced the siege mentality of white New Yorkers by portraying black women and interracial dating as a source of tension between whites.

[Funt Solo]

Lots of things to unpack, so I'm going to choose the ever-popular method of taking each in turn...

They don't have the power but maybe one day they will.

The slippery slope argument. There's a similar one about trans people doing nefarious things in public restrooms. There's no evidence for it, but it's a possibility, so we should ban them (goes the hoary logic). Slippery slope! But what if there's not a slippery slope?

I just watched a film yesterday that was an allegory for the white middle classes gentrifying black neighbourhoods.  The black kids in the film were the heroes, the whites were literally blood sucking vampires ... I'm not going to start thinking it was anti-white.

It was anti-white. Or, rather, it was anti-oppression. It just so happens that it's the white folk that are oppressing the black folk. See, if the white folk are doing that, then it's okay to be anti-that. So, it's okay (to an extent, right?) to be anti-white. Anti-oppression.

Friends was about six friends.  Not six klan members.  They made some dated gay jokes and yeah, that's just the tax you pay mentally to watch old comedy but it doesn't make the comedy worse.

It may well have made the "comedy" worse for gay viewers or their friends, though. So, it did make the "comedy" worse. If the butt of your joke is ... well, the butt of your joke, then it's not funny for them, necessarily. That doesn't mean they have no sense of humour - it means they're being treated like shit. (Wanting people to laugh while one is treating them like shit is , at the least, very controlling. Definitely abusive.)

Things just get analysed a bit too much these days.  I recently watched Lethal Weapon and it had two really out of place anti-gay comments ... the '80s were different ... people in the '80s ... smoked in offices.

The idea that shitty behavior is just weird is ... weird. Smoking in offices damaged the health of everyone - both the smokers and the non-smokers (who didn't have a choice in the matter). It being banned isn't just a weird happenstance of history - it was a public health issue. It's not all just random lights floating in front of our eyes - there's reason behind it.

[Professor Bear]

There's an Arthur C Clarke novel - Ghost of the Grand Banks, I think - where the main character's job is to digitally-remove smoking from old movies, as by the early 20th century there'd been a lung cancer epidemic so it had become a really touchy subject.

[IndigoPrime]

Pretty much nothing has been 'cancelled', censored or removed. What this means in reality is some people have criticised old shows for various reasons, and people—and, let's face it, we're talking some white people—get all annoyed about that. It's basically the same as that fuckwit on Facebook calling be woke because I like the modern Beano's inclusive nature rather than Dennis being a bullying shithead, female characters being marginalised, and Walter's portrayal being deeply problematic. "He dresses up in girls clothes! Let's KICK THE SHIT OUT OF HIM!"

As for the things were just different argument, it's not just weird. People were actively hostile towards gay people. Go back not much further and you have the same with black people. In other words, unless you were white and preferably also male and fairly wealthy, you were shat on. What people today mistake for preferential treatment is an attempt to make everyone equal. And Friends, like a lot of other comedy, was very much a product of its time, notably faring very poorly in modern eyes when it comes to gay and trans characters.

That doesn't mean people shouldn't watch it, understanding the context of the time. But I draw the line at people making excuses for it (these 'jokes' were nasty, punching down, and from a place of privilege at the time), and certainly making excuses for those kinds of actions/thinking in a more general sense. I suppose that again would have some people calling me woke. Frankly, it's just having a bit of humanity.