I made my wife watch Slap Shot last night as she had never seen it before. Sadly, she didn’t find it very funny. I guess its a bit dated now.
Anyway that stuck out for me was the abundant open derision of gays in the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t particularly offended, but I did find it interesting that a bulk of the insults in the movie were centered around calling people faggots. “I look like a faggot in this robe.” “Hey, you know your kid looks like a faggot. He’s gonna suck a lot of cock when he grows up.” I would hazard to guess that they must have made at least 10 or 15 such references.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting statement on the social norms of 1977 compared to now.
Last Christmas I watched the old Mel Brooks movie “blazing saddles” while I was laughing pretty hard, I kept thinking there is no way they could make this movie today with the same dialogue. Not saying it’s a good vs bad thing just an observation of how things can change in a pretty short amount of time.
I don’t really think it’s changed much at all. You just don’t see it in movies, etc. because they’re too PC.
Maybe it’s the industry I’m in but there’s an abundance of “faggot” going around. One of my former employees is gay. He’s got some thick skin.
Oh, I know. Trust me, when I played hockey the locker room was full of racial slurs. I don’t think this has to do with being PC. I think it has more to do with the fact that it just isn’t funny anymore. At the time it was perfectly acceptable to go around insulting people and referring to them as faggots and homos. Slap Shot didn’t have to do that. They did it because it was funny, and it was pretty common.
The point I’m making is that in the 70s you could put a movie together and ask yourself, “is this a good idea? Will this be funny? Will this go over well with audiences?” And the answer was yes. Today the answer is no, and again, it’s not because it isn’t PC. It’s just not funny.
And I think there’s also a distinction in the way it’s handled. In Slap Shot, Paul Neuman th egood looking cool guy was the one doing it. In Blazing Sadles, or Chasing Amy, or a whole host of other movies (or Tarantino’s use “nigger”), it’s done through the idiot character.
It’s a subtle distinction, but in the 70s it s was “cool and funny” to talk like that. Now it’s dumb and trashy.
Oh, I thought you were implying that off color gay and race jokes weren’t funny anymore. Nevermind.
Read through the thread again. This time try not being so obtuse. Have you noticed how Daneil Tosh as well as many other comedians crack plenty of gay jokes that are funny and no one has a problem with it, yet when Tracy Morgan cracks a “gay joke” everyone got upset?
I didn’t say gay jokes are not funny. I said the way they were done in Slap Shot are not funny. If Tosh responded to a heckler and said, “your son looks like faggot,”…yeah, just not funny. What’s the joke? Gay peope are bad?
Having read through many of your posts in the last month or two, I’m not expecting you to understand. You seem to have a gross inability to understand nuance. Good day, sir.
When I was in school a million years ago Polack jokes were the norm. All In the Family had a character (Rob Reiner) that was constantly made fun of for his ethnicity. I don’t think you see that anymore because sponsorship=$$$ and that’s the name of the game. Nobody wants to be tied to anything controversial if it’s going to hurt sales.
My last name is Pollock (pronounced differently) and I hear those jokes all the time. I never quite got them, but have noticed that I don’t think i’ve heard a Polac joke is well over a decade.
Also to note - All in the Family is another example of biggoted humur being done through a satirical “bad guy” character. Another good example is Clint Eastwood’s character in Grand Torrino. That’s a bit different than Paul Neuman’s character.
