Meanwhile, Monty Python’s Life of Brian literally had a male character who identifies as female and everybody in the movie is cool with it
And John Cleese is now a transphobe. Go figure. (Other members are cool from what I’ve heard)
Terry Gilliam is also a transphobe.
Damnit, what did they do? They’re my favorite director :(
He’s basically just railed against cancel culture and what he sees as forced diversity in media. In the Chappelle vein, where they’ve convinced themselves they’re not transphobic, just against “censorship”.
Now, to be fair, Gilliam was always the most defiant, aggressively anti-establishment guy of a group who are all pretty anti-establishment. He’s very much made a career off of being transgressive and pushing back on those that tell him no. So this isn’t exactly unusual for him. “Cancel culture”, to a 70 year old man who made a name for himself by being anti-censorship at a time when you could barely curse on television, would certainly feel like a familiar type of “authority” that they’ve spent their whole careers defying.
That’s not an excuse, but it’s also why I stopped expecting better from the legacy entertainers of that time who are all pushing 80. They’ve progressed about as much as they’re going to in their lifetime. Just take away the microphone before they hurt themselves (or anyone else) because you’re not going to change them.
There’s also the lumberjack song…
You can make the argument the joke there isn’t so much that being trans is weird or wrong, it’s in the juxtaposition between where it starts and where it ends up. The singer starts with a very masculine stereotype and shifts drastically into a feminine one to the point it confuses other masc stereotypes who reject him. The singer didn’t read the room and went way off the rails.
Not the best justification, I know, but it doesn’t feel especially hostile towards trans, just using it as an irresponsible punchline in a joke about traditional masculinity vs feminity, which was typical of the time.
Just like my dear Papa!
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Its not so indiscriminate. Its just that theyre edgy libertarians and radical centrists. Its less about blanket making fun of everyone including themselves and that theyre smugly declaring “both sides bad” on most things.
The viewer must be able to laugh at themselves, or at least be able to tolerate writers who are deliberately pushing people’s buttons. Sometimes there’s a good point hiding in the bullshit.
Or, just skip the show entirely. It’s great that their turnaround time is only six days(!), so they can address surprisingly current issues, but the show is past its prime anyway.
I love South Park, but damn, the Mr Garrison trans episodes are just, ahhhhhhhhhggggggggggg.
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I’m neurodivergent, and I laugh in many instances South Park made fun of neudivergent and mentally disabled people. I’m Latin American, South Park made fun of latin americans so many times. I’m progressive, South Park made fun of progressives so many times. I’m atheist, same thing. I’m bisexual, same thing, I could go on.
The problem with the Mr Garrison episodes is that, they are so viscerally transphobic, it is very obviously made in such bad faith.
Of course they are not the worse thing depicted in South Park, but yeah, a show with the objective to be as offensive as possible gotta hit somewhere in a very personal point eventually.
I don’t think anyone should take Mr. Garrison’s arc to heart. They did kinda point out in an earlier episode that Mr. Garrison isn’t what he thinks he is. He’s not gay, trans or anything else in that direction.
He’s messed up. And that’s all he is and all he’s supposed to be. At least that’s my take-away from the show.
Sadly, that’s not enough, just as Jaws did damage to shark conservation and The Silence of the Lambs did damage to Trans acceptance, even though it’s super clear Buffalo Bill is not conventionally trans but his own special kind of crazy.
Then again, our love for police procedurals and serial killer mysteries does damage to mental health awareness and police brutality awareness. Also judicial overreach. (Lots of false convictions.)
It bothers me less depending on how old the episode is, and the overall tone of the joke. Older “let’s put this guy in a dress for cheap laughs” type stuff is lame, but not as bad as more recent attempts to make hatred more palatable by disguising it with a thin veneer of “humor”.
One of the most egregious examples I can think of from recent media was from Kimmy Schmidt where the people that take issue with trans/enbyphobia were turned into the butt of a joke because… they’re annoying I guess?
Came out of left field in a show I thought was queer friendly but I realized later on that it tracks with the brand of feminism that Tina Fey follows. (I never watched 30 Rock and don’t intend to so I had no idea she was already problematic)
Oh no, what has Tina Fey done? I’m trying to think back on 30 Rock and I can imagine how some of it hasn’t aged well.
Whole lotta t***ny drops and the infamous black face.
No, that old stuff is just as bad. Go watch the end of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It was just simpler then because the writers considered that type of hate to be ubiquitous instead of needing nuance or explanation.
It’s like saying older racism wasn’t as bad as the more recent attempts to galvanize people into nazis. But I contend it was for the same reason above. You’re seeing recent attempts at both towards being more palatable specifically because it’s not as accepted now.
Huh. I just deleted an entire paragraph replying to you, but then I did some introspection. Where are you consuming media? I haven’t experienced much transgenderism or similar thing recently, but my experience seems to be very curated. I don’t watch TV, but I listen to radio and watch a lot of YouTube and some Netflix. I’m also following social media sites, most recently lemme, for decent conversations.
I’m curious where you’re seeing “hatred more palatable by disguising it with a thin veneer”?
It’s a bit of a lengthy read, but here is an article that gets into the messiness of Zoolander 2 and Deadpool. Long story short, they both attempt to be more performatively progressive with their depictions but end up perpetuating many of the same harmful stereotypes of queer individuals. They become the same low brow entertainment as before with a few tweaks to make them more acceptable. That being said, I still liked Deadpool. I think the industry is still evolving and we need to continue to let it evolve in a positive direction.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/meredithtalusan/25-years-of-transphobia-in-comedies
IT Crowd
I though you said you were from Iran.
But seriously I don’t think that episode was harmful.
Douglas is just a general asshole.
The character is an asshole AND that episode is transphobic. More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF. I don’t really want to pollute this space with his toxicity, but search if you’re curious.
More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF.
well sad to see/hear. But I’m still not convinced that the episode in its entirety is transphobic.
It’s the b-plot from what I recall, it’s not the main focus of the episode.
It was written long before his TERF days and so it’s not exactly hateful, just ignorant and it’s comparable to a lot of other ways comedy treated trans characters from the era - The League Of Gentleman was much, much worse than the IT Crowd imo, and that was a recurring character in every episode.
It’s rather the issue that while Matt Berry has distanced himself from the episode Linehan actually still defends it as pro-trans.
Can you tell me what’s transphobic about it?
When I first saw it I would have thought it was trans-supporting, other than the detail that (IIRC) the trans woman was played by a cisgender woman.
The entire point of it is that the only thing that is stopping Douglas from being genuinely, incredibly happy, becoming a better person and living an actually fulfilling life in the end is his inability to accept a historical detail that had made absolutely no difference to his relationship. And, since Douglas might be the worst person in the world, we see him destroy that because of his own weird machismo values. Just when we think he’s completely changed as a character, his shittiness on this one thing, emblematic of his incredibly toxic masculinity, comes crashing down on him. This is, darkly, funny. We are abruptly reminded that Douglas is an actual monster, to the point of fist-fighting with the person he loves. “Character is briefly happy but previous behaviour and/or shittiness of their character ruins it for themselves” is like at like 30% of Linehan’s sitcom plotlines.
If there’s something I missed - and it’s been a few years, and thoroughly agree that Linehan’s subsequent behaviour justifies examining his previous work for ulterior motives - I would like to know it. Genuinely.
Nah I don’t think so. Episode kinda got me a bit attracted to the female character ngl and I’m a hetero guy.
That’s why I love Star Trek
Instead it’s an episode thats either racist (early TNG) or ablist… as a trek fan even I recognize these shortcomings. Also I’m pretty sure I remember a transphobic episode? Somewhere in voyager I think…
Meanwhile Denise Bryson is on Twin Peaks being totally cool and never the butt of a joke
I love that agents Cooper try to understand her instead of freaking out.
Twin Peaks is safe 🙏 Bless Denise
Futurama.
The one where Bender becomes a woman bot to participate in the robot Olympics, I’m guessing? That one was kind of rough watching with modern sensibilities last time I recall, especially with all these recent trans people in sports debates. Also the one where they go to the planet where they switch genders. Is there any others I’m forgetting?
getting back into arrested development and then getting to that episode
This is what I was thinking of. I didnt know where that image in my head was from, now I remember.
Issues like this make me wonder: what’s acceptable to joke about now that future generations will find shameful? Any suggestions, folks?
Some people are starting to shift their opinions on it, but jokes about men being raped (especially in prison) are weirdly accepted.
I’d hope it’d be things relating to our treatment of non-human animals. There’s a pretty good talk making that case (not so much in terms of jokes, but in general)
Another good one! Thanks!
You should be safe if you don’t make fun of others. It’s not necessary to ridicule a specific person or group to make a joke.
True. Generally speaking, punching down is not okay.
Who is considered weird and or crazy?
That’s what I have a hard time with. Antivaxxers? Trump supporters? Callous billionaires? They all seem like fair game to me.
In the case of previous groups, it’s usually persecuted and marginalized groups. So I don’t think that fits.
I’m already seeing terms like “stupid”, “dumb”, “crazy” and other terms to refer to conditions people didn’t choose, especially mental ones, being used less and frowned upon occasionally. So maybe “crazy/insane” if we actually recognize it wildly as an issue or treat it.
Online? I’m seeing a lot more hate and memes against furries cropping up that I hope goes away. Not that that’s new, but I think it’s shifting towards them since it’s become unacceptable in most circles to denigrate sexual and gender identities.
Otherwise I think the question is: Who is society denigrating that is both a marginalized group and not actively/actually harmful?
The thing with stupid/crazy is inevitably a euphemism treadmill more than any meaningful shift. We still need to deal with people who make absolutely terrible decisions in ways that are both shockingly unexpected and predictably exploitable. Calling those people “wild” instead of the r-word won’t change that they dislocated their skeleton doing some obviously pointless stunt for momentary clout.
Furries is a good one. There’s definitely a lot of hate. “My coworker’s daughter said they were talking about putting litter boxes in the classrooms!”
Think about the words you and other people use and what they actually mean. Are you using a word that refers to a certain group of people who are part of some marginalised group? “Gay” used to be a very common insult, particularly in South Park. What about “lame”, “dumb”, “tard”, etc.
Antivaxxers? Trump supporters? Callous billionaires?
Science deniers and right wingers has never been on the right side of the history, so these you mentioned will be remembered as the idiots they are, and Billionaires will continue to exist but will be remembered but not in the Star Trek name dropping Elon Musk kind of way, but in the way we remember other idiotic and callous billionares from a century ago.
I’m going to hope it’s about wanting to kill ourselves all the time, because if it becomes taboo I hope it’s because we have actually managed to make life better and thus suicide rates drop, but I honestly don’t know if we will get any better tbh
“There are no taboos against taking one’s life here,’ said the Night Haunter. ‘Many do. This is not a happy world. But it can be a better one. By killing yourself, you take the easy way out, you encourage others to do the same. You might think you add yourself to a statistic, but your self-murder is much more than that. Every suicide adds to the rot weakening your culture. Every life abandoned is a signal that change can never be effected. You throw your existence away, and in doing so lessen the value of humanity.”
Proceeds to de-skin suicidal woman slowly.
Heh, as someone who deals with suicidal ideation daily, our collective devaluation of humanity drives my disgust. While our planet burns, human civilizations embrace imminent extinction (and the irrelevance of all current culture) to preserve the current power hierarchy.
Nothing we do today will matter including those efforts to reduce the effects of a looming cataclysm and population correction until we collectively achieve a high threshold that significantly reduces its effects. Nothing in this case includes both my choice to kill myself and my choice to live another day.
This time doesn’t matter until a huge number of us decide to collectively make it matter.
Going to throw this out there: self identification as a member of racial/ethnic/cultural group will become a hot button. Right now the left screams “cultural appropriation!” when this happens. But appropriating another gender is somehow okay. There’s a real mismatch here in logic, and at some point in the future this will flip. Like, currently it’s okay for me to say “I identify as a woman” but not “I identify as a black woman”. How does that even make sense?
I think that’s mostly an American thing: they think that their “racial” categories are the same thing as ethnicity, and since race is defined by racists (who believe that it’s an innate inherited trait), it’s constrained by them too.
“I was born French, but now I consider myself Corsican.” is an uncommon but perfectly normal thing in Europe.
American racism is just absurd, even by racism standards. That absurdity even influences American anti-racism.
Shout outs to Lily Simpson for showcasing just how bad these shows really are.
I wanna say King of the Hill is safe.
There’s one episode with a drag queen, not trans. It’s pretty positive! She thinks Peggy is also a drag queen and they become best friends. It ends that way too.
I watch that show its actually pretty safe outside of that one weird episode where bill hits rock bottom and thinks he’s his exwife though I don’t really think of that one as transphonic per se
Scrubs and 30 Rock too :(
Scrubs? That sucks. No episodes come to mind, do you happen to remember which one(s)?
I mentioned this further down the thread, but Scrubs is full of micro aggressions.
I mean, pretty much the very first joke in the series is JD asking Turk if he’s allowed to say the N word.
There’s an episode where the theme is whether Turk is black.
As for trans-specific problems, Todd advertises his website with the T slur in it on his T-shirt one episode.
He’s also a prime example of bi-erasure as when he “comes out,” nobody says bi the whole episode, and it’s like the whole cast can’t conceive of someone liking both men and women. Not to mention the bi stereotype that we’re all sexual deviants and overly promiscuous.
Frankly, I could go on for a while. Scrubs was fine for its time. It does not hold up well. Shame because it was my favorite show for a very long time. But I’m glad society has grown.
