Anyway, 50 years from now they are not going to look back on our media and say "My, what enlightened blokes they were back then! They picked exactly the right issues to focus on. Bravo!" No, 50 years from now they are going to do what we do now about 50 years ago. "How naive could you be! They were all worried about stupid things, when the greatest threat to the world was right in front of them and everyone ignored it! Let's blame them for all social ills because they were so dumb!" And, of course, those of us who lived in these times will counter with our nostalgic views of how wonderful they were and how the whippersnapers today don't appreciate anything, and by the way won't you stay off my Space Lawn 3000 if you please you young hooligans? And the eternal cycle will continue! (And geeze, you see those anti-gravity skirts the kids are wearing today? In my day you would go to jail for that!)
I keep hearing that the future is going to be direct download into the brain itself - which is where I intend to draw the line, thank you very much.
Interesting point. Basically I think it's part of the animation age ghetto, "all cartoons are basically the same, right?" hence why (certainly when I was a kid in the 80s) as mentioned before, they would randomly throw together mixes of Looney Tunes cartoons from the 1930s to the 1970s and ignore even things like dodgy racial stuff or extreme slapstick (like the popular 30s black humour joke of a character seeing something bizarre and then, having 'seen it all', promptly putting a gun to his head and committing suicide).
A peculiar consequence of this is that some of the 1930s pop culture is now better remembered by its referencing and parodies in Looney Tunes than the originals (which weren't repeated to generations of kids). More people seem to associate "Of course, you realise that THIS MEANS WAR!" with Bugs Bunny than Groucho Marx, to take one obvious example.
Ah yes, the
Weird Al Effect - one of my favourite peculiarities of popular culture. Although Groucho is probably one of their
most enduring sources, comparatively speaking - contrast Sen. Claghorn from
The Fred Allen Show, the direct inspiration for the character of Foghorn Leghorn. People don't even remember who Fred Allen is anymore!
I know you mention that Questor Tape went to series, but you never mention whether it was a popular series.
The Questor Tapes was one of the Top 30 shows on the air in the 1974-75 season, so yes, it is definitely quite popular.
Care to name a couple? 'cause I think of the chocolate production line & the "'splainin'", & not much else, & I'm not seeing the impact. OTOH, once you know the story of Dustin Hoffman's "I'm walkin', here!", you rapidly notice damn near every show doing it...
(Imitation is the sincerest form of lack of imagination.
)
You forget the Vitameatavegamin? For shame
("
Do you pop out at parties? Are you unpoopular?") There's also Lucy's ridiculous and transparent disguises; her buddy-comedy escapades with Ethel (to this day, female slapstick duos are still referred to as "Lucy" and "Ethel"); her landmark pregnancy (never mentioned by name) with Little Ricky, despite the fact that she and Ricky famously slept in separate beds; Ricky performing at the Tropicana; the trips to Europe, to Hollywood, and moving to Connecticut (
Who's the Boss even modeled their own house set after their Westport home); and the legions of guest stars (and since this was the 1950s, we're talking about the most star-studded guest lineup in sitcom history).
I Love Lucy also standardized the three-camera setup, the live studio audience,
and was responsible for the invention of the rerun.
phx1138 said:
Personally, I never found slapstick funny (aside the Coyote, which is a special case
). Even then, my favorite gag remains the Bengal Tiger Trap.
(And do I have to explain to
anybody how it worked?) The merest fact I don't have to explain, IMO, is why the Loony Tunes still get laughs: they were done right. It's why Chaplin & Keaton still get laughs, too, & not only for the slapstick.
Slapstick has a very simple, universal appeal (it's the form of comedy that most easily transcends language and culture). Did I mention that
I Love Lucy was slapstick?
phx1138 said:
I'm embarassed to admit, I don't even recall him being on the show...
For a time, some years ago, the whole episode was on YouTube. The only specific thing I remember about the Robin Williams interview was his blond hair (he had dyed it for
Toys, IIRC). And, of course, he tried his best to step all over the Bette Midler interview (though he
did eventually shut up, when it became clear what was unfolding). I can't help but think he was a little jealous - it was the one and only time in his entire professional career that he was upstaged
Really ? I admit that I haven't watched it much (and then mostly episodes dubbed into German), but I didn't think that it took itself that seriously.
Like I said, there's definitely an element of regional quirkiness there, but it's not really "precious" or "post-modern".
NCW8 said:
Remember I'm English. We were doing irony before it was fashionable.
Yes, you are the very model of a modern English gentleman!
The Goodies indeed did a fair bit of topical pop culture references, but of course it's an awkward example because the BBC never repeated them, but for unrelated reasons to anything to do with topicality.
Their rivals the Pythons also did a fair few topical jokes but those, in my experience, tend to be cut out of most of the best-of compilations which is often all that modern fans have seen. With a few exceptions: Doug and Dinsdale are based off the Kray Twins of course, the Election Night Sketch is specifically based on the 1970 election night broadcast, and so on.
Interesting about the Election Night sketch - I think I saw that once, quite some time ago, and it didn't
seem too dated to me, looking back in retrospect (having gleaned the basics of how British elections are presented). But if there's any specificity there that I missed, it's obviously been butterflied ITTL.
Was I one of the only people freaked out by the CBs?
I am rather surprised that the PC crowd have't tried to bring them back
. With increased multiculturalism (TM)
Funny you should mention the Care Bears and Multiculturalism, because a Canadian animation studio (Nelvana) was responsible for the original cartoon in the 1980s.
Would that include the "Liberal Party Political Broadcast" episode that featured some-one in a Jeremy Thorpe mask waving at the camera at odd intervals during the show ? Ironic since Cleese would later make a real party political broadcast for the Liberals.
Technically Cleese's broadcast was for the SDP I believe, but yes, it is ironic.
You're both right - it was a
video for the SDP-Liberal Alliance - or, more specifically, their attempts to get more seats by changing the electoral system. I happen to know about it because a number of Canadian provinces floated the idea to the electorate in the last few years, and that video was widely disseminated as a result.
You know, Soap had some pretty great actors in the cast. Katherine Helmond's Mona (in Who's the Boss) is about as different a character from Jessica Tate as you can imagine, and she was awfully good at both. Richard Mulligan does that fish-out-of-water-straight-man bit as well as anyone. Robert Urich played Peter Campbell in season one. Joe Mantegna (!) played "Juan One" in the last season. Richard Libertini, Gordon Jump, Sorrell ("Boss Hogg") Brooke, Howard Hesseman -- even the one-offs were pretty good actors.
I agree about Helmond and Mulligan (having obviously grown up watching the
latter of the respective shows for which they are famous) - fantastic range, the both of them, and good on Helmond especially for carving out a career for herself despite being a mature woman in Hollywood. With regards to the others, it's just a testament to the sheer excellence of character actors working in television in the 1970s. Sadly, many of them began passing on or retiring into the 1980s, and it shows.
Andrew T said:
On a broader scale, your point about sitcoms and their influence on the culture is really interesting. Consider Family Ties. It's obviously one of the signature shows of the 1980s, and it launched the career of Michael J. Fox, who has a plausible claim at being the defining actor of the 1980s.
And yet... can you describe a single episode of Family Ties? Can you highlight a single theme -- other than stock sitcom cliches -- from the show? I can't. I suspect anyone who grew up in the 80s can name the actors from the show, describe the characters they played with one-liners (Alex, little Reaganite; Mallory, ditzy teen girl; the Dad, old-school liberal; Skippy, the nerd sidekick; etc.), and so on -- but does anyone remember Family Ties ever influencing the culture even in a trivial manner?
And that's one of the signature shows of the 1980s. Isn't that weird?
Well, to be fair,
Family Ties codified most of those stock sitcom cliches - the Very Special Episode, the long-lost relative or suddenly dead friend who the audience had never seen before and would never hear about again (Tom Hanks as Uncle Ned), the Emmy Showcase episode ("A My Name Is Alex"), the incredibly sappy theme song featuring the entire cast smiling awkwardly at the camera (here achieved through the device of someone
painting them doing so)... I can't argue against the strong legacy of
Family Ties as a trailblazer. But is it remembered for anything on its
own terms? Apart from the already-mentioned central conceit (liberal parents, conservative children), not really.