Movies you've just watched

A place where you can chat about anything that isn't to do with games!
User avatar
vol.2
Posts: 3072
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2016 3:13 pm
Location: bmore

Re: Hi. I'm Mel. Trust me.

Post by vol.2 »

NYN wrote: Sun Aug 31, 2025 10:29 am it's striking how offensive slurs are thrown around, yet clear enough in Brooks fashion it's in a almost profuse manner and nearly everybody gets it. Almost as if they knew it would be going out of style with pc.
Mel Brooks was telling jokes about racism and inequality at a time when simply mentioning those issues through characters that embody those things in an "accurate" way was still a little bit taboo, and it could only be done as a joke (think 1950s mentality). The "p.c." era of the 1980s was really just a label that proponents of that particular kind of humor gave to the backlash against it. There was, of course, a lot of manufactured marketing-speak around the whole thing in both advertising and in the news media which created positions for people that may or may not have been fair. The general gist of it though was that we needed to be "past" the point that anti-racist (or anti anything) needed to hide behind humor in order to be acceptable, and that more serious form of social discourse on the subject(s) were necessary. To further complicate the matter, racist humor could and is coopted by actual racists as a form of hand-waving dismissal against their enemies, and is also a way that they can hide their own intentions. So the effectiveness of this kind of thing in the precise way that Brooks did it becomes, at the very least, questionable.
User avatar
NYN
Posts: 712
Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2014 8:33 am
Location: 0! Akedò

just say it

Post by NYN »

Ah, a welcome addendum. Thanks for that!
I, uh, prefer fiction to be less political next to reality, though who am I kidding here? Nowadays I'm happy enough when self-sacrifice is not a glorified trade, and a scumbag is called out for that. Anarchically yours... :P
Tengu 👺 'tude
Post Reply