I remember really enjoying How I Met Your Mother when it was airing. I tried for a rewatch recently and only made it a few episodes in because I was so disinterested. It felt empty, and the humor wasn't hitting. I think it's a combination of I've changed (I've aged out of the "20-something singles fool around in a fantasy version of NYC" demographic) and TV has evolved (good comedy shows are no longer just goofy hijink situations and setups for one-liners).
So instead I rewatched Archer season one (same era as HIMYM) and fortunately that one still slaps.
Oh man. So many and so much.
Most of the "comedy" from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s is unwatchable. Older movies are sometimes straight up disgusting.
I think it's a sign for how we grow as a society to be more aware of the sexism, racism and other forms of disrespect that has been sold as comedy or just as "normal".
I consume much more consciously and through a more meta lense.
For reference: I'm turning 40 this year
I tried to rewatch John Tucker Must Die as something to have on in the background the other night, and wooow did that not hold up. I only made it to where they give him estrogen (which is insane and terrible) and he starts acting like a stereotypical "girl on her period" before I bailed. So many of the movies targeted at teenagers and young adults in that era are so bad. They went all in on punching down, and the amount of rape and sexual assault is wild in retrospect.
There are so many examples of anti trans sentiment in older comedy. Just about all of them hinging on the "you can always tell" myth and/or highlighting how obviously wrong and confused the poor trans people must be. For someone whose only exposure to trans people was that for a long time, I can't begin to say how damaging and limiting that was.
There's just a lot of anti trans stereotypes in media that I tolerated before. It's a lot harder to turn a blind eye to it when people use the same misunderstandings to try and tell me I'm sick and confused and bad for just being myself these days
Old media has become such a minefield because there's just so much awful stuff that went over my head at the time. I'm scared to recommend anything that I haven't rewatched/reread in the past few years.
It wasn't all bad, though. One of my favorite TV shows is Babylon 5, a 90's sci-fi that I watched as it aired but hadn't seen again until late last year. All I really remembered were the cool space battles and devious political maneuvering, but it turned out to also be an incredibly progressive show. One of the main characters is first introduced while wearing robes that appear to have been partially made from a trans pride flag!
I quit smoking pot and no longer enjoy the Spin Doctors.
Well, that's half true. I heard them straight one day and decided if that's the kind of thing I like when I'm high, I should quit.
I can no longer make it through a show with a laugh track. They just spoil the flow.
While they don’t always ruin the thing, so many old shows, movies, and music have a ton of blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. sprinkled in that makes it less enjoyable. South Park’s Chef Aid album has a song that is a combo of Crystal Method, Ozzy, DMX, and I think Wu Tang called Nowhere to Run. It is pretty awesome, except for DMX inserting a few homophobic lines. That asshole ruined a great song!
Overall I notice mean jokes and cruel humor, which is still around to some extent but far less often without the person making the joke clearly an asshole. Stuff like Mel Brooks that included some humor about groups that were frequently mocked, but in a way that is mostly self aware parody, aged pretty well.
If that's what you got from my comment, you really shouldn't be participating in this comment thread. Please leave the conversations for the grownups in the room, thanks.
Blazing Saddles is the epitome of Mel Brooks humor that has aged well. It's an amazing satire of racism that is still on point for today (unfortunately).
They are everywhere for a reason. The people who commonly drop n-bombs aren't the heroes. Hell, the redemption of the town is that they'll be less racist going forward.
If I were to watch Dragon Ball Z now, I'd probably drop the series. I still remember it fondly, but it's too slow.
The first two seasons of the Pokémon anime aged well for me. Individual games, too. But the series as a whole felt from an "I know all 386!" to "...it's a Tentaquil".
Chrono Trigger went from "it's okay, it's fun" to "...I spent my whole life underrating it, didn't I?" So did Final Fantasy VI.
Same deal with Dostoyevsky. I guess you need some maturity to understand things.
Baudelaire, though? Hard pass.
I still love 1984 and Animal Farm, but I want to drown 90% of the muppets talking about them.
I can't stand Legião Urbana any more. Pink Floyd on the other hand aged well, so did Nenhum de Nós.
To be honest I was never too much into movies. There's one or another thing that I like (Modern Times, 8 1/2, The Shining), but it's mostly unchanged.
I think that's what Dragon Ball Z Kai was trying to solve, the ridiculous pacing.
Granted, the pacing sucked back then too. I remember it taking years to get to the event where Goku finally went super Saiyan. That whole Namek saga dragged on for far too long with nothing actually happening.
I remember for most of the Freeza saga Toonami would make a big deal about having a week of new DBZ episodes. They would play one new episode Monday to Thursday, then start back at the Raddits saga and buy the time they caught up to where they were they had 4 more episodes translated, and then they would do it all again.
Man... I remember having fond memories of it. Plus, sort of a Christmas flick. So come winter break, I turn it on for my eight year old. I get to cooking dinner and about 45 minutes in, he's shaking from it. He slept in our room for the first time in years that night. And the next night. And the next.
Literally just told his mom he's still scared of gremlins. This will be one of the parenting regrets.
White noise laughter tracks wind me up no end. All the hype and screaming on comedy like it's an opera or Ellen show is also painful to experience.
I might just be turning into a grumpy old fart but I also refuse to accept that people want awful pop music plumbed into our supermarkets and dance music in restaurants - why does everything degenerate into a nightclub setting?
I'm watching a lot of old sitcoms and that's a pretty common characteristic. Seems like there's always multiple characters lying and manipulating their loved ones for relatively insignificant reasons. At the end we all have a few laughs and think that's normal.
The show Psych used to be a favorite of mine. When rewatching it recently, there's a string of episodes a few seasons in that are just straight up all racial stereotypes
It's been a hot minute, and I don't particularly want to spend too much time on it, but I think season 5 episode 1 was the final straw with how they handle Chinese culture.
I watched tons of anime. Now everything feels like a redo of something from years before and it’s hard to get into anything. I feel the same about movies.
I have never had patience for anime that goes on and on for hundreds of episodes. I find a lot of modern anime to be annoying in how flat and boring the presentation is.
That said, I have recently enjoyed both SpyXFamily and Dungeon Meshi. They both have quality to the art and as of yet feel like the are going somewhere and not intended to go on for 500 episodes.
Comedy in general. Others have given specific examples of things that are discriminatory, including racism and sexism.
On the one hand, it's sad to realize that your old favorite movie is no longer that, but when you realize why I think it's actually uplifting. You can feel that you've learned something, you've improved as a human being, that you care more about society.
And because there are many genres other than comedy, it's not like you lost all of your favorite movies.
I've avoided rewatching Ace Ventura Pet Detective due to the transphobia
I recall in Boston Legal, William Shatner's character said he liked Trump (this was before his presidency) and that has made me less interested in a rewatch
Yes. My interpretation is that the above person knew that, but they didn't think it was even a remotely funny joke, not that they didn't understand what the implication was.
Not to mention Ace Ventura's too-long scene of showering, burning his clothes, using a plunger to make himself throw up etc. So you kissed someone you didn't know was trans, grow up.
Not defending the joke, but they were dry heaving because it's implied that she made out with
everyone on the police force, including Ace. Thinking about it that's actually worse. Huh.
Having not seen the scene until recently by coincidence, based on the description, I thought it was more like an "incels can't handle this" joke, but then saw it and saw it was used as the smoking gun for an embarrassing guilty verdict. It definitely has "this movie director has an axe to grind" vibes.