Saturday, November 6, 2010

Inappropriate Humor Now, but Then?

Fun story about Back to the Future.*  Disney was scared off because mom's attraction to time-traveling son was at the center of the plot.  Sure, that is understandable, but the discomfort was part of the fun of the movie.  This was the second (at least) bit of humor that seems strange in retrospect this week.  I watched the Women of SNL special with my daughter, who was shocked and just a bit horrified at an old, old skit with Buck Henry playing an Uncle with a Polaroid camera taking pictures of his nieces (Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman) dancing around with their nighties above the heads.  Yep, pedo-jokes!  Acceptable then, not so much now.  And that was much more recent a change than the drunk-driving depicted in an early Mad Men episode that would be wildly inappropriate today. 

Any other examples of stuff that we could laugh about and broadcast about, but cannot now?


*  I think the article jumps the shark or stretches its premise too much at the end.

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