Are my friends right that TV is more PC nowadays than before? (cartoons, the office)
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Today, you can't air any shows where the man calls the lady "honey, sugar, sweetie" today unless it was a dad talking to his own daughter. You also can't show a hot young blonde acting oblivious to the wisecracks while smiling silently made by a comedian or leading man.
Well the thing is, is that I haven't watched a show on censored TV in a long time. I finally started to watch Breaking Bad, and How to Get Away with murder, which are broadcast shows, and if those shows are considered politically correct for TV air, than even those ones go further than 90s shows.
I watched Breaking Bad but only saw the 1st season of How to Get Away with Murder.
Putting aside that Breaking Bad was a cable show, what did you find politically incorrect about these shows?
Oh well Breaking Bad things in it that wouldn't be allowed back in the 90s I would say. I've never seen a show back then where a family man slowly descends into becoming America's biggest drug kingpin, and mass murderer. If murdering around 12 people counts as mass...
Maybe How to Get Away with Murder is a better example, cause it's on ABC, which is broadcast, and that show has quite a few gay sex scenes in it, which could never be aired back on the 90s. So I thought that content has pushed further today therefore.
Oh well Breaking Bad things in it that wouldn't be allowed back in the 90s I would say. I've never seen a show back then where a family man slowly descends into becoming America's biggest drug kingpin, and mass murderer. If murdering around 12 people counts as mass...
Maybe How to Get Away with Murder is a better example, cause it's on ABC, which is broadcast, and that show has quite a few gay sex scenes in it, which could never be aired back on the 90s. So I thought that content has pushed further today therefore.
There's definitely stuff shown today that wouldn't have been in the 90s, but I think there's some confusion about the term PC. The following video shows plenty of politically incorrect stuff said by Sheldon's mother on The Big Bang Theory. And it's fine for broadcast TV because of how it's handled.
A few years ago there was a lot of people complaining because a Cheerios commercial showed an interracial married couple with a child. These days almost every commercial I see has an interracial couple. Almost every TV show has a lot of diversity and we see women in roles we wouldn't have seen 25+ years ago so I would say TV has become a lot more PC while pushing the envelope with a lot more sex and violence.
A few years ago there was a lot of people complaining because a Cheerios commercial showed an interracial married couple with a child. These days almost every commercial I see has an interracial couple. Almost every TV show has a lot of diversity and we see women in roles we wouldn't have seen 25+ years ago so I would say TV has become a lot more PC while pushing the envelope with a lot more sex and violence.
Having more women and people of color on TV isn't Political Correctness. That's just common sense.
Only being able to use certain words or approach certain subjects (women, race, sexuality, etc.) in a politically mandated way while demonizing any other viewpoint is Political Correctness.
The first example that comes to mind is an old one: the controversy that sprung up over Silence of the Lambs back in the '90s. Were protesters right to point out and object to the fact that for years Hollywood's only portrayal of gay characters were as comic relief or reprobates? Yup. Totally just criticism. Were they right to insist that no gay character ever be portrayed in a negative light? Nope. That's dumb, because that would cease to make gay people human and relatable. Gay people have just as many problems and vices as the rest of us.
This over-reaction is endemic on TV and in movies today.
Here is a good expose on this very topic. He concentrates mostly on an episode of DOCTOR WHO, but most of what he says could easily be applied to most American, Canadian, and British TV today.
I'm referring to the dumb blonde routine that appeared on Bob Hope Specials or The Tonight Show. That just wouldn't be PC any more. You still see sexy blondes on TV, but the "dumb" routine is out these days. It's not PC for men to address women that they know platonically any more as "sugar" or "honey." If a woman calls another woman "honey," it's not an endearment.
My friends always say things like how old shows could never be aired on TV nowadays. Things like All in the Family, or Boston Legal for example, would be too politically incorrect for nowadays.
Your friends are idiots. Sorry, OP, but they missed the whole point of AIF. Archie Bunker was a specific type that was portrayed deliberately to be made fun of. He was a cartoon character, like Coyote. Clearly, that went completely over your friends' heads.
TV has always had its "PC" aspects: the stereotypical family of the 50's/60's, as portrayed on shows like Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Donna Reed, where the perfect middle-class families that we were supposed to believe represented the typical middle-class family. (In fact, those two-story homes were more like upper-middle class, but the propaganda was, that average Americans were all that prosperous.)
All In the Family was popular precisely because it broke this mold, and showed a more realistic family, with all kinds of problems, an overbearing, crude and rude father, and so on.
How old are you and your friends? I'm guessing--not old enough to be able to put all of that into perspective.
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