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Eight Comedy Stereotypes that must die

Are HOT Wacky Latinas (Nadine Velazquez, My Name Is Earl) still okay? ???
 
they could add a few more:

"Christian" person as racist, countrified, moronic boor (those adjectives can be transposed in any order)

"Cool/Hip(hop)" "urban"=black guy/gal

guy/gal with glasses=smart

Cops=bumbling comedic idiots

The Extremely Hot Female Investigator/Detective/Scientist (c'mon, how likely is THAT?)


cheers
 
kinphoenix2 said:
they could add a few more:

"Christian" person as racist, countrified, moronic boor (those adjectives can be transposed in any order)
Click to expand...

Or anyone from the South have to automatically hold any of these same traits usually equipped with the most awful unintelligent sounding accent(s) imagined.

Before anyone yells at me, yes, I know those people really do exist. I just wish that usual stereotype for Southerners would fade away not only in comedy, but in other areas of American entertainment too.
 
kinphoenix2 said:
they could add a few more:

The Extremely Hot Female Investigator/Detective/Scientist (c'mon, how likely is THAT?)
Click to expand...

Let's face it - TV is a visual medium, so the leads and sympathetic guest stars are generally attractive people. "Ugly" is reserved for villains. Successful but less than beautiful or handsome actors are called "character actors" for a reason.

This seems to have accelerated in recent years - maybe because of big screen HDTVs. Obvious example - compare the original Chin-Ho Kelly on the old Hawaii Five-O (Kam Fong) to the new Chin-Ho (Daniel Dae Kim).
 
Not just comedy shows. Speaking of bumbling cops. have you ever noticed that TV cops ususally have a 70's porn star mustache?
What about the evil guy who is blond hair and sounds German
The really smart black dude, who is usually the computer guy, engineer or the brains of the outfit
The black guy that is the head honcho, military commander or President.
The dumb or racist guy that seems to always have a Southern Accent
The Italian guy who is some sort of wise guy or mobster
The black guy who always get killed first in the horror movie.
The hot chick in the movie who whips a whole room full of burley men
Back to TV comedys, in the old days the wife was always ditzy ( Lucy, Gracie Allen or Edith Bunker) now its the men who play the helpless dummy type.
Home Improvement, Everybody Loves Raymond, Malcom in the Middle etc.)
 
or, the most obvious one of all...

The Dad in a traditional nuclear family who is a bumbling, incompetent moron.

He is married to a woman 10,000 times smarter than he his, and even his youngest,
least-experienced children are constantly rushing to his aid to help bail him out of whatever
mess he created for himself this week.

He is the stated reason Bob Newhart would not allow the writers to give him children
on any of his sitcoms.
 
Until the new millenium, Political Correctness was always the driving force characterizing TV stereotypes. In TV's so-called Golden Days, women were the caricature of choice. That focus shifted in the '60s & '70s, favoring the ethnicity theme. The medium continued evolving in the '80s & '90s with the lampooning of men, particularly fathers. Nowadays we're witnessing a darker, not so politically correct trend, the inappropriate sexualizing of children and young adults, ie: The Big Bang Theory and Two And A Half Men.
 
Political correctness turns my stomach. We are so afraid of "offending" someone or some group that there is no humor anymore.
 
To be clear, I'm not advocating political correctness to ruin anyone's fun here. It just as someone from the South, it becomes very tiring to have to either constantly defend this region and/or endure non-Southerners' constant mentality that we are ALL still stuck in the 1950s or earlier. Despite those few who fit that particular stereotype perfectly, we are NOT all like that negative Southern stereotype that they like to shove down our throats. I wish more people would look past what Hollywood and the sensational news media tells them about this region.

Yes, I'm aware other regions of the country have their own similar issues with negative regional stereotypes. But because of our history over the last few hundred years, the South does seem to get hit the hardest. This may seem like whining to some who reads this, but I'm really only venting and possibly clarifying here.
 
BlueWanderer said:
But because of our history over the last few hundred years, the South does seem to get hit the hardest.
Click to expand...
It's not just our historical past. It's also the classist, regionist, lazy-writing, pigeonholing tendencies of media people in other provincial groups that made them continuously use stereotypes, often Southern ones.
Until WTBS I don't think there was ever any broadcast media done from a Southern perspective on any large scale for outsiders to even have any broader perspective than they got in their provincial little heads....
 
BlueWanderer said:
To be clear, I'm not advocating political correctness to ruin anyone's fun here. It just as someone from the South, it becomes very tiring to have to either constantly defend this region and/or endure non-Southerners' constant mentality that we are ALL still stuck in the 1950s or earlier. Despite those few who fit that particular stereotype perfectly, we are NOT all like that negative Southern stereotype that they like to shove down our throats. I wish more people would look past what Hollywood and the sensational news media tells them about this region.

Yes, I'm aware other regions of the country have their own similar issues with negative regional stereotypes. But because of our history over the last few hundred years, the South does seem to get hit the hardest. This may seem like whining to some who reads this, but I'm really only venting and possibly clarifying here.
Click to expand...
You probably wouldn't like "The Real McCoys". I just discovered that on a religious station here--it does fit because last night they really demonstrated their faith. For some reason, the station chooses to air one show five times a week from its .2 channel RTV.
 
vchimpanzee said:
BlueWanderer said:
To be clear, I'm not advocating political correctness to ruin anyone's fun here. It just as someone from the South, it becomes very tiring to have to either constantly defend this region and/or endure non-Southerners' constant mentality that we are ALL still stuck in the 1950s or earlier. Despite those few who fit that particular stereotype perfectly, we are NOT all like that negative Southern stereotype that they like to shove down our throats. I wish more people would look past what Hollywood and the sensational news media tells them about this region.

Yes, I'm aware other regions of the country have their own similar issues with negative regional stereotypes. But because of our history over the last few hundred years, the South does seem to get hit the hardest. This may seem like whining to some who reads this, but I'm really only venting and possibly clarifying here.
Click to expand...
You probably wouldn't like "The Real McCoys". I just discovered that on a religious station here--it does fit because last night they really demonstrated their faith. For some reason, the station chooses to air one show five times a week from its .2 channel RTV.
Click to expand...
I don't think The Real McCoys really fits any negative stereotypes. I'm not particularly defending the show - it's a corny old thing (and was at the time), but the family portrayed was quite admirable - poor and uneducated - yes - but otherwise good people. And they were from West Virginia, which is barely the south - it was not in the Confederacy - not the deep south, certainly.

I think the south has been an easy target since the Civil Rights era. And as far as I'm concerned - the derision was justified during the fight over de-segregation. Some really awful things happened in the South.

I seem to recall that either Johnny Carson (or somebody filling in for him) made a joke in the 60s or early 70s about flying over Alabama, and having the desire to go use the bathroom. Many southerners objected, but I don't recall if an apology was issued, or not.
 
Went back and Googled this after my last post. It was Jerry Lewis filling in for Carson, and he did apologize the next day.

Partial quote from another website:

Back in 1968, Jerry Lewis told a “joke” on The Tonight Show as a guest host for Johnny Carson. Lewis recounted in the “joke” how he’d realized a lifelong dream by “using the bathroom while flying over Mississippi.” The next night, Lewis made an on-air apology — but his career took a hit in the South generally and in Mississippi in particular as movie theaters here refused to screen his films.
 
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