Eight Comedy Stereotypes that must die

[bpatrick]

As a Southerner, I say amen to the postings about negative stereotypes.
I've had neighbors from the Northeast whose relatives have
come down and been shocked to discover that we wear shoes and do not have
dirt floors in our homes or pigs in our yards. And they can never understand why
everything closes down whenever we get more than a couple of inches of snow.
The answer to that is that it snows so rarely down here that the states feel
it's a waste of money to buy a fleet of snowplows. So we make do with a few
and let Mother Nature do the rest of the road-clearing job. And if the kids have
to make up school days, so be it. But hey, New York: I called an ad agency one
morning about 30 years ago and only one person was in the office. When I asked
where everyone was he said, "Don't you know? We've got 16 inches of snow here."

And Midwesterners (outside Chicago) don't get off scot-free either; I remember
a joke; the comedian (whose name I don't recall) said he was flying over Iowa
and the pilot said "set your watches back a hundred years."

However, to be fair, how many times have you ever seen New Yorkers depicted
as hustlers out to make a buck any way they can? (And I can use a
real-life example that leads to the stereotype: my dad and stepmother once
stayed in a Best Western in New York City, for which they paid $400 for one night
in what was essentially a cubbyhole barely large enough to turn around in.)

 

[Bongwater]

The reason negative Southern stereotypes don't die is because people have made their careers off lampooning them (Jeff Foxworthy, Larry The Cable Guy.)

And let's face it - some Southerners really do live up to the stereotypes.

Seattle people are often painted as smart aleck, coffee shop cruising, tech savvy yuppies on one hand and pot smoking, shoe gazing slacker musicians on the other. Not entirely true on either end, but I know there are those who live up to that characterization here.

 

[LKellerIII]

they could add a few more:

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

^ This.

cd

I would revise that sterotype to racist, countrified intolerant boor. Like all stereotypes, it is not fair, but it exists for a reason. It doesn't help that people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell exist (or have existed) to bolster the stereotype.

I live in San Francisco - and I've seen us sterotyped as leftist, predominantly gay, painfully politically correct, non-patriotic socialists who all walk around in the nude...mostly by Bill O'Reilly and his ilk on Fox News. And to be honest, you will find these people in San Francisco, but they're in the minority. The vast majority of people here are patriotic herterosexual mainstream Democrats (no - there aren't many Republicans) who keep their clothes on in public.

 

[FreddyE1977]

As a Southerner, I say amen to the postings about negative stereotypes.
I've had neighbors from the Northeast whose relatives have
come down and been shocked to discover that we wear shoes and do not have
dirt floors in our homes or pigs in our yards. And they can never understand why
everything closes down whenever we get more than a couple of inches of snow.

Having spent some time around Savannah, GA and Huntsville, AL, I came to appreciate some
stereotypes of Southerners that were positives.

For example the very genteel manners. I experienced that as the real deal.
Was in an Arbys near Savannah where two vans full of young baseball players stopped for lunch.
As a bunch of energetic twelve year olds were jostling at the tables an adult chaperone walked up
to them and said "Gentlemen, I'm surprised at you! Sitting down to partake of a meal, and not one
of you has thought to remove his hat, or to say Grace".

Immediately every kid took his hat off and bowed his head. Amazing and impressive.
I found other aspects of being in the Bible Belt to be rather comforting. People seemed to be
sincerely trying to live out the Biblical admonition to "love thy neighbor". Certainly I did not
get the sense that they intended to oppress any non-believers.

Of course nobody's perfect. Driving around country roads in North Alabama I noticed the place
seemed to have more nudie bars than Pennsylvania and Ohio put together.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Not really a comedy stereotype, but if I were from the South, I'd be quite annoyed by the practice of using subtitles when Southerners are speaking on TV, primarily on reality shows.

 

[justpassingthough]

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.

I think you're off the mark here, especially with the Big Bang Theory. Most of the characters are now in their 30s, but even when they were in their 20s, they really weren't hypersexualized. In fact, some of the characters are known to be completely asexual- which is out of the norm for 20-somethings.

Even if they were all sex-crazed, its not the inappropriate sexualization of young adults. Arguably, social markers like the steadly declining teen pregnancy rate would indicate that television has been sugar coating the reality of society for decades, and today's comedies are a more accurate reflection of the world in which we live.

 

[flytrap]

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.

Funny you should mention the Jerry Lewis incident. I'm from Mississippi and have heard that story all my life . I actually know people who haven't forgotten. I know of a couple of people who told me they don't watch him if he is on TV.
Another incident that stirred up Mississipians was an episode of ER that was based in Mississipp. One ofthe ER doctors came down to "Third World" Mississippi to help in a clinic. What he found was backwoods racist types. The clinic was a run down joint with the waiting room being in a gravel parking lot with second hand chairs. A woman gave birth outside of a shack full of junk that was so far back i n the swamp they had to use a boat. The doc was concerned that the grandfather would kill the baby because he might be interacial. In another scene someone from Pascagoula was injured and had to be sewed up with fishing string because he would have bled to death waiting for an ambulance in a "backwoods" town like Pascagoula. (Pascagoula is a large town on the coast and does indeed have a hospital. The episode angered a lot of people especially people in the medical profession. Local news gave out the email and address so people could send their hate mail.

 

[BlueWanderer]

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 agree that it was justified back then, but things have since changed for the better even if it is a slow transitional. It would be nice if more and more people outside of the South would recognize that change. Especially, the upcoming generations who currently get indoctrinated with what Hollywood, sensationalist news media, and those awful "reality" shows (that I forgot to mention earlier btw) tells them about the South.

I really can't speak for other regions in the country too much since I haven't lived in those areas before. That's why I only briefly mention them in my earlier post.

 

[LKellerIII]

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 agree that it was justified back then, but things have since changed for the better even if it is a slow transitional. It would be nice if more and more people outside of the South would recognize that change. Especially, the upcoming generations who currently get indoctrinated with what Hollywood, sensationalist news media, and those awful "reality" shows (that I forgot to mention earlier btw) tells them about the South.

I really can't speak for other regions in the country too much since I haven't lived in those areas before. That's why I only briefly mention them in my earlier post.

Very good points. I haven't travelled much in the South, outside of New Orleans and parts of Florida, but the few times I have, it has seemed much the same as anyplace else in America.

As a typical urban American, I've found that attitudes and lifestyles are different in rural areas, but it doesn't matter if those rural areas are in Mississippi or Northern California. I recently spent a day in a backward and kind of spooky rural town a couple hours outside of Redding California...lots of emaciated and unfriendly people walking around. I kept thinking 'meth-labs' and that banjo music from Deliverance kept running through my head. But again - that was California.

Disclaimer - I'm not tyring to stereotype rural people either -I realize most country folk are not meth addicts. Just relating a recent experience.

 

[dtuba]

Not really a comedy stereotype, but if I were from the South, I'd be quite annoyed by the practice of using subtitles when Southerners are speaking on TV, primarily on reality shows.

One of my pet peeves, when people speaking perfectly good English (accented or not) are subtitled. An insult to everyone involved, really.

 

[dhett]

Not really a comedy stereotype, but if I were from the South, I'd be quite annoyed by the practice of using subtitles when Southerners are speaking on TV, primarily on reality shows.

One of my pet peeves, when people speaking perfectly good English (accented or not) are subtitled. An insult to everyone involved, really.

Not if you're hard of hearing.

 

[LKellerIII]

Not really a comedy stereotype, but if I were from the South, I'd be quite annoyed by the practice of using subtitles when Southerners are speaking on TV, primarily on reality shows.

One of my pet peeves, when people speaking perfectly good English (accented or not) are subtitled. An insult to everyone involved, really.

Not if you're hard of hearing.

I had my hearing checked about a year ago, and it came up as "normal." But I find that I miss a fair amount of dialogue on TV. I think there are 2 factors:

1. As you get older (I'm 60), your hearing and vision get less perceptive, even if (like me), both test as "normal." Sad as it is to say, I think it's an aging brain thing.

2. Dialogue is much more realistic these days. Actors talk like they do in real life, so they'll talk fast or mumble sometimes. Nobody emotes anymore.

I watch most everything on DVR, so I can always rewind to hear what I've missed, but that gets annoying after awhile. So if I'm watching a show with hard to understand dialogue (especially stuff from the BBC, for example), I'll turn on closed-captioning.

So I actually appreciate it when they throw in subtitles.

 

[BlueWanderer]

Not really a comedy stereotype, but if I were from the South, I'd be quite annoyed by the practice of using subtitles when Southerners are speaking on TV, primarily on reality shows.

Personally, the subtitle issue doesn't bother me. There are those few I've encountered who I really can't understand what they're saying the first time around. A lot of them were much older folks than what you'll find in current day "reality" shows.

What really bugs me the most about those "reality" shows is how the current generation(s) will like use them to paint the rest of the South as being backwards, racist, using religion in a negative light, etc. I've listened to many podcasts, looked around social media, and wandered a bit in other sites' forums to reach to this conclusion. Granted, some are only joking around but you can tell there seem to be a serious disdain for the South or really any other rural area in the country. Perhaps, a lot of it is just normal rebellion against small town life and they will eventually grow out of that. But as a Southerner, it does concern me for the current and future public image of this region given the heinous things that went on in our history.

On a lighter note, another reason why using subtitles doesn't bother me is because I'm very used to watching subtitled anime. Although, I do enjoy the English dubs when they're obviously done right. Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread into anime talk so I'll stop here.

 

[vchimpanzee]

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.

Well, that one episode I mentioned did show someone realizing they were hard-working people who couldn't afford to be swindled.

I observed the first time I watched the early episodes of "The Beverly Hillbillies" that they weren't dumb. Just not familiar with the rest of the world. The performances then were quality. Even Jethro. And the same applies here, really.

 

[dtuba]

Not really a comedy stereotype, but if I were from the South, I'd be quite annoyed by the practice of using subtitles when Southerners are speaking on TV, primarily on reality shows.

One of my pet peeves, when people speaking perfectly good English (accented or not) are subtitled. An insult to everyone involved, really.

Not if you're hard of hearing.

That is why those of us in the television industry make sure there is closed captioning data included in as many shows as possible.

 

[kc1ih]

Another stereotype of old that you don't see on TV anymore is the cheap Jew. Perhaps the best example was played by a Jew himself, Jack Benny, who had to become a big tipper in real life just to show it was only a character and not the real him.

 

[bpatrick]

Oddly, in Benny's day very few people knew he was Jewish
because he never made a big deal of it. In radio days George
Jessel was considered the more stereotypical Jew but he lacked
the warmth to ever have a successful series. But yet, Benny
wasn't quite gentile either, in character.

I know that younger people (teens and 20s) tend to mumble;
I'm around them every day and I find the worst to be a couple
of girls who work in a pet store where I buy food and toys for
my cat, and they drive me up the wall. We have a female weathercaster
on WFMY, Leigh Brock, whom some people around here complain
about because she's almost impossible to understand without
closed captions. Which brings me to my first rule for any on-air
talent: ENUNCIATE, no matter how much effort it takes.

 

[SixtiesGuy]

I'm waiting for the sitcom where intelligent, educated, hard-working and well-mannered southerners move to the South Bronx, or south side of Chicago or downtown Detroit. Think of all the hilarious encounters they can have with the violent, illiterate, crack smoking people who live in filthy, self-demolished subsidized housing. Of course, to the entertainment industry it would be extremely politically incorrect to acknowledge that this side of "sophisticated" urban life even exists.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

I'm waiting for the sitcom where intelligent, educated, hard-working and well-mannered southerners move to the South Bronx, or south side of Chicago or downtown Detroit. Think of all the hilarious encounters they can have with the violent, illiterate, crack smoking people who live in filthy, self-demolished subsidized housing. Of course, to the entertainment industry it would be extremely politically incorrect to acknowledge that this side of "sophisticated" urban life even exists.

Generally yes, but there have been exceptions, ie The Jeffersons, Good Times and, ah heck, what was the name of that sit-com featuring the character of "ReRun"? What's Happening, or something like that ??

 

[PirateJohnny]

Three people walked into a bar. They asked the bartender for a drink. The bartender served them their drinks.

Now THAT'S funny.