Would it be a shock to find "the boys" banned from all streaming services? Oh, not because of the violence. Violence iS WONDERFUL. Sadistic gore movies are a delight. The other night I was flipping the dial, and I saw some rotten thing which I assume was a Stephen King novel brought to the screen. A little boy got his arm bitten off by a deranged clown with viper-like fangs. Then the kid was sucked into a sewer, leaving behind a puddle of blood.
I didn't really need to see this. Flipping around, there was no channel showing a couple having sex. Not even softcore. But THAT bit of sadism was ok.
Same way you can check the Internet and the London Daily Fail, or some other tabloid, will happily show you a mutilated crime victim, an acid casualty or some other vividly disturbing spectacle, BUT...put up a "this may offend you" block on a photo of some starlet exposing her panties exiting a limousine.
But I digress. THIS is not going to be allowed much longer, is it?
You can scare the shit out of people. That's ok. You can even make fun of burn victims (hello, Freddie Krueger) and that's fine. BUT...make them LAUGH? How DARE YOU!!!
The reason The Three Stooges could be banned any day now is their blatant use of words such as, in order of mental impairment:
IDIOT
IMBECILE
MORON
These were, at one time, clinical definitions of mental retardation. In my book "Stooge Fans' I.Q. Test," I mentioned that the classifications often used by Moe, referred to unfortunates who had the mind of a six year old, an eight year old, or a twelve year old.
Now, "retardation" is not used, and most certainly, RETARD. Norm MacDonald, apologizing on "The View" for something he said during a freewheeling interview on the deliberately tasteless Howard Stern pay-radio show, referred to it as the "word beginning with R."
The irony was that he was on Stern's show discussing various PC problems and insensitivities. Headline:
Norm had dared to express the opinion that Louis C.K. losing his CAREER, and losing MILLIONS of dollars, was kind of horrible.
His mistake was that in everyday conversation, he didn't say "you'd have to be an idiot" to not feel badly for the women involved (which COULD be un-PC any day now). He was about to say "you'd have to be retarded..." but caught himself in time, knowing the word got banned after being used in an insensitive way in a Black Eyed Peas song. ("Let's get...stupid drunk" was what they were going for.).
He caught himself in time to say Down Syndrome, which was not an improvement. He's lucky he wasn't banned from ever working again.
Ask yourself this question: would you rather lose the only job you were trained for, and possibly end up working 9 to 5 at something you hate, and drain your bank account to pay your bills because you're out of work...or take a look at Louis C.K.'s dick?
Louis C.K. at various times asked women if they'd mind watching him masturbate in front of them. That's pretty flattering isn't it? This idiot (oops, let's find a different word) is SO excited by a CLOTHED WOMAN that he has to masturbate in front of her.
Is there a guy out there who'd be particularly offended if a woman asked if she could masturbate in front of him?
I mean, aren't men and women supposed to be EQUAL? Have the same job, and therefore the same sensitivities? Yes? No?
Norm admitted that it was pretty awful for a woman to have to deal with sexual harassment, but he also dared to say that maybe it was also awful to lose your job because you acted like a dick in front of somebody who didn't just walk away. OR, didn't say, "What you're doing is wrong."
A male police officer recently discussed being sexually abused and humiliated by a superior FEMALE officer. He was laughed at. Nobody said, "Gosh, that's awful...your superior FEMALE officer should lose her job and NEVER WORK AGAIN.
He had complained when she apparently washed her panties in the communal bathroom and left them to dry. He'd complained to her, so she rubbed them in his face, and/or pushed them into his mouth. Amid various insults. Something like that. But hey, she's still on the force and wasn't suspended, so let's move on. Back to our theme:
If RETARD is now up there with the N-word and the C-word etc. etc. then the M-word (MORON) is not going to last much longer.
As it is, there are some uneasy moments in Three Stooges shorts (as in Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, etc.) where there might be a blackface moment for a laugh (Moe hit with a bottle of ink) or there's a stereotypical janitor or porter popping his eyes over some ridiculous sight gag. The Marx's "Room Service" ends with Groucho imitating Black dialect while everyone sings "Swing Low Sweet Chariot."
There's no question that comedy is the flip side of tragedy, and what is funny to one person, might NOT be funny to somebody else. A person who has just lost a loved one, may not want to watch "The Loved One." Someone with a Down Syndrome child may wince at Moe shouting "IMBECILE!" at Curly. But there's a difference between accepting a dated reference in its context, and banning it. "The Jolson Story" is not a DVD that many libraries would buy these days, and the Stooges may join the uh, blacklist.
How many people shout "IDIOT" or "MORON" at somebody else today? Should that change?
Funny (not very) that some things are sort of ok, and some things are not. "Washington Redskins" is ok. Why?
If Norm MacDonald had said "You'd have to be a moron to not feel sorry for a Down Syndrome person," what would have happened? PS, there are spokespersons for Down Syndrome who have it and can still function very well, who'd simply say, "Nah, don't feel sorry for ME, treat me like anyone else" and leave it at that. It's not that much of a surprise that some people with infirmities are not sensitive about them, and laugh about them. Others don't like it at all, and that can include ageist remarks. Some people at work "kid" an older person, and ask about their virility, or if they still have their own teeth, and shout "Grandpa" or whatever. Funny? A release of tension for people afraid of growing old?
Comedy is a fragile art. Anger is an emotion that can't be bottled up, because that's unhealthy. So, some people will laugh at Moe being angry and calling one of his stooges an IMBECILE. Laugh or don't laugh. But ban it? What kind of nitwit would do that?
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