Spearthrower wrote:Ironclad wrote:Yeah sorry Spear, I’ve been busy. Xmas, babies, house renovation. I’m here occasionally but am failing to follow the threads strictly lately.
Fair enough and a merry Christmas to you.
Ironclad wrote:The reactionary stance? I guess I get bored of reading that young folk are having to fan their faces in shock at often such trivial matters, lest they faint or something; and others with the power to control media, pandering to this new wave of butthurtery. A decade ago this forum would have poked gentle fun at such farce, I’m annoyed the edge has evaporated.
It seems a significant mistake to me to caricature all forms of aspirational equality by lumping it in with the extreme kooky ideas bandied about on the fringe. I don't know and can't see why a warning on media should be either problematic or cause for mockery. The media's still there to be consumed, but now it has an advisory similar to an age advisory and for similar reasons. I personally think parents should be proactive in monitoring what their kids watch, and these advisories can help with that. That's not to say that parents should censor these older films and programs, but that they might want to be prepared to have some kind of discussion, or explain the context for their kids.
One example show that springs to mind for me is Rising Damp, which I think we're both old enough to remember!
Rising Damp is interesting on many levels. It displays a period of time in recent British history that a significant percentage of tv viewers are too young to remember. In the mid 70's when the show was made, the first UK born generation of black british were growing up, going through the school systems, and entering the work-force. The violent clashes of the past had largely been replaced by a reasonable level of acceptance and a general social agreement that racism was the undesirable element, rather than the other races. The comedic crux of the show sets up the white protagonist as a foil to that old school racism with his views being shown as preposterous and the black antagonist as being charming, honest and intelligent. It's the political correctness of the 1970's and provides a really interesting window into social attitudes of that time in a comedy format. It's definitely not intended to offend black British people.
However, I think a younger black British person watching it today might still rightly be shocked at the cruder expressions of racism, even though portrayed ironically, that were still socially normal at that time (that's particularly the case when it comes to adults choosing what's suitable for their kids). The fact is that were that show made today, it wouldn't get funded or made. That's not to say that shows can't feature comedic racial based interactions between characters, but that they're comedic racial based interactions which people today find funny rather than crude and offensive.
For me, when it comes to talking about warnings on shows, there's a really simple aspect to this I think people don't acknowledge sufficiently. Firstly, it's entertainment, and shows are meant to entertain not fuck people off. Secondly, it's a business, and just as with any business, a show or network becomes successful by netting as many customers as possible, and so it needs to appeal to as many different potential viewers as possible. That wasn't the case with yesteryear when audiences were national and in many respects homogeneous, but just doesn't work from a business perspective today.
Finally, there's our aging. Just like your grandpa might have scorned the music of your day as a horrible din, so I think it's easy for old codgers like you
to not grasp that society has
changed already, and will continue to change, and choosing to dig in your heels isn't going to stop it; it's just going to make you a fossil. Perhaps you're right that a decade ago this forum would have poked fun at this (I don't actually believe you're right, unless you're referring to the Politics subforum which has, I am afraid to say, always been something more like a zoo from my perspective) but perhaps the world simply has changed in that time. Actually, I honestly think many people here would
always have been able to recognize racism and reject it on rational grounds while also being able to spot the silly fringe nonsense and make due mock of it; I found Atheism+ to be a great big pile of wibbly bollocks for example, but I am pretty damn sure you wouldn't be able to find any post I've ever made on this forum which dismissed or made light of racism. For me, the 'edge' this place possessed was the ability to dissect bad ideas rationally - it was of course not ubiquitous among the membership which was, I suppose, at least part of the fun therein. But from that perspective, I can't say as I've seen any rational reason offered as to why such an advisory should not readily be supported. No butthurt fanned faces required.
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