Airplane! is the perfect comedy

Ski Patrol, Police Academy 2, and Airplane the list goes on for 80s movies with a single brief topless shot.

I'd argue the self-aware humor of Airplane was really calling out stereotypes like the one pictured, and defusing tensions with humor. Now Revenge of the Nerds, there's a problematic movie.

Frankly a plain topless shot is not in my opinion grounds for anything heavier than a PG rating

I think you can still maintain a PG-13 rating as long as the boobs shown are not directly sexualized and they only appear in one shot or scene.

Airplane was released in 1980, before the PG-13 rating existed. I’m not sure how the film would be rated today, but I’d wager it would not hit PG standards without significant edits.

That preceded the PG-13 rating.

PG movies back then had more swearing and brief nudity like that scene in airplane was fairly common.

Stuff like that is why PG-13 came about. American parents didn't like it when their children saw two frames of boobs in a movie.

Soul Plane was a non-stop parody of black stereotypes. Damn that was good.

I wish it was so simple. Really it should be. A word can mean any number of things based on context or inflection but now i have to really be careful as to not offend. I feel like that's a created thing.

Obviously i say things in a friendly way or in a mean way and I feel like we are just going the "you can't say that word" route. When it's not the word, it's the context.

As such, yes anyone who finds that picture offensive falls into that group. It was also a great movie. Let's dissect Spaceballs for racism next!

if what you're making fun of IS the stereotypes, not the race.

Tell that to my American friends if the N word comes up. Yeah, some things for some people are so wired in as associated with offence or trauma it's better to steer clear. At least in real life. Public media is weird because it's kind of to everyone and no one at the same time. I'm glad some films/etc can make fun in ways some find offensive, but I'm glad I'm not the judge of it!

That’s fun :)

alt-text: map of “"AIRPLANE!" (1980) - international release names translated to English”

I had it on DVD and the French title translates to "Is there a pilot on this airplane?"

"Hey, we're flying!" in Finnish. "Hei, me lennetään!"

I forgot about that. Glorious.

I mean, the producers (David and Jerry Zucker) are Jewish themselves, so these jokes in Airplane are self-deprecating

EDIT: “were” to “are”; AFAIK the Zuckers are still with us 😅

it was a fellow passenger that spoke jive, and the Brady Bunch mom to boot!

e. am stupid, was leave it to beaver mom

Showed my Pilipino wife who's only been here a few years. She was crying.

Naked Gun is another great one.

Kentucky Fried Movie is up there as well.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines

I don't (and I'm not Jewish), but I can see how it might.

The way I see it, if it was a joke to poke fun and it was good-natured, it shouldn't be offensive. I mean the Zucker brothers who were writers on the movie are themselves Jewish, so they thought it was hilarious. All that being said, I don't get to speak for Jews as to what they find offensive.

It might offend some overly sensitive Israelis or Zionists but they are not representatives for all Jews.

The directors (Zucker brothers) are themselves Jewish. Any cancel culture reaction would as silly as the fake-controversy over Speedy Gonzalez, everyone in Mexico who heard about it were scratching their heads in puzzlement, how some white people who got hold of a bullhorn puffed themselves up like a peacock in heat virtuous "white savior who knows better than us" gatekeeping.

Maybe if it were an ad for an airline.

I can't really imagine why people would think so, in context if the movie.

I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.

"Where all the white women at?"

This was the absolute pinnacle of comedy IMO.

"Shieeet!"

*Golly

It really bugs me that YouTube have started adding tracking to the end of their links recently https://youtu.be/5CXeHk9W-iw

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/5CXeHk9W-iw?si=LMv-hzKpOmtFO1E0

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Which was OK; it didn’t have any of the original directors attached to it.

Blazing Saddles openly called out racism and made it the butt of almost all of its jokes. I think both it and Airplane could be made today, and would be received well. Why do you think differently?

Of course not! A studio would take one look at the script and say "hey! These movies already exist!"

Hate to tell you this but in case you thought cancel culture was a recent phenomenon: Richard Pryor (the co-star of Blazing Saddles) was arrested for foul-language during his stand-up routine the same year Blazing Saddles came out.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-12-12/5-comics-arrested-onstage#:~:text=Richard Pryor%2C 1974&text=“He was playing a huge,released on a %24500 bond

Blazing Saddles would be called dated and "done before."

It was originally made as a way to laugh at Westerns, which, up to that point, had dominated the market. A lot of the tropes and plot lines the movie rips on are explicitly there because they were usually in these "safe" Westerns.

They absolutely could. If Dave Chappelle can do 5 hours of shitting on trans people, a Jewish writer can write a scene where a plane is wearing a tallit with a beard.

Well no, if someone tried to make those movies today people would say that it's been done.

They made a CGI Blazing Saddles for kids not that long ago, Mel Brooks was involved too. Paws of Fury (2022) starring Michael Cera and Ricky Gervais. I watched it out of curiosity, it was pretty mid but for a kids movie it wasn't that bad.