this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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I was too young back then.
In hindsight, this show was a terrible idea.
Glorification of the Confederates and the protagonists called "the good old boys" would be instantaneously shut down and called out today for the racist white supremacist idea that it is.
The shows antagonists were a wealthy business man turned politician who wielded the corrupt police force to feed his own power and oppress the common folk. And while his nickname was Boss Hogg, the villain's canon name was Jefferson Davis Hogg. Pretty literally calling the cops confederate pigs.
Definitely a lot of problematic elements to the show, but there's some good there too. And I'm sure it influenced a ton of car action sequences for decades.
Yes the show itself outside some very visible totems like the car unfortunately, didn't really touch on issues of bigotry and racism. Had it just been about a back woods moonshining family in an unmarked car harassing the corrupt governor and police. There wouldn't be a lot of uproar. Hell it might be embraced.
Oh FFS, if you were young then you also remember All in the Family and The Jeffersons, shows that were in-your-face anti-racist. Prime time was hardly in a mood for racist bullshit.
What if I said the show was racist because it showed white, country people as wide-eyed, stupid hicks? How ridiculous does that sound?
A good point. "All in the Family" was based on a British show called "Till Death Us Do Part". That show featured a main character called Alf Garnett who was very racist and sexist. He was intended to mock the reactionary working class conservatives of the time but people dismissed the show as being in favour of the things that the character came out with because they couldn't understand the satire.
He's called Archie Bunker in the States and a lot of older Americans (Boomers and Xers mostly) love him because he shares their views. They don't get that that's a bad thing and he's shown to be wrong and backward on the show.
The same type of people that thought The Colbert Show was serious.
I may be giving too much but I think some writers tried to steer public opinion lessen hatred using characters like Archie as a tool. If you pay attention over the course of the series while he never becomes good a lot of the hate lessened and he'll admit people or things he hated were ok.
I.e. the racists become emotionally attached to him, so when Archie "learns" they will. (In theory)
I do think that was the intent. All in the Family was progressive show for the time.
'redneck dumbass' isn't a race, though.
Except that they are now seen as affirmation of the racism nowadays. They miss the point entirely.
As opposed to the white country heroes of the show who were always the most clever, compassionate, capable, ethical? I’d say that’s a bad take
Pretty ridiculous, considering you’d be comparing making classist jokes with the glorification of a nation founded to maintain the enslavement of black people.
In the 70s in the south people knew what that flag meant, just like they know what it means now.
To be fair, virtually everything more than 20 years old is some flavor of "problematic" today.
Not really. Those that aren't are still appreciated today still. Like the Golden Girls or Fresh Prince.
You know an episode of Golden Girls was pulled from Hulu for blackface right? Or the jokes about Dorothy's rape (there are several of those)?
Or "Wham, Bam, Thank You Mammy" , Maurgerite in general or having the same actor play different characters with different ethnicities that are broadly the same general color (for example Mr. Tanaka and Dr. Chang played by the same actor so apparently the show can't tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese people?), racist jokes about Chinese food, things Sophia had to say about Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Arabs, Rose in a Native American headdress, Rose pretending to be an exchange student, Blanche defending the Confederate flag... Yeah, there's a lot problematic about Golden Girls and a lot of it was about race.
I suspect I could spit out a similar list of examples for Fresh Prince if I dug down on it, though it probably would be less about race and more about sex or disability or weight or sexual orientation or some other demographic line that was a common well for comedy back then that is a problematic -ism or -phobia now.