You know you are fucking old when you start watching the old peoples channel. You know the one with the life insurance ads and the ads for the yogurt that makes you crap and stuff. Lately I have been DVRing a lot of show on ALN which is the American Life Network. It has cool stuff like the original Mission Impossible and Hill St Blues and St. Elsewhere and other old shit. But lately we have really been enjoying Rhoda.
You know Rhoda right? Mary Tyler Moore's Jewish friend. I say she is her Jewish friend because it is pretty amusing how much of it is about being Jewish. Now that's something you don't see a lot of anymore on TV. At least for white ethnics like the Irish, Italians, Polish or Jews. You get a lot of shows oriented towards African Americans and Latinos but nary a one that is recognizably about a white ethnic group. Ok I give the Soprano's but that's a special case. I don't know if "Big Love" counts since I don't know how to classify the Mormons. But you don't see a lot of shows that are explicitly ethnic in the way that "Rhoda" or "Bridget Loves Bernie" or "Angie" or numerous other sitcoms of the seventies. It's like those ethnic ties have loosened and people don't think of themselves as Irish or Italian or Jewish anymore. Which in my experience is not true in real life but seems to be true in television. Maybe living in New York I get a different feel than the rest of the country because there are still a lot of people who revel in being Italian or Irish or Jewish or Puerto Rican or Dominican or whatever.
What's one of the most popular shows on TV right now? "Jersey Shore." With stupid guidos acting like stupid guidos. You think someone would realize that there is a lot of money in exploiting offensive stereotypes for comedy thrills.
What's up with that?
7 comments:
You think someone would realize that there is a lot of money in exploiting offensive stereotypes for comedy thrills.
"Sex And The City" did a pretty good job of that.
More recently, "Mad Men" did/does too.
I don't watch much TV, but every time I do, I hear myself say to my wife: "so how come they get away with stereotyping?"
Well "Sex in the City" was really about the sex lives of gay men disguised as women. Mad Men was about the sixties so they could use sterotypes and pretend it was "historical."
But good old fashioned drunken Irishmen, and oily Italians and other rougher sterotypes are not in fashion and are not to be found on prime TV. Even characters named Murphy who wear crosses act like freakin Waspy protestants.
Hey, a show about a retired cop, a bra fitter, and a law professor. Ya know, a little show about nothing.
It would be great if there was a show about conflicted puerto ricans, ya know, puerto ricans who don't want to be puerto ricans but actually wanna 'similate. There must be some out there? Ollaaa.........
I think it's different in New York, but even there, not what it used to be?
Here in L.A., among the broadly-classified-as-white, ethnicity is about on a part with astrological sign.
There are hardcore Latino and Asian subcultures still, but within a generation, the Asian kids tend to really go American. We've always had a strong Mexican element here, so there's more preservation of that over generations.
True story: I worked in politics (agnostic, neutral data supply, not actual involvement) for over 15 years (starting in high school) and we used to keep these lists that would be used to identify ethnicity.
But since you're going after common political interest, you can't just apply them across the board. You can't take a Woo who isn't in Chinatown and send him Chinese mail, because he's probably not interested.
You had to apply the Chinese dictionary IN Chinatown.
Blacks were particularly tricky. You basically had a list of where black people lived, identified all the other ethnicities, and what was left was mostly black people.
But the list of where black people lived got smaller and smaller every year, as they felt less inclined to stay in specific neighborhoods, presumably. We actually had a black politician call up and complain that his children hadn't gotten his mailer, and we just told him: "Tell us how we can identify that these two people living in these neighborhoods are black?"
Shut him up fast.
Ethnicities are dying. Melting, really. That's what America does and is supposed to do. That's why there aren't a lot of Dutch in Manhattan anymore.
Also, I watched AmLife with The Boy while "Maverick" was on.
They don't show "Maverick" any more, so f'em.
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