Jokes involving racial stereotypes can be funny and inoffensive if what you’re making fun of IS the stereotypes, not the race. The writers of Airplane! being Jewish themselves, I reckon they knew exactly what they were doing. At least the bearded plane is clearly an example of making fun of the stereotype, not the people.
Soul Plane was a non-stop parody of black stereotypes. Damn that was good.
Black Dynamite!
God the conspiracy scene is legendary. This movie is probably the most recent whose humor is so similar to Airplane.
interesting… it turns out GNAA did get their name from that…
(p.s. at least one of the members, weev, went on to become a literal nazi… and is potentially responsible for the rise of trump)
Undercover Brother
Soul Plane was the first movie with John Witherspoon I ever saw (somehow), it will always have a special place in my heart. Man was an absolute comedy legend.
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!
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!
how about the topless shot halfway through this PG movie?! it feels like there is a lot of content they would never achieve that rating with today.
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.
dude, lets just rape some people or otherwise sexually assault them and call it good-natured fun!
Breaking and entering into a sorority, barging into private rooms and house showers/bathrooms, stealing property, and installing hidden cameras in their rooms in order to casually spy on them while they are naked, sleeping, etc. Capturing images of the sorority girls naked, making hundreds of copies of those images, and sharing them with the entire campus to win a school-sponsored competition for a student government seat. Raping a woman while sharing said porn of her and her friends with the entire student body. Said woman then falls in love with her rapist. All played for laughs and zero consequences for any of it. An 80’s hit! Make 3 more sequels of it!
I remember the first bit but not the rape?
It’s toward the end, he’s wearing like a Darth Vader mask or something and let’s her think he’s her boyfriend while he fucks her. That’s rape.
Oh shit yeah I forgot about that part. It’s been probably 10 or 15 years since I’ve seen it. I thought the panty raid and hidden cameras were bad, but damn, that movie did not age well.
From 2010, Hot Tub Time Machine had a short but delightful topless seen that was absolutely sexual
NSFW
https://celebsroulette.com/videos/6025/jessica-par-hot-tub-time-machine-2010/
Frankly a plain topless shot is not in my opinion grounds for anything heavier than a PG rating
Completely agree with you. If a man can show his nipples and it’s fine, why can’t women. It is sexism and misogyny.
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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.
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As a German, this is one of the few movies where the dubbed version is just as good as the original, in parts even better.
Especially the part where they’re speaking Jive, which is “translated” into a thick Bavarian dialect, including subtitles saying something completely different:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4And for some reason, they translated the movie’s title to “Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug” (The Incredible Journey on a Crazy Airplane).
That’s fun :)
alt-text: map of ““AIRPLANE!” (1980) - international release names translated to English”
IS THERE A PILOT ON THE PLANE?
How lmao
Fun fact: in Brazil this movie is infamously called Fasten your Seatbelts, the Pilot is Gone!.
Hey we are flying!
I had it on DVD and the French title translates to “Is there a pilot on this airplane?”
I just checked what it’s called in my country (Slovakia): Pripútajte sa, prosím!
“Buckle up, please!”Same name in Polish… I mean after translation.
Why would they not just name it “L’AVION!”?
“Hey, we’re flying!” in Finnish. “Hei, me lennetään!”
I forgot about that. Glorious.
- Would you like something to read?
- Do you have anything light?
- How about this leaflet, “Famous Jewish Sports Legends?”
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 😅
God I love this movie. True irreverent humor that I don’t want to know if people contained about. Nude breasts that perfectly fit the MPAA PG nudity guidelines of “brief and non-sexual”. So many quotable one-liners. The sight gags were on point and perfectly timed. I WISH movies like this could be made. Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, and all the other parody movies are great, but do not hold a candle to the Airplane! movies.
Naked Gun is another great one.
Kentucky Fried Movie is up there as well.
“It’s true what they say, cops and women don’t mix. It’s like eating a spoonful of Drano; sure it’ll clean you out, but it’ll leave you hollow inside”
I loved the Naked Gun movies.
The Hot Shots movies were funny too.
The obvious one is Blazing Saddles.
Then there is “the gods must be crazy” which I thought was amazing
- Top Secret
- Black Dynamite
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
Do people here think this is offensive to Jews?
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.
I’m just curious because I’m Jewish and I don’t know of any Jews who would find this offensive.
If the plane was rubbing its hands together and yelling “oy vey shut it down” I’d probably hear a dog whistle somewhere. Still wouldn’t get offended tho. I’d just know they’re a special type of moron.
That’s more of a Mel Brooks line anyway 😉
Yeah, this feels like silliness rather than malice.
It might offend some overly sensitive Israelis or Zionists but they are not representatives for all Jews.
I’m not sure you’ve met a real Israeli in your life if you genuinely think this would be offensive to them.
Are you Israeli? I ask because you only took the parts of my comment you wanted then got mad at me about it. Or maybe all Israelis are “overly sensitive”
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
heatvirtuous “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.
“Surely you can’t be serious.”
I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.
I just wanted to say good luck, we’re all counting on you.
Oh sir…? I speak jive :)
“Shieeet!”
*Golly
I preferred Blazing Saddles myself
“Where all the white women at?”
This was the absolute pinnacle of comedy IMO.
People have gotten less sensitive over time, we just don’t laugh at someone saying the n word or making light of sexual assault any more. I grew up on the dark web and the things people say/do nowadays blows even some of the worst stuff I seen there out of the water. Society is maturing, not regressing. Ignore the whingings of hack comedians who still think squinty Asian eyes and bad accents are the pinnacle of humor.
This and blazing saddles could not be made today.
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?
Idk maybe the sheer number of racial slurs said by white characters. I don’t think that would fly in today’s political landscape.
Have you seen any of Quinton Tarantino’s films?
He even did a western where the racism was front-and-center, and the constant stupidity of it all was just hilarious. That doctor’s reaction as they ride into town tells you exactly what kind of movie you’re in for.
Yes. Have you seen the kind of stuff movies get boycotted for?
Truthfully, I don’t watch many movies or keep up with Hollywood. I feel like the art of filmmaking died with the invention of CGI. Deadpool kept me in stitches tho. I finally watched it last month. I know white people got all upset about a black Ariel but gave no notice that it was otherwise a bad screenshot of the cartoon. What other bullshit are folks getting all boycotty over?
You don’t think that openly mocking white people who use racial slurs would fly? How so?
I just think it would be idiotically cancelled for even having that kind of behavior in it in the first place.
Why do you think that would happen? Can you give me some examples of media making fun of racists and getting “canceled” as a result?
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.
While I agree with your point, Richard Pryor was not in blazing saddles.
He did quite a bit of writing for it though.
Cleavon Little, not Pryor.
Of course not! A studio would take one look at the script and say “hey! These movies already exist!”
Now, in all fairness, when did that ever stop the bastards
No they wouldn’t. That logic has not stopped one single, shitty remake and almost all of them have been worse than the originals. So bad we forget they even exist. Robocop, Mummy, Red Dawn, Total Recall come to mind… garbage. I think Road House, Twister, and Mr & Mrs Smith are getting remakes this year, and they don’t look good either.
None of those movies exist. You just made that up! And they definitely never did, and never would remake Point Break. It would be futile and pointless to try to remake such masterpieces of their eras, whose stories really only work in the period they were created.
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.
Mel Brooks sort of put the fork in Westerns. They were maybe dying anyway, but after Blazing Saddles they had to change pretty significantly.
He also got everyone to laugh at all the little polite racist themes that were super common in Westerns. He hung a pretty big lamp on that stuff. You couldn’t do it again, because we’d all just laughed at how stupid it was.
As for people who say it’s too offensive for today’s audience, idk that they ever realized they were being laughed at, not with.
Well no, if someone tried to make those movies today people would say that it’s been done.
They’d also have to be really quick with filming
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.
This movie is straight Gold.
It’s fine, you can still sell it in China, so no big deal.
Airplane 2:
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Which was OK; it didn’t have any of the original directors attached to it.
