this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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It's important to understand cultural context in old shows. You don't need to agree with them or find enjoyment in every single thing of a show.
For example, The Honeymooners from the 50s openly joked about domestic violence ("pow, right in the kisser"), but the show was still pretty endearing overall.
Well, Married with Children was making fun of that. And a lot of other things, too. It was an anti-sitcom before Seinfeld perfected the idea.
All in the Family did it first. The problem with both shows is it’s real hard to tell satire from actually espousing conservative views and sexism.
Is it though? Was that a problem with the Stephen Colbert Show too?
Yes.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1940161208330904
All I'm reading here is some people weren't capable of getting the joke. That's on them. Those of us that can grasp humor had no problems. And with The Colbert Report if you didn't get the joke you probably were the joke.
Comedy should never be dumbed down for the people that can't understand it.
To be fair, I don't think satire in any way is bad, or that it should be dumbed down - but there are often legitimate issues with the way it's seen to the point of it becoming a meme.
That's on the person that isn't capable of nuance, like @db2 said. There really isn't much else to say. If someone can't understand a joke its thier own fault. Boohoo.
To put it bluntly, that's only a thing that happens for the dim witted. Everyone else is capable of nuance.
The cultural context for myself as a teenage boy was that Christina Applegate was in it.
Yep, she may have been my first real teenage crush lol
For real
Sorry, best I can offer you is a flippant observation about decade old media perceived only through the myopic lens of progressive youth shielded from the realities of culture in America.