Are things like this still "funny"?

[mjr]

Things like the "Jive" scenes from the movie "Airplane!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVJPB3W54Tc

And this...start about 55 seconds in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0j2dVuhr6s

[Daskinor]

No its not.


But on a related note. The 'Jive Woman' in the second clip played June Cleaver in 'Leave it to Beaver'.


I am going to feel old over here.

[Gravekeeper]

No one has spoken jive since like 1970 ( and even then it was on the way out ) and the jive words we still use no one realizes are from jive. Its not even a matter of whether or not its funny so much as whether or not anyone would even get the reference these days. -.-

[AccountingDrone]

OF a certain age, people will still find it funny but youngsters who have no cultural reference of blacksploitation movies and tv shows will be baffled. <shrug> I make no rpetense of trying to be PC any longer, what the hell does one call an American of african descent - blacks, negros, people of color? The terminology has changed so much over just the past 30 years I freaking give up. I figure if I don't call them niggers I am at least trying.

Honestly, I rarely give a damn what color skin someone has, and I really resent people of any color who will assume that because I am so white anglo saxon protestant I freaking glow in the dark that I will automatically be prejudiced.

[KabeRinnaul]

what the hell does one call an American of african descent - blacks, negros, people of color?

You can generally say "black". If someone gets offended by this, and they are black, offer to use African-American instead. If they're white, it's a good litmus test for who's oversensitive.

I don't default to "African-American" myself because it seems wrong that "_____-American" means "born in _____ and moved here" except when the person in question isn't white.

[Andara Bledin]

Considering that the humor in the Airplane! example is derived from laughing at people who fear people who use jive, it's no less funny today than it was then, just updated for a more current fear-trigger.

Satire never goes out of fashion.

[HYHYBT]

Like a few other gags in Airplane!, I find it a bit grating now, but still funny. Much less funny if not for who plays "Jive Lady."

[mjr]

Like a few other gags in Airplane!, I find it a bit grating now, but still funny. Much less funny if not for who plays "Jive Lady."

Absolutely. Who knew June Cleaver spoke jive? I wonder if Ward, Wally, and the Beaver knew??

[Ginger Tea]

I still find Airplane funny even now, (not that I've watched it in close to ten years, I showed it to a co worker way back when).

It was a product of its time, you cant hold it to the moral standings of the present (or the future as we are to it).

These days when I think of Jive talking, it's not this scene but the BeeGee's song. When Mega Tokyo did a l337 spoof of the scene I had sincerely forgotten about it.

I said some time ago that some phrases didn't make it across the pond, or died out before I encountered them and only exist today in movies, when someone said Sambo in one of the Dirty Harry movies I re-watched after getting the box set, I thought it was his name "Sam Beau".