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| 9 | * ''Series/The10thKingdom'': |
| 10 | ** A shockingly insensitive portrayal of MagicalRomani shows up in the series, where the tribe are portrayed as dark and otherworldly, who imprison magic birds to use them in spells and punish Virginia for freeing them by [[GypsyCurse cursing her]]. They also have rather stereotypical accents. |
| 11 | ** Virginia considers herself a loser because, in her early twenties, she still lives with her father and works as a waitress. After the 2008 recession, her having a job at all would be considered admirable, and the following decade would see the rising housing market make it rather common for young people to still live at home well into their thirties. Given that she lives in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and has an apartment overlooking Central Park in exchange for Tony being the building's janitor, her situation looks quite good from a 2020s point of view. |
| 12 | ** Tony makes a wish that his asshole boss and his family would be his slaves. Once they're under the spell, Tony starts flirting with the boss's wife, who is enchanted too. Some lines of dialogue imply he wants to sleep with her. Tony is intended as a flawed yet ultimately sympathetic protagonist, and yet the idea that he would sleep with a woman who's been magically enchanted into wanting it doesn't get touched on. He doesn't get any further though for other reasons. |
| 13 | * ''Series/Adam12'' have a couple of instances when it was shown that kids were far more free range than would be allowed now. One episode has a boy of about 11 or 12 say his mom was gone to the market. Most parents wouldn’t dream of leaving a kid alone now even at that age. |
| 14 | * ''Series/{{ALF}}'': The third season episode, "Promises, Promises," deals with Lynn dating one of her college professors, with him being in his 30s and her not being even 20. While Kate has her suspicions about the professor probably wanting to use her, Willie shows little concern. In 1988, broader society was only just beginning to question the acceptability of a sexual relationship between a male professor and a female student, which in earlier decades was fairly common and seen as desirable for the woman (especially if she could [[MRSDegree get the professor to marry her]]); if the attention was unwanted, it was on the student to say no. In the later part of the 20th century, it became much more understood how difficult it can be for a student to refuse an instructor's advances, or how a professor can use their authority to exploit students even with consent. These days, a professor getting involved with one of their students--even one that's a legal adult--is considered a massive breach of ethics. |
| 15 | * In 1972, Creator/MerrillHeatter and Bob Quigley produced a short-lived game show called ''The Amateur's Guide to Love''. It had a ''Series/CandidCamera''-esque premise with a van secretly observing unsuspecting lovers using hidden cameras. If this show was tried today, people would be up in arms about being watched and exploited on national television. The idea of using a van to do so won't sit well either due to it [[MistakenForPedophile having other implications]] [[PaedoHunt these days]]. |
| 16 | * ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'' |
| 17 | ** A first-season episode revolves around Ellie trying to make-over a tomboy farm girl. Her not wearing makeup or dresses is treated like SeriousBusiness, but can still be somewhat forgiven since she wants to try those things out. The ''real'' Values Dissonance hits in the ending. Her father complains that she can't help with the chores dressed like that, until the farmhands start hitting on her. Andy then tells him that, since she's a girl, she isn't any good at hard labor (''despite the opposite being shown about ten minutes earlier''), but now that she's been made over, she can be used to land him a son-in law. |
| 18 | ** In one episode, Andy lets a young boy hold a gun. Granted, the gun is empty, and Andy makes it clear that guns are dangerous, but a scene like that would ''never'' air today. |
| 19 | * ''Series/AreYouBeingServed'' has many, many examples through the 1970s of poking fun at the culture or speech patterns of foreigners that today seem shocking in their prejudice. There's also the CampGay Mr. Humphries. |
| 20 | * ''Series/TheATeam'': |
| 21 | ** There are many ethnic stereotypes on the show, mainly found in the form of the bad guys (usually either loud, raucous, stupid Hispanic bandits in Latin America or New York-ish Italian gangsters in L.A.) and some of the A-Team's disguises. Hannibal's [[ContinuityNod most referenced]] comic disguise is a ChineseLaunderer (which even appears in the opening credits of the first season), and in another episode he and Murdock have to disguise themselves as Native American warriors, complete with whooping. While ethnic stereotypes may not be eliminated from media, such blatant examples would never show up on TV today, except in parody. |
| 22 | ** While even ''this'' probably wouldn't fly today, the trope got a cursory nod in an episode in the first season where Hannibal briefly disguised himself as a black bellhop. He and B.A. had a light-hearted exchange over the quality of it: |
| 23 | ---> '''Hannibal:''' Remember, black is beautiful!\ |
| 24 | '''B.A.:''' Not on you it ain't. |
| 25 | ** Today, Hannibal probably couldn't constantly refer to the GirlOfTheWeek as "lady" and ''definitely'' couldn't disguise himself in blackface, and Face probably couldn't get away with statements like, "You know these co-eds - lost without a man to guide them," or "Now I'm about to chauffeur a spoiled heiress to some sandlot of a country so she can marry some guy with a towel wrapped around his head." |
| 26 | * ''Series/BabylonFive'' has a running joke in the first season where every time Talia Winters enters an elevator, Mr. Garibaldi is inside waiting for her with a happy grin. Talia actually comments on this and seems quite freaked out. In the mid '90s this might have seemed to just cast Garibaldi as playfully persistent, if a little bit pushy, but rewatching it in modern times, this actually comes off as stalking or harassment, especially given that Garibaldi is Head of Security and, since he turns up every time Talia summons the elevator, is presumably monitoring Talia's movements. This was an inside joke among the cast, as the two actors were married at the time. The scenes ended when the off-screen relationship did. |
| 27 | * ''Series/{{Banzai}}'', a late-night spoof on Japanese TV gameshows and the East Asian tendency to bet on almost anything, was cult viewing in Britain. Funny turned-up-to-eleven Japanese presenters preside over escalatingly ridiculous bets in a show deliberately filmed to evoke the worst excesses of Japanese TV, and it was viewed as light-hearted fun in the UK. Not so on export. Canadian TV was forced to pull the show on "racism" grounds after sustained protests from East Asian groups, and Japanese-American protests killed both the original show and a local remake in the USA. |
| 28 | * ''Series/BarneyAndFriends'': In seasons 1 to 6, the kids hang around their school outside of school hours with no adult supervision. Nowadays, the only time K-12 students are allowed outside is generally during P.E. classes or recess due to safety concerns. |
| 29 | * ''Series/Batman1966'': The episode "Nora Clavicle and the Ladies Crime Club" comes off as quite anti-feminist when watching it today. The eponymous villain is a StrawFeminist [[DoesNotLikeMen in the extreme]] who replaces the cops of Gotham City with women, who are depicted as caring more about their makeup, recipes, and shopping than actually solving crimes. Her plan revolves around using EekAMouse played straight. Although both Batgirl and Nora herself are depicted as capable, the other women are not. And the dialogue of several of the characters, Commissioner Gordon & Chief O'Hara especially, comes off as sexist; the show could get a pass due to it being [[{{Camp}} campy]] and therefore not meant to be taken seriously, but it's still a little cringey to watch. Then the way Batman and Robin themselves talk to Batgirl sometimes can be seen this way, with them repeatedly telling her to "leave the crime fighting to the men," sometimes not even thanking her for saving their lives but chiding her for being late. She is also often the one to get knocked out first in fights or get captured. |
| 30 | * ''Series/{{Bat Masterson|1958}}'' has an episode where a woman is spanked for her crimes. While the show is set in the 1870s, and spanking was still common practice in women's prisons when it aired in 1959, that kind of punishment nowadays would've been grounds for a lawsuit and depictions of it would come across as inappropriate. |
| 31 | * ''Series/BarneyMiller'': |
| 32 | ** The show has an [[http://www.hulu.com/watch/9225/barney-miller-rape episode]] where a woman comes into the police station distraught and says she's been raped. When it turns out that it was her husband, it's treated as a big joke and she ''learns her lesson'' that she should put out. Words cannot describe how cringe-inducing this is now, with the public increasingly sympathetic to rape victims and marital rape being taken just as seriously nowadays as other types of rape. |
| 33 | ** The [[RecurringCharacter recurring character]] Marty starts out as a CampGay stereotype as well as a grifter, a characterization that would not fly today. However, the show veers rather quickly into FairForItsDay, as he soon receives a StraightGay partner, and his [[CharacterizationMarchesOn criminality falls by the wayside]]. Some later episodes have a pro-gay rights [[TheAesop aesop]], even adding a recurring StraightGay police officer. |
| 34 | ** The second season episode "Heat Wave" is made of values dissonance from start to finish. The main plot mines its "comedy" from Wojo [[DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale almost being raped]] while dressing in drag to catch muggers, and Detective Wentworth being [[ArentYouGoingToRavishMe offended that the would-be rapist pushed her aside]]. The main subplot, meanwhile, involves a battered wife deciding whether or not to sign a complaint against her husband, lots of jokes from Fish about how a relationship involving an abusive husband and a wife who just takes it "works," and a studio audience clearly rooting for her to drop the charges. (To the show's credit, she does go ahead with signing the complaint - although it's a near thing.) |
| 35 | * ''Series/{{Benson}}'': In the episode “Don’t Quote Me”, Eugene punishes his daughter Katie by giving her a spanking. Nowadays, spanking children is illegal in numerous countries. |
| 36 | * ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'': There's a lot of casual sexism, even though the show tried to be progressive in other areas (depicting Willie Mays as a warlock for example). Darrin and Larry are often rather chauvinistic. In one instance, even Endora is convinced that Darrin is having an affair because his current client happens to be an attractive business''woman'', and presumably she can't imagine why he would wine and dine her the way he would a male client.\ |
| 37 | The series' sexism is codified in the rule that Witch Magic cannot overrule Warlock Magic. [[MagicAIsMagicA Period]]. Meaning that the weakest Warlock is stronger than the strongest witch, just because. Made overt by the episode where Samantha persuades a milquetoast HenpeckedHusband Warlock to stand up to his harpy of a wife. Once he decides to assert himself, her most powerful curses can't affect him. His wife sees his new assertiveness as arousing and immediately takes a more subservient stance towards him. |
| 38 | * ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'': |
| 39 | ** The oft-circulated clip where the parents talk about the MallSanta having a fatal heart attack while their kindergarten-aged daughter was sitting on his knee (the parents joke about the reindeer pulling a pine box [[GallowsHumor as if they were pallbearers carrying a coffin]]). A sitcom today wouldn't do this, as many places in the UK and USA have banned children from sitting on the laps of mall Santas because of sexual molestation and pedophilia fears. |
| 40 | ** Another episode has Cory videotaping the school and interviewing random students. When Feeny is shown, he quickly says he doesn't want to know why he's doing that. In recent years, a lot of schools have disciplinary action towards videotaping and taking pictures of students and school interiors without prior consent from a faculty member. |
| 41 | ** One episode has Feeny scheduling 3 exams on the same day in order to get people to study harder. The class stresses out and starts studying to borderline burnout (bar Cory and Shawn, who procrastinate). Mr. Turner and the kids try to get him to spread the dates out a little bit so it's not such a stress on them. In the end, they learn Feeny was right to put the tests so close together, because now they ''know'' the material rather than just memorizing it for the test. While the moral of having to learn something rather than just remember it for the test is good, Feeny's actions of putting the tests so close together ages very poorly, as in recent years stress levels, burnouts, and self-harm incidents related to schoolwork have increased exponentially in high school students, and studies have proven this type of stress is detrimental to their mental health. |
| 42 | * ''Series/TheBradyBunch'': |
| 43 | ** Aside from the occasional hint, you often couldn't tell that Carol was divorced. This is because ABC Standards & Practices policies forbade divorced characters from having children. These regulations were lifted halfway through the series' run. |
| 44 | ** In "A Clubhouse is Not a Home," Mike is asked what he would do if his sons wanted to play with a dollhouse. He answers by saying that he would take them to see a psychiatrist. If the show aired in modern times, gender rights advocates would demand that ''Mike'' be the one to see the psychiatrist for making a comment like that.[[note]]And this is HarsherInHindsight given that we now know that Robert Reed was gay, closeted, and miserable about it.[[/note]] |
| 45 | ** "A Fistful of Reasons," where Cindy is targeted by a bully because she talks with a lisp: |
| 46 | *** The Bradys never think to take the problem to the school, which is standard procedure today, and the boy's father thinks it's normal for kids to pick on other kids. Sadly, some parents still do think that way, but it's highly likely that things in the episode would be seen differently now, when bullying is taken far more seriously and more people are aware of the potential consequences. It's also worth noting that Peter could possibly have been suspended along with the bully for the fight, given many schools' no-tolerance policies about fighting these days. |
| 47 | *** Mrs. Hinton telling Carol that she effectively lets her husband (Mr. Hinton) walk all over her and lets him raise Buddy. Carol never seems to quite get that this may be a call for help. |
| 48 | ** "Cyrano de Brady": Greg's handling of getting an unwanted crush (Kerry, a seventh-grade girl who was in Peter's class) off his back and re-directing her to Peter. At one point, he agrees to go along with Kerry, but then advances on her (in a misguided attempt to scare her off). Mike and Carol watch from afar but don't intervene, even when it appears Greg is about to seduce Kerry. Today, they would step right in and stop it immediately. Additionally, even though Greg, by now a high school junior, had made it clear he has no interest in Kerry, even the implication that he was associated romantically with someone barely into junior high would land him in hot water. |
| 49 | ** The three-part Hawaii trilogy has two examples, both involving Greg: |
| 50 | *** “Hawaii Bound” sees Greg try to get a little too close to the Hawaiian girl trying to “lei” him. (Although Carol does stop it.) Greg might get slapped today or even — if the girl was especially guarding herself — charged with misdemeanor attempted sexual assault. |
| 51 | *** “Pass the Tabu,” where Greg goes to the beach to watch girls; none of the girls seem to care, and they certainly don’t speak up. Today, in the post-#[=MeToo=] era, it is far more likely a lifeguard (at least) would tell Greg to knock off the leering and watching girls, and this would be true even without one of the female beach-goers saying anything. |
| 52 | ** The Season 4 episode "Bobby's Hero," where at the beginning of the episode Mike and Carol are called to the school after Bobby (off-screen) brings a toy gun to school and plays outlaw Jesse James, annoying and harassing classmates by "holding them hostage." Indeed, as late as the 1980s, bringing a toy gun to school - while a definite no-no - would get the culprit off with little more than a stern warning to never do it again. Today, Mike and Carol would be fighting a losing battle to keep Bobby in school, let alone even get him enrolled in any alternative school. |
| 53 | ** Even though TV had gotten past the [[SleepingSingle 'separate beds']] thing by this time, [[NobodyPoops it was apparently still taboo to show a toilet]], as the kids' bathroom obviously lacks one. |
| 54 | * ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': |
| 55 | ** Willow snaps after Warren kills her girlfriend. She reacts by researching dark magic, healing Buffy (who was also shot), taking the bullet that was used, and hunting down and torturing Warren before [[FlayingAlive flaying him alive]]. The show treats it as Willow falling to evil, but for some viewers of the time it was hard to see what exactly she does that's so wrong. The idea that torture is morally acceptable against ''bad people'' is definitely a modern issue of values dissonance, as some people think that makes perfect sense but others are absolutely horrified. |
| 56 | ** The way [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale the sexual coercion and assault of male characters]] is treated. When Faith switches bodies with Buffy and [[RapeByFraud has sex with Riley]], it's Buffy (not Riley) who is supposedly the victim. In another instance, when Buffy is invisible, Spike says no to sex multiple times and Buffy ignores this and does it anyways. This is never called out as sexual assault or addressed in any way or by the narrative. Faith forcing herself on and then suffocating Xander is taken extremely seriously, though. |
| 57 | ** Buffy's relationship with the vampire Angel is for the most part portrayed romantically (if tragically). Today, the idea of a centuries-old vampire (and an adult man at that) hooking up with a sixteen-year-old teenage girl ''would not fly. At all.'' His behaviour towards her as well, up to and including stalking her before and after their relationship (including paying some else to stalk her), talking down to her and often treating her like a child, ''wanting to sleep with her so badly he was scared he was going to force himself on her so resorted to trying to kill himself (!!)'', and making all the important decisions without her input, is especially problematic. He also slept with her when she was seventeen, when the age of consent in California is eighteen, and this case of Statutory rape is never addressed. Granted, while their relationship was deconstructed occassionally, it wasn't nearly often enough. |
| 58 | ** In season 4, Buffy starts dating Riley, who is her TA in one of her classes at college. [[UnequalPairing This has raised many modern viewers' eyebrows]], and is especially problematic because Riley was supposed to be Buffy's ''healthy'' relationship. |
| 59 | ** When Willow starts dating Tara, she uses expressions like "gay now", even though she had previously had an attraction to men in the first four seasons. Never once is the possibility of bisexuality even mentioned, and Tara even insinuates in Season 5 that she thinks Willow sees her as just an experiment before she goes back to boys, which alludes to the now-hated stereotype of bisexuals as promiscuous and unfaithful. The show is simply from a time where it was believed that [[NoBisexuals bisexuality didn't exist]], with WordOfGod saying that the network were worried that portraying Willow as bi would make her relationship with Tara come across as a phase. |
| 60 | ** In Season 5, Ben summons a demon to kill the people that Glory drove insane, and says that he's been "cleaning up Glory's mess" for his entire life. While the demon is ''clearly'' portrayed as a monster, Ben's decision to summon it is completely glossed over, despite the fact that he works at a hospital and was supposed to be ''helping'' those people. Ben is also unable to bring himself to kill [[LivingMacGuffin Dawn]], despite knowing it would stop Glory from ending the world. |
| 61 | * The first two versions of ''Series/CardSharks'' which aired from 1978-81 and 1986-89 respectively have high-low questions asked to 100 people which have contestants judging human nature. Some of these questions would be overtly sexist if asked in the present time. Imagine the looks the poll-taker would receive if he asked female executives, "Has your boss ever patted you on the fanny?" these days. |
| 62 | * ''Series/{{Carrusel}}'': |
| 63 | ** David gives up his pet turtle so that a turtle soup can be made in order to cure Fermin from his illness. ''Carrusel'' took place in Mexico in 1989-1990. Not only would sacrificing a pet turtle have been unacceptable in the USA back then (and in the present day), but someone believing in old wives' tales to the point of suggesting turtle soup to cure an illness would have at the very least raised a lot of eyebrows. |
| 64 | ** All but one of the female characters are afraid of mice. The girl who was not, Valeria, was seen as gutsy and adventurous overall. In the USA, by 1989-1990, it would have been likelier to just have one individual female be murophobic, said fear of rodents being seen as an irrational sign of weakness. |
| 65 | * ''Series/ElChavoDelOcho'', probably one of the most popular and iconic TV shows in all of Latin America, dubbed into several languages and exported to many countries, is full of this. Produced in the 70s, many jokes and situations are considered very inappropriate by modern standards. |
| 66 | ** Many acceptable targets of the time include mocking Doña Clotilde because she is (or looks like she is) a senior citizen and calling her a witch because of that, mocking people because of their physical appearances, particularly Señor Barriga's and Ñoño's obesity, but any "ugly" physical trait (Don Ramon’s thinness, Chilindrinas's size, Quico's cheeks, etc.) earns the character a humiliating nickname. By today's standards that is considered very disrespectful to the adults and bullying to the kids (notice that almost all of Chespirito's sketch characters rely on mocking physical appearances at some point, including Chapulin, Chompiras and Dr. Chapatin, but doing it among adults probably has lesser impact). |
| 67 | ** Physical violence as a way to correct the kids, particularly used by Don Ramon who practically harms all of the children in La Vecindad in some way, including spanking his own daughter and bonking his surrogate son Chavo on the head, and all of this is PlayedForLaughs! Granted, he is the only adult doing this, and Señor Barriga and Profesor Jirafales (both frequent victims of the kids' slapstick violence) don't do it and in fact reprehend Don Ramon for doing it. Still, even though physical punishment for kids is still common in some parts of the world, the practice has fallen into disuse and is socially unacceptable in the most progressive areas, so in modern times it's unthinkable for a comedy to show it as "funny." |
| 68 | ** Don Ramon is often the victim of beatings and/or humiliating punishments by Doña Florinda, most of them undeserved. This was played for laughs back in the days ([[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale when the concept of a man beaten by a woman was, well, funny]]). Today many modern audiences take pity towards Don Ramon. |
| 69 | ** Homophobic jokes. Many jokes in the show cast homosexuality in a negative light, and implying that someone is gay is an insult. In one episode, Don Ramón and Profesor Jirafales are mistaken for homosexuals (actually Don Ramon is educating Jirafales on how to win over a woman), and when Don Ramon comes closer to El Chavo (an eight-year-old kid, in universe) Chavo's reactions are of fear and disgust, even violently avoiding Don Ramon’s touch. Meanwhile, Doña Florinda violently breaks up with Jirafales and the rest of the Vecindad reacts similarly with anger. Also, Don Ramon’s CatchPhrase “Yo le voy al Necaxa” (I support the Necaxa) is a reference to the fact that he is not gay (fans of the Necaxa's rival team, the Puebla, were considered “gay”). |
| 70 | *** In his defense, Chespirito did change many of this in later seasons. For example, a lot of the violence, like Botija slapping Chompiras as punishment or Doña Florinda slapping Don Jaimito (Don Ramon’s SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute), was taken out, the jokes about physical appearances were downplayed and, although until his death he was strongly opposed to same-sex marriage, the show became much more respectful toward gay people. |
| 71 | ** All the females in the show are afraid of mice - even the tough-as-nails Dona Florinda and the tomboy-ish Chilindrina. By the 1970s, in the USA, this was no longer the norm - as evidenced by an episode of ''The Brady Bunch'', where Cindy and Emma are clearly not afraid of mice. In Mexico it was still commonly thought at the time that all women were afraid of mice simply because of their gender. |
| 72 | ** The depiction of smoking. While at the time smoking was already being treated as bad (Sr. Barriga expressed shame when he admitted being a long-time smoker), it's still treated as something normal, and all male adult characters are shown smoking at least once. Professor Jirafales is the most obvious, since he is never seen without his cigar, even at school while teaching his students. Likely just an exaggeration that a teacher would so brazenly smoke in school, today it would not be tolerated even as a joke. In the animated adaptation, Professor Jirafales has never been seen smoking. |
| 73 | ** Chespirito's other programs also featured jokes that would be considered unacceptable these days: The most glaring example would be from the 1970 show ''Los Supergenios de la Mesa Cuadrada'' ("Super-Geniuses of the Square Table", the show where the Chapulin Colorado and Profesor Jirafales characters debuted), which featured extremely racy humor for the standards of Mexican television of the era, particularly a joke about Doctor Chapatin (a doddering old man who always carried a paper bag) allegedly seducing young women, preferring two fourteen-year-old girls to one of twenty-eight and asking for a picture of the 12-year-old girl who accused him. With pederasty nowadays being a permanent news topic, this very joke would have set the world on fire. |
| 74 | * ''Creator/CliveJames on TV'', the ur-show behind ''Series/{{Banzai}}'', where the laconic Australian TV critic presented an hour of the very worst of other people's television, culled from no shortage of worldwide examples. Excessively sexual ([[{{Bowdlerize}} and often edited]]) French and German adverts rub shoulders with American televangelists and especially James' ''bete-noir'', the Japanese. But a program designed to reinforce the conceit of the British that they have the best TV in the world, and everyone else's is to varying degrees crap, or just plain ''weird''... It is interesting that some of the examples held up as other people's crap in the 1980s--depths which British broadcasting of the time would never ever plumb, such as Jerry Springer-type trashfests or over-night cheap phone quizzes that give up any pretense of broadcasting quality or excellence--are now staples of British broadcasting. |
| 75 | ** The show had a particular knack for poking fun at Japanese game shows where contestants are humiliated and assaulted (physically and psychologically) in search of a handful of yen. Clive James, a man whose father had been captured by the Japanese and placed in a [=WW2=] POW camp, then killed in a plane crash on the way home so he never saw his father again, stopped short of any explicit statement of personal disdain. |
| 76 | %% * ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': In one episode, the title character, in using deductive reasoning to re-enact the scene of a crime, describes the socially acceptable way for a man to hit a woman: he doesn't punch her the way he would a man, he just slaps her across the face. |
| 77 | * ''Series/{{CSI}}'' has an interesting case of values changing over a relatively short time. One of the first episodes (airing in 2000) concerns the case of a murdered college dean who had been killed by two of his female colleagues to stop him from releasing reputation-destroying information about them. The bloodcurdling secret? The girls are dating each other. In modern times, as gay characters become more mainstream in the media and the gay rights movement continues to pick up steam in RealLife, it's...doubtful that'd be considered something worth committing murder over. The first few seasons have many similar cases where the motive is to hide the fact that oneself or a family member is/was gay, which strike many people nowadays as strange. It's telling that the number of cases with this as a motive dropped significantly as the show moved into modern times, when being gay was no longer such a big deal. |
| 78 | * In an episode of ''Series/DadsArmy'', one of the most beloved and wholesome sitcoms in British TV history, the Home Guard are tasked with reporting any Nazi parachutes they find, which are distinguished from British parachutes by being creamy off-white while British ones are bright white. [[HonestJohnsDealership Joe]] tells Captain Mainwaring that he found a parachute in the woods, but cut it up and made the silk into knickers which he subsequently sold to women around town, and cannot remember what colour they were. So, Mainwaring, Wilson and Joe visit each of Joe's customers and ask if they can see the knickers. All very funny, until they reach one house where the door is answered by her husband. He misunderstands them, goes back inside, and then noises come from the house which strongly imply that he is beating his wife. Meanwhile the three men just stand there looking slightly uncomfortable as the laugh track goes crazy. Needless to say, domestic violence isn't considered an acceptable source of comedy anymore. |
| 79 | * ''Series/TheDannyThomasShow'': In the episode "Terry at the Crossroads," Danny is worried because his daughter Terry is mostly interested in sports, and a boy she likes doesn't seem to see her as a pretty girl that he should ask to a dance. Danny tries to tell her how she can be more feminine, including the advice "A girl's job on Earth is to make the man feel like a big, important, strong somebody." Terry finally can't take it anymore and snaps, "You men think the whole world revolves around you! Well I've got news for you, this isn't a man's world anymore, it's also a woman's world! And I have a perfect right to dress the way I want to and to live the way I want to! And I don't have to go around drooling over boys just to make them feel important!" It's pretty impressive (especially considering it was made in 1957). But then in the next scene, when the boy Terry likes comes to pick her up for bowling, she comes out in a dress (she'd been wearing sweatshirts and pants up till then) and says she doesn't want to go bowling. She acts flirtatious and fawning, just the way Danny told her to, for no clear reason at all. It's presented as a happy ending that she turns her back on the things she likes so a boy will like her more. |
| 80 | * The ''Franchise/{{Degrassi}}'' gained popularity through its progressive and hard-hitting subject matter, but several instances in the series have not aged well, even courting criticism at the time for unbelievable actions that other characters seemingly ignore: |
| 81 | ** In ''Series/DegrassiHigh'', Michelle's character arc no longer plays remotely like it did in 1990. She moves out of her house at age 16 to escape a reactionary father who doesn't want her to go out with friends after school, or to date (especially not a Black boy). She has mixed feelings about him - he's a bully, but he means well and he has trouble changing his old-fashioned ways. Not even ten years later, he'd seem utterly evil as a result of the changing standards of what's acceptable for American and Canadian teens, with his attempts to make peace seem like a ManipulativeBastard softening her up for the kill, and that she should report him to Social Services just in case. |
| 82 | ** ''Series/DegrassiJuniorHigh'' also twice portrays sexual assault with a quite [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming victim-blame]][[BuffySpeak y]] undertone that would not wash today. Most notably in the episode "What a Night," where Stephanie's subplot where she suffers [[DateRapeAverted an attempted date rape]] from a soap star is mostly played as AnAesop about "not getting into risky situations," because she agreed to go on a date with him in the first place, and lied about her age (itself an example of ValuesDissonance, as she claims to be sixteen rather than fourteen, which to many audience members seems hardly much better). The soap star himself is a complete KarmaHoudini. Contrast this with the ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' episode "Shout," where Paige is date-raped at a party by an older boy, and a lot of emphasis is placed on the fact that Paige's behavior, including drinking, flirting with the perpetrator, and asking to go upstairs, does ''not'' mean the assault was her fault. There's also the infamous scene in "Taking Off" where Wheels is molested by a man who picks him up hitchhiking. This [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment never comes up again]], leading viewers to conclude it was only included in the episode as an example of [[HarmfulToHitchhikers the terrible things that will happen to you if you hitchhike]]. |
| 83 | ** The episodes "Censored" and "Trust Me" feature [[TeenPregnancy pregnant teenager]] Spike being labelled a "bad example", and almost swiftly being removed from school, with the other students reacting in a slightly outraged but generally apathetic tone. Even worse, the one student who tries to defend her (Caitlin) is made out to not only be wrong, but self-righteous, getting detention for speaking out and Spike herself telling her to cool it. Not only is this practice generally frowned upon (and in some cases illegal) in modern times, if it was attempted now, it would likely cause a backlash. |
| 84 | ** Snake's extremely cold initial reaction to his brother coming out as gay in "He Ain't Heavy..." seems a lot less sympathetic nowadays, where gay acceptance is much more widespread, especially coming from [[NiceGuy Snake]]. However, he does come around in the end, alleviating this somewhat. Harder to accept is the fact the Simpson parents disown Snake's brother at the end of the episode, which is portrayed as a bad thing, but somewhat understandable. To a modern audience, this is almost a MoralEventHorizon, and the fact that Snake's relationship with his parents is unchanged after this seems deeply odd. |
| 85 | * ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'' has Sally Rogers, who spends the entire series trying to catch a husband, but failing because she is too forward and funny. An early episode, when she is talking brashly to Laura's meek cousin, has Rob opining that "any normal man would have punched her in the face." Yeesh. |
| 86 | ** Rob and Laura also have separate beds similar to the ''Series/ILoveLucy'' example. |
| 87 | ** When Laura and Rob discover that their marriage may not be valid, Rob talks of having to sleep in the den. |
| 88 | ** One episode has Rob and Laura try to set up Sally and one of Laura's friends with a man, only for him to reveal he doesn't want to commit because he's been married twice before and both women left [[DomesticAbuse because he used to hit them]]. Rob and Laura are stunned...that he's been married before. |
| 89 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 90 | ** In the very first episode, 1963's "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild An Unearthly Child]]," the Doctor explains the humans' disbelief of the TARDIS to his granddaughter thusly: "Remember the Red Indian. When he saw the first steam train, his savage mind thought it an illusion too." As though the "savage mind" business wasn't enough, "Red Indian" is generally considered a seriously racist epithet in North America these days. |
| 91 | ** The Doctor threatening to give 16-year-old Susan a "jolly good smacked bottom" in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E2TheDalekInvasionOfEarth The Dalek Invasion of Earth]]" is pretty jarring, as popular attitudes towards child rearing have changed from a disciplinarian approach to a supportive approach, and because serious smacking was criminalized in the UK in 2004. It fits the Doctor's character as being old-fashioned and not a very good grandfather, but the fact that it's played for laughs is not possible today. |
| 92 | ** The First Doctor finding [[BlackComedyRape Nero's sexual abuse of women]] in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E4TheRomans The Romans]]" funny and harmless (saying "what an extraordinary fellow!" as he sees Nero chasing an underdressed, screaming woman down a corridor) is also something that would never fly in a children's program nowadays. It works well today as BlackComedy, though. |
| 93 | ** The First Doctor makes a rather racist comment in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan The Daleks Master Plan]]" as a punchline to a comedy sequence that would absolutely ''never'' be allowed on the screen today: |
| 94 | --->'''Doctor:''' This place is a madhouse, it's all full of Arabs! Come on, let's go. |
| 95 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E7TheCelestialToymaker The Celestial Toymaker]]": |
| 96 | *** The King of Hearts casually uses an older version of the "Eenie Meenie Miney Mo" rhyme which uses the n-word in place of "tiger". On Creator/TheBBC's soundtrack release (due to it being a MissingEpisode), Creator/PeterPurves' narration is deliberately timed to obscure the offending word. Of note is that the n-word [[https://twitter.com/The66Ramblers/status/1530509444907520001 isn't actually in the script]] -- the corresponding stage direction simply reads "the king closes his eyes and Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mos" -- but the fact that the actor deliberately chose a racially-charged version of the rhyme without repercussion is indicative of British views on race in the '60s. |
| 97 | *** The word "celestial" is itself an old (mainly American and Australian) slur used to describe the Chinese. While [[https://twitter.com/The66Ramblers/status/1530511149732712448 contemporary production notes]] indicate that the use of the word is in the more innocuous sense (i.e. the Toymaker's ethereal and otherworldly nature), the juxtaposition of it with the Toymaker's "Mandarin" getup (itself meant to tie in with his Towers of Hanoi puzzle) has given more than a few retrospective analysts pause. |
| 98 | ** There's an extremely upsetting moment in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E10TheWarMachines The War Machines]]" where Polly and Dodo go to a club, where Polly acts as a kind of icebreaker. While being friendly to the patron Ben, a man pins Polly up against a wall and says some creepy things. She tells him "Please, take your hand away" in a firm voice, meaning he puts his ''other'' hand on her. Ben leaps out of his chair and beats him up on her behalf, but afterwards yells at ''Polly'' for it, telling her [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming she should be careful who she encourages]], even though she encouraged him in absolutely no way beyond being a pretty woman and existing. It's quite possible the sexism is DeliberateValuesDissonance - Polly is shown to be exasperated by the patronizing attitude her boss subjects her to at work. Also, the Doctor had been travelling around with companions from the future for a while, both of whom are shown to have no gender prejudices. |
| 99 | ** Creator/JonPertwee-era episodes have an occasional undercurrent of antifeminism, containing StrawFeminist characters and having the Doctor put them in their place. The writers and actors were generally at least feminist-sympathetic (Creator/ElisabethSladen in particular likes to soften the worst of the Doctor's manhandling and verbal abuse by giggling at him in such a way as to make it look like consensual teasing), but few were able to resist poking fun at perceived acceptable targets, and [[DependingOnTheWriter some writers]] made it clear in their scripts that they didn't know what feminism actually is, assuming it's about women being in charge or men being inferior. The Creator/TomBaker era eased up on this a lot, due to fewer Earth-bound settings and because Tom disliked playing TallDarkAndSnarky and adlibbed his way out of his nastier scripted lines - but there are still moments. The scene in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace The Ark in Space]]" where the Doctor bellows sexist insults at Sarah in order to snap her out of a panic is particularly difficult to watch - Tom Baker has often expressed discomfort and embarrassment about playing the scene, and even that is heavily toned down from the scripted version, which is longer and meaner. |
| 100 | ** There's a pretty uncomfortable part in "The Ark in Space" where the Doctor explains his plan to see the dead Wirrn's memories [[EyeRemember through connecting psychically to a part of its eye]]. He relates it to something that "Gypsies" used to believe. Compare and contrast to a scene referencing this in the Eleventh Doctor episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E11TheCrimsonHorror The Crimson Horror]]," where the Doctor points out that the belief is rubbish without linking it to a specific racial epithet. |
| 101 | ** The serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E6TheTalonsOfWengChiang The Talons of Weng-Chiang]]" features a Literature/FuManchu-like [[YellowPeril Chinese villain]] played by a Caucasian actor in {{yellowface}} with a campy Chinese accent. While this was still acceptable practice in the UK in 1977, television stations in America, Canada, and elsewhere which imported the program found this problematic enough to refrain from airing the serial. Although the moral of the story [[FairForItsDay is against racism]], it's easier to see why they thought it was acceptable when one considers it was made at a time when ''[[MinstrelShows The Black And White Minstrel Show]]'' was also being aired as "harmless" family entertainment. Worse is that "Weng-Chiang" even goes so far as to have ''the Doctor'' join in with the racist jokes. Tom Baker performs the lines with as much RefugeInAudacity swagger as he can, as they're intended as a knowing part of the YellowPeril ExploitationFilm genre {{Pastiche}} (British audiences in the 1970s were exposed to this sort of fiction through constant Film/HammerHorror reruns). Modern audiences tend not to find it coming off as ironic thanks to all the other racist things going on in the story, and many people (like Creator/PaulCornell) find it upsettingly {{out of character|Moment}}. |
| 102 | ** You'll notice that the revival series of ''Doctor Who'' is much HotterAndSexier, yet also a great deal less violent. This is partially due to how frequently the old series was criticized for FamilyUnfriendlyViolence (it's rarely gratuitous but ''is'' by a long way the most violent show the BBC had at time), and partially down to the increased budget (PeopleInRubberSuits are expensive, and [[{{Gorn}} fake blood and slime]] is not), but mostly due to British culture moving over the course of the '90s to consider funny or cuddly sexual content more child-suitable than violent content. |
| 103 | ** Lampshaded in the final 12th Doctor episode "[[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime Twice Upon a Time]]" where the 12th Doctor [[MeetYourEarlyInstallmentWeirdness runs into his earlier incarnation, the 1st Doctor]]. 12 is absolutely mortified at how old fashioned and misogynist he used to be. |
| 104 | * ''Series/DoubleDare1986'': |
| 105 | ** Many teams were integrated on the original run, but some played under names that are now considered politically incorrect. Two of them, both consisting of a white player and a black player, were called "Salt & Pepper". A third with the same pairing was called "Chocolate & Vanilla". If those weren't bad enough, two teams from later seasons called themselves the "Redskins" after the then-NFL team. |
| 106 | ** On the "Marc Vs. Harvey" episode, Jim J. Bullock [[FreudianSlip accidentally said "fag" instead of "flag"]] while describing the "Thar she blows!" obstacle. Marc Summers followed it up with this off-color comment on Bullock's sexuality: "''You're'' coming out of there!" |
| 107 | ** The unaired Old Timers special has Marc mentioning that the outfit he is wearing makes him look like "a homosexual guardian angel". Any LGBTQIA+ related references/comments could not be made on a kids' show at the time and the take would have been left on the cutting room floor if the episode ever did air on television. In today's slightly more accepting world, this comment would also likely offend some people, though for different reasons. |
| 108 | * The 1967 version of ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'' is very much a product of its time, and there are occasions that will make modern viewers wince. |
| 109 | ** One example given is a scene where the main heroes talk about homosexuality as a "major societal problem" on par with things like drug abuse. With LGBT people no longer being mocked like they were back in the 1960s, this comes off as pretty homophobic by modern standards. |
| 110 | ** Jack Webb's hardline anti-marijuana stance and belief that it was a gateway drug to harder drugs dates the show, given the fact many states are loosening restrictions on the drug and some have even legalized it. |
| 111 | ** Some of the child abuse cases, like the case of a boy whipped with an electrical cord, can play out strangely to modern viewers since back then every attempt was made to reunite families while abused kids are far more likely to just be removed today. |
| 112 | ** One episode involved a woman who died while being involved in making adult films, and the detectives visited an office that was involved in censoring books and films deemed too lewd or explicit to publish. Today, people are much stauncher on defending freedom to read, even if some books offend people, and it's a safe bet that some of the things they would have deemed 'obscene' would be somewhat tame by today's standards. |
| 113 | * ''Series/{{Emergency}}'': |
| 114 | ** One main character, John Gage is of Native American descent. In an episode called "Peace Pipe," one of the other main characters begins relentlessly mocking him because of this. Gage is clearly upset, but it's played for laughs rather than recognized as, at best, arrogant insensitivity, and at worst, blatant racism. |
| 115 | ** Johnny’s constant antics with the nurses qualify too. Back then, it was seen as just Johnny being a typical young man, but today, he’d be putting himself at risk of sexual harassment charges with some of his antics. In one episode, he talks about his date criteria and rejecting women who are too tall or too fat, which definitely would have been called out more strongly today. |
| 116 | * ''Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond'': |
| 117 | ** Everyone in-universe is aghast at the idea of a 40-year-old man living with his parents, and act as if it's the most embarrassing and pathetic thing a man could do...except that in many cultures (including some minority communities in the U.S.), it's considered perfectly normal (and often fully ''expected'') for the eldest child to do this. It's also become increasingly common after housing problems which erupted in modern times. |
| 118 | ** The show, like many shows of the '80s and '90s, mocks the idea of an adult male enjoying comic books and sci-fi. Peter being a comic book fan is treated as if it's some sort of horrible deformity or character flaw, and the in-universe characters and the presumably baby boomer-aged studio audience members treat Peter's comic book fandom with derision. Younger generations don't place the same stigma against comics as the show does. |
| 119 | ** And that's not even getting into the show's use of DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale; Debra's treatment of Ray (often involving things like {{Groin Attack}}s, Ray being tossed against bookshelves, and tons of condescending verbal abuse) is treated as being A-Okay and lovably wacky, while if Ray ever complains in the slightest about Debra, then ''he'' is treated as being "obviously wrong" in-universe, while Debra is portrayed as being some sort of martyr. |
| 120 | ** In one episode, Ray is horrified when he discovers that his daughter Ally has been bullying a classmate, but Debra doesn't take it too seriously and says she shouldn't be ashamed of her daughter's "confidence". Nowadays, bullying is a lot less acceptable thanks to the rash of bullying-related suicides and murders. |
| 121 | * ''Series/TheFactsOfLife'' introduced the recurring character of Roy, the bakery delivery boy who was obsessed with Jo. Roy continued to pursue Jo, asking her out, hitting on her, and making suggestive comments, even after she told him no and angrily made it clear that she had no interest in him. Given this was the 1980s, it was played for comedy. Today, it would rightfully be considered stalking and harassment. Roy would likely have a restraining order against him and would be banned from the Eastland campus. |
| 122 | * ''Series/{{Fast Forward}}'': In 2019, in an interview, cast member Michael Veitch said that given the show's usage of blackface, yellowface, brownface, and gay stereotypes, all of which are considered politically incorrect nowadays, if the show was pitched today it would likely not be made. Also in 2019, fellow cast member Magda Szubanski expressed regret for having appeared in blackface on the show. |
| 123 | * ''Series/FawltyTowers'' has [[https://youtu.be/cN7L_cte7PA?t=76 an off-color scene]] in which the old and slightly senile Major recalls criticizing his girlfriend's use of the word "niggers" to refer to Indians, and instead tells her to [[BaitAndSwitch call them "wogs."]] Even the tactless and conservative [[EveryoneHasStandards Basil looks embarrassed]]. However, these days even joking ''about'' such language is no longer acceptable, and the line is edited out of modern rebroadcasts. |
| 124 | * ''Series/{{Friends}}'' |
| 125 | ** A season 3 episode features a great example of values dissonance between countries. When Rachel takes Ross out to dinner with her father, Dr. Green pays for the meal but only leaves a 4% tip. He's portrayed as a jerk for both this and for getting mad at Ross for leaving extra money on the table to pad out the tip. To viewers in the US, where waitstaff are often paid lower than minimum wage with customary tipping supposed to make up for it (usually about 15% of the total, and now 20% in the 2020s), Ross's outrage at the small tip makes sense. To viewers in other countries where restaurant wages are better regulated and tipping is just a courtesy (such as the UK) or even seen as rude (such as China and Japan), this is not common knowledge, so Ross comes across as a jerk who's being unreasonable by expecting a man who just paid for a very expensive meal to pay even more for the tip. Also consider that many Americans subscribe to the philosophy of "You get the bill, we'll get the tip," so if someone in the group offers to pick up the tab, other members of the party agree to cover the tip. |
| 126 | ** The show makes various gay jokes at Chandler, Ross, and Joey's expenses. While the show tries to be respectful with the portrayal of a lesbian couple, a show with those jokes made nowadays would quickly receive backlash from the gay community and crooked looks from most viewers. The fact that Chandler watched E! and likes theater, and therefore must be gay, is not very well-received by contemporary watchers, and is one of the main things that turn off new viewers from later generations. |
| 127 | ** Also relating to Chandler, DependingOnTheWriter, his animosity towards his father comes from the fact that his father left his family and the whole relationship is based on the divorce-child anger, or because he's embarrassed of his father being a gay crossdresser, putting QueerPeopleAreFunny into effect. These days, these jokes would at best be outdated and at worst be considered homophobic or transphobic. |
| 128 | ** Another bone of contention, particularly for younger fans, is that while the show deconstructs the DoggedNiceGuy trope with Ross and Rachel's off-again, on-again relationship being portrayed as having serious emotional abuse issues (before these got any kind of attention), they ended up together for good by the end. In recent years, the general opinion is that Rachel was StrangledByTheRedString and that she should instead have either [[RomanticFalseLead left for France with her new beau]] or to [[TakeAThirdOption try a formal relationship with Joey]]. |
| 129 | ** In the 90s it was believed that SexEqualsLove and [[ImAManICantHelpIt men can't help themselves]], so when Ross and Rachel broke up the reasoning was placed squarely on Ross sleeping with someone else because he thought they were on a break. To a modern audience it's clear that Ross was [[QuestionableConsent not of sound mind, being both drunk and heartbroken]], [[TheUnfairSex and this is never addressed]]. It doesn't take away from the serious [[PoorCommunicationKills communication and trust problems]] that led to the affair, but yelling about their break just avoids the bigger issues. |
| 130 | * ''Series/GilmoreGirls'': Miss Patty. She is constantly on the prowl for men, often much younger than her (some she hits on are even in their teens). It is played as a character quirk and RunningGag. Viewers today probably would be wondering why this lady is allowed to constantly harass the teenage boys/younger men in Stars Hollow without consequences. |
| 131 | * In ''Series/TheGnomesOfDulwich'', Big looks down on the Empire Gnomes, dismissing them as "plastic Chinese twits", while none of the Empire Gnomes were actually played by Chinese actors, but mostly white actors using broad, offensive accents. |
| 132 | * ''Radio/TheGoldbergs'' (the 1920s-1950s series), as one of the first mainstream depictions of a Jewish family from a Jewish perspective, likely has quite a few even for its contemporary audience. Fleeing the Nazis is a perfectly normal explanation for why a distant cousin is Irish and doesn't elicit any reaction, while a woman finding out that neither the male nor female potential name for her grandkid is going to be after either of her late parents or her late in-laws is treated as if her kid had dismembered her dog right in front of her (the plot is resolved when her son-in-law explains that they had just chosen Americanized translations of the names). Another plot that has a similar level of anguish is when Sammy discovers that his new girlfriend has escaped from an asylum and that he'll have to trick her into returning for her own good (the episode ends with him getting off with her early to presumably live on the run, but the next episode is lost). |
| 133 | * ''Series/TheGoldenGirls'': |
| 134 | ** The exact circumstances of Dorothy's first sexual experience fluctuate a little in each retelling because they're being [[PlayedForLaughs described as part of a joke]], but today, we know that she's describing a ''date rape''. At one point she even says she was completely unconscious during the sex and suspects Stan must have drugged her, and her mother outright says she never believed her. For women who were growing up during the 50s, it's not any more alarming than "Baby It's Cold Outside," but nowadays it's a lot closer to GallowsHumor. |
| 135 | ** Another episode has Rose practicing abstinence due to a tradition/superstition in her hometown; Miles, her long-term boyfriend, uses a variety of "blue balls"-style excuses and harassment to cajole her into it. When it doesn't work, he throws a temper tantrum and ''dumps her'' because he assumes that since she won't have sex with him, she must be cheating. In the end, Rose is the one who has to apologize, and although it's implied that she could have told him the truth and he would have understood, that still conflicts with the modern idea that "No." is a complete sentence and one doesn't owe consent to someone just because they're in a relationship or have had sex in the past. For all the progressive attitudes this show had in its day, its ideas about rape and sexual pressure are some of the only areas where the characters' ages seemed to inform their values. |
| 136 | * ''Series/TheGoodies'' was FairForItsDay on racial issues, for example an episode mocks the absurdity of Apartheid by showing tall white South Africans discriminating against short ones when all black people emigrate to the UK. However, there were also frequent uses of {{Blackface}}, which was considered an acceptable form of comedy at the time, including a very uncomfortable scene of Bill Oddie as "Rastus Watermelon", a long-standing character who had become a popular feature of the radio precursor series ''Radio/ImSorryIllReadThatAgain''.[[note]] in British radio comedy, a popular recurring character will get a huge round of cheers and applause. This is hard for any comedian to give up and both Rastus, and Tim's strident drag-queen voice of Lady Constance, carried over to TV with the same huge roar of recognition from studio audiences.[[/note]] Sounds bad to later generations, but as the Goodies were seen as a TV continuation of radio's ISIRTA, the popular voices were ''expected''. |
| 137 | ** In UsefulNotes/TheSeventies, drag was considered inherently funny, so there are a lot of jokes where the punchline is simply "Tim Brooke Taylor enjoys wearing a dress", and the character was depicted as being "peculiar" for being comfortable in women's clothing. That may appear transphobic to some modern viewers. |
| 138 | * ''Series/{{Gunsmoke}}'' has one episode in which Quint and Festus have to go to the next town over to buy supplies while playing a game of one-upsmanship on one another. While having a drinking contest at a saloon, and the inevitable BarBrawl that follows, they meet a lovely young saloon girl who promptly (and separately) seduces both of them, telling them of an evil man chasing her and convincing them to take her with them back to Dodge. Along the way, the man catches up to them; he is apparently domestically abusive, saying the longer she resists coming back with him the more he'll "whoop" on her. Quint and Festus stand up to him, and despite normally being portrayed as decent fighters, get their asses handed to them. Eventually the girl turns on them (saying that two on one is cheating) and gleefully goes back into the arms of her lover, telling the two "It's not so bad; I really do love him! And he doesn't whoop on me too bad!" This is PlayedForLaughs. |
| 139 | * The ''Series/HeyDude'' episode Amnesia has Mr. Ernst, a grown man at least in his 40s, get amnesia and mentally regresses him to 17 years old. At one point he genuinely starts to flirt with Melody, an actual teenager. With pedophilia being taken much more seriously in the modern age, there's absolutely no way they could do a joke like this, especially on a show meant for children. |
| 140 | * A segment on the Australian ''Hey Hey, It's Saturday'' show, similar to ''Series/TheGongShow'', had a scandal revolving around a sketch where a group of performers do a {{blackface}} Jackson Five routine called the Jackson Jive. Two of the judges were Australian, and were longtime members of the judge panel. The third judge was Harry Connick, Jr. While the two Australian judges had no problems with the skit (blackface has little stigma in Australia compared to America due to a lack of history surrounding the performance), Connick was not so happy with the act, to the point where if he knew that act was going to be on, he never would've been on the show in the first place. |
| 141 | ** A similar event in Australia was when during a television awards show in 1979 that had UsefulNotes/MuhammadAli show up as a guest host. During his appearance the main host, Bert Newton, after some back and forth quipping, remarked "I like the boy" which in the United States is a grievous racial insult while in Australia it has the same meaning as "lad" or "mate." Ali immediately did a double take before Newton realized he'd said something wrong, and prostrated himself before the champion boxer before they both moved on. |
| 142 | * ''Series/HogansHeroes'': |
| 143 | ** Some of Hogan's more...aggressive actions towards women come off as creepy to modern eyes. |
| 144 | ** While Kinchloe gets his chance at two women, both of them are black. He almost never vocally shares the other inmates' interest in beautiful white women. This might also be an aversion of PoliticallyCorrectHistory, as it wouldn't be particularly smart for a black man to do so even among friends in that time period. |
| 145 | ** When Carter reveals that he is part Native American, [=LeBeau=] and Newkirk spend the rest of the episode mocking him over it, to his evident displeasure. Especially jarring given the show's generally respectful treatment of its African-American characters. |
| 146 | * ''Hogar, Dulce Hogar'', a '70s Mexican sitcom, shows two neighboring couples; Sergio and Lucha on one hand, and Pepe and Juanita on the other. Pepe is extremely chauvinistic and openly misogynistic, to the point that he has Juanita subjugated and tries to convince Sergio to do the same to his wife. On the other hand, Lucha is violent and aggressive towards Sergio, frequently physically abusing him and beating him up, [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale which is always played for laughs]]. The show was very popular when it first aired and is fairly light-hearted compared to modern Mexican sitcoms, but there's no way a show like that could ever be made in modern times. |
| 147 | * In ''Series/TheHoneymooners'', Ralph threatens to hit his wife every time they have a fight. Those who watch the show will know that his threats are empty and he wouldn't dream of carrying them out, but there is no way a modern sitcom husband could get away with even an empty threat of domestic violence.[[note]]An episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' skitting ''The Honeymooners'' played with the idea of what might have happened if Ralph (played by Peter Griffin) had followed through on the threat to punch out Alice (a monochrome Lois). The results are not pretty or played for laughs.[[/note]] |
| 148 | * ''Series/ILoveLucy'': |
| 149 | ** When Lucy is pregnant, not only do they not use the word "pregnant," but in the episode where Lucy's trying to get the message across to Desi that they're having a baby, she looks to be about 5 minutes away from going into labor, which makes it all the weirder that it takes him so long to get it. |
| 150 | ** In one episode, Lucy intentionally gets sunburned so that Ricky will be less likely to hit her when he finds out about her latest clusterfuck. In fact, Ricky also frequently makes somewhat casual threats to punch Lucy in the nose (similar to Ralph Kramden's "One of these days, Alice..." rants). He never does it, and it's usually just a lot of bluster, but nowadays, even jokingly threatening to punch your wife just doesn't happen. |
| 151 | ** Due to period taboos, Lucy and Desi's bedroom has separate beds and their bathroom has no toilet, as with many shows of the era. |
| 152 | ** Ricky speaks to Little Ricky in his heavily-accented English. It's now known that a child can learn two languages in infancy as easily as one and would be recommended that he speak to his child in Spanish while Lucy uses English. |
| 153 | ** In an episode where Little Ricky wanders off, his father and Fred panic, but when Fred suggests calling the police, Ricky actually asks ''why'' they should do that. And Fred, rather than being concerned over kidnapping, just says that whenever a kid wanders off, they always turn up at the police station. In modern times, ''not'' calling the police when your child disappears would be unimaginable. |
| 154 | * Ali from ''Series/InForAPenny'' is depicted as a stereotypical '70s FunnyForeigner character, often the butt of most jokes and with many more being made about his accent/struggles with the English language. |
| 155 | * ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk1977'': In "A Child in Need," David, employed as a school gardener, suspects that a young male student is a victim of child abuse. He buys the boy ice cream and takes him back to his apartment without the parents' or school officials' knowledge. No way that would fly today. |
| 156 | * ''Series/InsideGeorgeWebley'': The episode "Brief Encounter" gives the viewpoint that driving isn't for women as it is a man's job. Even more concerning is that it is ''Rosemary'' who has these views and sees them as normal. |
| 157 | * ''Series/IronChef'': |
| 158 | ** In episode 284 (Potato Battle), Canadian challenger Michael Noble creates an appetizing lamb-and-potato dish and starts to lay it out, casserole-style. To this American viewer's eyes, this is completely normal (and the dish looks awesome). The Japanese panel, on the other hand, reacts with dismay at the presentation, as if none of them had ever even seen a casserole before. (Noble lost, leading many to believe it was that moment of dissonance that cost him the battle.) |
| 159 | ** The Iron Chefs seem to get the benefit of the doubt on the original, leading to some absurd win percentages (including Kishi outright rigging battles to avoid OT by randomly docking a challenger point whenever possible). This went away in the American version, and the IC's winning percentages drop since fairness trumps deference. It makes the Japan-esque winning percentages of Batali and Symon all the more impressive. |
| 160 | ** When ''Iron Chef'' is shown in Australia it sometimes has a "contains scenes that may disturb some viewers" warning. This is because the people on the show have no qualms about doing things like chopping up a live octopus that is still crawling around on the cutting board and trying to escape. |
| 161 | ** French actress Julie Dreyfus flatly refuses to taste a challenger's dish because it contains whale meat. |
| 162 | ** In episode 73 (Stingray Battle), Chef Noboru Inoue -- boss and mentor to challenger Yoshihide Koga -- spends almost the entire show standing on the sideline, getting drunk on red wine. The camera even catches him punching assistants on two separate occasions. On an American production, any one of those examples would've seen Inoue quietly hustled backstage -- at a minimum -- and most of the footage would probably never make the airwaves. Here, the attitude of the commentators is, if anything, patronizing. Apparently, the loss of dignity is more important than the fact that ''there's a drunk guy on the floor punching people''. |
| 163 | * ''Series/ItsAwfullyBadForYourEyesDarling'': In "A New Lease", the girls' landlord Horatio can forbid them from entertaining young men in the flat. This was standard in TheSeventies, but would be unthinkable in the modern day. |
| 164 | * ''Series/{{JAG}}'' is an interesting example showing change over the lifetime of the show. In early seasons, the presence of female pilots (or women in general) on warships was controversial. It was the subject of the pilot movie, and they had [[Series/AmericanGladiators Raye "Zap" Hollitt]] playing one of the pilots, apparently because only a woman built like a bodybuilder could realistically be expected to survive on a warship. Not only would this seem dated a decade later to the audience, but female pilots and ships crews eventually became unremarkable within the show itself by the second season. |
| 165 | ** An episode with a broadly favourable depiction of Irish Republican terrorism and negative depiction of the security forces countering it was met with outrage in Britain. Post 9/11 and the Oklahoma bombing American audiences would also find it unacceptable. |
| 166 | * It seems on ''Series/TheJeffersons''[[note]]as well as a number of other American sitcoms and dramas from that era[[/note]] that whenever the title couple and their neighbors the Willises get together, even by chance, they routinely break out the liquor bottles and fix themselves a drink. Such routine social lubrication raises eyebrows today, since it seems like a sign of a drinking problem. |
| 167 | * ''"Johan En De Alverman"'', a Flemish children's show featuring a white man dressed as a Native American character. |
| 168 | * ''Series/KabouterPlop'': |
| 169 | ** The show is well-known for its catchy songs [[OurGnomesAreWeirder and goofy themes]], but once did a song titled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZcL2pwln-g Wij Dansen]]" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZpi3RTWJ4o in which the main characters pretend]] [[DarkestAfrica to be an African Tribe]], complete with BlackFace. The music video was later removed from the show's official Youtube channel. |
| 170 | ** One episode from the show called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvQUYz2lkds "Kabouter Klusoemba"]] features Klus in black make up. |
| 171 | ** There's a song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn1ILOA4q0M Een Kabouterindiaantje]], which translates to "A Gnome Indian," which may sound racist to Native Americans today. |
| 172 | * ''Franchise/KamenRider'' |
| 173 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderX'': Akuninkaijin are Lord Dark's genetically created minions using the DNA of evil historical figures. One of these figures is Geronimo, a famous Native American who fought against United States most famously in The Battle of Littlehorn. For the longest time, in the United States at least, he was not seen in a sympathetic light, but even when X was airing that started to change. Today stating he was a straight up villain would cause major outrage. |
| 174 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'': |
| 175 | *** Kouta's sister Akira has a little speech in #3 about the value of "real" work in contrast to mere "play" like Beat Riding which struck many western viewers as patently false and hypocritical, as it seems to devalue work in entertainment, falsely implying that only drudgery and self-sacrifice helps others. Though considering what sparked the speech, [[FridgeBrilliance she might be trying to warn Kouta away from what is pretty much high-school thug life]]. |
| 176 | *** While it does look odd[[note]]Why, you ask? [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/krga_gaimkiwami.png Err]]...[[/note]] to a Western Audience, Kiwami Arms (specifically the helmet) is based off of Oba Nobunaga's armor. While he's been portrayed as both good and evil in culture, Nobunaga is considered a powerful warlord and one of Japan's greatest rulers, so with that in mind, basing Gaim, a Samurai's, ultimate form off his armor makes sense when Nobunaga's cultural significance is taken into account (something western audiences may be less aware of).[[note]] |
| 177 | *** That being said, many images of Nobunaga's armor have his helmet as round. Even in the ones that did have a pointed tip weren't that high up. So the uncomfortable resemblance (see UnfortunateCharacterDesign) still stand. |
| 178 | *** The helmet also in some ways resembles a design commonly attributed to another Sengoku-era warlord of note: Uesugi Kenshin.[[/note]] |
| 179 | *** As stated in AlternativeCharacterInterpretation and TheScrappy above on the YMMV page, many Western fans [[spoiler: hated how Mai was handled in the end and thought it was sexist and objectifying.]] |
| 180 | * ''Series/KenanAndKel'' has one episode where the gag is Kel dressing up as a woman so he and Kenan can compete on a couples' game show. When gay marriage became a hot-button issue in the mid-2000s, it would have been unlikely to appear on a children's show. And in modern times, they'd have to tread carefully to avoid making two men getting married seem inherently like a joke. |
| 181 | * ''Franchise/LawAndOrder'' and ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'' are so long-running that the current characters would have a values dissonance with their own earlier incarnations. |
| 182 | ** In at least two separate episodes of the original series, it is considered revolutionary and controversial to charge a man in authority with rape for coercing sex from his female employees or charges under threat of termination or homelessness (kicking her out of of a group home). |
| 183 | ** In early ''SVU'' episodes, Detective Munch espouses the infamous "well, she shouldn't have been dressed that way" viewpoint. |
| 184 | ** The way UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} individuals are treated in early episodes of ''Special Victims Unit'' is uncomfortable. They casually throw around slurs like "tranny" without it being portrayed in a negative manner and frequently misgender characters. It's especially noticeable as episodes in TheNewTens, barely ten years after some of the aforementioned episodes, go out of their way to portray this sort of thing as negative, and sympathetic characters don't do it anymore. In a 2015 episode about an assault on a transgender victim, the defendant's use of the term "tranny" is used as evidence of a hate crime. |
| 185 | ** The earlier episodes of both shows regularly have the police (and on occasion the district attorneys) bend or or violate the law to get convictions, such as by arranging for certain people to be unavailable for court, withholding evidence, and assaulting suspects. Elliot Stabler often uses the JackBauerInterrogationTechnique to beat suspects into convicting, toys with the idea of terrifying them, and confesses that he fantasizes about murdering the people he arrests. Over the course of TheNewTens (shortly after Christopher Meloni left the show), United States police officers were the subject of one scandal after another involving assault and unprovoked violence toward the people they're meant to protect, coupled with a justice system that fudges the details of each incident and protects officers guilty of such actions. Nowadays such episodes are quite difficult to watch, and you have to wonder how long Stabler would last in an era where everyone's first reaction to the police is to take out their phones. |
| 186 | ** On one Season 10 episode "Lead," an intellectually disabled teenager is accused of murdering his pediatrician. Alex questions the young man on the stand despite his diminished mental capacity by pointing out that he is "retarded," which by current standards would be offensive, considering the fact that people in the mentally impaired community are frowning upon the word "retard" being used as slang and to describe people with intellectual disabilities, even comparing the use of the "R-word" to using the word "faggot" as slang and to describe gay individuals. |
| 187 | ** The original series features "good" and "bad" black activists, with the latter being portrayed, negatively, as MalcolmXerox who are unreasonable, excessive, and dishonest in their attempts to hold the police and courts to account. |
| 188 | ** In a couple of early episodes of ''SVU'', Benson mentions that when she was sixteen she dated one of her college professor mother's grad students and almost married him; and expresses the opinion that a young girl dating an older man is no big deal and can even be beneficial. Even at the time a relationship between a twenty-something man and a teenage girl was on the verge of being considered unacceptable, and Stabler suggests that it was inappropriate when she first brings it up. Decades later, it is now well understood that there is an inherent power imbalance in that kind of relationship, and any consent the girl gives is [[QuestionableConsent dubious]] at best. This is acknowledged in a much later episode when the man in question shows up again and Olivia realises that he groomed her, and it's revealed that he went on to use the same techniques on dozens of younger women for decades after her. |
| 189 | * ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'' ran in the 1970s and early 1980s. The show's Aesops are a hybrid of good country living and 1970s values. In the show, it's not polite to make fun of poor people, but it's okay to punch a girl in the face if she says or does something you don't like -- and there is no consequence for doing so. |
| 190 | * ''Series/LoveThyNeighbour'' aired on British TV in the 1970s as a jolly sitcom for all the family. The premise for this laugh-fest is that a West Indian couple has moved in next door to a white couple, the male half of whom is rather intolerant of black people and who expresses his tolerance in throwaway epithetic one-word descriptions of his darker-skinned neighbour. The West Indian has an equally colourful set of words for his white neighbour, and much hilarity ensues as the odd couple are generally thrown together in comedic and instructional situations where they each realise they need the other's help to get out of deep doodoo. Meanwhile, the two wives just get on with it and are friends over the back fence. While not as completely horrendous as it's been painted and in some respects wickedly funny, it could never, ever be commissioned or broadcast today. Examples exist on Website/YouTube if you want to judge for yourself. (Or, if you really dare, [[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Thy-Neighbour-Complete-8dvd/dp/B005VEJA7O/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1398710915&sr=1-3&keywords=love+thy+neighbour on DVD...]]) |
| 191 | * ''Series/{{Lovejoy}}'': Some of Lovejoy's flirting registers as more creepy than charming when viewed today, such as this exchange when Lovejoy wakes up on Jane's couch and asks if they had sex: |
| 192 | -->'''Jane''': No we did not! You were out cold. |
| 193 | -->'''Lovejoy''': Are you sure? |
| 194 | -->'''Jane''': I think I'd be the first to know about it, don't you? |
| 195 | -->'''Lovejoy''': [[DudeShesLikeInAComa Not necessarily]]. |
| 196 | * ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'': |
| 197 | ** A season one episode has Lois being told by another parent that Malcolm has been throwing around "the R word." No, he wasn't calling other kids retarded (an especially easy mistake to make since the premise is that Malcolm is a genius), but the joke is supposed to be that there is no offensive "R word" and the other parents are indulging in PoliticalOvercorrectness. |
| 198 | ** The show's ''premise'' features Values Dissonance. When it launched, it still got some flack for "not being very funny" due to the legitimate sociopathy and abusive behavior of much of the cast, but many people rolled with it as absurdist humor. Come TheNewTens, with a much greater general understanding of the kind of psychological damage emotional abuse inflicts on children, and a lot of the relationships of the show seem a lot darker and unfunnier. |
| 199 | * ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'': Even with the controversy of the show (or just plain BlackComedy of its nature), some elements of the show, given its genre and prime-time hours (and the then-nascent network it was on), wouldn't fly nowadays. |
| 200 | ** Even if it were for only a few episodes and with that blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments, Kelly wore a bomber jacket with a Confederate flag patch on it. |
| 201 | ** An especially bad one involving Bud when he decides to get revenge on a girl who's been stringing him along in the hopes of making another guy jealous. He convinces the guy--who couldn't care less about the girl--to entice her into meeting him under the bleachers for sex. Later, we see the girl emerging from the bleachers, adjusting her clothes, completely unaware that she just had sex with ''Bud'', as we see him coming out a few seconds later. This kind of BedTrick is recognized as rape these days. |
| 202 | ** Along the same lines, anytime Al had sex with Peg against his will (or vice versa), or Bud was grabbed by a fat woman and was forced to have sex with her. Played for laughs, but would be viewed as spousal rape and female-on-male rape, respectively, today. |
| 203 | ** The infamous episode "Her Cups Runneth Over" has Steve ogling a mannequin dressed in a leather mini-skirt and matching pasties, which he then begins to poke at. [[EveryoneHasStandards Even Al chews him out over this]], thinking that he should be ashamed of himself for doing that stuff. Steve then replies, "Oh, come on, Al... She was asking for it! You can see the way she's dressed!", a comment that would not sit well in a post-[=#MeToo=] era. |
| 204 | ** Both of the episodes "Requiem for a Dead Barber" and "Calendar Girl" would cause a lot of controversy and backlash if aired today. The former can come off as homophobic (particularly the part where Al complaining to his friends about their ridiculous hairstyles and saying how they need to put their heads under a hose and "wash the gay away") and the latter's ending can be seen as ''extremely'' transphobic. |
| 205 | ** One of the show's most beloved {{Running Gag}}s centers around Al insulting the fat women he has to serve at the shoe store. Al's mocking the women for their weight (and the show often presenting him as justified in doing so) would be vilified as body-shaming today. |
| 206 | *** However, the series made it repeatedly clear that the real reason he insults them is due to their atrocious personalities, such as when he simply told one that her shoe size is not what she thought and she acted indignant about it, leading to an insult. Take the episode when Al had to carpool with three fat women. They're nice to him, and he doesn't insult them. The only time he has any problem with their weight is when he first meets them, and that seems to be mostly due to his bad experience with ones who are rude to him to start out with. Doesn't necessarily make it fully okay, but considering Al isn't supposed to be too sympathetic in the first place, [[DeconstructedTrope that may be the joke]]. |
| 207 | ** Al's occasional mocking of Bud for not displaying the stereotypical "macho" traits he values, and for putting more effort into his studies than athletics, would likely be seen as abusive and mocking towards anyone who's more of an academic than an athlete. |
| 208 | ** The jokes about Kelly's promiscuity would likely be seen as slut-shaming today. |
| 209 | *** However, half of those jokes are made by her, and she is repeatedly shown to be less slutty than the jokes imply. Also, as with the fat jokes, the ValuesDissonance is supposed to be intentional. |
| 210 | * ''[[Series/{{MASH}} M*A*S*H]]'' is a show that covers a lot of contemporary social issues in a progressive light (especially after Alan Alda was given a great deal of creative control). However, the show still has a tendency to handle rape in a distasteful manner. Not that an actual rape is joked about or anything, but general rape jokes are unfortunately common. One can argue that a show that tries to bring humor to dark circumstances is simply attempting the same thing. However, dark circumstances on ''M*A*S*H'' are still handled in a dramatic fashion, so the show's trivialization of rape is rather cringe-worthy. Even the writers in the later retrospectives on the show regret the rape jokes, and asked "What were we thinking?" |
| 211 | ** It's noticeable in "Rainbow Bridge," when Hawkeye and Trapper make light of Margaret's fears about rape by the enemy. Thankfully subverted a few seasons later in "Bug Out," when she expresses a similar fear and Hawkeye is reassuring in response. |
| 212 | ** In one episode, a plastic surgeon visits the 4077th. He corners Margaret in the supply room and has her bent over a table before Hawkeye and Trapper intervene. It's fairly clear this was a NearRapeExperience, but Hawkeye and Trapper treat it as a minor indiscretion at worst and no one seems to care all that much. |
| 213 | ** In another episode, however, resident ButtMonkey Frank Burns tries to start something with a visiting female officer, who screams that she's being raped. The guards take it seriously and hold Frank at gunpoint while the normally easygoing Colonel Blake throws the book at him. However, StatusQuoIsGod and the incident has no further impact on Frank's duties or career.[[note]]when Burns eventually leaves the series, his going AWOL, on top of his mediocre performance as a surgeon and erratic behaviour, results not in a court-martial, but a posting back to the continental USA to work at a base hospital there. It is revealed at this point that Frank Burns had influential connections who were prepared to cover up for him and to mitigate any disciplinary measures his actions deserved.[[/note]] |
| 214 | ** A non-rape-related example: "Guerilla my Dreams" has Hawkeye and BJ trying to defend a suspected North Korean female guerilla fighter from a South Korean lieutenant, whose methods on her are implied to be torture and execution. Even after she tries murdering another patient in broad daylight, Hawkeye and BJ ''still'' try (and fail) to defend her until the bitter end. While the pair are portrayed sympathetically for attempting to save a life no matter how horrendous her crimes, these days in a post-UsefulNotes/WarOnTerror America, modern viewers would be baffled on why Hawkeye and BJ are naïvely trying to stop a known terrorist from being brought to justice. |
| 215 | * ''Series/{{Maury}}'': A one-time staple of the show was "Man or Woman?" episodes, where Maury would feature a lineup of cisgender and UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} women and invite the viewers to guess the person's biological sex.[[note]]The formula was painfully predictable; the cis women were always bodybuilders with rippling muscles and terrible makeup, while the trans women would be far more conventionally feminine. It goes without saying that trans women were only in it [[MoneyDearBoy for the money]].[[/note]] The show stopped doing these episodes in the 2010's due to increased awareness of transgender issues. |
| 216 | * ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'' [[InvertedTrope inverts it]]. By modern standards, Uther is a ruthless tyrant. By general medieval standards, he would be considered rather benevolent. |
| 217 | * ''Series/MiamiVice'': The central element of the series is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States civil asset forfeiture]]; cops using stuff seized from rich criminals to justify them wearing expensive suits and driving expensive cars. This is ''extremely'' uncomfortable in modern times, with cops nationwide having come under fire for seizing anything they feel like from any''one'' they feel like and telling their victims, "You'll burn up the value in attorney fees trying to get it back, so shut up and get lost." Even worse, the assets aren't used for police work, but for luxuries like alcohol for office parties, new houses for administrators, etc. |
| 218 | * ''Series/MindYourLanguage'' is today considered to be at best embarrassingly xenophobic; at worst, blatantly racist. However, when it aired in the late 1970s, the show was appreciated for having a comparatively diverse cast with several actors of African and Asian descent. |
| 219 | * ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' isn't immune either. |
| 220 | ** Watch the ''Erizabeth L'' episode, where Italian director Luchino Visconti is revealed to be a Japanese imposter with a drawn-out JapaneseRanguage joke and Terry Jones in {{yellowface}}; he then does it again in blackface, when he plays an African impersonating another Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni. |
| 221 | ** The name given to the friend of the mother of the Secretary of State for Overseas Affairs, who is just about to make a major speech about Rhodesia in the Commons but wouldn't mind a cup of tea first, is ''Mrs Niggerbaiter''. This was intended as CrossesTheLineTwice, but the dissonance is much more glaring today than it was in the early 70s. |
| 222 | ** There was a skit where two of the Pythons, playing a pair of old women watching television, change the channel by torturing an Indian man wearing a turban and loincloth with electricity until he physically turns the dial. Again this may have been shock value in the 70's but certainly unacceptable in modern times. |
| 223 | ** There are so many examples of BlackFace that it would take too long to list them. |
| 224 | ** Television executives are frequently depicted as Jewish with thick accents, prosthetic noses, and stereotypical mannerisms. |
| 225 | * An episode of ''Series/MorkAndMindy'' has Mork go up against an overgrown bully named George. George stalks Mindy, makes threatening phone calls to Mork and hangs out menacingly near their house. This is treated as creepy jerkassery, but no one even thinks of calling the police. Ironically, it would take the death of another of Pam Dawber's co-stars (Rebecca Schaffer of ''My Sister Sam'') to get the first anti-stalking laws passed in America. |
| 226 | * ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' frequently calls out and lampshades ValuesDissonance, where Joel/Mike and the 'bots will riff on a movie for the horribly dated or inappropriate attitudes it displays. This is particularly prevalent in their riffs on informational short films and travelogues made between the 1930s and 1950s/60s, where the crew will mercilessly mock the film for its outdated attitudes to family life, gender politics, racism, social behavior and so forth. |
| 227 | ** In the short film "[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248722/ Catching Trouble]]" (episode 315). Filmed in 1936, it presents a lighthearted look at Ross Allen, who captures animals for his zoo - with his bare hands. This involves poking them with sticks, knocking them out of tall trees - by cutting the trees down - and trapping them in a bag, with the help of "his faithful Seminole." On one occasion he starts a small forest fire in order to drive out a snake, and eventually he grabs two bear cubs who scream in a particularly pitiful way (their mother is strangely absent). Then one of the cubs attempts to escape from the boat by swimming, but as a camera just happens to be underwater, it seems clear that he was provoked into jumping off the boat just so that he could be recaptured. Joel and The Bots became audibly upset over the course of the film, culminating in Joel apologizing on behalf of humanity. It's quite telling that, when all the Shorts were gathered together, the accompanying Host Segment that had Crow and Tom performing "Catching Ross" was not included and the fandom were upset at its absence. |
| 228 | ** In "[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276048/ A Date With Your Family]]," a short film from 1950 which is intended to teach kids how to have dinner with their parents. The film's portrait of family life circa 1950 - in which everything has to be arranged so that the father will not be upset when he returns from a hard day at the office - exactly fits the modern stereotype of that era. The narration, which is delivered by Hugh Beaumont of ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'', gives such as advice as "pleasant, unemotional conversation helps the digestion," and observes that "these boys greet their dad as though they were genuinely glad to see him, as though they really missed him." The narrator further points out how the mother and sister of the family "owe it" to their menfolk to be attractive and charming, and encourages the son to compliment the ladies' cooking as "this will make them want to continue pleasing you." |
| 229 | ** The Union Pacific safety film "Days of Our Years" features a segment where a husband drops his wife in labor off at the hospital, and is then encouraged by the doctors to go on ahead to work while they take care of business. (This was during a time when women were kept sedated during childbirth, so it's not like the husband's presence would mean much to the wife either way.) Against that though, the tradition of the new father handing cigars to everyone at the workplace almost fails to rate a mention. |
| 230 | ** The short advertising spot for a home economics major for female college students takes quite a few hits. While most of the short is rather progressive in asserting that most of its graduates went on to have careers, the hosts audibly boo when the short gushes over a graduate who takes on the "full-time career" of being a housewife. |
| 231 | ** "The Home Economics Story" heavily emphasizes the... "[[StayInTheKitchen domestic]]" side of home ec. |
| 232 | ** The short that precedes ''Catching Trouble'', "Aquatic Wizards," has the narrator call a Hispanic jumper "a Mexican jumping bean." The Bots proceed to tear him a new one, with Crow calling him a "white fascist," and Tom pegging him as a fat, ignorant hick who gets paid to talk into a microphone and eat pretzels all day. They later suggest that the jumper sneak into the announcer's booth and [[TheDogBitesBack take his revenge on him.]] |
| 233 | * ''Series/TheNanny'': |
| 234 | ** The fact that Fran and C.C. are over 30 and single is considered a bad thing and [[JewishMother Fran's mother Sylvia constantly nags her about it]]. While some of that nagging is PlayedForLaughs and part of Sylvia's character, these days it's much more acceptable for someone that age to be unmarried without being judged harshly. |
| 235 | ** Season 5's "Not Without My Nanny" didn't age well. Besides the egregiously stereotypical portrayal of Middle Easterners ([[{{Qurac}} even in a fictional Middle Eastern nation]]), the Sultan is played by Charles Shaughnessy in {{Brownface}}, a practice now frowned upon in Hollywood. |
| 236 | * ''Series/NYPDBlue'''s constant use of swearing, nudity and graphic violence caused a considerable stir in North America, with many ABC affiliates initially refusing to pick up the show (as did Canadian networks), whereas nudity and swear words had been commonplace on European TV since 1970. While North American broadcast and basic cable TV largely refrained from sex and strong language after the Super Bowl "wardrobe incident"[[note]]Note that in the US, media watchdogs possess an influence that might shock foreigners[[/note]], premium cable and streaming series have raised the stakes to a point where ''NYPD Blue'' looks very tame by comparison. |
| 237 | * The basic premise of ''Occasional Wife'' is that a man hires a woman to pose as his wife so he can qualify for a promotion at work, as his boss refuses to put single men in management positions. Nowadays that kind of blatant employment discrimination would be grounds for a lawsuit, not zany sitcom misadventures. |
| 238 | * ''Series/{{The Odd Couple|1970}}'' |
| 239 | ** As the public perception of masculinity was already shifting to "macho" archetypes by 1970, ABC executives feared that people would see Felix and Oscar as a couple, so they made the producers to add an intro halfway through the first season specifying that the characters were divorced men temporarily sharing an apartment. |
| 240 | ** The episode "The Pig Who Came to Dinner" features a guest appearance by Bobby Riggs, in which he plays up his sexist public image in the wake of the then-recent "Battle of the Sexes" match (the episode also features Billie Jean King). If similar statements had been made about blacks, for example, they would ''never'' have been tolerated, but women were fair game back then and Riggs' bigotry is largely played for laughs. |
| 241 | * ''Series/OdiseaBurbujas'' features a scene where Mimoso Raton (a baby mouse) walks into a room, and a woman jumps onto a chair because she is terrified of him. And this is shown as perfectly normal and expected. This show ran in Mexico during the first half of the 1980s. Imagine the backlash and accusations of sexism the producers would have received if the same scene had been aired in the USA during the same time period. |
| 242 | * ''Series/OnlyFoolsAndHorses'': Del's homophobia, which is PlayedForLaughs in a way that reflected society's attitudes at the time the early seasons were filmed. Interestingly, the show notes the change in opinions - Rodney is much more accepting, and calls Del out when he suspects that he could have gotten [=AIDS=] from an effeminate hairdresser. |
| 243 | * ''Series/OnTheBuses'' has one episode where the main characters Stan and Jack notice that their homemade beer makes Stan's sister and brother-in-law so out of their minds that they want to have sex with each other, even though they normally don't. So they decide to make some more and get the women at their work so out of their mind that they'll have sex with them, not really knowing what they are doing. This is treated as harmless fun. |
| 244 | * ''Series/PartyOfFive'': |
| 245 | ** Season 1 has a subplot where Julia, using a fake ID to pretend to be a twentysomething, is working in a bar. The owner decides to make the women's uniforms HotterAndSexier to their displeasure and, after a number of them complain once they've been harassed by multiple customers, he fires them. Julia calls him on it but still enters a relationship with him, and him losing his job once her real age is revealed is presented as a sad thing. |
| 246 | ** Bailey repeatedly acts very controlling and smothering towards Sarah; spending an episode SlutShaming her for wanting to dress skimpily when performing on stage, and often assuming any guy she hangs out with is going to make her cheat on him. Whenever Sarah calls him on how smothering he's being, he responds that it's just the way he wants to love her and it's ''her'' fault if she doesn't like it. While he does learn AnAesop, he just looks abusive to a modern audience. |
| 247 | ** Alison, Justin's friend from the UK, is revealed to be a closeted lesbian. Or at least, that she has an interest in girls. Julia automatically assumes that she has [[NoBisexuals no interest in boys whatsoever]], and tries to stop her going home from the bar with a random man she met. There were other valid reasons for her not to go home with the man - such as the apparent age difference - but an interest in women is the deciding factor for Julia, and her forced outing of Alison is presented as a good thing. |
| 248 | * ''Series/PipoDeClown'', a very popular Dutch children's show that aired from the 1950s until the 1970s, featured a white man dressed as a Native American, speaking in childlike sentences. Nowadays this seems horribly racist. |
| 249 | * In ''Series/PoliceWoman'', FairCop Pepper Anderson's male colleagues keep complimenting her on her good looks, beautiful eyes and so on. Today this would at best be considered unprofessional catcalling and at worst sexual harassment. |
| 250 | * ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce'': The show's handling of [[FantasticRacism institutionalized racism against mutants]] was considered revolutionary for the franchise in the 2000s but would be ripped apart if it came out in the 2010s or a decade after that. Despite having a rather valid FreudianExcuse for hating humans, most mutants on the show are written as your standard MonsterOfTheWeek who just wants to wreak havoc. Even [[BigBad Ransik]], one of the few mutants given any real depth, is mostly portrayed as a power-hungry terrorist who, as was pointed out by [[WebVideo/HistoryOfPowerRangers Linkara]], shows no real interest in actually making a better life for his fellow mutants. Making things worse is the fact that the Rangers are police officers who never really question society's treatment of their enemies. Given that state-sanctioned violence against marginalized groups has gotten a great deal of attention during the 2010s and onwards, the Rangers may look much less heroic in the eyes of some viewers. |
| 251 | * In ''Series/PunkyBrewster'', the famous episode "Accidents Happen" has Alan bringing a real-looking fake gun to school for career day, claiming he wants to be Rambo; post-Columbine, he would've likely been expelled. |
| 252 | * Usually, ''Series/QuantumLeap'' has this in-universe with Sam (a time traveller from the early 21st century) seeing how vastly different things were in the past (especially when he leaps into a black man in the 1950s). But the show (made in the early 1990s) could often end up doing this itself. |
| 253 | ** When Sam leaps into a woman, many of the cracks made about him "playing dress-up" can be seen as rough today. |
| 254 | ** Al's often lecherous attitude toward women plays like a guy out of the 1970s. While it's meant to show how "old-school" Al is, it can be disturbing even without the fact that, as a hologram only Sam can see, Al can be a major peeping tom (the show quickly backed off the latter point but it's still there). |
| 255 | ** A 1990 episode has Sam leaping into the body of a man with Down's Syndrome. When he first sees the reflection of the man in the mirror, Sam's first reaction is "I'm retarded." Imagine how that would be viewed today... (To put the scene in context, the line is actually an IronicEcho of the man's brother insisting Sam tell people he's not retarded, he's just slow. Still, it's hard to see it being used in any context now.) |
| 256 | * ''Series/AlRawabiSchoolForGirls'': A lot of the show's conflict stems from being told from the Middle Eastern Muslim society of UsefulNotes/{{Jordan}}. |
| 257 | ** Ruka is slut-shamed, pulled out of school, forbidden to see her old friends and told she destroyed her family's honour because...she dared to show a picture of herself without her hair being covered to a guy. In UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} head coverings are considered a way to preserve female modesty, and it is only allowed to take them off in the presence of family members. |
| 258 | ** Hazeem's obsession with his sister Layan's "purity". To Westerners, his obsession with keeping her in check, his fury at seeing her clothes at another guy's house ([[spoiler: thinking she slept with him, when they actually just played in the pool for a bit]]) and him [[spoiler: being driven to kill her when he finds her with her boyfriend]] come off as IncestSubtext, CrazyJealousGuy and IfICantHaveYou all rolled into one. But in the Middle East, men with his mindset are common because familial honour is a huge part of the culture. |
| 259 | ** Many girls (including Mariam, Reina, Ruka and Layan) meet their boyfriends online on Facebook and not in person. In the West this would be seen as foolish because of stranger danger. But as shown by the above example, sexual repression is a huge thing in these countries. |
| 260 | ** Might be DeliberateValuesDissonance, but Ruka is slut shamed for daring to (gasp) show her hair to a guy, while Reina's ex boyfriend sexually harasses women left and right and cheats on her. |
| 261 | * The ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode [[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonIIParallelUniverse Parallel Universe]] has Rimmer's female equivalent acting what would be considered pervy for the time ([[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale if done by a man]]), but downright horrible by today's standards. She comes onto male-Rimmer, grabs him by the thigh, claims he's "begging for it," and, when he turns her down, calls him "frigid." When the Rimmers discover the Listers in bed together, she slut-shames male-Lister right to his face. |
| 262 | * ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'' - the episode "White Men Can't Kiss" has the title character's son, DJ, in a play where he has to kiss a girl, but he doesn't want to. It's revealed she's black and the refusal implies racism in the Conners. On the one hand, the racism card could be used in this day and age. On the other, society now claims children don't have to do things they aren't comfortable with. If done today, DJ could have the director delete the kiss if it bothers him or let him know he doesn't have to go through with it if he is not comfortable. The girl would also be given the option. |
| 263 | * ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'' began airing ''juuuuuust'' before a massive paradigm-shift in the art of [[DragQueen drag performance]], where it has become less "men dressing as women" and more about playing with the concept of gender as a whole. Because Creator/{{RuPaul}} has been performing drag since the early 80's, he can be a bit old-fashioned in his views, which viewers and past contestants criticized: |
| 264 | ** The sewing challenges. In the old days, queens ''had'' to make their own outfits since it was impossible to find man-sized evening dresses unless they were fortunate enough to live in a big city with a specialty drag shop. Nowadays, thanks to the internet and increased queer/trans visibility, queens are able to build entire wardrobes without ever having to touch a sewing machine, and many otherwise-capable queens have struggled with the sewing challenges for this reason. |
| 265 | ** NWordPrivileges: In the early days when it wasn't clear that most drag queens are not transgender women, queens would often humorously describe themselves with transphobic slurs like "shemale" and "tranny." With today's increased respect towards trans people, this has become a major faux-pas if the queen isn't trans themselves, and the show has faced a great deal of controversy over this ("You've got she-mail!"). |
| 266 | ** Exclusion: A few old-school drag pageants ban transgender women that have medically transitioned to female, and the show did as well, believing such a woman has an unfair advantage over the cisgender men in the competition. The show (and pageants with this policy) has been heavily criticized for excluding trans female contestants in such a manner. Ru and the producers eventually started allowing women to complete, both post-transition and cisgender. |
| 267 | ** Presentation: Early drag was all about "the illusion," how well a man can pass himself off as a woman, and queens in the early seasons would be harshly critiqued if their outfit or makeup made them look too masculine. With drag today being more about blurring the gender lines rather than looking like the opposite physical sex, the judges have become much more accepting of androgyny. Their critiques nowadays are more about the construction/quality of the outfit and makeup, and less about passing as female. |
| 268 | * ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'': |
| 269 | ** In “What Price Harvey,” Harvey says he doesn't want to go to college because he wants to get the job training to become a mechanic after high school instead, prompting Sabrina to fret about his lack of ambition and try to push him into attending one in order to guarantee that he can get a decent job in his future. The episode ends with Harvey still wanting to be a mechanic, but deciding to get a college degree as a fail-safe. While the series was directed at kids (thus it would be a HardTruthAesop to teach little kids that you don't need college to have a successful career), this episode aired before the 2008 recession and with college tuitions, cost of living, and the wage gap hitting an all-time high in TheNewTens making it hard for many college graduates to find jobs and/or pay off obscenely high loan debts. People are also [[PopularityPolynomial slowly-but-surely discovering the benefits of learning a trade]] (steady income, excellent job security, non-sedentary work, employment guarantee, no outsourcing risk), especially since vocational education doesn’t cost as much as getting a college degree. As a result, Harvey forgoing college in favor of learning a trade and finding career and financial success in that post-secondary path seems much more sensible to viewers nowadays. |
| 270 | ** The Season 2 HalloweenEpisode has a gag where Valerie is the only one to go to the party in costume. This looks extremely odd to modern viewers. In the 90s, dressing up for Halloween was seen as something only kids would do, but since then a strong revival in costume parties among teens and adults and dressing up for the holiday occurred - especially with the SexyWhateverOutfit trend - to the point where it looks odd that the teenagers wouldn't show up to the party in costume. Likewise, the Season 5 and 6 episodes also have Sabrina's college friends not being fans of Halloween, which looks weird to college students in the 2010s. |
| 271 | ** One episode has a CouchGag where Sabrina dons a kimono, {{Yellowface}} makeup and speaks in a stereotypical Japanese accent. |
| 272 | ** The Josh character has not aged well. He's not only Sabrina's boss, but pursues her even when he's a college student and she's a high schooler. He even sends her secret Valentine's Day cards when he knows she has a boyfriend, and frequently encourages her to cheat on Harvey. |
| 273 | * ''Series/{{Scandal}}'': Abby, on Stephen: "I don't understand why a successful, charming man like him, with a good job, needs to sleep with whores." Abby is hardly an innocent, nor Stephen's actual wife. |
| 274 | * ''Series/{{SCTV}}'': Dave Thomas did at least two characters in yellowface. Thomas plays Lin Ye Tang in multiple episodes, while playing Tim Ishimuni in 3. |
| 275 | * The DVD releases of the early seasons of ''Series/SesameStreet'' are given a label warning that they are intended for adult viewing for nostalgia purposes, as the standards of what is appropriate for children to watch have gotten stricter. The episodes include the likes of an adult Muppet approaching a bunch of kids and pulling letters out of his trenchcoat. There's also the matter of things like Cookie Monster smoking a pipe. |
| 276 | * ''Series/SexAndTheCity'': Many people, including the main characters, all casually throw around the word "faggot" to refer to gay men despite the show being generally FairForItsDay in its depiction of gay people, and the four friends all being generally supportive of gay rights. |
| 277 | * ''Series/TheSingingRingingTree'': The princess gets cursed with ugliness as a reflection of her inner character, with her beauty gradually being restored as this character reforms. What might seem a little jarring to modern viewers (aside from the blatant use of BeautyEqualsGoodness) is that part of this involves her hair being turned green; this is an acceptable fashion statement now, but not in the 1950s when the original film it was adapted from was made. It was ''certainly'' frowned upon as "socially deviant" in East Germany, where the story originates, and probably impossible to achieve in the MedievalEuropeanFantasy setting. |
| 278 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'': |
| 279 | ** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': |
| 280 | *** The treatment of women can feel sexist to the modern viewer, despite the fact that the show usually pushes standards of equality that were [[FairForItsDay radical for the time]]. ("But there ''was'' prejudice on Earth once! I remember reading about it in a history book!") In fact, the only reason there isn't ''more'' obvious gender equity on the original ''Enterprise'' is ExecutiveMeddling by nervous suits who thought the very presence of females would imply rampant promiscuity among the crew. According to producers who worked on the series, though, even though Gene Roddenberry did want more female characters, it was less in the name of real, honest gender equity and more in the name of skirts and tops that exemplified the TheissTitillationTheory. But hey, at least they're there and (sometimes) involved in the plot. |
| 281 | *** The miniskirts come across today as making female officers seem less professional than the male officers and more like sex symbols. While they ''are'' {{Fanservice}}, the miniskirt in TheSixties was also a [[FashionDissonance symbol of female empowerment and liberation]] (as opposed to "proper" floor-length dresses), so this is also a lot of UnintentionalPeriodPiece (and with a bit of {{Zeerust}}, for a good measure). |
| 282 | *** A reason women are treated as mostly eye-candy on the original series might have to do with the poor reaction of test audiences to the original pilot, "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage The Cage]]", in 1964. Creator/GeneRoddenberry claimed that a lot of women objected to seeing a woman in a position of authority (Number One, played by Creator/MajelBarrett), and the fact that the female crew members wore pants. However, significant doubt has been cast on his version of events in recent years. According to others, the network were fine with a female first officer in principle but objected to the fact that [[CastingCouch Rodenberry had cast his mistress in the role]]. They were reportedly livid to realise he had smuggled the actress back onto the show by changing her hair colour and [[YouLookFamiliar casting her as a new character]]. |
| 283 | *** Also in "The Cage," somewhat jarring to modern viewers might be Captain Pike's unwillingness to allow, and discomfort with having, a woman on the bridge (when a female yeoman comes up to deliver a report)... [[OneOfTheBoys with the exception of Number One, that is]]. |
| 284 | *** This is DependingOnTheWriter. In the first season's "Who Mourns for the Adonais?", when Uhura has to put together a communications bypass circuit so the ship can reach Kirk, she worries that she can't do it but Spock says "I can think of no one better qualified for the job" ... something rarely said to a black woman on American TV at the time. But in the third season's "The Lights of Zetar," the main female guest character, Lt. Mira Romaine, is constantly referred to by almost every male character as "the girl," even though she's not only clearly an adult but is en route to take charge of the Federation's biggest archive/library. |
| 285 | *** The original series also has [=McCoy=] constantly insulting Spock's Vulcan heritage by calling him such things as "you green-blooded Vulcan" or "you pointed-eared hobgoblin." In real-world terms, these would be considered racial insults, [[NoSuchThingAsHR something HR should really be looking into]]. Within the show, it's considered a harmless part of Spock and [=McCoy's=] VitriolicBestBuds relationship. May also count as DeliberateValuesDissonance, since Spock has no emotional sensibilities with which to be offended due to his Vulcan mental discipline. |
| 286 | *** Even worse, the show consistently has Spock making the same sort of racist insults towards nearly every member of the cast for being human, having emotions, etc. |
| 287 | ** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E16Ethics Ethics]]", some human Starfleet officers have a hard time accepting the values of other cultures. Worf is injured in an accident that renders him a parapalegic. The cultural norms Worf was raised under compel him to take his own life if he could not function as a warrior, which he could not do as a paraplegic. Riker and Crusher show a complete inability to understand or respect Worf's values. Crusher threatens to keep Worf from taking his own life by any means necessary, but Picard is more respectful of Worf's values and talks her into letting him undergo a dangerous procedure that would either cure or kill him. |
| 288 | ** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': |
| 289 | *** The show presents an uncomfortably realistic view of the morality and ethics of warfare that may seem objectionable to audience members. Almost all of the main characters are shown doing underhanded deeds in the name of victory, up to and including [[spoiler:attempted genocide on the part of the Federation]]. |
| 290 | *** The show's tacit acknowledgement that Kira was a member of a terrorist cell during the Cardassian occupation can raise a few eyebrows now that the word has become so much more politically charged now after events such as the September 11th attacks. Had the show been made after [=9/11=] they'd probably have used "partisan" as a description, invoking those forces from World War 2 fighting against occupation by the Axis powers. "Resistance fighter" or even "guerrilla" also might be the label—not "terrorist." Alternatively, the Cardassians using one term and the Federation another would also make sense. |
| 291 | *** The romantic relationship between Garak and Ziyal tends to make a lot of modern viewers uncomfortable due to their age difference (Ziyal is about 18 and Garak is middle-aged.) When Dukat criticizes it, Kira tells him he should mind his business and that Ziyal is old enough to make her own decisions. For context, Ziyal is about the same age as Jake Sisko, who is more or less still treated as a child by the rest of the cast. This isn't helped by the decision to recast Ziyal from an actress closer to her canonical age to an actress in her 30's. Many viewers choose to interpret the attraction as one-sided on Ziyal's side, with Garak's feelings being platonic (aided by the fact that Garak has HomoeroticSubtext with Bashir.) |
| 292 | ** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS5E9ThirtyDays Thirty Days]]," demoting Paris to the rank of ensign is fine, but Janeway sentencing him to thirty days of solitary confinement is horrifying in hindsight, because we've come to recognize it as a form of torture. Depriving someone of human contact for an extended period of time inflicts major psychological trauma that can stay with them for the rest of their lives. Particularly jarring given the setting; the Federation is shown to be highly enlightened, and they seem to treat inmates with velvet gloves. |
| 293 | * ''Series/TheThornBirds'' upset a great many viewers when it first aired in 1983 due to its depiction of a Catholic priest falling in love with a woman and eventually consummating his relationship with her. Other viewers lauded said depiction. Oddly, ''all'' of these people seemed to overlook the fact that said priest had [[WifeHusbandry known this woman since she was a child and had a hand in raising her]]. Made even more jarring if one reads the original book, in which he admits to his confessor that it's ''because'' he's known her since she was a child that the relationship went where it did, and that if he'd met her as an adult he wouldn't have been interested. |
| 294 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XGe_hncsiM (in)famous appearance of the Sex Pistols on Britain's ''Today'' show]] is, like the film ''Film/{{Blowup}}'', an example where what's dissonant about a work can change over time. In 1976 it was the profanity that lit up the switchboards at Thames Television[[note]]London's ITV weekday provider at the time. In fact the program did not air outside London at all[[/note]] after the show ended, profanity which doesn't seem all that shocking to modern viewers. What ''does'', though, is that middle-aged host Bill Grundy, who claimed earlier in the show to be drunk on live television, [[DirtyOldMan seems to have no problem suggesting he might want to try to pick up]] the 19-year-old [[Music/SiouxsieAndTheBanshees Siouxsie Sioux]] after the show. ''This'' is what causes Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones to swear at Grundy, and Jones sounds ''furious'' that Grundy tried to flirt with his young friend. In context at the time, the swearing could easily have been perceived as further provocative behavior on [[Music/SexPistols the band]]'s part. |
| 295 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': |
| 296 | ** The DownerEnding of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]" wherein Henry Bemis breaks his only pair of glasses, leaving him blind and alone in a world of nothing but the books he has salvaged and can't even read. Rod Serling's intent with this episode was to punish Henry Bemis for refusing to be "normal". In the modern age, where men have strived for pursuits that do not fit the masculine or prescribed stereotypes of men, the intent definitely comes off as overkill and extremely derogatory. |
| 297 | ** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E21MirrorImage Mirror Image]]" has Paul call the cops on Millicent due to his belief she is suffering from a mental illness and female hysteria over the idea that a MirrorUniverse counterpart is trying to take her place. This by itself would be par for the course in 1960, but in recent years, the increased news coverage regarding police brutality, especially those against mentally ill patients has this comes off as extremely cruel to contemporary viewers. Doubly so that the police seemingly kidnap Millicent without a second thought, only going on Paul's word -- they don't even try to talk to Millicent -- and she wasn't causing any trouble or being a danger to anyone. |
| 298 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E6EyeOfTheBeholder Eye of the Beholder]]", doctors and nurses are shown to be smoking within the hospital building. If this were made today doing this would get them fired due to the dangers smoke inhalation could have on the patients or others. Though admittedly this is lessened by the fact that the people in said hospital aren't human, so it is not known how it would affect them. |
| 299 | ** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E37TheChangingOfTheGuard The Changing of the Guard]]" reveals that Prof. Fowler inspired his students to join the military. At the time, this was considered honorable and noble. Nowadays, even the most patriotic of teachers would likely be horrified at the idea that they inadvertently talked their students into volunteering to die in a war. |
| 300 | ** The climax of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E3NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]" has Robert Wilson open a passenger window on an airplane and pull out a concealed gun, attempting to shoot the gremlin tearing apart the wing. If this were made in the 21st century, there would be no way Mr. Wilson would've been able to get away with bringing a concealed weapon onboard a plane, especially with his history of mental breakdowns. |
| 301 | ** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E10The7thIsMadeUpOfPhantoms The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms]]" was made at a time when the reputation of George Armstrong Custer was more favorable and less controversial, making the protagonist's decision to [[spoiler:side with him at the Battle of Little Bighorn]] so much more disturbing to modern viewers. |
| 302 | ** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E31TheEncounter The Encounter]]" runs off the myth that the Japanese had collaborators in Pearl Harbor. Thus, it was one of five episodes withheld from syndication until 2016. |
| 303 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S2E5 Toys of the Caliban]]" repeatedly and causally uses the word "retarded" to refer to the character Toby Ross' medical condition. Nowadays even if he did fit the medical definition of the term this would never be allowed. |
| 304 | * In ''Series/TwinPeaks'', it's [[AmbiguousGenderIdentity unclear]] if FBI Agent Denise is meant to be read as a trans woman or a man in drag, and several characters (though, in a bit of ValuesResonance, not Denise's former partner Dale Cooper) have shocked reactions to her that are meant to be viewed as relatable and comedic. The 2017 revival series, in acknowledgement of the changing times, does away with the jokes and the ambiguity, treating the character as a transgender woman. |
| 305 | * Creator/WhoopiGoldberg got in trouble for this on an episode of ''Series/TheView'', where she said that UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust was not an act of racism, stating that the Nazis were motivated by a hatred of their fellow man detached from ethnicity, then made it worse by arguing with her co-hosts as they tried to explain what antisemitism was to her. While she didn't deny the Holocaust happened or downplay the horrors of the Final Solution, she later explained on ''Series/TheLateShowWithStephenColbert'' that she was looking at Nazi antisemitism from the perspective of America in the 21st century, where race is defined by skin colour, and since both ethnic Germans and Jews in 1940's Germany had light skin she didn't realize there was an aspect of racial hatred to the attempted genocide of the Jews, or that Jews (and many Eastern and Southern Europeans) were not seen as white at the time.[[note]]Leaving aside the fact that there are examples throughout human history of ethnically motivated genocides by one group of people against another with the same skin colour, from the Yugolsav Wars to the Rwandan Genocide to the Second Sino-Japanese War.[[/note]] |
| 306 | * ''Series/TheWaltons'' episode "The Romance" had the eldest daughter Mary Ellen state that she wished to become a doctor rather than just a nurse as she originally planned, explaining that she believes she has the talent and drive to succeed. Instead of encouraging Mary Ellen, Grandma Walton disbelievingly asks her to name one female doctor. When Mary Ellen names several, Grandma says "Well, hopefully, by the time you're grown up, that sort of thing will have stopped happening." |
| 307 | ** Grandma also finds it shocking and incredible that Olivia would have the audacity to want to learn to drive a car and go places by herself. "Where do you need to go that one of the men can't take you?" |
| 308 | *** The driving example becomes a case of this trope PlayedForLaughs (even by modern standards) in one episode where Olivia and Grandma borrow John-Boy's car. Grandma is practically clutching the door in terror because Olivia is driving ''twenty miles an hour.'' |
| 309 | ** In "The Violated," a rapist never faces justice. Instead, John "persuades" him to leave the county - meaning he could do it again to someone else. |
| 310 | ** In "The Victims," a Walton neighbor experiences DomesticAbuse from her husband, who has returned from WWII with his nerves shattered by PTSD. He truly doesn't mean to hurt her, and that's made clear when the audience sees him having a terrible flashback and unaware of his own surroundings; however, the way the local law enforcement responds to her situation is rather appalling by today's standards. The sheriff admits that the police are reluctant to get involved with domestic disputes. |
| 311 | * ''Series/TheWestWing'': |
| 312 | ** This show's attitude towards gender relations is a product of its time. While it was airing, Josh's behavior toward Donna was considered cute and romantic; nowadays it would be looked on as controlling, possessive, and improper of a boss to his subordinate. Also, the scene in season 4 where Charlie "respectfully" refuses Zoey's request to stop pursuing her raises multiple red flags after the [=#MeToo=] era. This also applies to Lord John Marbury's allegedly adorable habit of leering at and propositioning any woman in the vicinity, up to and including the First Lady. (The last seems to be acknowledged slightly in the show itself when late-season character Kate Harper runs into him. Rather than treating him as an eccentric but harmless rogue, she appears to be appalled by his behavior and also very unhappy that she has to work with a high-ranking lech who is an obvious favorite with the President.) |
| 313 | ** The "Don't Tread On Me" flag Sam has on the wall of his office. Back when the show started, it was a bit of an HistoricalInJoke, but the symbol is now inextricably linked to the extreme right wing -- the polar opposite of the characters (and alignment) of the show. |
| 314 | ** The show has an extremely pro-globalisation, pro-unrestricted trade, pro-Grand Bargain viewpoint. Said viewpoint, while not necessarily hated, is far more controversial and scrutinized over the years, even among the show’s target audience. Particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent "Great Recession"; an event which some parts of the US (if not the world) have not ever recovered from. |
| 315 | ** The characters mercilessly attack those on their ideological left. For many viewers with the hindsight of the 2010's and beyond, they would see this failure to embrace their left flank to help the working class to be the same thing that resulted in the rise of populist right and alt-right parties across much of the Western world (including Brexit, the idea of which would have been unfathomable to the characters on the show). |
| 316 | * ''Series/TheWhiteShadow'', a high school drama from the late 1970s, has aged badly with general WhiteSavior issues in its premise. One notable episode features a NewTransferStudent. He thinks he has escaped the bullying he suffered at his previous school. Unfortunately, while he's playing basketball with his new classmates, some of his old classmates show up at the court. They begin mocking him for having [[MistakenForGay five new boyfriends]], which means that now the rumors have followed him to the new school too. From then on, he is treated with suspicion at best, even by the basketball coach who tells his wife, "When I see him talking to a girl, I wonder if he's faking it." The episode makes much out of the fact that he's not actually gay, and ignores the fact that he's being sexually harassed. |
| 317 | * ''Series/WhosTheBoss'' has this trope applied to the ''title'', as it would never even occur to most viewers nowadays to question whether a live-in housekeeper could presume to be the head-of-household's "boss," merely because the employee happens to be male and the employer happens to be female. Indeed, few of the show's once-groundbreaking role reversals would raise an eyebrow today. |
| 318 | * In ''Series/TheWildHouse'', Serena (who is 17 years old) marries Orlando, who's around 21-22; it's stated that by the time she starts university he will already have graduated. Her family is happy for her and the series ended with them joining her after she moved to the USA to be with Orlando. Later, her [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute cousin Georgina]] (16-17) dates and then becomes engaged to Gavin (mid to late 20s.) Although the family comments that he's considerably older than her, they don't think anything of it. Today, while teenage marriages aren't rare, they are less common than when the show aired in the late 1990s and it is much less socially acceptable for an adult in their 20s or older to date a teenager. In a modern show, Gavin and Orlando would likely be seen as predatory. |
| 319 | ** In season three, Natalie begins dating Dave who is selfish, dismissive of her feelings, and engages in behaviour that could be seen as outright {{Gaslighting}}. At this stage, she's living with her aunt and uncle who note that Dave doesn't make her happy, but chalk it up to normal teenage relationships and figure Natalie will work it out on her own. There is now much more awareness of emotional abuse in relationships, and numerous public education campaigns teaching young people how to recognize it. |
| 320 | * ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' has several examples, especially when it comes to misogyny; |
| 321 | ** More than once, a villainess is given much a lighter punishment than her male counterparts [[spoiler: such as Morn in "The Night of the Flying Pie Plate," who gets a lighter sentence than her other conspirators]], or is even allowed to walk away scot-free, apparently simply because she is a beautiful woman. This is compounded at the end of "[[Recap/TheWildWildWestS1E11TheNightOfTheRedEyedMadmen The Night of the Red-Eyed Madmen]]," when the villainess gives a rather insightful, moving speech about how she'd only wanted to be seen as more than "just a woman." This small step forward is promptly ignored in favor of having her and another woman fawn over a new dress and begin discussing how to look their best when the train pulls into Carson City. |
| 322 | ** The last scene of "The Night of the Firebrand" drips with misogyny, as West and Gordon decide that Vixen O'Shaughnessy's punishment (for helping mastermind an attempted massacre at a military fort and a coup against Canada) is to be "forced to return to the feminine fold" so that she will "leave the fighting to us," by which they mean they're just going to make her return to the ladies' finishing school she escaped from. When she objects and goes into a CharacterFilibuster about all the wrongs that still need fighting against in the world, West basically gives her a Vulcan nerve pinch (a RunningGag in this episode) and reflects that he'd better tell the school's headmistress how to do it. |
| 323 | ** "The Night of the Tycoons" romps home with the gold in Sexist Episode Writing; other episodes have female villains, but there's an unpleasant tone throughout the episode suggesting women have no business being in charge of huge corporations, capped off by its tag scene with Lionel's fiancee Kyra booted off to the kitchen and Jim telling him he's got to keep these women in their place. |
| 324 | ** All that said, there ''are'' exceptions [[spoiler: such as Laurette in "The Night of the Winged Terror, Part 2," Posey in "The Night of the Poisonous Posey," and most dramatically Astarte in "The Night of the Druid's Blood," who's not only caught but will, it's implied, hang for her crimes. And Jim makes it clear he isn't sorry.]] |
| 325 | * ''Series/WKRPInCincinnati'': Herb's constant pursuit of Jennifer would very likely result in a sexual harassment suit nowadays. |
| 326 | * ''Series/TheXFiles'': The 2016 revival got some criticism for presenting Mulder's old conspiracy theories completely at face value again, without acknowledging how, in the years since the original show, conspiracy theories were now largely associated with extreme fringe nuts, rather than the more sympathetic view they had in TheNineties. The premiere even features Creator/JoelMcHale as a NoCelebritiesWereHarmed take-off on Alex Jones who's presented as a hero with no sense of irony. Despite enjoying the episode, the AV Club's reviewer thought that real-life tragedies such as 9/11 were being mercilessly exploited. |
| 327 | * ''Series/ZCars'', which by today's cop-show standards is exceedingly tame, once ran an episode where the cops have to bust a child-porn ring engaged in making dubious home movies. The series screened in the early evening, just after teatime. This was the 1970s, a time when paedophilia was only just beginning to be recognised as an issue, partly because of the exposure of groups like the Paedophile Information Exchange.[[note]] an "advocacy group" campaigning for sexual relations between adults and under-age children to be legalised. Debate centred on the limits of free speech and whether or not the PIE should be made an illegal organisation[[/note]] However, this was still two decades before an ever-increasing sensitivity (and something of a hysteria) on the issue emerged. Nowadays, no one would talk about child porn and the like before the 9 pm [[{{Watershed}} watershed]]. |
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