Values Dissonance / Other Media

aka: Other

noreallife

Advertising

• Ad Turds often points out the largely scathing British response to American-styled advertising, especially adverts from the USA which are shown verbatim in Britain with very little post-production. Ads of the long-winded and hard-sell Infomercial style are especially loathed and draw a bucket of bile upon themselves.
• Commercials for Underoos brand underwear, once omnipresent on Saturday Morning TV (especially in the 1970s through early 1980s) vanished by the early 1990s - a combination of networks' programming targeting older kids and increasing paranoia over anything that could even be implied to sexualize kids. Early commercials called them "costumes" to get away with showing them on TV.
• These Kia-Ora fruit drink adverts were made and broadcast in the UK in the 1980s. Especially weird because "Kia ora" is Maori for hello, and has nothing to do with the American South. And especially weird as most 1980s British people wouldn't even recognize the stereotypes (the pickaninny, zoot suits, crows = black people, basketball as stereotypically 'black', "dog" as a term of affection, the "mammy" are all American ideas).
• This 1960s Jell-O ad about how Chinese people have trouble not calling it "Jerro", how they can't eat anything without chopsticks, and how the spoon is a Western invention.^note Also inaccurate: Archeologists have found Chinese spoons as far back as the Shang Dynasty.
• The earliest McDonald's television commercials featured future news weatherman Willard Scott as a far different version of Ronald McDonald. The commercials featured Scott (wearing a burger tray on his head, and sporting poorly-applied clown makeup and a goofy grin) explaining that he "likes to do what all little boys and girls like" and accosts a young boy by bribing him with cheeseburgers - the kid even says that he's "not supposed to talk to strangers", and Ronald replies with, "Well, your mother's right as always, but I'm Ronald McDonald!" Even though people wouldn't have batted an eyelid back then, the commercials were swiftly swept under the rug after the company launched the mascot nationwide a few years later, for obvious reasons.
• If your husband hates your coffee your only choice is to improve it for him.
• British jam and preserves maker Robertsons took a long time to retire its advertising mascot, a children's doll in minstrel blackface known as a "golliwog". ^note  Possibly the origin of the n-word "wog" used as a pejorative with a meaning almost as strong as the other n-word. It took until the late 1990's due to floods of protests from traditionalists who didn't see the problem and considered black British people oversensitive.
• Camp Coffee's iconic label, showing an officer of the British Raj being served coffee by his faithful Indian servant, long outlasted the end of British rule in India, and its withdrawal caused outraged protest from traditionalists, who thought Asian-British people were complaining about nothing.
• The tonic Moxie (which was popular around the turn of the century but lost nearly all market share south of Massachusetts to Coca Cola when its ad director died) has a good bit now that tonics and other sugary beverages are considered to be contributors to obesity and herbal remedies of unknown content are no longer considered trustworthy. It's very odd to see it being treated as a revitalizing health beverage for the whole family in adventure magazines (hence the name's modern meaning).
• An underwear sales presentation for the shopping channel QVC showing two very attractive women wearing hideously unflattering undergarments went viral on YouTube. When the British sales pitch reached QVC viewers in the USA,^note Apparently it could be accessed through the QVC website it provoked lots of complaints. The reason is apparently that both models had very visible erect nipples under their vests. This highlighted the gulf between British and North American social attitudes to visibly erect female nipples under clothing; it's no big deal in GB but is apparently almost as bad as toplessness in the USA. ^note American style guides for women's clothing do not like this at all and consider it socially unacceptable. Strangest of all, American websites covering the item ran edited excerpts from the show but still considered it necessary to run a Censor Box over the chest of a woman who was otherwise fully covered!
  • There is even values dissonance on this within the US; to older/more conservative Americans having nipples show may be unacceptable but younger Americans may have a different view (and not even that young, Rachel on Friends rarely wore a bra in the 1990s and it wasn't very controversial).
• While the idea of regional or limited-edition flavours isn't unheard of, in Japan, it's very common. Because there is a lot of competition in small food production companies (especially confectionaries), some stores within certain regions advertise having that particular unique flavour as a selling point. Outside of Japan, it's mostly limited to seasons - namely the Pumpkin Spice fever every fall and winter.
• In this commercial for a luxury bed from the 1950's, we see two female roommates enjoying the bed's many features, including its handheld vibrating massager. At the time this commercial ran, it was considered indecent to show a man and woman sharing a bed. Showing two women supposedly looked more innocent, but in this day and age, it's hard not to think they're a lesbian couple who would be using that massaging tool on everything except their faces.
• In The '80s, British cereal Weetabix had a skinhead gang as their mascot (the leader briefly voiced by Bob Hoskins). While the idea was to create a London "hard man" image, the movement is also associated with racist movements like the National Front and the British Movement.
• Wilkins Coffee: Given that these commercials were made in The '50s, it's no surprise that some skits haven't aged well.
  • During the skit where Wilkins is tasked with delivering a shipment of Wilkins Coffee via stagecoach, Wontkins refers to the Native Americans as Indians, who proceed to fire arrows on Wilkins' coach, since "everybody drinks Wilkins".
  • One commercial has Wilkins and Wontkins being boiled in Wilkins Coffee by cannibals, and although they're silhouetted, the cannibals are very clearly offensive native African depictions.
  • A Wilkins Tea commercial depicts the Boston Tea Party, albeit Played for Laughs, as a mistake, saying that, "This dreadful thing would never have happened if we'd sent them Wilkins Tea."
  • In one skit, Wilkins and Wontkins are depicted as communists wearing ushankas, with Wontkins being declared a traitor for selling Wilkins Coffee, which is denounced as "capitalist coffee", before Wilkins asks him to send two pounds through the back door. Following the USSR dissolving in 1991, this commercial comes off as dated as a result.
• This Russian article about 15 old ads in English. Rather cringeworthy today.
• This Coors Light ad from 2002. [1] With the #MeToo Movement and feminism in full swing nowadays, this commercial is seen as sexist today.

Asian Animation

• In the US, Happy Heroes and Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf have been marketed at preschoolers on the Miao Mi app (which teaches Chinese), but neither series has been very successful there. There might be values dissonance about how much slapstick, comic violence and Toilet Humor (Mainly in season 8 episode 11 of Happy Heroes, where Big M. is attempting this with Huo Haha's floating spell logic and... farting.) is acceptable for preschoolers.
• Somehow, Korean animated series Larva subvert this without problems, despite featuring much toilet humor.
• Motu Patlu can seem surprisingly violent to foreign audiences, since the show is marketed to the same demographic as SpongeBob SquarePants in its native India. An infamous scene has Motu and Patlu beating up Dr. Jhatka in a non-slapstick manner, and Officer Chingum is seen using a gun, among other things which wouldn't fly in a Western children's cartoon.

Automobiles

• Unless you are a real car enthusiast with research on varieties of cars, expect to see some stereotypes on automobiles from even the non-car people.
  • Japanese non-car people see cars simply as a tool of transportation rather than a status symbol. This is different from people overseas who see the situation other way around. They only have basic knowledge (or even none whatsoever) about cars, like many non-car people overseas. And this is why they only drive small kei cars.
  • Some Asian (particularly Chinese) people see big cars as a status symbol, and overlook small cars as (in their opinion) blasphemy. They overlook the usefulness of small cars due to the classic Bigger Is Better mentality.
  • People outside Japan and Europe see station wagons as "uncool" plain people movers, while people in Europe and Japan see pickup trucks as "monster trucks" which are too brash for them.
    • Japanese people exaggerate even more, thinking of bonnet-type pickup trucks as "brash, insane and hardcore" trucks that are too much for their lifestyle. This is one of the reasons Japan is the only country that doesn't have pickups on sale.
• Generally, mentioning that you like either European, American, or Japanese cars will get you flack from fans of the other two camps. If you like American cars, prepare to hear numerous Eagle Land "yank tank", "gas guzzler" and "your car can't turn" comments. If you like Japanese cars, prepare to hear Rice Burner, "tiny wimpy" and "no torque" comments. If you like European cars, prepare to hear "whiny rich-kids" and "poor reliability" comments.
• The general attitudes "car is the default" versus "cars are for uneducated rural bumpkins who are too stupid to ride the metro" are highly dependent upon the country, demographic group, and era you grew up in. A person from rural Kansas might look at you like you're from the moon if you suggest getting rid of a car, whereas some places in Switzerland ban cars outright. When those attitudes clash, the result is not pretty.
  • This happens even in the same country. Someone living in New York City may consider a car more a nuisance to own than having any benefit, whereas in far-more spread out Los Angeles (or rural Kansas) it's an absolute necessity to do anything.
  • Baby boomers will think of cars as the default, and often experienced getting their license/first car as a rite of passage. Gen-X'ers^note mostly ones who came of age in the '90s and/or lived in cites and millennials, on the other hand, tend to view them as a necessary evil at best, and often nothing but a nuisance and a symbol of suburbia they want to outgrow. "Car sharing" and similar services that make people have access to a car when needed without the hassle of owning one are more popular with younger people for this reason. Even the son of Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear fame) associates cars with the boring times he spent being driven around by Daddy, if Jeremy Sr. is to be believed.

Comic Strips

• Knights of the Dinner Table:The comic spoofs an era of Tabletop Games which had a much more adversarial relation between the players and Dungeon Masters than modern games. Players of more modern RPGs might end up being confused at the Comedic Sociopathy that takes place on both ends.

Clothing

• What constitutes acceptable clothing and standards of dress can vary wildly from country to country and decade to decade, or even within the same country or community. Contributing factors can include climate, religion, social class, culture and gender.
• The acceptance of school uniforms varies from country to country. In countries such as the USA, the Netherlands, and Germany, school uniforms are limited largely to private schools, and are generally depicted in media as symbols of elitism, a way of repressing student's self-expression, or examples of institutionalized sexism and racism. In countries such as the UK, Ireland and Japan, almost all schools have uniforms, often with the justification that without them, students would bully others based on looks or be peer-pressured into buying expensive clothing or fitting in.

Eastern European Animation

• Hungarian Folk Tales faithfully adapts many hundred-year-old folk stories, but while the creators' approach was to stay true to their traditions, there are some stories that younger generations and international audiences took issue with, for things like alleged misogyny, hateful depictions of non-white people, mistreatment of the mentally ill, religious imagery and other sensitive subjects (suicide, alcoholism, or plain awkward morals). Nudity was a standout issue, especially the infamous episode "The Mayor's Clever Daughter", in which said daughter flashes her bare butt in her father's face as a gag and then publicly shows off her nude groin and pubes to the entire town, and the viewers, as a plot point. The series is still shown to Hungarian children on TV with a generous 12 age certificate but international reactions have been mixed, with many American viewers remarking that they found the nudity borderline pornographic as opposed to playful.^note Given the extreme American prudishness about female nudity, and the linked assumption that nudity always equates to sexuality - something Europeans can find puzzling and risible about the USA - this is an example of Values Dissonance in itself

Folklore

• In "What the Rose Did to the Cypress", an Iranian tale, Prince Almās-ruh-baksh marries four different women in close succession with nobody batting an eye, including the women themselves. One of them also happens to be directly responsible for the execution of dozens of men, but argues that it was their destiny to die in that manner, therefore she hasn't really done anything morally objectionable.
• Step-parents and adoption were seen as things to be ashamed about, hence the reason for the tropes Wicked Stepmother and Changeling Fantasy. These days, not so much. The tropes are far from gone in fantasy or historical fiction, but far less common today.
• As noted in this article, the cultural image of dragons has changed quite heavily from the medieval and Renaissance eras, largely due to changes in culture itself. In older eras, before technology had advanced and environmentalism and animal rights became mainstream, any animal that didn't present some kind of immediate utility (whether as a domestic beast or as food to hunt) was a pest at best and an active threat at worst, and therefore completely okay, if not outright holy, to kill on sight. Because of this, old European artwork of dragons (particularly the one St. George killed) tended to illustrate them as looking quite small and ugly next to their human adversaries and often barely putting up a fight, under the assumption that the viewer would look at the creature and view them with the same contempt as the rats that ate your grain or the snake that killed your cow, glorying in the dragonslayer for ridding the world of them. To modern audiences, who have reached an understanding that humanity is a far bigger threat to animals than the reverse and are used to antagonistic dragons being gigantic and fearsome, as well as sapient and legitimately evil, these older dragons instead look like Unintentionally Sympathetic Villainous Underdogs.

Magazines

• Humorama was a series of cheap digests meant for blue collar males loaded with Fanservice popular during the 1950s and 1960s. To modern readers, the gag cartoons from Humorama comes off dated in two ways. Some of the Humorama cartoons involve beautiful women being groped and female secretaries being ogled by bosses. Nowadays, they can be outright offensive with more sensitivity about sexual harassment and sex offender registries in action. At the same time, the cartoons are quite tame compared to the hardcore pornographic material freely available online.
• Military Modelling, now defunct, was a long-running publication based on the hobbyist market for building and painting scale models, military-themed construction kits, and soldier figures. It sponsored the prestigious EuroMilitaire expo and competition which drew in the best model constructors and miniature painters from around the world. The competition, like the magazine, expanded to cover fantasy, sci-fi and civilian modelling topics in its many categories, and no area of modelling was off limits. Except one: there were very severe restrictions around depictions of the naked or provocatively dressed female form^note This was grudgingly permitted for sci-fi or fantasy depictions, where such things are the norm. It was pointed out that military modelling is predicated around depictions of war and combat, which is what military equipment is designed to do. Therefore there was no parallel restriction on depictions of death or wounding, apart from a vague requirement to "be tasteful". Besides, as some pesky people pointed out, the magazine has advertised far more questionable kits^note Such as animé/manga character figures of idealised Japanese schoolgirls, often with helpful illustrations.

Mythology and Religion

• Almost all religions come with a prepackaged moral code. Most of them contradict each other in some sense, though if one considers only relation between believers, most of them are surprisingly similar. The most known points of conflict are polygamy/polyamory, gender roles, homosexuality, sexual perversions and sex outside marriage.
• In The Bible and many other religious texts, it doesn't matter whether a person is righteous or just by our standards, it matters whether or not they do what their patron deity tells them to do.
  • Traumatic C-Section was a common practice between Israelites and their enemies; nowadays, it would be considered as a war crime. Other practices which were common then (depicted in the Bible) were the killing of entire peoples, or at least males, with the survivors enslaved. Those were not unique to the Middle East either, but occurred in much of the world (some even now, of course).
    • The Israelites even did this to themselves - in a brief and nasty civil war, the tribe of Benjamin were virtually eradicated in this way, until it occured to the winners that Israel would then only have eleven tribes, contrary to divine will, and a tiny remnant was allowed to survive to keep the divinely-mandated Twelve.
  • The Bible: The parable of the Prodigal Son: People today will often have sympathy for the older son, who had been working hard on his father's land, while the younger son wasted his half of the inheritance on prostitutes and partying. And they will find it easy to understand that he was angry when the father threw a party when his younger brother dragged his sorry butt home. Modern readers will often miss though that not only is the older son supposed to represent people who are too self-righteous to give a "sinner" a second chance, but he would also have been seen as just as bad as the younger son by the first century CE audience, who would have been the first people to hear this story, because he dared to criticize his father's actions when he thought that he preferred his brother over him! Honoring your parents was Serious Business back then, no matter how much people today might understand the older son's anger.
    • There's Dramatically Missing the Point that as a metaphor for God and his relationship to his worshippers, it's about saying God will take back those who have strayed from his path, and the already righteous shouldn't feel jealous since this is a cause for celebration, and they aren't losing anything because of it.
• Classical Mythology:
  • To Greeks, the greatest sin one could commit was hubris, meaning the sort of pride that makes you think yourself above the gods. That's why so many mortals end up dead or transformed into things for boasting about their talent in a certain area being above that of the relevant god; they're not just being hyperbolic (which most modern people would assume by default), they're demonstrating hubris. The punishments doled out were considered the natural consequences of their hubris inevitably being proven wrong.
  • Hades is often viewed by modern myth buffs as being The Woobie, despite being the default God of Evil in modern pop culture adaptations of mythology because Medieval Christianity, with its practice of demonizing pagan religions, decided to associate him with Hell. The funny thing is the Ancient Greeks themselves didn't like Hades that much — they'd attempt to not speak his name and look away when making sacrifices in his name. Meanwhile, guys that are commonly considered assholes today, like Zeus, Poseidon and Hera, were viewed with great respect by the ancient Greeks. About the only Greek god modern audiences and the Ancient Greeks had the same opinion (read: dislike) of is Ares, and he was given the Draco in Leather Pants treatment by the Romans!
    • This likely has a lot to do with differences in attitudes about adultery. Hades is the only male deity (sans Dionysus, depending on your interpretation) who's neither cheating on his wife nor being cheated on, which makes him come across to many modern readers as a much, much better husband than the ones who were banging anything that moved even though they knew it would upset their spouse. Similarly, Hera's habit of doing horrible things to the people Zeus cheated on her with doesn't get her a lot of fans nowadays, because it's now considered much more acceptable for wives to argue with/yell at their husbands. It doesn't help that most of the time it wasn't her victim's fault, anyway.
    • While Hades was never unfaithful to Persephone, the fact that he first kidnapped her, and later blackmailed her into spending time with him, probably doesn't sit very well with modern audiences.
    • A possible intended interpretation of the abduction of Persephone also lends itself to this trope: some believe that the abduction was actually an elopement, and that Demeter was meant to be seen as clingy and overprotective of her daughter. While modern audiences would agree that a woman trying to keep her adult daughter from marrying is overprotective, the fact that Demeter is certain her daughter had been kidnapped makes her wild behavior a bit more sympathetic.
  • In the case of Ares and Mars, the Romans did not actually just adopt the Greek religion wholesale and change the names of the gods just because. Instead, they engaged in a common form of syncretism popular in the ancient Mediterranean where they matched Greek gods with their closest equivalent in the Roman/Etruscan pantheon and said that they were the same god all along, just worshipped under different names. To the Greeks, Ares was the god of brutal warfare. The Roman Mars was a god of agriculture as well as warfare, reflecting the fact that during the early Roman Republic most soldiers were also farmers. It is also worth noting that there was Values Dissonance regarding Ares among the Greeks. For example, the militaristic Spartans held Ares in higher esteem than other city-states, especially Athens.
    • In addition, the Roman conception of warfare, and hence Mars, was a lot closer to the ideals of warfare in defense of your people and nation than the Greek position was. So less Draco in Leather Pants than Heel–Face Turn. The Greeks perceived Ares as the enemy of civilization, whereas the Romans saw Mars as the patron of its expansion. ^note In a nutshell... more or less: Ares = Sociopathic Soldier. Mars = Officer and a Gentleman.
  • There's an awful lot of incest going on in the family tree of the Greek gods. Uranus may or may not be Gaia's son, or possibly her brother, but whatever their relation, they had kids. A couple of those kids got married and had six children: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia. Zeus and Hera got married and popped out a few kids of their own, including Ares, Eris, and sometimes Hephaestus. Meanwhile, Zeus also got Demeter pregnant, resulting in Persephone. The same Persephone that Hades married. Yeah.
  • Speaking of the Titans, it's also this way between Greek/Roman views of Kronos/Saturn. The Greeks believed, while he did have some marginal affiliation with the harvest, that Kronos was a "cruel and tempestuous force of chaos and disorder,"^note That's what they say on The Other Wiki which is justified in that he castrated his father and ate five of his children, just to consolidate his power. The Greeks believed that, when Kronos was overthrown by the Olympians, it was followed by the greatest era of peace. When the Romans came and merged the Classical Greek stories with their own pantheon, they apparently ignored the "entirely evil" part of Kronos' story, and paired him with Saturn, their god of the harvest. They also gave him his own festival, Saturnalia, and built a giant freaking temple for him.
  • In Rome, Bellona. She is considered to be a mostly Roman deity despite having a Greek counterpart (Enyo). She was a war deity - and much more important to the Romans.
  • The Ancient Greeks celebrated Odysseus as a brilliant strategist for coming up with the Trojan Horse, a view that tends to be shared by modern readers. To the Ancient Romans, however, the Trojan Horse was a cowardly trick that offended their sense of honor. The Roman view of Odysseus, as a deceitful trickster, was still held in the Middle Ages, which is why Dante put him in one of the deepest circles of hell.
• The Swastika was originally a Buddhist/Hindu symbol of protection and/or good luck. Thanks to a certain group hijacking it, not many others do. Being white and trying to show a swastika anywhere in the US or UK will, at best, get you called a Neo-Nazi, and at worst get you attacked by someone who thinks you present a threat to someone's safety, and in Germany, it's banned outright except for a single religious group ^note Jains, a strictly pacifistic religion. In general, American Hindu/Buddhist temples either downplay the presence of swastikas or don't include them at all, and even in mainland Europe, while old buildings are allowed to remain, new temples often don't either.
• The capirote is a ceremonial costume symbolizing the folly of sin that unfortunately resembles another infamous group's costumes. Penitents wear them during Semana Santa (Holy Week), and this occasionally disturbs uninformed tourists. Ironically, the Klan, who targeted Catholics, adopted a costume that Catholics have been using for centuries before the Klan even formed.
• Yoruba Mythology: Olorun, one of the chief deities of the Yoruba Pantheon, is often compared with gods like Zeus/Jupiter, Ra, Amon-Ra, or Odin - however, there exist virtually no shrines dedicated to him. He isn't He Who Must Not Be Named - just that followers would send prayers in his direction and that he is outlying and distant.
• Mesopotamian Mythology is very ancient and culturally distant. Hence, the behavior of its gods can seem pretty horrible to modern eyes — there's a lot of rape and murder, even from the "good" figures. There's a reason why beings out of this mythos so often serve as monsters in modern works.

Newspaper Comics

• Buster Brown is one of the earliest newspaper comic strips ever and over a century old, so this was bound to happen. This includes the now rather offensive illustrations of black people, and the regular spankings his parents punished Buster with. In one strip, Buster and a girl are both brutally paddled just for switching clothes.
• For Better or for Worse was hit hard by a contemporary case of this, that is, a severe case of dissonance between the values of the author and the values of the audience. Towards the end of the original run, author Lynn Johnson's self-described worldview as a "child of The '50s" (and the resulting emphasis on safe domesticity over youthful exploration, comfortable familiarity over exciting opportunity, and traditional motherhood over freedom and feminism) started to rear its uncomfortable head more and more, especially as the now-grown Patterson kids started discovering romance. The readers (especially the young, educated women who made up a majority of Johnson's audience) who'd first gotten hooked on the comic when it was first fresh and groundbreaking mostly took one look at Johnson's idea of the "ideal man" for Elizabeth (the standard 50s husband-esque stodgy, hopelessly bland Anthony) and laughed, laughs which soon gave way to horror when they realized Johnson was relentlessly devoted to pushing him as perfect for Elizabeth and neither heaven or Earth could sway her from this devotion.
• Garfield:
  • The National Fat Week strips early in the run became these due to the ever-growing obesity epidemic.
  • Another strip from the earlier years had Jon outright say he should kill himself out of boredom. Good luck getting that one past Standards and Practices today.
  • Older strips from the 70's, 80s, and pushing into the 90's would casually depict smoking and tobacco usage. Jon smoked a pipe, his father chewed chewing tobacco (and declared "A good chew never hurt nobody" in one strip), Nermal claimed smoking cigarettes kept him looking young, and even Garfield would join in on it sometimes. Nowadays, naturally, all of this has quietly been phased out save for the occasional Mythology Gag of Jon's pipe... which of course is now a Bubble Pipe to mock how immature and childish he is.
  • Jon was involved in a lot of behaviors early on that are no longer considered acceptable, or at least not acceptable in the Sunday funnies. In one very early strip he was subscribed to an adult magazine, complete with a centerfold, something he was never shown doing again.
  • Before his Relationship Upgrade with Liz, Jon would be often featured leering at girls or being quite pushy on getting dates. In the 2010s, none of this would be deemed acceptable, even considering that it always ended in humiliation for Jon.
  • In an early strip where Garfield goes to the vet, Jon plants an unprovoked lip kiss on Liz (pre-Relationship Upgrade, meaning she was at best dismissive of his advances and at worst openly hostile) and uses it as an excuse to go on a date with her. In modern times he'd be lucky if he was only blacklisted from that veterinary clinic.
  • In one 1979 strip, Garfield fears going to the vet because his Uncle Bernie went to one and came back as his Aunt Bernice. Today, that would come off as a knock against transgender people.
• In the case of the Argentinian comic strip Mafalda, there are several examples.
  • While Mafalda's ideas on women's rights were advanced by the standards of The '60s, they come as more rude and stuck-up than well-intentioned to modern readers. Especially when she says that her Housewife mother Raquel is "useless" and "mediocre" because she chose to raise Mafalda at home rather than juggle with work/college and motherhood.
  • Manolito's parents' quick willingness to use corporal punishment on their son is also quite cringeworthy. It's worth pointing out, though, that this is still shown in a very negative way.
  • One strip shows that mentioning divorce during dinner is a big no-no.
• Peanuts veers in and out of this at times, but one notable example is one gag which features Linus mistaking snowfall for nuclear fallout. A kind of gag that wouldn't be out of place in the 50s and 60s (albeit pretty dark for the time) but these days, wouldn't really be seen as funny.
  • Bullying in Peanuts is an interesting case. In some ways, it would be seen as kind of mean to a modern viewer. But at the same time, the strip never condones it and often features some more severe cases (such as Lucy flat out destroying Schroeder's piano) being treated as Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
• In one mid-90s Zits strip, Jeremy finds his dad, Walt, outside casually smoking a cigar. Walt explains that he got it from a patient celebrating a new baby, and then asks Jeremy "What do you think? Pretty cool, huh?" Nowadays, there's no way anyone would see that as something a responsible father would say to his child, especially in light of so many anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns.
  • Another 90s strip has Jeremy and Hector telling Connie how they aced their lifeguard training, only for Hector to reveal that Jeremy got points off for gagging on the CPR dummy while doing mouth-to-mouth; Jeremy responds "So sue me! The thing looked like Richard Simmons!" Nowadays, this joke would be derided as homophobic.

Public Service Announcements

• Many bicycle safety P.S.A.s released prior to 1975 would fall under this, because a helmet wasn't included in the safety rules. There is a difference from a bike PSA from 1958, like Bicycle Clown and this one from American Automobile Association called Bike Safe, Bike Smart from 2009. Both have the same road rules but the motor club one would be more acceptable today.
  • In other contexts the older one would be more acceptable. Calling for cyclists to wear helmets tends to anger many bike activists (especially in Europe) and some even believe it to be some sort of Conspiracy on part of the auto lobby. Just look who made the pro helmet ad. Here cycling advocate Mikael Colville Andersen from Denmark passionately argues against helmets.
• Boys Beware, a PSA from 1961 would be frowned upon today and would be deemed homophobic due to the subject matter. The film is trying to describe a very real danger which is recognized today—that of older men grooming youngsters for sexual abuse. The dissonance comes from the false assumption that all homosexuals were involved in this sort of behavior, or that homosexuality itself equals pedophilia, a view that, whilst still prevalent, is likely to mark you out as ignorant and prejudiced these days, certainly not one you'd put in a PSAs. In addition, a tacit endorsement of hitchhiking like this would be horribly irresponsible by today's standards. In older works, a hitchhiker would likely be a free spirit who is perhaps down on their luck; in the modern day, picking up strangers or hitchhiking yourself is seen as a radical risk.
• Fire Safety videos done before 1965 have also come under... well... fire for not including smoke detectors, which didn't become common in the home until around that time. The Discovery Network even includes wildfires as part of today's fire safety videos.
• The Disney short I'm No Fool had two on fire safety, the first in 1955 and a remake in 1986. The 1986 version included the following: exit drills, smoke detectors, stop-drop-and-roll, and fire extinguishers. Today, such method in the 1986 version is now the norm. There are now web videos, mostly from Howcast, that have fire safety videos such as the following: Practice and putting out grease fire safety.
• In the PSA Accidents Don't Just Happen, the narrator takes about how accidents are likely to happen and he points out that he should have considered seat belts for his car. This made before 1968 where the US Federal Government began making it mandatory for automobiles made after that date to have them with the exception of buses. In 1984, New York went one step further and made it mandatory for occupants or they face a fine.
• "Duck and Cover" from 1951 was to inform people on what to do in case of nuclear strike. This is controversial because it's not clear if such a tactic would work in a nuclear strike. Some videos, like this one from Howcast, updated it in case of a terrorist attack. In fact, many would regard Duck and Cover as a scare tactic due to the early in the Cold War when it was released. However, it has served a purpose when it comes to earthquakes where one must hide underneath an object like a strong-enough table to withstands falling debris. It also was the basics on tornado-drills since seeking cover is key.
  • In the UK, the "Protect and Survive" series of films and leaflets have come under fire, as although their advice on how to survive a nuclear attack is more comprehensive and appears more likely to be of benefit on the surface, it gives the impression a nuclear war would actually be survivable, earning it condemnation from anti-nuclear/disarmament campaigners.
• The existence of PSAs such as Run! Hide! Fight! designed to teach American children and teenagers drills to increase their chances of surviving a school shooting come across as insane to citizens of other countries, such as the U.K., with much stricter gun laws. The very fact such PSAs even exist, along with with other ones such that, for example, teach kindergarteners to stand on toilets so a shooter can't see them if he looks under the stall door, makes the USA look to these countries like it values the right to own guns over the lives of its children.

Podcasts

• Mom Can't Cook!: Discussed:
  • The movies often bring up the idea that divorce is the worst thing that could ever happen to a couple, which Andy and Luke Lampshade whenever it's brought up.
  • Luke snarks at one point about how DCOMs require everyone to be heteronormatively paired by their conclusions.
  • They seem to be a bit irritated at how OK a character is with the idea of spanking the titular First Kid.
  • When an internet-booked holiday is shown in Jumping Ship, Luke notes how this is meant to be all sketchy, rather than the perfectly normal thing it would be now. Later, they note that the existence of shrunken heads in, supposedly, Australia, is an "obnoxious stereotype".
  • They note that Cadet Kelly seems to think the military is "A-OK", which draws a bit of snark. Direct reference is made to the film being from 2002, and all the patriotic fervour that was happening during that time period.
• Discussed in You're Dead To Me. Inevitably, since this is a podcast about history, in discussing the subjects, the presenters are confronted with racism, enslavement, children getting married or outrageous age gaps between spouses, incest, sexism, homophobia, etc.

Radio

• American Country Countdown: The Don Bowman-hosted programs from about the first six months or so of the show's run (1973-late spring 1974) saw him making jokes that absolutely would not be allowed today. An example: "How do you make a horse stop complaining in the winter? Shoot him in the summertime!". He also lashed out at a listener who wrote in complimenting him on the show in general but that he needed to cool the jokes, implying that he used crayons to write the letter (and was thus crazy).
• Amos 'n' Andy has definitely not stood the test of time—In the early 1930s, it was the top show on the air. By the late 1940s and 1950s however, the show got fire for its excessive stereotyping of African-Americans (starting with the fact the main characters were portrayed by white actors in exaggerated voices, as in an audio variant of blackface) and the 1951 TV version was withdrawn from circulation in 1966.^note Not being seen again on American television until 2012 (save for a one-off marathon in 2004) Notably, the show was actually Fair for Its Day, portraying the characters as honest and hard-working instead of lazy and vice-prone as in many stereotypes of the time.
• When BBC (Radio) 7^note Now known as Radio Four Extra launched in 2002 as a "nostalgia" station dedicated to rebroadcasting old content, it straight away ran into editorial problems concerning what was and what was not a fit subject for comedy as perceptions concerning what could be considered fair material for a joke had changed over the years. A much-anticipated staple of the station was the promised opening up of the BBC's radio comedy archives and the first broadcast in decades of many old favorites, such as 60s-era shows Round the Horne and I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. The trouble was that many of the jokes about gays and coloured people perfectly acceptable then could not be presented anymore. But fans of these shows protested loudly at any hint of editorializing or censorship, demanding they be broadcast whole and uncut. Eventually the BBC conceded the point and prefaced rebroadcasts with an advisory that the humour reflected what was acceptable for its day and some content might be found offensive by modern standards.
• Bill Oddie ran into trouble in the 1990s as some of the personas that had made him famous in The '60s were no longer politically correct, such as Rastus Watermelon, a stereotypical black character Bill created for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (and later reprised in blackface in The Goodies)^note As with other ISIRTA voices recycled for the show, his appearance drew a huge cheer from the studio audience. This sort of reaction is hard for a comedian to let go of.. Seemingly unable to grasp that Rastus had become politically incorrect with the years, Bill became visibly angry when he was (gently) told by Stephen Fry he could not portray him, as well as with other of his familiar radio voices, for a 1990s comedy benefit show Fry was producing. Further complicating things, Bill had also written a song featuring now-outdated gay stereotypes (the show was for an AIDS charity benefit). While Oddie later apologized, the spat was embarrassing and unedifying to those who witnessed it, and may have contributed to Bill retiring from active comedy performance to concentrate on his natural history shows.
• Journey into Space: In The World in Peril, Jet tells the Martian that humans all over Earth have been conquered by other humans throughout history. He argues that in many cases, the conquered peoples were better off as their conquerors brought them civilisation when they were previously savages.

Sports

• No one today would name a sports team something like the "San Antonio Wetbacks", "Chicago Polacks", "New York Darkies" or "Atlanta Crackers". Yet many people have no trouble with the "Washington Redskins". This became the focus of some media attention in the 2010s when the team had an argument with the US Patent and Trademark Office, who have a standing policy that ethnic slurs or other offensive language may not be protected by a trademark. Following the police brutality protests as part of the Black Lives Matter social movement, and the increased sensitivity toward ethnic names, Washington were forced to retire the name after stadium naming rights sponsor FedEx pulled out so long as it was their name. They spent two seasons operating as "The Washington Football Team" while they figured out a new name for themselves, before eventually deciding on the "Washington Commanders".
  • Incidentally, occasional opinion polls have found very little enthusiasm for changing the name, even among local Native Americans, probably due to the Grandfather Clause. However, many Native American activists claim that the opinion polls among Native Americans are either highly misleading or not actually scientific. Given that some of them were made by or paid for by the owners of the Washington NFL team, this subject is highly controversial.
  • Other United States teams named after the natives raise similar controversy. Along with the Redskins, there's also the Cleveland Indians whose stereotypical logo was phased out through the 2010s until its retirement in 2018 (and to push things further, in 2022 they were renamed the Cleveland Guardians). Two other examples are the Kansas City Chiefs and Atlanta Braves^note plus the Chicago Blackhawks, named after an old chief and not much derided despite their logo, and the Golden State Warriors, who don't use Native American imagery ever since they moved to California. In Latin America, using such imagery doesn't create outrage. Examples include Colo-Colo from Chile and Guarani FC◊ from Brazil.
  • A similar thing happened in 2020 with the Canadian Football League's Edmonton Eskimos. After years of protests, the team finally dropped the "Eskimos" moniker and like its Washington counterpart was renamed for a time to "The Edmonton Football Team". They were later renamed as the Edmonton Elks, but they preserved the team's traditional logo, which consists of two "E"s in a green oval and doesn't otherwise have any ethnic references.
• A controversial example occurred when the NCAA went after teams with Native American based names under Myles Brand's leadership. The issue was that they not only went after the stereotypical named teams (which there were still a few of, though most had already been renamed), but also teams named for specific tribes, such as the Florida State Seminoles and University of Utah Utes. The controversy came from the fact that these teams were using the names of tribes native to the region that the schools were in, and were used with the knowledge and consent of the tribes. Though at least in the case of the Seminoles, there are two tribal councils, and one of them (the Seminoles of Oklahoma) is absolutely opposed to the name. Interestingly enough, the tribe that's in favor (Florida) is the one that's getting money from the school.
• In another example of prejudices changing over time, Kenny Washington, the football player who broke the NFL's color barrier originally planned to play baseball, but failed to make it due to refusing to pretend to be Puerto Rican instead of African-American. In the Jim Crow era, having a Latino player in major league baseball was much more socially acceptable than a black man. Fast forward to 2013, and black athletes playing alongside whites in any sport, including baseball, is considered normal.
• In the UK, fans of Tottenham Hotspur FC are nicknamed "Yids", though as this is also a sometimes-pejorative slang term for Jews, it has caused some controversy. Its origins lie in that Tottenham is a district of North London that is predominantly inhabited by British-Jewish citizens, and so rival supporters would jeer at them by calling them "Yids" and directed anti-Semitic slurs their way. The entire supporters group, Jew and Gentile alike, embraced the name, taking the sting out of things and forcing said supporters to find new ways to taunt the Spurs fans.
• Violence in sport has become a major source of values dissonance. It's not uncommon to come across ice hockey and football fans who laud the days of aggressive hits, and in the case of hockey, fights. The 1980s and early 1990s NHL exemplified this, when fighting and brawls were practically over the top, especially in the Norris Division (which was nicknamed the "Chuck Norris Division" for this very reason).
  • The 2000s saw the biggest catalysts to change these views. Once the apparent ugly consequences of this violence were too obvious to be denied, the attitudes changed. Concussions were better understood and demanded more respect. Both leagues were sued. The code of the NHL for many years was that of enforcers keeping the game clean from the dirty cheap-shot artists who would injure players, especially star players^note One of the most famous cases occurred in the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals, in which New Jersey Devils captain Scott Stevens blindsided Mighty Ducks of Anaheim captain (and rising NHL star) Paul Kariya, knocking him out cold and stopping his breathing for several seconds. Kariya would need to be helped off the ice, and although he came back and scored a goal later in the period, he has said in contemporary interviews that he cannot remember the hit, the rest of the series, and several days after it, and it is one of many incidents that forced him to retire earlier than most from the game.. But then the Todd Bertuzzi-Steve Moore incident bore an ugly example of the NHL's "culture of revenge". While a freak occurrence, it made the fans understand that they can't crave the violence, but refuse to be held accountable for it when the violence has real-life consequences. The concussion age brought a lot of this over the top violence in sports to an end, and despite many fans wishes, it won't be coming back. There's simply too much accountability for it anymore. In modern days, the NHL is still full of hitting and contact, but enforcement of rules and a much stricter definition of acceptable hits has drastically cut down the number of similar accidents, though long-term effects remain to be seen for some time. In the short-term, this caused gameplay to change from a more physical, grueling affair to a speedier, offensive show, which has also caused teams to abandon the more hit-heavy schemes of play as the years have gone by.
• The Washington Wizards' most recent name change was due to a form of this, when then-owner Abe Pollin announced the change from the Washington Bullets due to his uneasiness of having a team named the "Bullets" in a city known for its high violent crime rate.
  • The Houston Astros were established as the Houston Colt .45s. While the name change was due to the team moving to the then-new Astrodome, a sports team being named after a gun still wouldn't fly in today's society.
• Many European sports fans express disgust at teams being "owned" by a single person or a small group of people. For the most part European sports teams are or have historically been organized as "clubs" with the members deciding on what happens to the club and - at least in theory - every member of the club able to influence club decisions and/or vote on those who implement said policies. On the flip side, advertisements covering all or most of the uniforms is a very common thing in European sports (even at the semipro level) that is seen as crass commercialism in the US.
• The franchise system of American league sports is largely seen as purely driven by money, even in the US itself, with many people (even some hardcore sports fans) seeing it as a huge waste of resources that could be used on other stuff, and is begrudgingly accepted. In Europe however, even moving a team out of the suburb that gives it its name is highly controversial and in the very very few cases a team was actually moved, fans have founded their own replacement club. However, European sports fans don't think twice about promotion and relegation which would not fly in the US - just imagine the New York Yankees becoming a minor league team for a couple of years for a season of bad luck and/or crappy play. To which British observers in particular might reply "And your point is?", pointing out that even mighty Manchester United were once dropped a division for particularly mediocre performance and nobody should be immune, however inconvenient it is for big money backers.
  • The Scottish super-giant team Glasgow Rangers were punished, not for bad performance but for financial irregularity verging on outright corruption, by being dropped by three levels so that they really were playing in a "little league" populated by semi-amateur sides.^note This is a rare but not unknown sanction that the sport's governing body can impose for offenses not directly to do with how well the side is playing. It took several years for them to make it back to the big time. In the USA, this wouldn't even be considered.
  • In 2021, Real Madrid owner Florentino Perez proposed an European "Super League" that would have followed the franchise model to a point (there would be a number of "fixed" teams while each season would feature a number of invited sides), which garnered an angry response not only from fans, rival clubs, national associations, the FIFA and UEFA (both of which threatened a lock-out from all competitions), but also from the governments of the countries involved, and the players and coaches of the teams that were supposed to form the competition. In response to the mounting criticism, the six British teams dropped out, followed by Spain's Atletico Madrid and Italy's Inter Milan and AC Milan, leading to the Super League folding before even playing a match.
• Starting in the late 1930s, the Brooklyn Dodgers had a Sym-Phony band which played behind the visiting team's dugout at Ebbets Field. When the Dodgers fell victim to a questionable call, the band would play "Three Blind Mice" in reference to the three-man umpiring crews at the time. The band started toning it down in the Dodgers' last few years in Brooklyn, not only out of respect but because MLB added a fourth man to the crews in 1952. There have been at least two known occasions of umpires ejecting organists for playing "Three Blind Mice" on a stadium's PA system.
• The American dislike of sporting contests ending in draws (to the point where American sports go out of their way to ensure there is a winner and loser) can seem odd to people in other countries, where a draw is often seen as an appropriate outcome for a close-fought match. The most common exceptions are single-elimination tournaments, and playoffs where a drawn match could disrupt the schedule and/or cause a significant disadvantage to one of the teams if the match were to be replayed.
• India always underperforms at the Olympic Games, even if one could expect many athletes to emerge from a country with a billion people - for comparison, between 1900 and 2016 India got 28 medals... while the other nation of billions, China, scored that number in 1988 alone! Along with questions of preference (the nation's favorite sport, cricket, isn't an Olympic one, and the only other team sport they excel in is field hockey) and economics (malnutrition is a big problem, and over 250 million people live below the poverty line) their caste and class attitudes as a whole did not favor physical effort, being a society in which middle-class people will have a servant bring them a glass of water from just a few feet away.
• Professional Gaming has been treated as a legitimate professional enterprise in South Korea since the 1990s^note To make a long story short, broadband gaming was heavily popularized from the explosion of the PC bang (a Korean style of internet cafe and Local Hangout), with the Korean government being fast on the ball in organizing a dedicated branch, the Korea e-Sports Association, in stark contrast to much of the western world, where it was only treated as a fringe endeavor that only began gaining increasing legitimacy in The New '10s. As a result, Korea has a much more robust infrastructure to maintain integrity in the scene, and they also have a much harsher cultural attitude towards cheaters. While elsewhere, matchfixing and elo-boosting scandals are likely to dampen professional reputations (at most, earning a ban from the scene in question), it's treated as a severe show of moral failing with much broader legal repercussions in Korea, not just among professional gamers — some, including former Starcraft II champion Lee "Life" Seung Hyun, faced extended jail time for matchfixing — but even politicans — such as Ryu Ho-jung, a heavy nominee to represent the Justice Party in the 2020 Korean National Assembly, had her reputation significantly dented after political opponents uncovered a history of account-sharing in League of Legends years prior. The dissonance is most apparent regarding international leagues where Korea is not the main authority — in the Overwatch League, Su-min "SADO" Kim, was suspended for about 75% of the league's inaugural season following allegations of account-boosting, a punishment that drew outrage from Korean audiences and other Korean league players, as it was almost universally believed it should have been much more severe.
  • Building off of this is the even more niche domain of professional mobile games, which is treated as a much bigger deal in Asia than in the west since the mid 2010's. With the massive boom of hit games and subsequent tournament scenes like Tencent Games' Arena of Valor and Moonton's Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, smartphones have become much more accepted in Asia as a platform for both casual and hardcore-level play, whereas in the west, mobile games in general are vastly more stigmatized as low-skill, casual-only experiences riddled with predatory business practices, not exactly a space for professional competitive scene to thrive.
• In recent years, the NFL cheerleading squads and NBA dance teams have become this as female cheerleaders and dancers performing sexualized and risque dance moves and wearing revealing outfits are considered being frowned upon these days due to the #MeToo Movement. As a result, some NFL teams are adding male cheerleaders while some NBA dance teams have been rebranded as family-friendly coed hip-hop teams.
• For almost all elite gymnasts, the Olympic Games are the pinnacle of their careers, and a post-Olympic wave of athletes will always retire after making their final bow on the Olympic stage. (Not all of them do, obviously — plenty retire mid-quad for other reasons — but the "I've made it to the Olympics, time to move on" mentality is still very common.) For Chinese gymnasts, however, the National Games of China, which are held every four years in the year after the Olympics, are equally prestigious, and as a result most of their gymnasts will stay in the sport for one more year and bow out after their last National Games if they're physically and mentally capable of it.

Toys and Games

• The scale modelling hobby and the associated pastime of War Gaming has its own ongoing controversy, dealing with how far the enthusiast can go with depicting Nazi-themed topics. ^note This is covered elsewhere under No Swastikas. As the Nazi era is still within living memory for many people, modellers are advised to show sensitivity, and model depictions of, for instance, the leading Nazi demagogues, or themed around the worst excesses of the SS, are covered by a sort of implicitly agreed ban. Some nations even have legal bans on depictions of WW2 icons, meaning swastika or fasces insignia cannot be reproduced on the models, even when omitting them detracts from accuracy in depiction. Ongoing debate in the hobby revolves around such fine distinctions. Some debates go further, asking if it's right and proper to depict Confederacy flags in American Civil War representations. ^note The use of Confederate imagery by far-Right and neo-fascist groups in the USA, for instance. This also extends to live-action re-enactment cosplay: a group of Waffen-SS re-enactors were refused permission to be present at a historical re-enactment weekend in the UK as they were considered "offensive".
• When Mr. Potato Head was first introduced, the play set came with a plastic tobacco pipe. To make the concept of smoking less appealing to children, the pipe was removed a couple of years after the toy's 1985 redesign. This was ceremoniously done to make Mr. Potato Head the mascot for the Great American Smokeout.
• During the original run of My Little Pony, two characters were made: Gypsy, a pony based on Romani stereotypes who was only sold in Europe and appeared in the UK comics, and Wigwam, a pony based on Native American stereotypes. While future MLP media occasionally have characters based on ethnic stereotypes, characters like these two would not even be thought of being created.
• When Transformers debuted in 1984, Megatron transformed into a realistic-looking toy handgun. In the years since, toy guns (particularly ones resembling real firearms) have been increasingly frowned upon and legislated, prompting modern mass-market Megatron figures to instead turn into tanks or jets. This has also affected fellow Decepticon Shockwave, who initially transformed into a less-realistic sci-fi laser gun.
• The original series' of Wacky Packages contained parodies of alcohol and smoking products. Considering the sticker line was made for kids, once the newer iterations of the brand were created, these types of products to parody disappeared. Tellingly, they would only make new appearances in the "Old School" series, an online retro collection meant for adult collectors first.

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