On a slight tangent but movies and TV shows always reflect the way society is at that point in time. It puts on display what was valued, what was of concern, etc. This is true regardless of the genre.
Changing scenes or using cgi to remove things we would now consider"problematic" is like erasing history.
This is weird. The 90's were so homophobic it was normal. The people who were saying "it's ok to be gay" were considered fringe and extreme. This is the decade where it was subversive and radical for gay people to "come out of the closet".
In the 80's, people lost their jobs and there were news specials to talk about this hidden side of society that nobody knew about. In the 80's a significant amount of people were saying "yeah Aids is bad, but it's punishment for the gays so not really that bad..."
Jump to the 2000's and being gay was becoming a normal and open thing and society was adjusting to this idea. The liberal half of the country was already on board and saying "this is ok and normal" and the conservative/religious side of the country was still trying to hold on to their laws to punish and criminalize gay sex.
My point is that the 2000's were the good days and the 90's and 80's were the dark days of homophobia. Pointing back at the 2000's and saying "WOW, LOOK AT HOW THEY TREATED GAY JOKES" really misses how massively far we came in a few decades and how much worse it was even a decade before that.
What if I just have a hard on for the Soviet subway?
Every time I come across forum posts from the 2000s I lose a little bit of nostalgia for that period of time. The casual bigotry was fucking everywhere.
The culture shift is stark sometimes when you watch old stuff.
On the other hand, don't let them turn that into an excuse. You know what dealt with trans rights in a pretty honest, raw, and understanding way, in the mid 1980s? Fucking Hill Street Blues. One of the cops gets together with a woman, he's happy to be with her, and then the other cops start giving him hell for it because she used to be a man. He gets disgusted and angry, goes over to her place, and she lectures him about it and sets him straight, tells him to figure out if he wants to be with her, but don't try to turn who I am into some kind of thing I did to you, or make me feel bad about it. He sort of accepts it, because she clearly has a point, and that's the end of the episode.
Hill Street Blues, man.
I been watching some movies and TV shows from the early 2000s as a nostalgia trip with my wife and man there were some terrible lessons. We talked about the homophobia and transphobia but the misogyny, body image and sexualization of teens. The skin women being called fat with the fashion that only looked good on thin thin thin women. The insistence that there was nothing worse than being a virgin. (While the schools were doing an abstinence only education BTW). The countdown clocks to when every female celebrity turned 18 everywhere. It's surreal to think that message was everywhere.
Hell the 2000's were bad - but it was just an extension to decades, if not centuries of homophobia. Watch the first 5 minutes of Eddie Murphy's RAW to see what was socially acceptable to say in the late 70's, early 80's.
This is an episode from my favorite podcast to listen to on road trips, Decoder Ring. https://open.spotify.com/episode/73XOUMOeqkFWYrCcaRMJqd This episode is about the term metrosexual.
I love this podcast. They also did an episode on truck nutz! It's just very very deep dives on random pop culture topics. And it's good journalism too, not just the C-list YouTube Video Essayist summarize-the-wikipedia-article type of stuff.
I used to get called gay because I rolled the sleeves up on my shirt. Also because I worked with a gay guy and occasionally had lunch with him, maybe half a dozen times a year. The odd thing is that I had a girlfriend (same one 22 years later) who these idiots knew about.
Asian dude who went to high school in the 90s.
We were constantly called metro or straight up gay because we dressed like BTS before BTS was born.
But they called us that in a hateful way.
Ya 90s high school sucked for minorities.
Theres a southpark episode about this.
Me in the 2000s: No lotion, no conditioner, no umbrella, no scarf. Just ashy skin, nasty hair, and choking on the rain and cold.
Not because I was afraid of being made fun of, but because I was stupid and gross.
You young GenZ homies knowing how to groom are the real champs.
Before we had been introduced, my wife’s BFF told her I might be gay because I like opera.
Just watched SLC Punk last night, as a 90’s kid, was a real nostalgia gut punch. One of the characters, Eddie, took me back to my 90’s teenage growing up when they threw metrosexual at me.. I always took it as a compliment, never helped me with the ladies though.
I got called metro so much because I pierced my ears and wore button ups and flannels in HS
that's two words for the same thing...depending on which european country it is.
I didn't even look at the post
