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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

My son is a teenager but loves to watch old politically incorrect comedies like "Airplane". There's no way you could make that movie today... but there's certainly a market for it, cruel or not.

Now that I think about it, it's no more cruel than what most kids watch on YouTube today.

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Airplane could be made today, the central premise would hold up well, some of the skits in it would have to be dropped or altered. Most things that were made in one period could not be made whole cloth in another period.

You think they'd do the jive bit (or an equivalent)? Closest I'd expect would be gen whatever slang with the yeeting sigmas to Ohio etc.

I think either way it would be unfunny because

1) jive isn’t something many people have encountered nowadays and

2) “internet slang is incomprehensible” is an overdone joke.

1 is why I said or an equivalent - you could do the same with pidgin or any creole or, I don't know if this is a PC way to say it, but any kind of 'hood' or 'ghetto' type slang. The joke is just person is 'fluent' in an unlikely dialect/way of speaking. If cockney rhyming slang were more prevalent you could do that, with you know a black American or Asian person or whatever being the unlikely fluent one.

2 is is not really the point, sure it could flop, my point was just that I couldn't imagine it going further than that, not that that would be funny.

There are tons of dialects and accents and group slang that the joke could be done with. Doing basic generational slang would likely flop, but you could easily use something like a thick accent from Texas like Boomhower in King of the Hill, or a Louisiana Creole accent, or some deep Appalacian accent, or some Spanglish.

>Airplane could be made today, the central premise would hold up well, some of the skits in it would have to be dropped or altered.

In other words, not Airplane!.

and to say what I said before, hardly any movie that was made in one generation can be made in another. There will always be things that have to be changed. This same thing applies to basically every other work of art - despite the valiant efforts of Pierre Menard.

The protagonist with Vietnam flashbacks would obviously have to be altered, you couldn't have skits about Ronald Reagan - nobody knows who he is, nor do they know who Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is.

Having the autopilot smoking after being inflated doesn't make sense in a world where barely anyone smokes.

autopilot rates Elaine's Social media profile.

There is an airplane movie from this year! No idea if it can hold up to the old ones and I don't have time to watch movies these days: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34956433/

It's been a few years since I watched Airplane, and while I absolutely love it, I recall it being rather tame even by modern standards. I can think of a few gags that might not land as well today, but I don't think it was mean-spirited.

"Oh, stewardess! I speak jive" would absolutely get you cancelled today. I don't think it's mean-spirited either but that's not enough to save you these days.

change jive to aave and I think the joke works pretty similar now? just needs modern slang

Black man uses heavy black slang isn't an offensive joke. They sound cool.

When I watched it recently the joke that kinda flops is the heavily stereotyped gay man. Whether it is offensive I have no idea. Its not flattering.

> Black man uses heavy black slang isn't an offensive joke. They sound cool.

Sure, the old white woman using heavy black slang is where the joke comes in.

In Blindspotting (2018), a white protagonist is shown as being able to fluently speak an incomprehensibly dense version of AAVE, and it’s revealed later he has no idea what he’s saying (despite communicating effectively). I’ve never seen anyone criticize that joke.

The first time without her is funny though too

I don't get it does that make her a racist or something? She tries to help.

The joke is: their slang is so heavy its another language.

Personally make fun of zoomers all the time for this.

The joke is how incongruous it is that she speaks their language despite being very white. It only works because you expect black people to speak like black people and white people to speak like white people.

There’s a sequel to Naked Gun coming out soon, starring Liam Neeson. Whether it’ll be any good or do well at the box office is a different question.

You could absolutely make airplane today. It just depends who does it and some people may attack it but who the hell cares.

not in Hollywood, is what I think the poster meant, due to the political sickness that has infected them as of late.

Airplane is mostly physical humor and dumb wordplay. 90% of the jokes would be fine as-is. There are a few you'd have to update, but that's hardly surprising for a movie released 35 years ago. You could have said the same in 1980 about most comedies made in 1945.

the scene of the arabs walking into the airport with RPGs and machine guns wouldn't make the cut.

Are you talking about this scene from Airplane 2? I don't remember a scene with 'Arabs' going through security in the first one.

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

we're both right|wrong

- no, I was wrong that the person passing thru security was in any possible way "arab"

- yes it's from Airplane 2

- No it's not from the metal detector scene

- Yes it's from Iranians

- No Iranians are not "arabs"

- Yes They are engaged in a stereotypical crime

- No it doesn't involve an RPG

- yes it involves a battle rifle / something that doesn't belong at an airport

https://postimg.cc/0rTzkhyR

I mean the movie came out shortly after this event:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

I don’t think you are correct that a movie that was made today couldn’t make comedic references to recent world events.

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