Posted on 07/03/2020 8:52:32 AM PDT by Stravinsky
Surely, we can be serious: Forty years ago in the summer of 1980, Airplane! flew into theaters and made the friendly skies safe... for laughter. The disaster movie spoof became an era-defining hit and launched the directorial careers of writing partners David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker — better known by their comedic call sign ZAZ. The trio went on to make such oft-quoted favorites as Top Secret!, The Naked Gun and Hot Shots!, but Airplane! remains their crowning achievement, even landing a spot on the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.
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While Airplane! is filled with gags that are funny in every age, some jokes play very differently in 2020 versus 1980. That includes moments like the “I speak jive” sequence, which might strike contemporary audiences as being out of step at a time when the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests are shining a light on the way race is addressed in Hollywood comedies from the past and present.
Zucker, though, stands by it four decades later. “It’s evenly laughing at Black people and white people. Everything is so sensitive nowadays, but when we show the movie, it still gets a laugh. People get it. It cuts through all the sensitivity, because in humor, you can’t be that sensitive.” On the other hand, Zucker notes that ZAZ made a point of road-testing all of their movies in front of preview audiences in order to spot jokes that crossed the line into meanness. “Sometimes stuff just isn’t funny, and that’s our fault. If the audience doesn’t get it, we haven’t done our job and we cut it out.”
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
What added to the humor was that the white woman involved was Barbara Billingsley. Better known as Beaver Cleaver’s mom, June. I’m laughing just thinking about it.
And yet so few picked up on that. I knew who she was, I saw the Beaver! Oh, wait... ;)
Funny one. Hope they can still show the beans scene.
“ Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.”
“Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?“
That was one of the funniest parts of that movie, and still is today as back in that era I knew people that talked very similar to that. Such folks had two lingos, the way they talked in that movie, and they way they talked around other people.
“black Americans they are insulting every day by coddling them like children unable to care for themselves.”
Man, I cannot agree more. An observation I’ve made since this BLM crap started, is some black people seemingly appear a bit sheepish acting. I think it’s due to embarrassment. This could be a mis-perception, but this phenomenon did not exist prior to all this blowing up and being amplified by the fake MSM.
Any normal person with a career, a home and a family would really not want to be falsely exploited like this.
Jewish creative talent back then had not problem making fun of their own.
The lady who “speaks jive” is June Cleaver. Beaver’s mom.... that is what makes it even funnier
Made more hysterical because it was June Cleaver.
Sorry for adding to the list of people who felt it necessary to point out that the white woman was Barbara Billingsley. I should’ve read the posts before posting.
Are you jiving me?
How about the scene of the two precocious kids talking and the girl says I like my coffee like my men...black.
Jive talking in a comedy is now deemed offensive. What about the pilot asking the child if he ever saw a grown man naked? No one finds that offensive. Some people are just too thin-skinned.
Now I won't feel bad about reviving the old middle school level joke "They censored Barbara Billingsley from one episode. She said 'Ward, I think you came down on the Beaver a little too hard last night.'"
And then there’s National Lampoon’s “Vacation” with the scene in East St. Louis.
I thought it was funny when Mrs. Cleaver started talking jive!! I guess I am hopelessly, and willingly, UN-woke.
Life becomes a bore and a chore when you can’t laugh.
I’ve always thought that Blazing Saddles made fun of white people, not black.
Yes! This.
Why is the scene “controversial”? It is hilarious. Everyone in the scene is a stereotype, and the juxtaposition of the stereotypes makes it funny. Homie can only communicate in jive? June Cleaver can translate jive? Hilarious.
The role of the “Jive Talkin’ Lady” was originally offered to Harriet Nelson of “Ozzie and Hariet” fame. She turned it down because she was not comfortable with some of the language in the film.
Why feel bad? Always good for laughs!
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