CAUTION: This commercial has been judged to be offensive to liberals and
other smelly pot-smoking alternative life-style hippie-types, but I repeat myself.
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Posted on 08/11/2007 1:39:54 AM PDT by chessplayer
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - There are so many negative vibes around "Cavemen" that at least one TV critic is taking bets that it won't even get on the air.
The ABC series based on Geico insurance commercials has gone beyond being just another stupid sitcom.
Questions are being raised about whether the Cro-Magnon characters will reinforce racial stereotypes.
(Excerpt) Read more at tbo.com ...
Maybe Abe Foxman should step in with the ADL.
LOL--all the grievance groupies should move in and protest! Feminists, homosexuals, latinos, CAIR... I didn't pick up that any of the characters were gay, but definitely urban metrosexuals...got a kick out of the tennis racket that one of them carries.
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Remember the conniving Kingfish and the formidable Sapphire? The wise and even-tempered taxi-driver, Andy, who was always trying to rescue the gullible Amos from some scheme by Kingfish? (Although I might have Amos and Andy's names switched) I remember the characters as clownish, but appealing. Isn't the point of comedy to clown?
It’s reassuring to know that at least one of the cavemen is gay, explains a lot.
It’s not a crutch, it’s a soapbox.
Put a sock in it!
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Like Planet of the Apes?
That wouldn't be something like "sexual prowess" would it?
So easy a caveman can edit it.
maybe someone should point out the dudes are white. Maybe his TV needs adjusting—he sounds confused or has eye problems
I think the commercials are a joke on the notion that evolution represents progress; in the very first commercials the catchphrase that switching to GEICO was so simple that even a caveman could do it was based on the logical connection that everybody would recognize the meaning.
As the commercials aired, it became obvious to them that the phrase was catching on but the uptick in new business seemed to be tapering off, so some bright young fellow got it in his head to give the gecko a day off and “characturize” the cavemen now firmly fixed in the audience mind.
And then came the masterstroke, the sit-down-dinner, the apology, the shrug and disdain of these “cavemen” who, for all their hirsute primitive countenance still seemed quite prepossessing in their manner and bearing as though we modern humans had misjudged them all along and had been operating under the false notion that all our trappings and contrivances represented going forward when to our suddenly-manifest-now-contemporary forebears sitting across from us we seemed to be but sophomoric bores.
It will be very hard to beat that moment of first comeuppance.
The problem with Amos and Andy was that the show was conceived and performed entirely by a white cast on the radio before T.V. even came on the scene and it was insulting to some listeners but nobody listened to the listeners.
When the show went on T.V. and the stars were cast as real blacks somehow the effect just wasn’t funny anymore; something like the first time you see your mother naked.
If the series gets canned, does that mean ABC goes with the gekko?
Any clown from an ethnic group, I guess, runs the risk of playing to stereotypes. I'm glad the feminists didn't go after Lucy.
As an ante-video relic, I remember looking eagerly forward to the television versions of the radio shows that I had already pictured so clearly in my mind as I was growing up.
Of all the ones that I had a clear image of by shape, color, size and age, only Jack Benny was a perfect fit.
Now there was a show, and Rochester was Rochester, so to speak, but he was a stereotype of the stepandfetchit black, the house negro always eager to please and Benny was wryly amused by his wisdom and simple wit all the while never losing an ounce of his own aplomb while perfectly engraving the headstone of the now entombed “penny-pinching-Jew.”
When we quit laughing at ourselves, we buried more than just some silly jokes, we smothered the roots of humor.
That's why I always say "If you can't laugh at yourself, listen to me laughing at you."
L
But I did hate the mime on Red Skelton.
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The Black in that report is a chip looking for a shoulder - a whine looking for a gripe. He won't be assuaged. He can't be consoled. That is not his objective.
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