Episode 553 - Out of date humour?

Oct 18, 2021

I was reading an article the other day about the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen and how that style of comedy is now out of date, along with The Hangover and Hot Tub Time Machine. The idea is that the day for this sort of masculine, bawdy, sleazy humour has been and gone and that we're more advanced, sophisticated and enlightened now. Personally I took issue with this, I think this style of comedy is extremely relatable and eternal because of it. You can see examples of it going back thousands of years across all cultures because many factors of it are universal to the human cultural experience.

Topics and Show Notes

It's inappropriate to make fun of people for things they can't change about themselves. We should never “punch down” by making fun of groups who don't have power in society, like the homeless, ethnic, sexual and religious minorities. But sex based humour, or humour based around a masculine point of view, even if it's tawdry and immature, is not wrong or inappropriate. At least that's my feeling on the matter. It's a complex subject and Banes and Tantz had slightly differing points of view and we touch on things like satire as well, you'll have to listen to the Quackcast to hear them! :)

When people talk about crass, “out of date” humour they usually reference Married With Children. This is another thing that really gets to me because they totally ignore the cultural context of that show. When Married With Children came out in the late 80s is was a breath of fresh air and sharply contrasted with the predominant style of comedy coming out of the USA at the time, it was completely dominated by glurgey semi dramatic sickly sweet comedy with a message, shows like Golden Girls, MASH, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Different Strokes etc. The list is HUGE because that was the main style of comedy and it continued well into the 90s. Those examples were all very good shows, but they has a massive dose of sentimentalism which Married With Children totally eschewed and that make it very different and special. Today that kind of cynicism is not a rare thing anymore but back then it was and we have the popularity of Married With Children to thank for reintroducing it into our culture. Its bawdy, raunchy comedy is just as relevant today as it was then because the archetypes it's based on are just as universal.

What's your opinion on so called “out of date” comedy?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Designersaurs - Rocking, bopping, pop! Finger-snapping fun. This joyous, light, bright ditty is designed to make you happy and ready for fun. A good piece of synth electronica, reminiscent of 80s future music.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
EVA of Asgard - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/12/featured-comic-eva-of-asgard/

Featured music:
The Designersaurs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Designersaurs/ - by Jotravers, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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Episode 551 - Tropes we LOVE to hate...

Oct 4, 2021

3 likes, 1 comment

Tantz explains why she really hates a bunch of tropes that are super commonly used in things, stuff like very obvious plot armour for the protagonist so that you KNOW nothing can seriously hurt them so you stop caring what happens to them and in the story in general, child-led stories where the adults are all useless and ineffectual because it takes away your suspension of disbelief, and amnesia where a huge bunch of the story is erased so the writers can just repeat stuff over and over. Banes and I join it to talk about stuff we hate too!

Episode 550 - Gaming

Sep 27, 2021

3 likes, 0 comments

We decided to chat about games. Video game and computer games. They're now a huge part of pop-culture entertainment and they've influenced us in many ways creatively throughout our lives. There are many different kinds of games out there, but one of the really cool things about them is that they're able to deliver a kind of interactive narrative experience that takes things further than Film or comics can easily do. Games were also instrumental in the early days of the first big popular wave of webcomics with gamer comics (PVP, Ctrl Alt Dlt, and Penny Arcade) and sprite comics (8 bit fantasy), being some of the most popular.

Episode 548 - Foreign Influence

Sep 8, 2021

4 likes, 0 comments

Translating cultural concepts so they can be understood in a different country can be really tricky, most people never bother. Often the audience is just left to guess what's behind certain concepts and idioms. As an Australian, growing up as a little kid we were bombarded by media from everywhere, but mainly Britain, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. There was so much about American media that was utterly alien to us and we were just left to puzzle it out, especially American high school concepts: The level of seriousness with which they regard team sports in schools, cheerleaders, jocks, jockstraps, school kids driving cars, homecoming, pep rallies, summer camp, proms, tick or treating, thanksgiving… We just had to make sense of those things ourselves. Some we could work out from context but others I never really understood and never really will.

Episode 547 - Franchise fail

Sep 2, 2021

4 likes, 2 comments

There seemed to be a lull for a while after the 1990s and the massive sequel craze of the 80s, but nowadays we're back in full swing again with sequels, reboots and reinvisioning of film and TV franchises. Banes noticed a distinct pattern of behaviour that occurred around bad or failed franchises: The makers would chose to go against what existing fans liked about the property in the fist place, usually in order to appeal to new fans. When both new fans and old ones dislike what they do, they attack the fans and blame the fans for failure of their version. Then they'll search and find a new franchise to mess up. It's rare that people own up to or admit to failures anymore, it's usually always the fault of the fans for being too “toxic”.

Episode 546 - The bad-arse dandy!

Aug 30, 2021

4 likes, 0 comments

Why aren't there more prettyboy bad-ass characters? Pretty girl bad-asses too! This character type is often a hall-mark of Japanese and Korean fiction more than anything else though it DOES show up in Western media occasionally. There is no age-limit to the type, what distinguishes it is that the character is tough and a very good fighter while also being very obviously concerned about their appearance and looking good- they don't just look good and fashionable naturally, they actively work at it.

Episode 545 - tipping point to become a fan?

Aug 22, 2021

3 likes, 0 comments

We're all fans of something, but when does that happen? When do we transition from just following and liking something into being full on fans and is there even a difference? I think there definitely IS a difference. I became a fan of Star Wars after watching the first film but I'm not a fan of The Witcher even after watching the entire show. Henry Cavill as Geralt is super amazing but the show itself is just blah to me. I've seen about 200 or so episodes of One Piece but I don't think of myself as a fan. I became a fan of Ghost in the Shell after seeing a poster from the Manga. I became a fan of Farscape after watching reruns of the series over and over.

Episode 544 - Horrorrorrrorrrrr

Aug 16, 2021

4 likes, 0 comments

We have a special guest today, myEx, Miss_Judged. She's onboard with the whole group of Tantz, Banes, Pit and I because she's super duper into horror like Pit and Banes, AND it just happens to have been Friday the 13th last week. Why horror? Well, this is what I want to know too! Why do people like it and what do they like about it? The reason we're talking about it at all is because of the DD horror anthology comic that is all horror themed and has many great contributions from great DD creators here. Please buy a copy to help fund new improvements to DD!


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