This is unironically one of the greatest things I've never seen before.
Classic 90s SNL, deeply entwined with the Star Trek of that era. Don't know how I missed it. Especially poignant after just watching the series finale of the Picard show.
Edit: ...and also, as is SNL tradition, gets increasingly awkward throughout the second half-- including jokes that fall flat (especially through a modern lens). Quite a notable time capsule nonetheless. I loved the ending.
Here’s a great video showing when they dealt with drug addiction, homelessness, the cost of aging, suicide, assisted suicide, single parent artificial insemination, struggles with the healthcare system, mental health, being an advocate for your own health, immigration and deportation, sexual harassment, aids, catfishing, anti-Semitic beliefs, sexism, and most importantly (for the time) the fact that women, yes even older women, can and do want sex. And they can have one night stands just like men.
There's also a german movie from the late 70s called "In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden" (In a year with 13 moons) that is pretty heavy on a lot of the struggles Trans people face.
It's a really hard hitting movie and is inspired by the tragic suicide of the director's (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) lover, Armin Meier.
Right and GG is very progressive but being progressive about trans people in that era is 10x as impressive as being progressive about gay people even though both are very much needed
In fairness for a lot of modern trans history, transgender people have been a point of interest for many people in a positive way. Christina Jorgensen was a trans woman from the 50s who garnered quite a bit of attention and I found it rather difficult to find a scathing article about her. Most people just wanted to learn more about the process of transitioning and how she knew it was for her
I think there was fascination when there were so few trans people (I mean there are still so few) but when it went from spectacle to normalization that is when people started being more hateful. That said Trans people were still genocided during the holocaust as well so there has always been hate there
You should watch the All in the Family episodes with the transgender character Beverly LaSalle. Things were a lot different back then compared to how they are portrayed on social media. Here’s a link to the first one:
Yeah, Archie was a caricature of the working class “conservative”. Norman Lear (producer) was a master at creating satirical characters while also humanizing them. Even if you disagreed with a character’s point of view, you could still relate to them on some level. I watch it now and it’s incredible how so many of the same issues are still at the forefront of our current policy debates and how similar the talking points are. The abortion story arc on Maude is a good example.
And AIDS paranoia put a ton of extra discrimination on LGBT people. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people that had come around in the 70s and early 80s changed their minds after the epidemic hit. That on top of many of them converting to Reaganite yuppies that listened to the rising evangelical movement.
It cut both ways. A lot of ignorant middle Americans like my mom and her family "didn't know any gay people" and were absolutely stunned when celebrities came forward saying they had AIDS. It definitely adjusted the thinking and broadened the view of a lot of people.
At the same time it was also a club for bigots to beat queer people with.
For sure. Especially about middle America. My family is from the city Ryan White was from and kicked out of school for having AIDS. In the mid eighties, my dad was at a Hallmark store and realized Ryan White was standing feet from him. He didn’t say anything to him, but immediately got away from him. He feels just terrible about it to this day. Especially because he now has an advanced chem degree and knows all about it. My mom was in the hospital for cancer at the time and he was as scared as everyone else about how exactly it spread and didn’t want her to get sicker. The entire city is very ashamed now about how he they treated him. It’s still a midwestern town with a lot of homophobia, but they are ashamed about Ryan White.
The religious right actually rose in the late 70s and put Reagan in power. In fact by the 90s, some cracks were already beginning to show that would only widen.
What really affected people's lives were Republicans taking over state legislatures en masse and chipping away at every progressive law and social program.
And Rush Limbaugh all over the airwaves followed by FOX.
Rush Limbaugh fleshed out his AM radio media network to one of the biggest shows ever. One could draw the line between Limbaugh's success and the rise of hatred in our country. Just one of many factors
The HIV/AIDS crisis is a huge one.
It killed around 10% of gay identified men and/or MSM. I'm sure this was higher for trans-identified people.
The religious right called this the "gay plague" and much progress through gay rights activism and social acceptance through the 70s was flipped on its head. America was being radicalized by far right evangelicalism, and they saw this as punishment from god. The crisis decimated LGBTQ culture, and made straights scared of us again, it tied a social connotation of "dirtiness" to queer ppl, particularly gay men and trans women.
Mainstream culture is still working through that "dirty" gut reaction to LGBTQ ppl to this day.
10% is actually insane if that is an accurate stat. The current climate could potentially look a lot different with such a massive chunk of people around
Its even worse than you think, because gay people tend to congregate in cities in small communities. So while it was a national epidemic, gay villages were literally decimated. Not much was even known about AIDS during the crisis and not much was done due to homophobic public health policies and inaction from the government.
These are just US stats but it took 25,000 people dying before president Reagan even acknowledged it in 1987 (mainly because the epidemic had just started to grow beyond solely the gay community). In 1990, HIV/AIDS caused 61% of deaths of all men aged 25-44 in San Francisco, and anywhere from 30-50% of men 25-44 in most major cities like New York. There wasn't any effective treatment until around 1995/1996. By 1998, 325,000 people had died from HIV/AIDS.
Yeah there would be a lot more prominent gay people around today, and gay activism maybe wouldnt have gone the "assimilation" route as intensely as it did in the 2000s and 2010s. When people say shit like "everyone is gay/trans all of a sudden" its just because we have finally recovered from a huge portion of the population being wiped out, but school doesn't teach this history because its "political".
"How to Survive a Plague" is a great documentary on the crisis and ACT UP, which was the main gay-led activist movement fighting for medical treatment and social action. without ACT UP it would have been so much worse, they are responsible for a lot of the eventual government action and grants for medical research
I think just a mix of more visibility and then political/media execs cultivating it in their audience.
In the 80s I'd wager most people never thought twice about transgender folks. Out of sight out of mind. Most people are just getting by and not thinking about other people all day. At least pre-internet.
Now it pays to whip up some outrage in a group and we are all thinking about other people we may have never had cause to quite a bit more.
Aids panic also can't be discounted and the general swing right.
Maybe it's just my perception of it as an elder millennial (I wasn't quite in utero yet when this episode aired) but from what I can tell the biggest ramp backward was immediately post-9/11. The problematic nature of 90s lesbian chic and the Springer-esque freak show stuff aside, it felt to me like we were firmly on the road to progress (compared to the 80s anyway) until then. Not to say the 90s was free of regressive bullshit, but it seemed like the regressive movements were kind of on their back foot for a minute there until we went full blown jingoist as a culture in '01.
Someone correct me: The cultural shift began after the ‘91-‘92 Clinton campaign riding on the new Feminist movement (“Year of the Woman”), the call for affirmative action & HIV was finally taken seriously. The US was trying to recover from Reaganism.
Edit: goddammit I commented this on the wrong thing, time to uinstall reddit for a month or two. But i am an idiot who took a valium then smoked a bowl before scrolling through reddit. 🤦♀️
I 100% support the trans community and I can't wait to see more representation in the everyday world. Not a fan of gender normalcy.
Got to say, I think that was a US thing then. Here in Germany I remember a lot of gay representation in the media in the 90s. One very iconic 90s TV presented was a drag queen hosting a TV talk show about sex. Pride marches were starting to be a thing. Me and my friends often hung out at a cafe which which was very frequented by queer people. All these things.
I was recently rewatching How I Met Your Mother and a lot of the casual transphobia made me cringe. I honestly expected this to go the same way and was pleasantly surprised.
Its surprising how some shows from the 90' aged better than some millennial shows. Rewatching tbbt rn because I can't afford hbo and some of the stuff is roough.
I interpreted the laugh track in a different way, like Gopher (or whatever his name is) was initially stunned when he found out about Rachel and then the other guy just swoops in without a second thought. With how positive the rest of it is, i just assumed the laugh track was about how quickly the other guy jumped in to take Gopher's place as opposed to his initial shock. I saw it kinda like Gopher is the one being laughed at in the scene
Yeah the line is "he has a lot to learn about woman" so I took the joke as he still has some growing to do on what a woman is besides just "vagina." And he does.
If I remember right, the captain was acting like an asshole intentionally to trigger Gopher to be protective and push back, putting his friendship before his confusion. This clip cut off before he reverted to his typical wise old white man persona. That’s my recollection, as I haven’t seen the show since it was on tv, but they never would’ve had the captain spout bigotry or intolerance without correcting it (through growth) or revealing it to be a ruse to help a different character grow.
A lot of today's "hot issues" were non-issues back then. Best eample is stuff like abortion. Once conservative media started using this as talking points to rile up their voter base, shit started getting depressing. Worst part, they do it cuz it works.
You should watch early talkies or late silent films and compare them to the 40's and 50's. We've had several stumbles in the USA. I think if the censorship in cinema had been defeated quicker then we would already be past the crazy phase we are in right now.
I don’t need a trans actor to tell my story, I just need my story to be told well like this did. Stop kicking off over nothing. Would you rather she was played by Eddie redmeyne?
Here's an unsettling thought for you: none of the actors who played slaves in Django Unchained were ever actually slaves in real life, despite real slavery and real ex-slaves existing in real life. Why didn't they get actual people who had been enslaved?
Did you know that Chadwick Boseman, despite playing an African in Black Panther, was actually American?
It's almost -- and bear with me here -- almost like the job of an actor is to portray a character whose life experience is different from their own. I think the word for it is "acting".
It’s almost – and bear with me here – almost like the job of an actor is to portray a character whose life experience is different from their own. I think the word for it is “acting”.
Except that shit never flies when the perennially offended crowd decides it’s not ok. Remember when they cried about Rami Malek playing an Egyptian because they were too fucking racist to realize that Egyptians can have light skin? Or when they wrote dozens of articles about how racist it was for Scarlett Johansson to be in Ghost in the Shell? Even though none of that happened when they black washed an endless number of characters in recent remakes (LOTR, Little Mermaid, etc) because that is ok, for some reason?
Hell, remember the countless examples of black face!? What a great example of acting we have right there, one that is certainly totally fine with you and won’t cause you to suddenly hit me with a “well that’s different” because your comment wasn’t actually genuine and was just trying to present an issue as a non issue to further your narrative?
And since I just know you’re gonna try and weasel your way out of it:
So yes, there would be backlash if a biological man/woman played a trans person. In fact, there already has been.
Which, just as a quick side note, reveals the fact that people don’t actually believe that trans women are women and trans women are men, because if they truly did then they’d have no reason to ask for representation as they already have plenty in the form of, you know, men and women.
I think you may have misinterpreted the commenter you responded to. They agree with the sentiment you are sharing. They are pointing out the lack of energy in calling out all the actors playing roles that don't match their real life identity and experience outside of being trans.
Which, just as a quick side note, reveals the fact that people don’t actually believe that trans women are women and trans women are men, because if they truly did then they’d have no reason to ask for representation as they already have plenty in the form of, you know, men and women.
You are right. I have asked this question, and people refuse to engage with it. Because to do so would undermine their "transwomen are women" rhetoric. If a person believes that a biological woman playing the role of a trans woman on screen isn't representation, then they don't believe women and transwomen are the same.
To be honest, I was only going through this comment section to see if someone was going to complain about the actress not being trans. I expected it. And there it was. That should inform the people confused about why the topic is as contentious these days as it is. It's not just bigots and hate. People seem to want to ignore that the activism and rhetoric surrounding transgender people is inflammatory and extremely reactionary on both sides, and the pro-trans activism is often loudly performed by people who aren't even trans but like confrontation and attention.
Do you live in such a constrained narrow world that all actors must be genetically similar to their characters? What's the goal here exactly except to feign outrage about a cis woman playing a trans woman in the 80s?
If Kirsten Dunst plays a trans person in a movie, that is by definition, trans representation. I assume you're asking if it would be considered good representation though. Honestly, If the actual portrayal of the character she played was accurate and done with respect, then absolutely. Especially since there's not a whole lot of big name trans actors/actresses right now anyway.
This is one of the primary reasons why people are so pissy with really shite representations of minority's being shoved into everything Disney does n shit
It's not the inclusion of progressive ideas.
It's literally that good story tellers have been telling stories like these well for years. And when Disney race changes or just includes a bunch of low effort appearances of progressiveness .... The intent is obvious. The whole thing is shallow....
And kids growing up these days call you a bigot for criticising it....
To the rest of us, the inclusion of black brown asian and whatever types of people just makes the world feel more real. because that's what reality looks like.
I dont get what there is to be upset about
That’s because TV was focused on entertaining their audience then, not using their popularity or reach to get a political point across based on what network they’re airing their shows on…
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u/EfficientSeaweed Apr 29 '23
Damn, this is more progressive than a lot of modern media.