Posted on 07/21/2004 7:52:52 AM PDT by presidio9
Personally, I like the fist punches to the nuts by Lee Marvin in "Point Blank"
It's also a potentially lethal blow if it's hard enough.
I think you've covered it pretty well.
And in amongst all the laughter, folks might realize people have died from a kick in the privates - in one case the rapid onset of testicular cancer. Encouraging this as "humor" is way sick.
Having seen Lucy Lawless in person, yes, I think it could be quite funny if the context made it clear that Mr. Jackson wasn't doing any harm to Ms. Lawless.
In my experience, it's nothing but taking a cheap shot by promoting a cheap laugh by using a cheap gag.
That just about sums up all slapstick humor and just about anything the Three Stooges ever did.
Some things ought to be off limits.
Some things are. I don't think a blow to the groin is one of them, despite having experienced a pretty hard one myself. By the way, they do have similar sex-oriented humor directed at women, usually revolving around PMS and/or labor pains.
No one would think of getting a laugh today in the movies by showing a black person doing a minstrel show, a stingy Jew, or "playfully" slapping a woman around "because it is funny."
That's because men, as a class, haven't been enslaved, hurded into death camps, and there aren't shelters full of men beaten to the point of hospitalization by women. It is because men really aren't all that vulnerable that people can laugh at this vulnerability.
With respect to minstrel shows, you should watch Spike Lee's movie Bamboozled, which revolves around the idea of a modern minstrel show. At one point, one of the militant blacks starts laughing at the show and says that he thinks it's actually pretty funny. Minstrel shows are not off limits because they aren't funny. They are off limits because of their historical context.
If we are going to "respect" people, then it should be everybody, and I don't care if the Left drags out the "its funny because men are evil bastards and deserve it" excuse.
I don't think that's why it's funny, any more than people thought the Three Stooges were funny because they liked watching Jewish men get bashed over the head. If you watch the movie Something About Mary, it has humor worse than simply getting hit between the legs. But it also laughs at retarded people, has a lengthy scene based on essentially killing a pet dog and shocking it back to life, and makes fun of an older woman's sagging breasts. Yes, there are people who probably think all of those topics should be off limits and that movie certainly crosses the line of good taste. But the real question is why people find those things funny and I think the answer is a lot less political and freuidian than you do.
It is no more funny than "America deserved what it got on 9-11".
And putting a groin kick in the same league as 9/11 seems as absurd to me as all the liberals comparing anyone conservative to Hitler. Put the analogy down and step slowly away before someone gets hurt.
Around about that time, us boys were figuring out that if you hit another boy in the doodads, they will turn multiple shades of blue and red and collapse in a heap on the floor. Pretty cool to watch, not much fun being on the receiving end.
Well, one day, Sister Irene Marie just happened to waddle around the corner when one of the bigger guys in our class, Johnny, dropped the class nerd, Patrick with a devastating blow to the groinal regions. The good sister was fuming as she came to Patrick's aide and helped him down to the nurse's office to rest. When she returned we were all sitting in our seats waiting for class to start. Sister Irene Marie stormed into the room, slamming the door behind her and marched down the aisle to Johnny's seat, grabbed him by the ear and marched him up to the front of the room.
She started lecturing all of us about the dangers of hitting boys below the belt and how it also can be harmful to a person's pride. She saw nothing humorous in our primitive behavior and she told us that she will no longer tolerate the bigger, more athletic kids picking on their smaller and weaker classmates and with that, she spun around with a balled up fist and WHAM!, nailed Johnny in the doodads. As his cheeks swelled and his eyes crossed, his knees buckled and down he went.
Picture, if you will, 26 5th grade boys and girls all simultaneously falling out of their chairs laughing so hard, tears were running down our cheeks. Ahh, Parochial School, I hated it so much then but the memories will last a lifetime.
Nope. And I've been slammed in the groin more than once, too, though the years. I've also managed to get myself caught in my zipper when I was much younger, a quite painful accident that was the source of a lot of humor in Something About Mary.
Trust me, I know that there are some men who hit women. That said, many many women abuse their husbands in a variety of ways (humilitation, denying affections, hitting them knowing they can't hit back, etc.)
Of course they do. And is that the sort of thing you find in a comedy movie? Context. Pay attention to the context. Add blood and perminent brain damage to the Three Stooges bashing each other over the head and that stops being funny, too.
Bill Cosby used to do quite a few stand up routines about parents "beating" their children and the fear children have of being "beaten". Does that mean that all of the children of earlier generations were the victims of child abuse? Does that mean child abuse is funny? Of course not. And I find it telling that it was my friend's teenaged sons, who have never been hit as children, who found Cosby's old routines shocking while many of us who were spanked by our parents find them quite funny. No, it's not funny if the context is child abuse. It can be funny if the context is a willfully misbehaving child and a loving parent. Context.
But men don't go around kicking women in their nether regions and get a jolly laugh all around from it.
No. And men also generally don't have to worry about being left alone with a group of women. I came home one day a few years ago and found a guy collecting money standing outside the front door. When I went inside, I asked my wife, "So why didn't you let him wait inside?" She gave me a look and said, "Do you really want me to let a strange man into the house when I'm home alone?" Women are very vulnerable in ways that most men don't have to think about and they are quite aware of it. Again, it's that men aren't all that vulnerable that makes this Achilles Heel a suitable source of slapstick humor. If you watch those home video shows, goin shots are hardly the only painful slapstick shown. People like watching other people be surprised and react to relatively harmless pain. A kick in the groin is like hammering your thumb with a hammer, not like sending a woman to the hospital with a broken jaw.
Context.
But I am shocked and dismayed by your representation of the Three Stooges as faking those eye-gouges. Is nothing sacred? What are you going to tell us next, that pro wrestling is fake?
Hmph. I didn't think so.
If you already know it, then perhaps you should apply that knowledge to understand the difference in context between seeing a man hitting a woman and a woman hitting a man. Slapstick is funny so long as people don't see the injury as serious. A groin blow is very painful to a man, but it is rarely lasting or serious. If you take the violence in slapstick too seriously, it stops being funny. I have yet to see a groin shot in a movie or television portrayed as a serious injury in a comedic context.
No, don't have or watch TV. Maybe this is why I don't get what you are trying to convince me of.
I'm not trying to convince you to find it funny. I'm trying to get you to realize that a lot of people consider slapstick funny and that's all most groin shots are -- slapstick. Would you care to condemn all slapstick, as well? After all, slapstick is essentially finding humor in the pain and misfortune of others.
There is a growing movement among men to boycott advertisers and movie producers who make a joke of men getting kicked to the groin. I think its about time. There is nothing funny about violence or sexual assault, no matter who inflicts it on whom.
Note as to how often the groin shot occurs (often by a woman) when the male oaf expresses a politically incorrect thought about women or feminism. Ball breaking as thought control?
Let me start out by telling you that I completley respect you for standing up for your views, and the conservative views of America. Ive been waiting for conservatives like me and you, and the great people of freerepublic.com to get their views into the mainstream, and its finally happening. People are finally starting to see the dirty politics and lying people from the left, because of people like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and the rest of the leaders of the great conservative movement including the people of freerepublic.com. Eventhough I cant disagree with you about the predjudices against us men, I dont think that movies like Dodgeball, and Anchorman are to fault for that at all, expecially because they were written by men. But ya, good point about all the commercials of wifes rolling their eyes at men, it does represent the idealogy of socieity unfortunatley. Hey, I noticed your sn is jbeachgrl05, is it true? Are you really a girl saying this stuff? If so, that amazes me and i respect you even more for your views. But, I dont think we need to attack movies like Anchorman, or Dodgeball for this, however, we should go after idiots like Hilliary Clinton.
Yes, we do. And, were fighting back by throwing their own stupid policies in their faces, and exposing their lies for what they are. If we play dirty, and sink ourselves to their levels, it will make us look just as stupid as they are and that cant happen. People everyday are begining to realize that the extremist of the left are leading this country through lies, scandal, and unanswered terrorist attacks against Americans (think about the US Embassy, the USS Cole, and the first World Trade center attack in 1993, all of which almost completley went unanswered during the Clinton days).
Yes, you are right though, we recieve numerous low blows from liberals every day, but for that reason, people are starting to see what the left is really like. People will vote AGAINST John Kerry because of these lies and senseless attacks from the left, but it wont serve us any good if those same people see us doing the same thing back. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The america's home video shows usually have the man getting a blow to the groin due to his own stupidity or trying to perform jackass stunts or a child inflicts the blow with a kiddie baseball bat or during sports. They have videos of women, little babies and tiny pets having painful spills and mishaps too.
The males who get kicks to the groin are usually harassing, annoying, obnoxious pricks. Innapropriate and annoying behavior would never be directed or attempted with other males especially ones stronger and bigger. Most men wouldn't insult or provoke a man. He knows there is a good chance of getting his ass severly kicked by a man and he would have to get into a fight. The male usually only attempts audacious arrogant behavior with someone smaller and weaker than himself with no weapons closeby. He assumes the female will have a submissive non-violent reaction. When he does get smacked, it's funny.
It would be funny too if an arrogant stuck up snobby girl landed in the mud after a good smack from the high school nerd girl who always let herself get pushed around.
I know violence is always wrong etc. but let's get real, it's just a comedy show and real women usually don't go around kicking guys in the groin because girls know the male could resort to violence in retaliation.
Would a man be justified in punching or kicking a woman to any number of vulnerable spots if she was also being obnoxious in a similar manner?
The male usually only attempts audacious arrogant behavior with someone smaller and weaker than himself with no weapons closeby. He assumes the female will have a submissive non-violent reaction. When he does get smacked, it's funny.
Would you say that it's funny when a violent woman assaults a man thinking she can get away with it because he won't hit back, and he does?
It would be funny too if an arrogant stuck up snobby girl landed in the mud after a good smack from the high school nerd girl who always let herself get pushed around.
What if the nerd was a guy?
The title is misleading. It's not that "Hollywood Thinks It's Hysterical When Men Take A Shot the Groin," it's that PEOPLE think it's hysterical when a man takes a shot to the groin.
And it doesn't mean that writers have lost the ability to write comedy, either. This humor has been around forever, as the article states. It has been a part of moviemaking since the first camera rolled.
I'll grant you that there aren't as many intelligent comedies as there are slapstick, but that's the free market for you. Kids spend more money on films, so it's no surprise that the films are more jeuvenile.
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