Posted on 07/26/2007 10:19:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The producers of ABC's new sitcom Cavemen, based on a series of popular advertisements for the insurance company Geico, were ready to defend themselves against charges of rampant commercialism. But the charge that their show about put-upon Cro-Magnons in the modern world has racist undertones took them by surprise.
''I actually didn't know we would catch so much hell,'' Cavemen writer Joe Lawson ruefully told a room full of highly critical critics at a gathering of North American television writers here Wednesday. ``That's a pleasant surprise.''
Cavemen, which features shaggy Cro-Magnons trying to make their way through a hostile Homo Sapiens world, won't even air until October but is already drenched in its second wave of controversy.
The first came in May when ABC announced it was converting a handful of 30-second insurance commercials into a half-hour series. The Cavemen producers had to endure a seemingly endless round of cracks like the one on Saturday Night Live's satirical Weekend Update newscast, which announced NBC would counter with a new drama called 1-800-Mattress.
But as the show's pilot episode began circulating in Hollywood, so did a new round of criticism: that Cavemen trafficked in the very racial caricatures it was supposed to be lampooning. By depicting the Cro-Magnons as good dancers, great athletes and grand sexual partners, the show's detractors argued, Cavemen was using black stereotypes for cheap racist laughs. ''We finally get to laugh at all the stereotypes in the world directed at cavemen, without feeling guilty,'' wrote one Hollywood blogger. ABC's decision to reshoot the pilot didn't exactly help.
Wednesday's panel discussion here was the first time Cavemen producers have discussed the show in public, and they said people are reading too much into what they called a ''fish out of water'' story.
''Unfortunately, in our society, if you pick an offensive stereotype of any kind, it's going to bump into some ethnic group,'' said Mike Schiff, one of the executive producers. ``Is the show about race relations? No. Is that a background to the show? Yes, of course.''
Lawson, who wrote the original Geico commercials as well as the pilot, said that if the Cro-Magnons are an allegorical stand-in for anybody, it's not black people but outsiders.
''As human beings, we all have that need to fit in,'' he said. ``It's really a show about acclimation more than anything, and that's something that everybody deals with, doesn't matter if you're a minority or not.''
Not everybody -- in fact, almost nobody -- in the room was buying it, partly because some of the Cavemen story lines the producers offered as evidence the show isn't about race (for instance, one of the cavemen concealing the fact that he's dating a Homo Sapiens woman, for fear his Cro Magnon friends won't like it) sounded like race was exactly what they were about.
The cavemen are ''known for their athletic prowess, their sexual prowess, their dancing,'' complained one critic, to which director Josh Gordon deadpanned: ``They're Jewish.''
So many questions were about hot-button racial topics that the producers actually seemed relieved when anybody circled back to the subject of commercialism. When one critic sarcastically asked if the gecko lizard who stars in another group of Geico commercials would be making a guest appearance on Cavemen, Gordon replied that it ``depends on how ratings are.''
And he was sympathetic to the charge of another critic that Cavemen suffered ''a failure in anthropological verisimilitude'' by making its Cro-Magnons look more like Neanderthals and suggested that the show fire all its technical advisors.
''If we had technical advisors,'' Gordon conceded, ``we would probably fire them.''
A famous American explorer is deep in the primeval jungle, going where no man has gone before. Accompanying him is his trusted guide, interpreter, cook, and troubleshooter all in one.
One day, early in the morning, they arrive at a lake fed by waters from melting ice high on a mountain, and find a handsome, naked, young Cro-Magnon man engaged in playful activities with eight or nine beautiful, young Cro-Magnon women, all dressed in animal skins.
The explorer is shocked to see that the young man has the biggest member the American has ever seen. It is far larger than anything he has ever imagined, and he asks his guide who this man is.
“He is the Prince of the Cro-Magnons who live on the other side of the lake, Sir,” the guide answers. “This is his morning ritual.”
“Ask him,” the awed Westerner says to his companion, “how his member got to be that size.”
The guide goes to the group and talks to the man, who seems to get very agitated by the conversation.
“Well, what did he say?” asked the explorer, when his assistant had returned.
“He said, ‘What do you mean – how did it get to be that size? There’s nothing wrong with my member. Doesn’t the homo sapiens’ member shrink in cold water?’”
If it had been a computer geek, he would have said, “Seven?! You beat me by six!”
The Pope goes on a visit to the primeval wilderness, and is traveling along in his coach by the side of a large river. Soon, he catches sight of a Cro-Magnon man in the river, struggling and screaming, as he tries vainly to fight off a huge crocodile.
The Pope feels terrible as he realizes there is nothing he can do. Then, suddenly, two homo sapiens males leap into the water, drag the Cro-Magnon and the croc to land, and beat the crocodile to death with sticks.
The Pope is really impressed by this. He goes over to where the two men are standing next to the bleeding and unconscious Cro-Magnon, and says, “Congratulations; that was the most wonderful thing you two men did! I know it is men like you who will rebuild this wilderness as an example of caveman harmony.”
Then the Pope goes on his way.
After he’s left, one of the homo sapiens turns to the other and says, “Who was that?”
The other replies, “That was the Pope; he’s in direct communication with God and thus knows everything.”
At this, the first homo sapiens replies with skepticism, muttering, “Well... maybe – but he didn’t seem to know much about crocodile fishing.”
...I mean, stupid, this is just stupid. The liberals have ruined us.
That’s what I would have said. If I were able to wake up.
Alien Nation.
“I’m not Pedro! Heee’s oustside selling teeeekeits!”
I actually think GEICO has used too many gimmicks at the same time that they start to cannibalize themselves. If I remember correctly, they use 3 series of commercials simultaneously: the cavemen, the gecko with Australian accent, and ordinary people with celebrities.
Wait until they bitch that there are no Black or Asian cavemen.
Just think how much cheaper GEICO (Government Employees Insurance Company) insurance would be without all those damn commercials. I don’t think I’ll be wasting any of my time watching half hour GEICO commercials.
Yup. There has to be 2.7% of everybody..
Cowardly PC cattle.
When the Left is not dominant, then it is allowed to mock the dominant culture, as a way to undermine it
When the Left is dominant in culture, then no further humor is allowed
“Cro-Magnons were the prototypical modern EUROPEANS. I.e. the first white men”
These cavemen look like Neanderthals to me.
I guarantee you that these very same people who think that the “Cavemen” are a laugh a minute would NEVER dress up a group of black people as apes and then use them in a Geico Insurance commercial. END of story!
Considering that GEICO's Caveman campaign is a blatant ripoff of SNL's "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer."
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