Mind Your Language
Just finished watching the entire first three seasons of the 70's British sitcom Mind Your Language. Ah, the nostalgia. I first watched it on TV2 in the mid 90's when I was around 10.
They don't make sitcoms like this anymore. And I mean that quite literally. The show got its laughs by playing on the racial and cultural stereotypes of the different nationalities of the students in the classroom. We have the communist, Chairman Mao-loving Chinese from China who spouts communist propaganda at every available opportunity while replacing her "R"s with "L"s (who incidentally, is played by a Penangite and speaks Hokkien in several episodes), the Pakistani Muslim and Indian Sikh who are ever-bickering over their religions and calling each other a barbarian and an infidel, and the Japanese who ends every other word with an "O", just to name a few.
In this age of (extreme) political correctness, it would be a miracle for a sitcom such as this to be produced and broadcasted. In fact, Mind Your Language was cancelled in the end due to fears of criticism being directed at it for being racist. Screw political correctness is what I say. Sometimes, it goes so overboard that its ridiculous. Methinks that nowadays, we spend too much time sanitizing and tip-toeing around our words out of fear of offending the other person instead of just taking the piss and having a laugh over it.
And that's what makes Mind Your Language so special. It's a comedy of its time, where political correctness was not so prevalent and we could all have a laugh over the gentle ribbing of the different stereotypes as compared to now where the authorities would go berserk over anything deemed 'politically incorrect'.
As for me, watching Mind Your Language now takes me back to the days when I was a young boy, eagerly waiting for the next episode of Mind Your Language to air on TV2 and laughing at "por favor", "holy ravioli" and "santa maria". Good times.
They don't make sitcoms like this anymore. And I mean that quite literally. The show got its laughs by playing on the racial and cultural stereotypes of the different nationalities of the students in the classroom. We have the communist, Chairman Mao-loving Chinese from China who spouts communist propaganda at every available opportunity while replacing her "R"s with "L"s (who incidentally, is played by a Penangite and speaks Hokkien in several episodes), the Pakistani Muslim and Indian Sikh who are ever-bickering over their religions and calling each other a barbarian and an infidel, and the Japanese who ends every other word with an "O", just to name a few.
In this age of (extreme) political correctness, it would be a miracle for a sitcom such as this to be produced and broadcasted. In fact, Mind Your Language was cancelled in the end due to fears of criticism being directed at it for being racist. Screw political correctness is what I say. Sometimes, it goes so overboard that its ridiculous. Methinks that nowadays, we spend too much time sanitizing and tip-toeing around our words out of fear of offending the other person instead of just taking the piss and having a laugh over it.
And that's what makes Mind Your Language so special. It's a comedy of its time, where political correctness was not so prevalent and we could all have a laugh over the gentle ribbing of the different stereotypes as compared to now where the authorities would go berserk over anything deemed 'politically incorrect'.
As for me, watching Mind Your Language now takes me back to the days when I was a young boy, eagerly waiting for the next episode of Mind Your Language to air on TV2 and laughing at "por favor", "holy ravioli" and "santa maria". Good times.
posted by mental.tsunami @ 7/12/2011 12:16:00 AM
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