The Introverted Detective: Family Friendly Through The Years

If I said I had a family-friendly movie to bring to a family gathering, what do you picture? While I'm sure you don't expect me to bring Game of Thrones or Fifty Shades of Grey to the party, you definitely don't expect me to bring a 1930s short film showing black stereotypes in a blatantly offensive way. My point is this; it all depends on the year you are currently living in.

Courtesy of weareunheard.com

Some films and cartoons age poorly as the culture changes. Most of us cringe at old media showing racial and gender stereotypes that no longer fit the culture we have been raised in. Fun for the whole family thirty years ago is different from what it is in 2023. Let's talk about the family-friendly rating and how it has changed.

First, we all need to know what "family-friendly" is defined as. Law Insider says this:

"Family Friendly with respect to any Entertainment Property, Consumer Product or other Content, means that such Entertainment Property, Consumer Product or other Content is targeted to and reasonably appropriate for family audiences and consumers. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, a Motion Picture or a Television Motion Picture will not be deemed to be Family Friendly if it would receive a rating more restrictive than “G” or “PG” under the rating standards used by the Motion Picture Association of America (regardless of whether such Motion Picture or Television Motion Picture is actually submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America for rating)."

Short scan version, it has to be targeted to families and be no more than PG or G rated. G contains nothing that would offend the parents of the child and the child could watch it on their own with no worries about inappropriate content. PG means parental guidance needs to be exercised and some inappropriate content could show up, so young children may not be able to watch this without their parents.

As you can see, what is and isn't offensive depends on the era and time period we are living in. This is why you should probably do research before you judge a generation's film you don't relate to. You don't know what they find shocking. The film trend I'm seeing is the trend of darker media. While I do think making media too brightly ignorant of the outside world is bad, the reverse of that is bad too. There is a spectrum of dark to light and I feel you need both to make a good film. That opinion aside, let's get into it.

What was family-friendly in the past

Starting in 1920, we have the radio that the family could sit around. Everyone sat around and listened to it as leisure time became more common in the home. Shows like Amos N' Andy were well liked, but now we'd probably cringe at the negative stereotypes toward black people. Around this time there was also The All Negro Hour (the actual title, or else I wouldn't be using the word). This included all African-American entertainers, which was a step toward better representation of the black community. Speaking of, jazz and swing music started playing on the radio, along with the blues and ragtime. Same community, as you might have guessed.

The radio was targeted at everyone. The media we have today is not. Radio shows and dramas were common forms of entertainment. Remember, your TV didn't exist at this point in time. The only films you could see were at movie theatres. What should be remembered is that they were also transitioning from silent to talking pictures, which means they added sound. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and several others took over the film stage. What a lot of families probably flocked to were comedies, epics, and westerns, as well as those new talkies. Everyone went to the movies. It was a fun activity for all ages. This era does have a category for dirty films, but I'm almost positive they were only viewed in private locations. I'm also pretty sure they wouldn't have let them play in a full movie theatre for all ages during this time period.

Next we hit the 1930s. The depression wasn't great, but families still had their fun. Radio and movie theatres were still going strong. The Talkies were beginning about now. To be clear, the TV is here in 1939. Sports games and fun contests were common ways to entertain the family. Media by our definition is limited.

I'm moving to the 40s due to the fact entertainment didn't change much. Lighthearted films started to darken around this period of time. War does that. Artists began experimenting with new ideas. The film noir style made its way to theatres and was a hit. Radio was still major. Comic books and books, in general, are popular. Digital media changed, but the form they came in didn't. TV did exist, but it wasn't the most popular way to spend an evening, and it was probably expensive.

Noir style books and films have a distinct style, one that is cynical and sexual. It is all about suspense, shadows, and mostly pessimistic main characters. I love the Marlowe books. Philip Marlowe fits this style like a glove. The one thing that does bother me upon rereading the books is the way the women talk in the books and are portrayed. You can tell a man was fantasizing when he wrote it. Femme Fatale is the term for a seductive, dangerous woman. These characters show up and behave in scandalous ways. Case in point, Carmen Sternwood from "The Big Sleep" (1939) propositions Marlowe by getting into his apartment. He comes into his bedroom to find she's in it naked. He makes her leave, but she later attempts to kill him because he rejected her. Femme Fatales don't behave like most women you've met. In fact, I doubt most real women would do anything they do. Given that Noir films toned down some of the books, I'm sure kids could watch this. The scene referenced was never put in the film, but can be found in radio broadcasts of the book. All the same, this maybe shouldn't be marketed toward kids who might imitate it - both genders included.

1950 is when the TV comes into play. Everything on that TV was seen by the entire family, so - much like radio and theaters - it was not going to publicly play pornography and graphic content (though I have no doubts about pornography being in existence). You'll notice a theme before computers, which is the fact most entertainments were in person and face-to-face. TV, radio, and movie theaters bargained on the whole family coming together. TV shows in this era included I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Price Is Right, Leave It To Beaver, The Today Show, and The Mickey Mouse Club. Westerns hit their peak at the end of the era. This development hit movie theaters and book sales hard. People worried we were becoming "couch potatoes". It isn't unwarranted to think that even today. Bring a book into a public space and see how many people come up to you thinking you are lonely or bored. TV still competes with book sales.

I used to call this era "the groupthink era". The cold war was impacting entertainment, forcing comics to become more good vs. evil, rather than varied genres. It also limited what could and couldn't be broadcasted everywhere. People were actively being controlled by propaganda and the media gatekeepers (those that approve what is and isn't broadcasted). Creativity got held back and you can blame the red scare for that.

Rock and roll took off as teens listened to it and parents tried unsuccessfully to stop them. The drive-in movie theatres were doing well, playing movies that teens liked. Some of those films fed right into the propaganda. After the devastation of war, everybody wanted normal, which led to rigid social boundaries being reinforced by all kinds of media. It was not a shock to see the next generation become so free-spirited post-cold war era. We cringe at 1950s media today and sometimes forget that people were being controlled by expectations, expectations media policed actively. We mock it, but it was meant to be serious.

1960s media completely let go of all the rigid social expectations and embraced freedom of thought, which means family-friendly is no longer a strict standard. Helicopter parenting was not common here. Parodies became a category of media. The western theme continued onward in Bonanza. People asked questions more and became more liberal. The Vietnam war and other factors from the previous era produced more rebellious younger generations. The media of the time reflects this. Politics were all over the TV content. Theaters were more or less replaced by TV living rooms. As politics swarmed the screen, drug use and freestyle living became more popular, since it seemed the world was self-destructing anyways (sound familiar?). Aside from that, you could also catch Star Trek, Twilight Zone, musical variety shows, sitcoms, old movies, dramas, or Saturday morning cartoons.

Let's talk parodies. I've watched one called Support Your Local Sheriff that made fun of the western trends and cliches. There is a whole list of parodies from the 1960s. The Pink Panther starring a character named Inspector Clouseau came out in March of 1964. We still watch these movies. Families were enjoying Mary Poppins, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Sound of Music, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Absentminded Professor, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and 101 Dalmations. All these are generally lighthearted and silly. Conclusion? People wanted to laugh and smile. Dark content was not in the family-friendly category as far as I can tell. A lot of adult jokes probably made it into G and PG-rated films.

TV took over everything by the 1970s. TVs were in color and music players (Sony Walkmans) were new. The civil rights movement made black entertainment in any form rise up. Except for the "blaxploitation" films, which were rejected completely by black communities. Disco and punk rock rose up from the New York Underground. The Godfather drew people back into theaters at a time when they were struggling (again, sound familiar?). Jaws and Star Wars dominated several other films at the box office soon after. Not much else to report on this era. Disney, as usual, made a killing in children's content. Based on what was rated G and PG I see musicals and comedy still reign supreme, as well as westerns. It is hard to say whether any 1960s standards changed, which is a sign that it didn't change much.

The 80s were a time of bright colors and parachute pants. CDs, which are now less popular than before, were new. They are still here with us, though. VHS was also a major source of entertainment. The idea of portable music became even more popular through more devices that were a bit bulkier. My family used to have a Blockbuster in our town. It is gone forever now, and to think they could have teamed up with Netflix. Anyway, Blockbuster debuted in this era. Home video marketing and special effects in films were getting noticed and loved. Movies got a boost in popularity due to the ability to watch them at home. (We just got lazier from here.)

Sitcoms and the 80s go hand in hand. We are still entertained by those sitcoms. MASH, Seinfeld, Knight Rider, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Golden Girls, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air are all 80s sitcoms we still like to binge-watch. Another trend that continues is arcades, the elder relatives of modern-day video games. They were around in previous eras, yet here we find arcades are beloved hangouts. This was also the beginning of computers and cell phones. This era has what some people call the mooks and midriffs. It is a phrase used for boys acting like fools and women wearing half-shirts. It taught boys to be huge goofballs and women to wear less clothes (because they looked cool at party scenes in movies). The mook sometimes got the girl in the films, further encouraging the behavior (which may be in the 9o's too). It has gotten increasingly harder to pinpoint what is actually G or PG. Only one sitcom in the previous list is going to be marketed family friendly, maybe three. Nearly all of them include sex jokes somewhere in them. Subtle jokes were hidden for the adults and went over the heads of the kids, but yet some of these weren't subtle. Yet, families felt they could watch these together. Anything broadcasted over the air had to meet a standard. There is a standard for all these, thus they were all approved by somebody.

The 80's blended right into the 90's, which held a particularly interesting cartoon called Rocko's Modern Life. The actual creators of the show have openly admitted that they made it a personal goal to cram as much past the censor as possible. You can tell the censor started to give up. Nickelodeon has tried to ditch and ban the worst examples of this lack of censorship. People, naturally, have found them anyway.

Another note to be made is that Kim Possible and many women around her wear Midriffs. Ron and Kim fit the Midriff and Mook stereotype. I didn't think about that until today. Other shows include Recess, Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Ren and Stimpy, Doug, Catdog, Pokemon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Johnny Bravo, Arthur, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, The Wild Thornberrys, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Cow and Chicken, and Captain Planet. I'm not even listing all of them. Cartoons took off like nobody's business. Most of the time kids watched these on Saturday mornings and after school. Some of these got weird, like Rocko's Modern Life. Courage the dog was something I was never sure of. Johnny from Johnny Bravo was constantly hitting on women and not getting any. Dexter and the Powerpuff Girls were kind of bizarre. I vaguely remember the character Doug sitting upside down on a park bench, but couldn't tell you much else about the show (I was far too young to understand much of it). Captain Planet is a weird superhero trying to save the planet in the cheesiest way possible (with kids that look like they came off the magic school bus and grew up into tweens). Recess and Hey Arnold were some of the staples of my childhood. In retrospect, a lot of these are kind of weird and explain why my childhood brain was so weird. Ed, Edd, and Eddy is quite odd - yet when you have no brain power it is still funny. A lot of these require no brain, which means the family can sit and relax together - unless it is just so odd you are not allowed to watch it (cough cough, my husband's childhood). In retrospect, history has shown us cartoons get a lot of dirty jokes past censors, especially in the 90s.

Adult cartoons began here. Do you like Rick and Morty? You can thank the early adult cartoons for it. South Park debuted in this era. Family Guy and Simpsons also came out.