• NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    It’s a joke from The Nanny specifically about linguistic drift.

    This post is like someone watching Austin Powers and being like “I can’t believe they almost showed his dick! What a whacky accident!”.

    • ObsidianZed@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, I know it’s black and white but some younger folks seem to way overestimate the quality of older television. This looks like it may have actually been HD, or at least higher SD.

      • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Anything old enough to have been filmed in black and white was shot on film, which can be scanned in HD just fine so long as you have access to the actual film. The remaster of the original Star Trek is a great example.

  • Psaldorn@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    UK parlance

    “fag” = cigarette “Gay” = happy/good times “Queer” = odd or unusual

    🏳️‍🌈❤️

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      My friend’s dad is from Scotland. He came to Canada and works as a dealer at a casino. One day, two obviously gay men sat at his table and one of them put down his pack of cigarettes. My friend’s dad then unknowingly said “I’m sorry sir, but we don’t allow fags at the table”. Everyone learned a bit about regional dialects that day!

  • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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    4 months ago

    I don’t know what show this is from, but that’s an awfully strange choice of words to use to describe your butler, and I’m just saying this wouldn’t be the first time Tumblr has lied to me about what the dialogue in a TV scene was.

        • Quexotic@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          It’s a play on words assuming that you know both meanings of all 3 words, which the audience clearly did.

          Also, it was during a time when people were becoming more aware of queer rights and those words were becoming offensive to more Americans, part of the joke, kinda like “you should never say this in the US, but in the UK it’s totally acceptable because all the words have different meanings than in the US”

          It’s also a play on linguistic drift as mentioned in another post. It’s also hanging a lantern on how unacceptable that kind of language had become and in that sense was progressive.

          I cannot think of a way that joke flies in the US today unless in a meta context of old jokes, which this meme attempts.

          Hopefully this explanation has made the joke completely unfunny at this point.

          Hahahahh

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This is literally from The Nanny. The fact that it sounds like he’s talking about gay stuff is the joke, in the show itself.