We Need To Drop This Dumb, Tired Talking Point About Edgy TV

By TeeJay Small
| Published 26 seconds ago

If you’ve spent any time at all browsing social media in recent years, you’ve definitely encountered the claim that older TV shows, movies, and games simply “couldn’t be made” today. The argument is that modern audiences are just too sensitive to handle the rough-and-tumble jokes that the Nixon or Reagan era handled with so much grace. Rainn Wilson is the latest voice to join in this insufferable chorus, having recently sat down with Fox News. Per X, Wilson expressed “I do feel like you couldn’t make The Office today. I think that would be too hard to be as politically incorrect as the show was.”

Nobody Is Clutching Pearls Over The Office

Personally, I’ve always found this line of reasoning to be idiotic. Sure, on occasion I’ll sit down to watch an old film without my nostalgia glasses on, and find myself gasping at the rampant homophobia, misogyny, or racism on display from characters we’re meant to like and agree with. Even still, most of the jokes from older projects hold up just fine by modern standards, and offensive humor is very much still alive and well. In fact, I’d argue that the average episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia or South Park is significantly more politically incorrect than anything from The Office, and those shows seem to be doing just fine.

The fact that Rainn Wilson is referring to The Office in his recent comments is perhaps the most baffling part of this entire discourse. In fairness, it has been a few years since I’ve sat down to binge the show, but I really don’t recall anything offensive or boundary-pushing occurring within the Dunder Mifflin bullpen. Michael Scott offers a few awkwardly-placed racial jokes at the expense of Kelly, Oscar, and Darryl, but it’s nothing more jaw-dropping than the stuff you’d hear in a traditional work environment.

This bizarre take seems to stem from the idea that young people today, primarily those who lean left of center, are put off by patently bigoted material. Sometimes, these audiences can amplify their positions to the point of absurdity, and call something bigoted when it was really just a good-natured joke with a bit of edge. But, the idea that this is new is baffling to me. Decades ago, it was the conservative christian crowd chomping at the bit to cancel anything and everything. Television shows, films, and rap artists were picketed for foul language, suggestive nudity, or the mere suggestion that conservative Christian values could be questioned in any capacity.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, movies and TV shows were strictly governed by the Hays Code, which prohibited a wide array of so-called “offensive” materials. Landmark TV moments that broke the mold include Captain Kirk smooching Lieutenant Uhura, (a black woman) on Star Trek: The Original Series and a married couple from The Flintstones sleeping in the same bed. For contrast, Always Sunny characters now frequently drop the C word on FXX, while South Park shows off photorealistic deepfake sequences of the sitting president’s teeny tiny wang.

Art Is Getting Away With It

Every time I hear someone espouse this notion that they can’t make jokes because of cancel culture, my first response is to ask for some examples. So far, I’ve yet to hear a single joke that would be deemed “too edgy” for modern audiences. Sometimes people will respond with bits from Blazing Saddles, or show me the blackface scene from Trading Places. But those movies continue to air on television today, exactly as they were produced. In fact, you can pull up regular daytime cable and watch films that blatantly violate the Hays Code of yesteryear, in between car insurance ads and children’s programming.

Modern politics have become extremely divisive, leaving audiences significantly more polarized than they were back when The Office was in its heyday. Still, I just can’t see liberals foaming at the mouth over Michael Scott misusing urban slang, or MAGA voters writing in to the network because they had to bear witness to a desegregated workplace. I think every joke told in The Office, and in fact, in all popular movies and shows of decades past, would survive just fine on today’s radar. Plus, there’s a new Office spin-off series or foreign remake being produced just about every year, and those rarely receive negative press.