Fun fact: the creators of Max Headroom were the creators behind the original 1993 Super Mario Bros movie with Dennis Hopper, Bob Hoskins, and John Leguizamo.
The making of that film is a bit crazy. Part of the issue was, Disney bought the distribution rights shortly before filming was supposed to start, and demanded all these rewrites. Probably also demanded that the stripper scenes be cut. :P
Hoskins claimed that he and Leguizamo started drinking every day before, and between, takes.
Absolutely amazing. American TV was a desolate landscape with occasional stuff so good you couldn’t believe the oasis wasn’t a mirage. Max Headroom was in that category. And of course it didn’t start in the States.
At least not necessarily in the way that this is generally meant, i.e., a timeless classic that more or less transcends the historical context that produced it and, probably most importantly, does not require the audience to know or grasp that historical context to appreciate it (even if understanding the context would add to the appreciation.)
However that doesn't mean it can be no less entertaining and interesting, just that it probably requires some context. This isn't an uncommon issue for popular media which, by definition, is a product of and for its time. Humor/comedy is especially notable for this. In my experience, very little comedy is truly timeless.
However, relevance can of course resurge (and I would make a distinction from more cyclical trends as is seen in fashion, for example.)
And thus I'd say Max Headroom was very much a product of its time and, aside from "ha-ha-old-tech!", you'd most likely need to have at least some knowledge of the social and political landscapes of the time to understand what and who it was satirizing.
But also, sometimes—often?—it's just capitalizing on the cultural moment.
This depends almost entirely on the type of comedy. Things like reference, satire, or shock are obviously dependent on the specific context of time in which they were made and of course become less meaningful as times change.
But comedy is not inherently less "timeless" than any other art. Who's on First is genuinely still funny almost a century later.
The little bits of surviving ancient comedy may seem trite but being simple does not make the jokes less "timeless".
Indeed. In the same vein, Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat" has made me laugh out loud more than a century after it was originally written.
That said, Shakespeare's humor, as an example, lands more flat with me. English idioms and grammar have changed quite a bit since the 16th century, and though I can intellectually approach his plays and recognize the humor, I rarely laugh out loud to it because there's additional mental load required just to understand what's been said. I suspect that may be true of "Who's on First" in another couple of hundred years, too. I'll report back in 2224 and let you know!
I tend to agree that Who's On First is a exactly the sort comedy that will lose its pithiness in time, moored as it is to the cultural context of baseball and contemporary English wordplay.
One of my favourite lines is from Three men in a Boat: "George has a cousin, who is usually described in the charge-sheet as a medical student, so that he naturally has a somewhat family-physician way of putting things".
not really, culturally the 70's was more desolate where the 80's was a rebirth.
The 80s spawned Cheers, LA Law, Hill Street Blues, Dynasty, Dallas, The Cosby Show, Murphy Brown, The Golden Girls, Family Ties, The Wonder Years, The Facts of Life, St. Elsewhere. I didn't watch all of them, but you can't sneer at so many shows with such tremendous production values, appeal, and staying power. A number of the actors have continued to be popular up to the present day.
and that's not even including my personal favorite, ALF. You want edgy? try making a show today with a star who eats cats
Great! It was inventive and dystopian. Many of the stories were lifted from classic sci-fi concepts.
Of course, it hasn't held up. The subtitle was "20 minutes into the future" so it wasn't designed to be timeless a la Star Trek or Star Wars.
Also, the trajectory of Max Headroom was great: started off as "the first digital talking head for commercials, i.e. not human _at all_, did commercials for Coke IIRC, music videos (Art of Noise), had a late night talk show, a TV series.
I still have a Max Headroom poster hanging in my fl-fl-flat.
Errr, I hate to be the person that breaks this to you but ....
Fake Digital Head !!
The tried but it was before CGI was really up to it so they fell back on a real actor, latex head covering, dropping frames in post production and other tricks.
I enjoyed it a lot, though was a kid. It made a statement similar to the movie Network (1976), that I somewhat understood at a young age—they’ll do anything for ratings.
