I would say it's a combination of science fiction and humor, honestly. Science fiction is usually set in a future that is extremely mutable, while words in books aren't. And humor is so often very topical, very set to a particular timeframe.
Yep. Jim Lileks (before I stopped reading him) used to spend considerable time dissecting the older Warner Bros cartoons and pointing out the cultural references that made them funny 'back in the day', but which are of null value today. Personally, I think that's why they are so often seen as nothing but mindless violence today, because we have no connection or context for virtually everything else in the cartoon.
Several years ago, I remember seeing some Thirties WB cartoon that was basically nothing but a big party attended by caricatures of then-current celebrities, who said their trademark catchphrases. I could only identify about a third of them. I remember thinking that that whole style of cartoon was extinct and then realizing that a lot of "Animaniacs" segments from the 1990s were really in about the same vein.
I believe I've seen that one Bogey - Peter Lorre, etc? I remember (or I remember that I remember) getting all of the personalities; which is sad because the only way to do that is to be familiar with the old movies. And if the only way to do that is to specifically order them through netflix or some other service . . .
Of course, most people today can't decipher the iconography of religously-themed paintings from hundreds of years ago. I'd wager that few feel that lack. Any more than my daughter feels the lack of not knowing the details of really great bands like Talking Heads :-)
The original Flintstones cartoons are like that as well. Hum Along With Herman, Stony Curtis, "Bug Music," J. Bondrock spy movies amd on and on. Some is more subtle, like a couple of episodes that have more general parodies of hard boiled private detectives and so on.
Yakko packs away the snacks, while the Clinton plays the sax, it's Animaniacs!
Dot: [referring to David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg] Who are those guys? Yakko: The stuff that DreamWorks are made of!
Dot: I found Prince! [She is carrying Prince, the pop musician] Yakko: No, no, no. Fingerprints! Dot: [Considers a moment] I don't think so. [She throws Prince out of the window]
By 1923 they had developed a functioning steam-powered Robert Benchley, and had a prototype electric S J Perelman capable of working for nearly 80 minutes between radio tubes burning out.
I'm going to dissent. The difference between ancient and modern comedy is mainly one of cultural translation, not historical change. You can read jokes in the Philogelos whose form wouldn't be out of place in the Borscht Belt. The big difference is, they have slightly different comic types. The skolastikos, for instance, is usually translated as an "egghead" or an "intellectual". But from context, it often seems to mean "absurdly literal-minded", in that computer programmer social cognitive deficit sort of way.
Theophrastus, in addition to his botany, wrote some great little character type sketches. Some of the types are immediately recognizable. Others, you can see all the elements, but the culture is different enough that you don't know why together they form a whole. Commedia dell'arte is the same way. It's not the difference in time that makes them opaque, but the difference in culture.
I don't see how you can completely separate time and culture, so I'm going to mildly dissent with you. However, you do bring up a good point and I thank you.
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Of course, most people today can't decipher the iconography of religously-themed paintings from hundreds of years ago. I'd wager that few feel that lack. Any more than my daughter feels the lack of not knowing the details of really great bands like Talking Heads :-)
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Dot: [referring to David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg] Who are those guys?
Yakko: The stuff that DreamWorks are made of!
Dot: I found Prince! [She is carrying Prince, the pop musician]
Yakko: No, no, no. Fingerprints!
Dot: [Considers a moment] I don't think so. [She throws Prince out of the window]
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By 1923 they had developed a functioning steam-powered Robert Benchley, and had a prototype electric S J Perelman capable of working for nearly 80 minutes between radio tubes burning out.
no subject
Theophrastus, in addition to his botany, wrote some great little character type sketches. Some of the types are immediately recognizable. Others, you can see all the elements, but the culture is different enough that you don't know why together they form a whole. Commedia dell'arte is the same way. It's not the difference in time that makes them opaque, but the difference in culture.
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