Most people love to get together and watch their favorite TV show or movie. But it turns out that those television shows and movies often rely on the audiences being familiar with the rules of social etiquette. This is because writers have to make sure that the majority of their audience knows how to behave in a setting before they go on air. But in reality, we live in a world where most people are generally not familiar with these rules, and many take liberties when watching entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Can the graph of y=f(x) intersect a vertical asymptote?
And this can create a lot of problems for some communities, such as children who learn more about inappropriate behavior from watching TV than from parents or other teachers (and what kind of message does that send?).
1. The Berenstain Bears
Most of us who were raised in the 80s and 90s are familiar with the Berenstain Bears. But we had no idea about the controversy behind their names. The books that we loved were not actually written by the Berenstein family, but rather by a separate family with a significantly different spelling of their last name. They changed their name in order to take advantage of the famous Berenstain name and give these books more popularity. This was an issue with naming during this time because many people had similar names as others, so to differentiate themselves they often added “stein” or other variations to their last names.
2. The Real Reason Mrs. Doubtfire Was So Mean
In the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams, we see a father desperate to be part of his children’s lives once again after he loses custody following a messy divorce. He dresses up as an elderly woman in order to get a job as their nanny and spend time with them again. There was actually some controversy behind this movie, because Robin Williams is not nearly old enough to play the role of a man in his 60s raising children who are well into their 20s. Because of this, the character was written to be in his 40s.
3. Disney’s ‘Mighty Ducks’
Every child growing up in the 90s remembers the Mighty Ducks movie trilogy, starring Emilio Estevez. The movies are about a group of hockey players who come together to form a team and win championships against their rivals. But most people don’t realize that there was no actual team known as the Mighty Ducks (or rather, not until Disney released a real version of their film). The name was created for the purposes of film marketing and does not exist in real life.
4. The Term ‘Dude’
In the world of skateboarding, to be able to do a trick that is called a “dude” or a “turtle” is one of the highest honors a skater can receive. But most people don’t realize that the term was created by surfers. It was not meant to be used in everyday life, and if it were used for anything other than skateboarding it would be extremely offensive.
5. The Worst Day to Avoid the Gym
Most of us have probably avoided going to work on a Friday. But in a different era than today, it was an ideal day to skip working out because it was believed that God did not want anyone working on a Friday, no matter what the situation. This was a general belief amongst Christians in parts of Europe during the Middle Ages because they believed that God needed all the rest He could get. That’s why we don’t see this rule still in place today – because people can live without going to work every Friday but if they all decided to start refusing God’s wishes then most of our lives would become very difficult, and perhaps even impossible.
6. ‘Possession’
There was a time when people believed that during certain haunted times of the year it was possible for spirits to take over the bodies of human beings, and this is what inspired the plot of the movie “Possession”. It’s surprising to learn that today most people don’t really believe that the world is full of ghosts in need of possessing our bodies. But we do have television programs about those who claim to have encountered such visitors. It turns out that many people like to share their ghost stories with others and watch others being frightened by tales about otherworldly visitors.
7. The Name of the Water in ‘The Waterboy’
In 1998 there was a comedic film called The Waterboy, starring Adam Sandler. It’s about a football player who has a mental condition that causes him to let out a high-pitched scream every time he is touched. We see his character improving over the course of the movie as he deals with his condition and learns how to control it. But did you know that people with this same mental condition are not actually called waterboys? In real life they are known by other names, such as “Vatasha” or “Vata,” which is a name used in parts of India.
Summary:
Most of us don’t even realize how many rules we break before we become accustomed to it. Our ancestors didn’t have the same access to entertainment as we do today, and with so much engaging content to watch it was easier for them to simply disregard these things. This is not true with television today, because there is such a large amount of content that most people prefer not to watch anyway, because they find it boring or difficult to understand. It’s easy for us to miss these things when they are not highlighted in bold letters on the screen.
