Gen Z finds “American Pie” deeply problematic

According to the article, this is what upsets them:

[quote]Those asked to review the 1999 comedy took issue with, among other things, the men only caring about losing their virginity and recording foreign exchange student Nadia without her consent or knowledge.

Yeah, it seems like an overreaction.

Is it?

A comedy from years gone by that only teenage boys ever laughed at is pretty much the definition of problematic, is it not?

No.

I don't know what microplastics or social media nonsense have done to Gen Z, but when I was in high school, sex was on the mind of boys, both straight and gay, 24/7. Girls got into it, too, but not to the same level. American Pie was very accurate. Teenage boys with normal hormone levels will go after anything even a fresh apple pie.

R5, yeah, doesn't today's generation realize that it's normal for teenage boys to try and lose their virginity?

Accurate does not = funny, R5.

"So true!" can be very funny, actually.

As though Netflix doesn't contain any other problematic movies.

They should see Eurotrip they'd shit a brick

Gen Z is the most prudish generation yet.

R10 Eurotrip is a great movie.

There are far funnier movies from that era. I won't fault Gen Z for disliking American Pie.

[quote]Yeah, it seems like an overreaction.

Yes, it's the selective outrage. When people are brutally murdered or mutilated in movies, that's not "problematic", even though it's a far, far worse offense than recording someone. .

But "Squid Game", anime teen porn so beloved of GenZ, "irony-horror" and drug-cartel fetish films are not problematic?

Isn't everything problematic for Gen Z?

Apparently, reading is a generational divide.

The article links to a Vice article from 2020, which describes showing 90s movies to 2020 high schoolers. The headline generalizes a single quote about one aspect of the movie:

[quote] “The part where Jim and the other male characters film the foreign exchange student in his room is deeply problematic. The film doesn’t even question the morality of doing this, it makes it seem like a joke and that the dudes are all ‘legends’ for getting the plan to work. It’s a huge violation of privacy and definitely a sexual offence for Jim to film her, let alone to then share that with his friends. There’s no way a teen film made now would allow it.” Hannah, 17.

Of course, this is all about publicizing the movie coming to Netflix. Antagonizing grumpy old people against the young is a sure-fire tactic.

[quote]Antagonizing grumpy old people against the young is a sure-fire tactic.

Antagonizing grumpy old people is probably the easiest thing in the world to do.

I bet all the little hand-wringers talk about it at band camp.

So, best not ask Gen Z about Luchino Visconti.

[quote]Those asked to review the 1999 comedy took issue with, among other things, the men only caring about losing their virginity and recording foreign exchange student Nadia without her consent or knowledge.

[quote]“The part where Jim and the other male characters film the foreign exchange student in his room is deeply problematic. The film doesn’t even question the morality of doing this, it makes it seem like a joke and that the dudes are all ‘legends’ for getting the plan to work. It’s a huge violation of privacy and definitely a sexual offence for Jim to film her, let alone to then share that with his friends. There’s no way a teen film made now would allow it.” Hannah, 17.

Sounds like it's woke liberal Gen Z who find the movie problematic. Wokes are humorless, especially about older comedies.

I doubt Gen Z on the right are complaining about it. They tend to find pre-2010 comedies pretty funny and refreshing.

I guess I'm old but when I saw it over a family holiday with the entire family we all laughed. People today are absolutely humorless. No wonder they don't have sex.

That pie was not gluten-free! It's so triggering to my intolerance for most foods.

They realize it's a M O V I E?

I’m starting to think Boomers who work at these media publications are using the rants of one “out there” GenZer and then using bots and other people at the company to spread the story online. This can’t be real.

That’s one of the things I find so refreshing about living in Europe, Italy. No one is asking kids what they think about anything. Culture isn’t youth driven. Why should a 40/50/60 yo regulate their opinions, how they lead their lives based on what some 22 yo feels? It is ok to say Shut the fuck up and Sit down.

R20 "So, best not ask Gen Z about Luchino Visconti."

I'll bet everything I have that the only Gen-zers who find the film problematic are young " incel" women.

R21 whenever I see these articles complaining about Gen Z in general -- how lazy and immature and asexual and humorless they are -- they're usually talking about young people from woke liberal households.

Gen Z from conservative homes tend to have a sense of humor and are industrious and married by age 25 with kids by age 30.

The twentysomethings you hear about being difficult/lazy at work, who are refusing to grow up and are refraining from sexual/romantic relationships, are liberal Gen Z.

But these articles never specify, as if all young people are like that.

I find the movie "problematic" and always have, just like Porky's was offensive in the 1980s. Just because *you* have nostalgia about something doesn't mean that it doesn't promote crappy ideas about women.

I suggest a movie night with the article's author.

Starting with Airplane and Blazing Saddles.

R29 Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin and Washington DC

The thing about these "kids today!" trend pieces are that they're totally made up. They never actually identify anyone who actually thinks the things they say Gen Z thinks. It's always "someone on Twitter" or "a person my friend knows" or "this girl at work who totally exists!"

They're all bullshit outrage porn and the resentful grandmas of the DL eat it up like free cock.

Gen Z will be the food source when the MAGA Zombie Horde finally gets it all.

[quote]This can’t be real.

You'd be surprised. Go to Reddit or Bluesky, there are a lot of kids like this competing for the title of Most Outraged.

anything having to do with sex is problematic with GenZ

Videotaping or streaming someone getting naked is of course not cool - but I can't remember if that was intentional in the film or not? I haven't seen it in so long. I thought the camera just happened to be on.

At least kids are more aware of all of this stuff - including grooming. Do they take it to a level or paranoia? Yes.

There are tons of threads on Reddit with Zoomers complaining about this film.

[quote]At least kids are more aware of all of this stuff - including grooming.

Yes, like a 19 year old going out with a 25 year old. Fuck off with that bullshit.

[quote]The thing about these "kids today!" trend pieces are that they're totally made up.

Sure, dear.

[quote]Just because *you* have nostalgia about something doesn't mean that it doesn't promote crappy ideas about women.

Okay, Karen.

I always have a problem watching these movies because they're like something some cretin would dream up, and I can't believe what the pitch meeting would be like. Whose stupid idea would masturbating in your mom's apple pit be? It sounds like something the biggest moron in my fraternity would think up when he was drunk.

And yet, R42, absolutely everyone knows about it. It's been inculcated into the culture.

Standards ain't what the used to be.

I think the last teen comedy I went to was Superbad. Somebody told me it was great, I didn't laugh once.

(And I had generally liked teen comedies.)

Younger people are less repressed and shameful about sexuality so they don't find inappropriate masturbation as hilarious as boomers and millennials did.

Well I love American Pie because it gave the world Jennifer Coolidge and coined/popularized MILF.

Unfuckable, asocialized, culturally ignorant and doomed, the lot of them.

I don't think so R47.

I saw this film at far too young of an age, but it's near and dear to me. I had such a massive crush on Thomas Ian Nicholas--he was so gorgeous in this movie.

One benefit about being Gen X now and from a different time is that Gen Z are easily impressed and easy to manipulate when it comes to sex.

This is about a quote from one person who was selected for interview precisely because of their political positions. There was never any generation wide wave of anger at the American pie movie. But you all fall for it because you’re looking for any opportunity to shit on Gen z ( which contains plenty of MAGA btw)

You want to pretend that the younger generation invented moral outrage and hind wringing when it was the boomers who gave us Anita Bryant and the moral majority

R53 Anita Bryant wasn't a boomer. Born in 1940.

[quote] Gen Z finds “American Pie” deeply problematic

[quote] It’s a film about fucking a goddamn pie.

Gen Z may have a point, there.

Adam Herz's original screenplay had the 4 guys masturbating together, but Universal said "no."

[quote]Accurate does not = funny, [R5].

Did R5 say it was funny? I didn't see that.

R54. Boomer seems to have become an all-purpose insult for an old person. Which is odd to a person as old as I am who thought of the boomers as decadent hippies.

The whole naming of generations is stupid, and the cutoff dates...'I was born one year after the boomers, so I'm completely different'...because the media tells me so...

I agree with r30 - I was the target age for this movie, in college when it came out, and I always found the scene with Nadia super fucking gross in a not funny way., even at the time. And newsflash, things age, perspectives change, the world moves on -- I know a lot of DL is embedded in amber but maybe try "growing" out sometime

Random posters on the Internet have woke opinions? Great Caesar's Ghost, stop the presses!

These kids heads would explode over Revenge of the Nerds.

[quote] I find the movie "problematic" and always have, just like Porky's was offensive in the 1980s. Just because *you* have nostalgia about something doesn't mean that it doesn't promote crappy ideas about women.

Tell me you can’t get laid without telling me you can’t get laid.

Loser.

Yes r62 Another sacred piece of cinema history which deserves solemn respect from all

Gen Z finds lunch problematic.

Again why are so many of you that a movie that was intentionally designed to be rude and inappropriate is being identified as rude and inappropriate?

[quote]The whole naming of generations is stupid, and the cutoff dates...'I was born one year after the boomers, so I'm completely different'...because the media tells me so...

Yes, in general. The Baby Boom generation is one classification where I do find a difference from people born even slightly earlier. Someone born during the war usually had parents who were generally pretty old and therefore exempt from military service (draft age was quite high). The subsequent generations are so arbitrarily named I have no idea what they designate.

Welcome to getting old. Comedy is very much of its own time.

If you showed them an SNL clip from the first years, they'd find it as entertaining as a silent movie.

[quote] I’m starting to think Boomers who work at these media publications are using the rants of one “out there” GenZer and then using bots and other people at the company to spread the story online.

Not a lot of Boomers work at media publications anymore. The Baby Boom is usually defined as American children born 1946-1959, so that would make the youngest of them 65.

R69. More evidence that Boomer just means old or middle-aged person now to most people.

[quote] The subsequent generations are so arbitrarily named I have no idea what they designate.

Here's a primer:

Generation X: People born between the early 60s and @1980. So-called after Douglas Coupland's novel about them with that title published when they were young and people felt they were less defined and more anonymous than the Bay Boom.

Millennials (also known as Generation Y): Defined as people born between the early 1980s and mid 1990s. So-called because they came to adulthood after the millennium.

Generation Z (or the Zoomers): Born between mid-1990s and early 2010s. So called because to follow up on the Generation x/Generation Y classification. the children of Generation X.

Generation Alpha: Born starting from the early 2010s to the present day. So-named because after Z the alphabet had run out of letters unless it went back to the beginning.

[quote] [R69]. More evidence that Boomer just means old or middle-aged person now to most people.

Over 65 is an old person, not a middle-aged person.

[quote]Over 65 is an old person, not a middle-aged person.

I think pretty much everyone on earth is clear on this.

When American Pie opened in July 1999, it was a cinematic graduation gift to first class of millennial high school graduates. The movie belongs to a group of decently entertaining adolescent-centered flicks that came out in the same year: She’s All That, Ten Things I Hate About You, The Virgin Suicides, Varsity Blues, and Election.

It is interesting to consider that the Columbine HS shooting had taken place on 4/20/99, just ten weeks prior to the July opening of American Pie. Cultural commentators at the time were asking if without having realized it we’d brought up a generation of violent perverts.

R21 I recently saw a poll that most Gen Z guys are rightwing whereas most Gen Z girls are leftwing, so that should tell you who's really objecting to AMERICAN PIE.

I never saw it - and not because I had any issues with it; I just missed the boat and never saw it on video or streaming.

I was 26 or 27 when it came out. I'm mid Gen X. I'd assume it's considered a "millenial" film since many of them would have been in high school and/or teenagers when it was released, as where no Gen Xers were (though the youngest ones would be just 19).

At the time that the film originally came out, one scene that was actually praised by some women's groups was the one in which Thomas Ian Nicholas performs oral sex on Tara Reid. It was considered a very progressive scene because it was one of the first times in film history when a man went down on a woman in a mainstream film.

[quote] Thomas Ian Nicholas performs oral sex on Tara Reid

I love Thomas Ian Nicholas as he was, but certainly not for that.

I much prefer the more progressive scene in Road Trip where Sean William Scott gets his prostrate milked by the nurse. I think it awakened the top in me.

[quote] The whole naming of generations is stupid, and the cutoff dates...'I was born one year after the boomers, so I'm completely different'...because the media tells me so...

It was determined by the government, dear, which includes the EU.

[quote] I'd assume it's considered a "millenial" film

Oh, dear.

It’s a small vocal minority of Gen Z.

If anyone knows Gen Z people, they’re so fucking indifferent. If a meteor crashes into the earth, they’re going to be the ones to make people feel better about it.

R69 1946-1964.

I prefer "Another Gay Movie".

R80 ????

I second R85's question marks.

Picking a fight with older millennials is not the move than Gen Z is going to find out that it doesn't want.

I guess it’s five o’clock somewhere, r87?

R88, I wish I had a margarita right now! Nothing I said was untrue.

This movie is so stupid. Americans are obsessed with teenagers and "adolescence " and our movies reflect that.

R90, this movie was *for* teenagers. It never billed itself as Masterpiece Theatre.

No shit R91. The number of movies geared towards teenagers is embarrassing.

R92, when hasn't their been movies geared towards teenagers? Before the talkies? How old are you?

^there

As someone born in 1995, I have always found the "Are We There/Done Yet?" films way more problematic for youth than all "American Pie" films combined. Mostly, because their concept of "family entertainment" is watching 2 annoying, loathsome brats with little emperor syndrome, who think they can do whatever they want and disrespect their stepfather. No wonder why the biological father left them.

People are so woke these days. I miss the days when fags were murdered and you never saw blacks or that gay shit on TV.

What is problematic about driving a Chevy to a levee?

R96, gay shit and blacks have been on tv since the early 1970s. Historical revisionism isn't going to work here---the average DLer is probably 70-71.

[quote] What is problematic about driving a Chevy to a levee?

The levee is dry.