One of the more interesting shows on the fall lineup at ABC is "Cavemen." Inspired by the stars of the Geico TV ads, the show promises to make fun of the way America looks at stereotypes. The main premise of the Geico commercials is that modern-day, sensitive cavemen are offended by Geico's use of the slogan "so easy a caveman can do it."
Supporting characters and subplots aside, there have been VERY FEW sitcoms centered completely around making fun of a minority group's stereotypes. That would seem to be a good thing. How is it that ABC can pull this off? Well...the same way Geico did: the subject minority group in "Cavemen" is COMPLETELY FICTIONAL. That makes it a whole lot easier to keep the jokes coming, doesn't it? We could be in for a whole season of laughing about how easily someone becomes offended when society makes fun of him. That's funny?
It goes something like this: some evolved human on the show sees one of our modern day cavemen and says something derogatory like "Hey ugg! you go club woman in head?" Ok...that part might make us chuckle a little bit, but the real laughs come when the caveman, who turns out to be quite intelligent and sensitive, is offended by the comment. Now imagine that the situation involves an effeminate gay man walking down the street when he is called "faggot," "lady" and "homo" by a group of straight people. Then...is it funny when he becomes offended?
In more sophisticated ways, this is exactly what Will and Grace did. The much-loved NBC hit almost always revolved around the stereotyping of gay men and it tried to elicit laughs from the ways the gay characters reacted to it.
But this is different because the cavemen are fictional. Right? In that way, it is more like another ABC hit: "3rd Rock From The Sun." This sitcom dealt with the stereotyping of aliens, and more importantly with the sterotyping they discovered among the humans they met.
The only circulating clip from the show also involves an interesting point of contention for every minority group. The three cavemen stars are in a car when one of them uses the term "Cro-Magger." The driver is offended by this derogatory term, but the first caveman says "No...it's ok if we use it." Then the litany of namecalling begins. Of course, I immediately thought of my group of gay friends. We like to call each other "girl," "homo," "fag" and "fairy." And yes...we all believe it is ok because it is us. And yes...we would all be offended if a straight stranger called us any of those words. Now that ABC has used cavemen to get laughs out of that very same concept, I must admit to not finding it so attractive any more.
[ Click HERE to see the clip ]
What does all this mean? Well...in the world of ABC network television, you can only deal with stereotypes if the offended party is fictional. Cavemen seem like a pretty good idea. We should watch carefully to see if we ever see ourselves in the cavemen experience on ABC. My guess is that we will laugh, but for some of us, it might be a guilty laugh.
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