By Anna Goldberg
Publication Date: 2025-11-12 15:00:00
I love my early 2000s shows as much as anyone. But when I look back at it now that I’m older, I notice how many offensive jokes were made. Since it had become so normal in the early hours of the morning, maybe the jokes just went over your head. Maybe you felt like it wasn’t right to say that, but no one around you felt like it was wrong. There definitely wouldn’t be anyone on the show who would say it was wrong. But even though it was so normalized, that doesn’t make it okay.
I’m currently re-watching Pretty Little Liars and I’m finding it incredibly difficult not to notice how many blind jokes are made about one of the antagonists, Jenna. In almost every episode she appears in, one of the characters will mention something offensive about her blindness. One of the infamous lines comes from one of the characters, Hanna, when she exclaims, “Jenna can’t hear us, she’s blind!” Another scene that caught my eye was one of…