Daisies In Hades

Nothing depresses me as much as Bugsby Berkeley.
Hear me out. I adore his pieces. First of all, that's bad enough. I know I'm supposed to look at them as objectifying women, and as a girl raised in post feminist society by a strong mother, blah blah. I just can't get past the pretty, and the opulence though.
That's not even the bad part though. Skip to about 3 minutes in this video.

Visually interesting, huge amount of variety, and done so that you actually forget you're watching dancers.
BUT... I can't help but think of the fact that every woman there would be tossed out in modern filmmaking as being "too fat". Hell, probably they'd be "plus size" models. Actually, a modern filmmaker would probably just CGI the whole thing.
Oh, and keep in mind these were all from the height of the Great Depression. Folks may have been eating their shoes, but Hollywood was doing well enough for half a dozen costume changes for EACH of those girls AND a giant wedding cake-girl-lazy susan with multiple fountains.
While the choreography just isn't there on this one, it does show another thing that just gets me down.

Imagine someone singing like that in America's Idol. The ideal voice just has no personality anymore. This also was one of the most beautiful people in Hollywood at the time. She'd be photoshopped to being unrecognisable on a modern cover. (Not that it didn't exist in old Hollywood, look at Rita Heyworth, but expectations were still better than they are now.)
The best part about that last clip is that it is designed to showcase costuming. Including giant pelvic coins, which must have been the rage in the 30s.
Of course, all this went away for years and years after the code. Just not the same.