the main joke in the movie "high anxiety" was a spoof of the movie "blow up" which in turn was an exciting story which turned on the fallacious premise that images can be enlarged infinitely without loss of definition simply by zooming in furthur.
so you had to understand something about diffraction or at least darkroom work before you could get the joke. the people involved in making the movie all worked with film, so they all got the joke & thought it was funny and made it into the main comic feature of their comedy.
most normal people don't understand how cameras or diffraction works, so they didn't catch the humor.
all that took place 50 years ago and theres been no progress since, the same topics are addressed today with the same credulity and sophistication as they were back in the 60s & 70s
