Racist? yes, NO?

[lazyfatbum]

I kind of see your point lazy, but don't you think it's a double standard to get upset about the portrayal of stereotypical fat people in media and not the same about races being stereotyped? That is what this is about - stereotypes marginalizing a group of people. I especially disagree with you thinking that Japanese propaganda was A-OK. I don't even know what to say in response to that.

On fat: Ever seen Total Drama Island? Here we have one fat character who is completely oblivious to sexual advances, only interested in eating, he is a giant farting, belching mess inherently asexual and disgusting. To any kid who's overweight and trying to imprint on who he (or she) wants to become as they grow up, their only positive view in to being overweight is Jack Black. Someone who has to use humor to compensate for his physical appearance in film, literally going after women who are attracted to other men who are attractive yet boring, and wins them over by being funny and imaginative. So, sorry fat kids, if you're not funny or imaginative you're just screwed.

In Family Guy Louis explains on multiple occasions that she loves Peter because of how he stood up to her father and that he made any situation relaxing and care free. Him being a retard, funny, etc are things she views as negative towards his character. Its the only time i've ever seen an overweight male depicted as attractive based on his ability to be romantic and be a better man than her other suitors. But for the audience, it's still naturally inclined to have the fat guy do 'funny things a fat guy should do' because hugely obese and naked is funny, because overweight people are considered asexual, like watching a toddler run through the living room naked. It's incredibly hateful and insensitive and its just not brought up in media or discussion. They're TRYING to be hurtful towards overweight people, they're TRYING to make fun, put down, and laugh at people that are overweight. They purposefully make the fat character gross, they purposefully make the fat character a greedy unattractive mess. But 'They drew that African American with big lips!!! THAT'S RACIST!!! oh the artist was black, it's okay ^_^' , I mean holy shit dude. Holy shit.

On WW2 pops: It's war! Hate the enemy, sponsor your allies. In WW2 we fell in love with the dutch and Canada, that's also around the same period that the UK became a major part of our collective. Whether it was bridges in government or types and styles of clothing. Regardless of who your enemy is, you do everything you can to make fun, belittle and hate them. You can giggle at a Osama spoof on SNL or Family Guy but Japanese are off limits? The cartoon of some arab decapitating a jew is funny because that's actually happening and it looks that ridiculous. If we can throw a joke out about a guy strapped with TNT calling out for his 70 virgins, we can make a joke about an ignorant and confused Japanese. A culture mind you, that America thought of historic and beautiful until they aligned with Germany. Then they became enemies, and you do everything to make that enemy feel less of themselves and feel every ounce of our hate. To every man, woman and child.

It should be noted however, the characiture alone isn't hateful. Its a cartoon of a Japanese, you cant draw that without using references to Japanese facial qualities. Even Shigeru Miyamoto agrees.

Huey from the Boondocks is the same as a black kid eating a watermelon? Really? What if it were a black guy eating fried chicken and smoking crack while stealing a stereo?

This is funny to me (aside from comparing eating fruit to committing crimes), doing crack and stealing a stereo and... eating chicken? Srsly? So almost every ad for Popeye's chicken or KFC is racist because it depicts black people eating southern styled foods? I already explained watermelon, another southern favorite. Why so Southern? This may come as a shock but the civil war wasn't even that long ago, and most blacks, almost the entirety of blacks in the United States were in the south. Though they've died off, it wasn't too long ago we had people alive in the 1950's that remembered the end of the civil war, my mom was a child when she had to use the Whites Only bathroom. Blacks are almost exclusively from the south, so southern styled foods are in the family, passed down from great great grandma etc. Watermelon, fried chicken, barbecue anything from the south you can think of, but a black with cornbread isn't as funny as a big awkward slice of watermelon. My mom was raised on a farm in Alabama, we eat the same shit and everytime my mom tries to make collard greens I go get Taco Bell.

I don't think you can equivocate the watermelon kid with Huey. Huey has an afro, that's about it. He's well-spoken, intelligent, level-headed (aside from having radical liberal beliefs), interested in Kung Fu and Japanese culture (like Aaron MacGruder) and provides the commentary for the show. Riley is more of a stereotype. Besides, the comic/cartoon were created/written by a black man, and they have certain privileges about that sort of thing. Unless you think that, for instance, white people should be able to say nigger as liberally as black people, which is looking at things from a dichotomy that makes no sense.

You're just as brainwashed as the other damn people around here. First, I was using just the picture: A modern depiction of a young black male. I could use other references, there are characters on that show with huge lips, low bros, midnight skin, and big and just plain big and stupid. I happen to agree with almost everything i've seen in Boondocks, the episode where Martin Luther King woke up from a coma and went to do a speech, but called everyone a worthless bunch of niggers because he was so angry at the way 'blacks' had become was not only hilarious but profoundly deafening. There are white people who work on the show, does that mean they're racist? That's fucking retarded.

I assume you know who Al Jolson is (Jewish white guy who did an amazing act as a black jazz singer), who also spawned the cartoon character Bosko (a black boy who's naturally inclined with music and resembled Jolsen in his make up). It's a vaudeville art style.

Look at today's art style concerning girls: We have anime super cute prepubescent types who could resemble a preteen but with large breasts, though sometimes flat chested to boost the prepubescent appearance. Its all based on the 'cuter and more innocent, the hotter' and for the most part any guy can agree. Then you have the American super graceful, wispy type. Think Dee Dee from Dex's Lab or the cast from Sixteen, then you have Disney who says a beautiful woman has hands and feet from a 7 month old, still wispy and ultra graceful. Then you have the universal badass woman, not really Samus Aran (the buxom blond), but the warrior types of women. Usually depicted in very intense realism, veins and bulges and etc. Anime didn't even exist in the 1960's except for a new show called Astroboy that spawned a lot of creationism in Hollywood and Japan alike. All we had Disney's graceful princess or the Tex Avery curvy red head. How did we get to prepubescent girls? Because the audience grew in to anime style, and super cute became the audience evolved. The art styles in depiction that have changed and evolved over time: The hips disappeared to being smaller than the shoulder's width. Round breasts are replaced with stubby handfuls, smokey, half closed eyes replaced with huge, bright eyes like on a confused deer. The style evolved to match the tastes of its audiences. The same thing happened with the 'Bosko' style of art when depicting any black. Why?

Cameras and projectors sucked ass back then. It was hard to tell on screen who was black. Today, we can actually light appropriately as blacks soak up more light, so if you lit your scene for white skinned people and put a black in it, you wouldn't see them! Back then, the problems were a thousand times worse. By making the lips much brighter than the skin and using a stereotypical hairstyle of blacks it was easier for the audience to see it was a black on screen. For a time, it was even argued if Micky Mouse was black because, well, he is.

I don't know if some of these images are racist per se, but it's very racially insensitive, reinforcing the same image of poor, simple black people in that particular case.



Historical context makes it what it is, and most people say words with racist overtones with that very intent. Not all, but most. Don't be obtuse.

*I'M* being obtuse? In a thread where it's claimed that any characiture of a race can qualify as potentially racially insensitive!? Oh, I cant help it if there's an actual bigot or racist who twists historical reference so he can voice his hate upon a particular race, but taking things from media with no hate intended and trying to make it hateful is just as retarded.

One more point. Although I disagree with racial insensitivity, I don't think history should be censored to take those sorts of things out. I disagree with editors cutting out parts in cartoons that depict racist things, like Jerry in Tom & Jerry falling into a bottle of ink and coming out in blackface. We should look at that and recognize it at a time when people were still ignorant and callous to minorities, not erase it entirely.

Entirely? Is a little bit okay? Oh look, 50 years from now there isn't a single scrap of evidence that Germany taught school children that Jews aren't human beings. In that episode (and other cartoons where that happens) they're referencing Al Jolson and/or Bosko. A vaudeville Jazz musician depicted as a black man. If we're going to play that game, then I want every scene of Dave Chappelle depicting a stuck up white guy removed from media because it offends me. Now tell me that's not retarded.