rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

rolling "even frogbs knows this is racist" thread

http://louisvsrick.com/post/16010782829/episode-12-the-bad-cats

re: the bad cats

i was thinking long and hard about this post-Chappelle/Mencia "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE 'BLACK' DEBBIE"-style humor that's just everywhere right now. Like acknowledging racism exists equals a joke on shit like Archer and Family Guy and most of the internet. Like even in "I'm Shithead" there's this "AND IM DEFINITELY NOT ASIAN" throwaway line that really adds nothing but "hey, think about race, I know right?" 100 percent of the time it does more to re-enforce racial stereotypes than confront them in any way. Like it def seems like Wonder Shozen at least tried to put a political spin on it most of the time.

yeah this is why Curb Your Enthusiasm and It's Always Sunny etc. tend to be really wearying for me.

I mean, at least on Curb or South Park, there's a real Archie Bunker style attitude towards racism where it's like Frank or Cartman are obviously loathsome people who have bad opinions about race.

er, Sunny or South Park.

Curb I think tries to do Louis-style meditations on white guilt (ie, the ep about nodding at black ppl), but isn't as good with that stuff. I do think the black doctor on Curb who was incapable of doing his job after hearing the n-word was pretty misguided bit tho

Whiney's continued evolution into the new Morbius is getting closer every time he posts "the Donald Glover TV show".

yeah i mean those shows aren't totally wrongheaded about it or anything and HAVE done undeniably funny things in that vein, but it's enough of the core of their approach to comedy that i get tired of it quick (xpost)

i'd like whiney to update the rolling "Is Das Racist?" thread with his opinion of the new heems/childish gambino heatrock

I thought the point of Always Sunny is that the characters are so bad at relating to other humans in general that getting "how to not be racist" wrong is the least of their worries. The joke always seems not to be that they're racist, but that they have some idea of how they're supposed to act and it's so wrongheaded or misinterpreted.

I can't think of any Archer moments about race off the top of my head, but Family Guy always annoys me any time they try to talk about anything serious whatsoever

family guy is too obv going for "omg lol i can't believe they said that!" reactions from t*mblr wh*tes, cf elizabeth smart.

haha the elizabeth smart joke i mean, though she may have a tumblr

the Dumbo crows joke was probably the best race joke Family Guy ever did

I just watched an episode of the doco series on those guys who do the terrible viral YouTube local ads - "Commercial Kings" - and it was one I havent seen online, a salon aimed at black customers where the owner was trying to do a pitch to "non black ladies" and I was squirming with discomfort all the way thru at how they were handling the jokes... I dunno if I was being oversensitive?

Like, thew 2 twats who make these ads are so hipster it would make Whiney's eyeballs bleed, maybe that doesnt help matters.

the Dumbo crows joke was probably the best race joke Family Guy ever did

― Bam! Orgasm explosion in your facehole. (DJP), Tuesday, January 17, 2012 12:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i havent seen it but was it stolen from paul mooney?

this is the difference between Family Guy and South Park for me, SP has a lot of gay-bashing, racial humor, anti-Semitism, etc. etc., but they always manage to paint it through the eyes of some pretty deplorable characters, whereas Family Guy will just straight up do a cutaway where an Asian person is in a car and "LOL THEY CAN'T DRIVE!"

The LOL Muslims/ 'any Middle Eastern people, but obviously not Israelis, y' know Arabs and Muslims and dudes who wear turbans' in Family Guy is pretty repulsive (to this UK viewer at least)

Besides Cleveland, was there ever a non-white character on the show where they didn't immediately call attention to the character's race?

http://www.thesharkguys.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ollie.jpg

you mean Ollie Williams of the Blaccu-Weather Forecast

whiney I think you've got a lotta good points here but the "make black people act wacky" thing above, that whole agency-denying aspect of white people like you & me describing the motivations of nonwhite ppl - that is a bad look imo

p. sure that in family guy the deplorable character through whose eyes we are seeing lol stereotypes is an implied omnipresent narrator or w/e ie no they don't have a character buffer btwn the viewer and the depiction but i'd disagree that it's somehow a flat, literal and unironic statement of belief for all that

lol i've never heard them say "Blaccu-Weather"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7UBlZcZSE0

ie no they don't have a character buffer btwn the viewer and the depiction but i'd disagree that it's somehow a flat, literal and unironic statement of belief for all that

I have no problem believing that as far as the misogyny goes.

p. sure that in family guy the deplorable character through whose eyes we are seeing lol stereotypes is an implied omnipresent narrator or w/e ie no they don't have a character buffer btwn the viewer and the depiction but i'd disagree that it's somehow a flat, literal and unironic statement of belief for all that

I remember some interviewer that was grilling Seth on this and he just kept saying "well, Peter is supposed to be an idiot, so everything he says is wrong", which is fine, but that ignores that there is a ton of racism in the show outside of "the dumb shit that Peter says", something that even "edgier" shows like South Park doesn't have

that's not really true, there is plenty of racism in all of these shows to fill everyone's daily allotment

there's always been a distinction for me, not just with Family Guy but also shows like Mind of Mencia and 2 Broke Girls. I don't remember where I read this but basically the saying goes "the funnier you are, the more offensive you can be" which IMO is pretty OTM, shows like Chappelle's are pretty clever which makes you feel like the writers are going for laughs on another dimension than just "stereotypes lol"

like I don't have a problem with racist humor, but if it's not funny (or doesn't try to be) then what are you left with?

^ seems to me to be the point of this thread, it's the funny!/not funny! game with "racist!" in place of "not funny!"

i refuse to be the frogbs pawn in this pond

(not beefing, mind) xp

i mean it's obviously all "racist" to some degree, i think the better question is "is this offensive?" which IMO most posters ITT aren't really going to be good judges of

...

(maybe I should have changed my display name before posting that)

hahahahahahahaha

@frogbs Not so much "is this joke reenforcing the oppression/stereotyping of non-whites", more "as a white person is it OK if I laugh at/listen to/watch this"

You can deal with racial humor or racist stereotypes without actually being racist, it's just a really difficult task because to some people even acknowledging a race-based stereotype is seen as racist.

@frogbs Not so much "is this joke reenforcing the oppression/stereotyping of non-whites", more "as a white person is it OK if I laugh at/listen to/watch this"

does anyone actually feel like watching/listening to racial humor is "not okay" because it'll turn them into racists? (or...?)

... because, in the case of Family Guy, it's boring shite that you could probably have gotten away with in the UK like 30 years ago

i.e. 'Allo, 'Allo?

Well, it's old hat, red nose humour

You can deal with racial humor or racist stereotypes without actually being racist, it's just a really difficult task because to some people even acknowledging a race-based stereotype is seen as racist.

― mh, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 11:14 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but the flipside of this, which i thought Whiney was getting at in a worthwhile way, is that to some people acknowledging a race-based stereotype in any kind of knowing or humorous or ironically distanced way absolves you of any kind of possibility of seeming racists or approaching the subject tastefully or responsibly. there's a bit of a naughty 'ain't I a stinker' hue to it as well as a strong whiff of 'if I bring this subject up AND preemptively signal that I'm not endorsing a racist mindset in the same breath I can preempt any accusations of being a racist' maneuvering. at some point this WAS a clever and perhaps even smart way to deal with this kind of thing, but now that it's a standard tool of every 3rd show on TV and is often done really reflexively and carelessly, it's just kind of nauseating.

yeah, exactly that.

I pretty much agree with that with the unfortunate caveat that ironic racist caricature heavily informs most of my current favorite shows

sorry that tosh.0 is your favorite show

lol

the really sad thing is that I did actually watch Tosh.0 for like three weeks before going "wait, NO"

Tosh.0 is basically just videos of ppl throwing up on each other and dick jokes, right?

Tosh is actually one of the people guilty of that sort of thing who I don't mind as much because there's so little distance between him and the joke, he's not playing a fictional character or voicing a goofy-looking cartoon or putting his words in the mouth of a minority to soften the blow, he just stands up there saying the horrible noxious but sometimes pretty funny thing as himself and lets you think whatever you want about him.