rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

And the movie version. (Seen the movie, never read the book.)

http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/6061/445058_020.jpg

^ yeah that's common knowledge right? i read about it several times in grade school (always laudatory)

Popular in its day, and very well received. But James Whitmore passing as black was o_O to me even in the early 70s.

it provided a great cory matthews zinger

I read the book. He supposedly took a bunch of tanning pills.

Which you'd think every white theater major would've tried by now.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/819dgLLVR7L._SL1500_.jpg

?

honestly never occurred to me but i guess so

Haha wow how has this never occurred to me

wait srsly that has never occurred to you guys, dang

when i was a kid, I made my own othello board out of wood and painted bingo chips http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

ha holy shit

The name was selected as a reference to the Shakespearean play Othello, the Moor of Venice, referring to the conflict between the Moor Othello and Iago, and more controversially, to the unfolding drama between Othello, who is black, and Desdemona, who is white. The green color of the board is inspired by the image of the general Othello, valiantly leading his battle in a green field. It can also be likened to a jealousy competition (jealousy being the central theme in Shakespeare's play), since players engulf the pieces of the opponent, thereby turning them to their possession.

source links to a time article behind a paywall

More on Zwarte Piet, 90 people were arrested in Gouda for protesting in a non-designated zone yesterday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30069240

The Gouda authorities introduced other coloured Petes, including a Cheese Pete, this year

Yup. Right wing media crying wolf saying a children's party has been ruined forever. Death threats to people who want to change the tradition. A former (social democrat) MP actually denied to shake my hand a couple of weeks back because I've published op-ed's about how we need to get rid of this blackface tradition.
At the other end I had friends of mine arrested, simply for BEING there and being black. Black people were seen as suspect simply because of the color of their skin.

Meanwhile we have a PM, Cameron's best friend Rutte, saying 'Pete is black because he is black, it's a tradition, children's party' etc. What a fucking shambles. Take away our healthcare, let banks dupe you, it's all no problem. But you want to change a racist blackface tradition? Get out of this country! That's the tendency in this 'tolerant' backwards country. Death threats are through the roof. When football player Leroy Fer shared a photo on Instagram this weekend he gets dozens of comments calling him monkey, black pete etc. The attack on black Pete brings out the blatant racism that is virile in this fucking country.

These are our culture wars, but we *will* win. This racist blackface tradition WILL go.

a MP knowing who you are seems like a pretty good humblebrag

Man.

fightin the good fight amory

We had a version of Othello on the BBC B Micro, only it was called Reversi. Loved the crap out of it and would play my dad for hours at it.

I first became aware of Othello when I was 5 or 6 years old and a commercial played regularly during afternoon cartoons. The commercial featured an old asian man who waved his hands over the tiles, causing them to flip from white to black. I begged my mom for the game, but she explained to me that the tiles did not actually do that. You had to flip them over yourself.

moms are such killjoys

I was p pissed when I got Guess Who around the same age and the faces didn't pop out of the cards and talk to me like they did to the kids in the commercial.

ultimately my parents never did help me put it together

stevie otm

lol @ the throwing in of a mystical asian. some bewildering semiotic terrain this game.

(and all to dress up go jr.: cultural approps!)

I've never played this game, but could it be more racial than racist?

I mean, what if you're the black team and you win all the time? What if you played it while listening to the White Album?

"mystical asian" probably a nod to othello's provenance as poor man's go

i need to make my posts less gnomic

anyway there's nothing Racist abt the game itself i think, or no more than chess. (not sure when chess standardized white/black.) it's just the name that insists you try to read it as a metaphor about race relations, which is a mess: on the one hand the races are total/essential and at implacable war; on the other hand people apparently find it easy to switch their race; on the other other hand maybe the process represented by the flipping pieces is cleansing/repopulation. none of these thoughts would exist if not for the name.

(so because the name invokes a torrent of signs it has no idea what to do with and is invoking cheaply and shallowly i am cool w being anti-it)

this is a no-brainer don't sweat it

not sure when chess standardized white/black

p recently I would say - they're red and white in Lewis Carroll for ex.

none of these thoughts would exist if not for the name.

sry maybe it's foolish to say none of these thoughts would exist abt a game made on earth by white people featuring a war between white and black pieces. none of these thoughts would exist specifically about this game zall.

oh look

this is p interesting actually

it is!

I mean just... waht:

it was evident that players could in many cases choose Black when they had the first move, even if the published game-score indicated that White had moved first.

lol @ the throwing in of a mystical asian. some bewildering semiotic terrain this game.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, November 17, 2014 5:20 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mastermind2.jpg

We had this Mastermind at home when I was young. The cover of the box fascinated me to no end.

i am positive we did this on another thread already (maybe this one) but i guess this is the next line
http://www.le.ac.uk/press/press/landmarkreunion.html

Didn't know that but thanks Forks!

a MP knowing who you are seems like a pretty good humblebrag

― jenny holzer, ilxor (mh), Monday, November 17, 2014 2:00 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not really. It was merely to illustrate that even someone who practically shakes hands for a living - a politician - couldn't bring himself to shake mine, even though we go back a bit. That is how Black Pete is dividing this shameful nation right now.

On the mastermind box, from tvtropes:

The game was originally produced with box-art that seemed to suggest that "masterminds" would pose like James Bond villains and have Dragon Lady girlfriends

good ol' tv tropes

maybe this is just me but when I was a kid I thought they were both masterminds

yeah I had that too and their identity/role was confounding - were these the people I was playing against (then shouldn't there only be one of them?) or were they opponents playing against each other? is that guy supposed to be some evil British colonialist etc

My thought was "there's the male mastermind and the female mastermind and they are both challenging me; CHALLENGE ACCEPTED as soon as I can beat my older brother"

Distinguished-looking Bill Woodward was then the owner of a chain of hairdressing salons

You know, I wasn't that far off.

http://grouchymuffin.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/goodfellas_134pyxurz.jpg

lol @ the throwing in of a mystical asian. some bewildering semiotic terrain this game.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, November 17, 2014 5:20 PM (Yesterday)

isn't othello just a total ripoff of GO tho? not to justify; I am probably staring too much into the fucked up marketer's abyss?

ok skooled by yahoo answers here

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080112054042AAeKRgP

mark s has some classic analysis of the various Mastermind boxes in this old thread - mastermind, the game

"gypsy cab"?

Good catch - apologies for using that phrase