Jake

Idle Thumbs 176: The Classic Alien Form

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I think, after having thought for a while, that the sticking point for me is not that someone's reproducing art that is espouses offensive ideas, but that someone gets to make money off of it for the sole reason that it is offensive.

That sort of implies that the ONLY reason anyone would ever watch something like Song of the South would be to see the racism.

 

There are other things going on in the movie, and other reasons a person might watch it.  So it's somewhat impossible to judgeif the "sole reason" you'd make money off it is that it's offensive or not.

 

 

I think the obvious solution is to use profits to support charities, particularity educational funding for low income people.

Ideally yes.  But the simple fact of the matter is that corporations are motivated by what makes them money.  If they aren't going to make money off of something, they'll generally simply not do it instead.

 

You might convince them to split profits with charity, but all profits to charity just means they won't bother.

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That sort of implies that the ONLY reason anyone would ever watch something like Song of the South would be to see the racism.

There are other things going on in the movie, and other reasons a person might watch it. So it's somewhat impossible to judgeif the "sole reason" you'd make money off it is that it's offensive or not.

I really don't know anything about Song of the South besides "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and racism, despite having actually watched it some years ago. If I revise my statement to racism being the predominant reason for most of the abiding interest in a seventy-year-old movie that saw little financial and critical success, would you be less inclined to quibble?

Interestingly enough, Disney has never released the film in full in the United States, so whatever merits it may or may nothave, Disney doesn't seem interested in making money off of it, so there's that.

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Oh, that sounds fantastic.  A stealth game where, instead of hiding from enemies, you have to accomplish your objectives without being seen by the dude you're helping who thinks he's the hero.

 

Hnnnnggg... How do I get good a making games so I can make this idea happen? Helping some oblivious incompetent idiot to accomplish their quest completely unbeknownst to the entire world, and never receiving any recognition for it at the end of the game.

 

Imagine if Luigi was doing this for Mario and was secretly in love with Peach but was constantly foiled by his own pathetic social skills and pathological helpfulness in helping Mario stop Bowser, leading to Mario getting the princess every time. And the only person who knew about Luigi's true heroism was Toad, but he refused to support him because Toad hates Luigi due to something secret that happened in the past. 

 

This of course leads to Luigi becoming more and more repressed and passive-aggressive, until he lashes out in Mario Kart races, which he secretly feels should be called Luigi Kart.

 

Hire me Nintendo!

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Imagine if Luigi was doing this for Mario and was secretly in love with Peach but was constantly foiled by his own pathetic social skills and pathological helpfulness in helping Mario stop Bowser, leading to Mario getting the princess every time. And the only person who knew about Luigi's true heroism was Toad, but he refused to support him because Toad hates Luigi due to something secret that happened in the past. 

 

Luigi de Bergerac

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I'm not sure if this has been brought up already in the thread re: shitty things in old media, but a lot of these old cartoons and films and songs have HUGE importance in not only the context of their culture but the evolution of their respective media. Birth of a Nation is a massively important film, and it makes heroes of the KKK.

A lot of historically significant animation is fucking weird and gross, but still influential in the animation world.

As for who profits off of the archival releases its not necessarily the racists, and the appeal of these old is probably mostly for people interested in the art form or people who enjoy the transgressive thrill of seeing classic characters in something so obviously unacceptable. Its not like they are broadcasting them or putting them in Walmart, its simply available for niche audiences.

I'm actually really against the idea that a cultural artifact like that should just straight up be scrubbed from public conscious and made unavailable.

Appologies if all this has been brought up, and if I'm missing the point entirely. If the issue is mostly with profiting off of this stuff, I am much more sympathetic to that. Capitalism blows.

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I always enjoy seeing San Francisco in movies, including American movies, and I'm American. I think that kind of impulse is hard to completely avoid.

 

I get frustrated by how Hollywood handles this stuff now though where setting feels more like some sort of referential thing, rather than something that grounds the movie in a lived experience. I think there is a huge difference between the Iron Man movies, and a movie like Trading Places which is set in Philadelphia, even though it doesn't have any particular need to be set there, but nonetheless provides the movie with some real character. Similarly, I'll take the Dirty Harry movies or the Conversation over the nods to San Francisco in the latest Star Trek or Planet of the Apes.

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As for who profits off of the archival releases its not necessarily the racists, and the appeal of these old is probably mostly for people interested in the art form or people who enjoy the transgressive thrill of seeing classic characters in something so obviously unacceptable. Its not like they are broadcasting them or putting them in Walmart, its simply available for niche audiences.

Appologies if all this has been brought up, and if I'm missing the point entirely. If the issue is mostly with profiting off of this stuff, I am much more sympathetic to that. Capitalism blows.

Yeah I sort of laid this out earlier but was less succinct, but I am in complete agreement. Plus the Looney Tunes DVD sets that tend to make it around places like Warmart are just the less expensive Spotlight Collections which have no racial content, special features, and about half the cartoons, intended for children. The Golden Collection sets are the ones that are more expensive and less available. I think Disney did the same with their cartoon sets in the tin cans with possible a disclaimer, but those damn things are almost never available because THEY ARE GOING BACK IN THE DISNEY VAULT. Fucking Disney.

 

I am somewhat concerned though that for instance a Tom and Jerry set gets released uncensored since kids really seem to love Tom and Jerry, but I suppose the only outcry from that is one cartoon was accidentally released censored and they had to ship out a corrected copy. It's good Tom and Jerry was restored unedited for public consumption however. I am not sure if children heard the mom character as a stereotypical black woman if that would truly affect them. I actually remember being super confused as a child because sometimes the same cartoon would air where the woman was originally black (you only ever see her feet) and then I might see the Ted Turner version where Chuck Jones reanimated her legs to be white and she was overdubbed.

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If the issue is mostly with profiting off of this stuff, I am much more sympathetic to that. Capitalism blows.

 

At least for me, the issue is entirely about publishing problematic and offensive art without promoting it or profiting from it. It's not about censorship, it's about endorsing terrible stuff by investing money in and making money off of it being available (or alternately, peddling a kind of post-racial utopia in which making such a thing available doesn't have any negative connotations, so long as there's a disclaimer beforehand).

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I get frustrated by how Hollywood handles this stuff now though where setting feels more like some sort of referential thing, rather than something that grounds the movie in a lived experience. I think there is a huge difference between the Iron Man movies, and a movie like Trading Places which is set in Philadelphia, even though it doesn't have any particular need to be set there, but nonetheless provides the movie with some real character. Similarly, I'll take the Dirty Harry movies or the Conversation over the nods to San Francisco in the latest Star Trek or Planet of the Apes.

 

My favorite NY in film is Death Wish 3. Low budget punx with badly dubbed accents. 

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Funny thing about the Disney Vault: they tried just releasing everything on DVD, and sales went way down. They started the Disney Vault again for DVDs, and sales went back up. They have a strong financial incentive to make the transaction more complicated.

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Enjoyed that more than I've enjoyed any episode in a while! Anita was excellent.

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It was amazingly cool to hear Anita's cheerful, happy, funny mode. You can see peeks of sly humour in the femfreq videos but Anita unleashed is excellent. Hope to see her return.

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It was amazingly cool to hear Anita's cheerful, happy, funny mode. You can see peeks of sly humour in the femfreq videos but Anita unleashed is excellent. Hope to see her return.

 

Anita Unleashed: Origins

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Funny thing about the Disney Vault: they tried just releasing everything on DVD, and sales went way down. They started the Disney Vault again for DVDs, and sales went back up. They have a strong financial incentive to make the transaction more complicated.

 

The saddest thing about the Disney Vault is that it was envisioned as a way to let every generation of kids get to see the movies before home video was a thing, and now it's a way to introduce artificial scarcity.

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Oh god I keep forgetting to ask - So those Warner Bros. cartoons being released from their vault, racist content unedited; are they being sold, or is it just content you can acquire for free?

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The ones they were talking about on the podcast with the disclaimer are included in the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection (previously Golden Collection) boxed sets. They're sets of unedited versions of classic Looney Tunes shorts meant for collectors (there's another edited series meant for kids that I believe is called the Spotlight Collection). They also replace all of the previously removed violent or risqué content. The really super overtly racist stuff, the "censored eleven," is mostly kept locked up though (unless you go to Youtube).

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I searched for this link in the topic and didn't find it so here it is:

 

All known locations of PacMan Battle Royale.  I did not make it so I can't verify any of the data.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?oe=UTF8&ie=UTF8&msa=0&mid=z8Y-rKJteh6Y.kGtOC6GE1RrI

Hey, according to that there are 2 of them in my area! Checking the website of one of them, they confirm that they do have one. I'll have to put together an arcade outing with some friends soon.

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There are only three of them in my entire country. Goddamnit, Canada. There's not even any in Maine, so I can't do a border hop.

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Apparently I was in the same building as one about a month ago. Damn.

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So lately I've been reading Fantagrraphics' collected editions of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse newspaper comic. They were originally published in the thirties though, so there are loads of super racist caricatures and sentiments sprinkled in at times. Oddly enough, I'm not as bothered by the caricatures themselves as I am by the chapter forewords that try to accomplish the exact opposite of the Looney Tunes ones: they try to present stuff that is clearly racist as being totally okay at best and secretly progressive at worst. Probably the worst so far is the treatment of the cannibal islanders in the second volume. The foreword puts forth the idea that it's subversive that they worship a "white god" because he -like Mickey himself- is technically black-skinned. It reeks of some very shortsighted executive trying to paint the very obvious racism of the time as something that Disney was exempt from.

 

 

 

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