Idle Thumbs 176: The Classic Alien Form

[mike]

I believe the most recent Transformers movie also had some scenes that took place in China for the same reasons as Iron Man 3, except I think the Transformers ones were in all versions of the movie (not sure about that though, and I haven't seen the movie). I heard an NPR story about it and it sounded like it was just an inexplicable 10 minutes where they were fighting in China, but the places they were fighting in made no sense because they were in different parts of the country. It pretty much sounded like some horrible movie studio just found famous places in China and used them as the backdrop for a fight sequence without much thought beyond that. It's weird because stuff like that seems like it could just come across as offensive if you're not careful. Like if your intent is to make your movie have more appeal in China, wouldn't you at least want to come across like you actually gave a shit?

[Gormongous]

I loved this as well. It's such a bummer that women int he video game space have to be like, super guarded and walking over egg shells all the time because if they say something that doesn't jibe with a segment of the internet they are going to experience a lot of extremely aggressive behavior.

 

It broke my heart at the end of the podcast to hear Anita take as given that these forums would become a frothing sea of toxic shit because of her appearance on the podcast. And then my heart broke again to hear Sean try to reassure her but not really be able to articulate how it'd be different without discounting her experiences elsewhere.

[feelthedarkness]

the worst nightclub

 

[mike]

It broke my heart at the end of the podcast to hear Anita take as given that these forums would become a frothing sea of toxic shit because of her appearance on the podcast. And then my heart broke again to hear Sean try to reassure her but not really be able to articulate how it'd be different without discounting her experiences elsewhere.

 

We were worried not about the existing posters but that there would be a crazy influx of sock puppet accounts, but I guess they prefer platforms like Twitter where harassment goes totally unchecked. Honestly if any regulars here had been horrible that would have been the most shocking thing to me.

[Brannigan]

It broke my heart at the end of the podcast to hear Anita take as given that these forums would become a frothing sea of toxic shit because of her appearance on the podcast. And then my heart broke again to hear Sean try to reassure her but not really be able to articulate how it'd be different without discounting her experiences elsewhere.

I'm pretty impressed that nobody has shown up to spew garbage like in the past with Danielle. Granted it always was taken care quickly and calmly.

[Dewar]

Worse is the very transparent way that stuff is marketed toward kids based on gender though. Watch some toy commercials sometime and see how phrases like "electronic lights and sounds" vs "magically lights up and talks to you" (oh hey, Clarke's third law) are used based on their demographic, or how literally every piece of marketing for Nerf's range of dart guns for girls depicts them wearing the included protective eyewear incorrectly as a fashion accessory instead of as safety equipment.

 

It blows my mind that we need to have a range of Nerf guns for girls. Isn't the standard Nerf color scheme broadly appealing? If not, can't we just have a bunch of different color schemes without comment? Also, what baby wears eye protection to play with Nerf guns?

 

 

As long as I'm bringing up stupid DC comics bullshit, this is all I could think of when Danielle started talking about fighting women in her own weight class and not holding back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etPYl1OQoqk

 

I wonder how many people he killed that were just sitting at work in their office building.

 

 

I am very much with the thumbs on the frustration for stories where the schlubby white dude being mentored by the far more capable non-white non-dude character only to have them stand aside for him to take his rightful plcae as the chosen one. I am dying for a film or book to reach that final act and have the more capable character go "No, you you're going to help me. You're not ready." As a schlubby white dude myself I don't like the dishonesty.

 

If you're into X-Files sci-fi in the present day type stuff, you might look into Charles Stross's books. Why they aren't completely innocent of these trends, they also play with the convention in some interesting ways. To say more would be a spoiler.

 

 

I'm glad the skip list thing came up here already (I saw Mints' tweets about it, thus reminding me). I had something to say about it as I listened to the episode.

Skip lists are a thing? I mean, I immediately understand how and why they exist. I've just never thought to look up such things before. I've never gotten that intricate before either. Like when I tell people to watch this show or that, I often say what point is best to start if you want to see the show from when it found its more "permanent" identity. But I've never gone through episodes individually among the good batch to say "skip this, watch that."

The behavior fascinates me.

Edit - Just for insurance this is not passing judgment or anything.

 

I guess I'm just a completionist, but I can't imagine working my way through a skip list. For me it would ruin the whole point of watching a series. I just recently (2 years ago or so) watched every single episode Farscape for the first time and loved it, so I guess maybe I'm just more tolerant of "lousy" TV.

[BobbyBesar]

It blows my mind that we need to have a range of Nerf guns for girls. Isn't the standard Nerf color scheme broadly appealing? If not, can't we just have a bunch of different color schemes without comment? Also, what baby wears eye protection to play with Nerf guns?

Peripherally related, but has this been posted here before?

 

[Gormongous]

We were worried not about the existing posters but that there would be a crazy influx of sock puppet accounts, but I guess they prefer platforms like Twitter where harassment goes totally unchecked. Honestly if any regulars here had been horrible that would have been the most shocking thing to me.

 

I guess I take it for granted that you guys handle it so well. And you do handle it so well.

[feelthedarkness]

i'll judge! NO SKIPPING ON FIRST RUNS!

[tegan]

It blows my mind that we need to have a range of Nerf guns for girls. Isn't the standard Nerf color scheme broadly appealing? If not, can't we just have a bunch of different color schemes without comment? Also, what baby wears eye protection to play with Nerf guns?

I think it's one of those well-meaning but ultimately problematic things like what happened with Lego. Lego was a gender-neutral toy that got so heavily militarized and dudebro'd that their female audience dropped off and market research found that the only way to reclaim the lost female audience was to start a second product line aggressively marketed toward girls in a very stereotypical way. Nerf Guns are super Codblopsy now, so it's not surprising that only boys end up owning them. It's no coincidence that the Rebelle line prominently includes bows.

 

I wonder how many people he killed that were just sitting at work in their office building.

 

Most of the city was very explicitly evacuated earlier in the episode. The Timm/Dini version of the DCAU was generally very good about not letting innocent bystanders get hurt and would only very rarely let buildings be destroyed*, unlike a certain other Superman franchise. There was an arc specifically about the watchtower being used to destroy an empty building and how controversial it was for the league to even have that kind of power. It ended with them decommissioning it.

 

*the only other time I can think of Superman causing massive property damage in the DCAU was during a fight with Captain Marvel in a completely unoccupied planned community.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I believe the most recent Transformers movie also had some scenes that took place in China for the same reasons as Iron Man 3, except I think the Transformers ones were in all versions of the movie (not sure about that though, and I haven't seen the movie). I heard an NPR story about it and it sounded like it was just an inexplicable 10 minutes where they were fighting in China, but the places they were fighting in made no sense because they were in different parts of the country. It pretty much sounded like some horrible movie studio just found famous places in China and used them as the backdrop for a fight sequence without much thought beyond that. It's weird because stuff like that seems like it could just come across as offensive if you're not careful. Like if your intent is to make your movie have more appeal in China, wouldn't you at least want to come across like you actually gave a shit?

 

As someone from a country that is only occasionally represented in mainstream media, I can say that for us there is a dumb bit of "Oh hey, sweet!" when you see your local area has been included even if it's dumb. And after all... you go into Transformers movies expecting dumb by now.

[syntheticgerbil]

I think in the end there's going to be no right way to present old cartoons with racism, just the same with the amount of sexism they tend to have (Hey there Tex Avery!). Like Jake brought up, the company would have to make a profit to justify the restoration, but what's interesting is that the "Censored 11" by Warner Bros. have been restored but are still to never be released. Perhaps they were planning on a release at some point, but I guess these cartoons are so racist there might still be an outcry. I've seen a few, I wouldn't say they are any more or less racist than many of the ones already released on the Looney Tunes Golden Collections, just that they give the blackface characters either more screentime or they are the main characters.

 

Two that I really like despite all of the blackface and stereotypes are the Bob Clampett ones, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs and Tin Pan Alley Cats. It probably doesn't make much of a difference, but Clampett was a huge jazz fan and apparently liked hanging out around the jazz club culture at the time. I think what you get is a strange combination of a cartoonist only knowing how to show everything in exaggeration for the sake of a gag, just like how every celebrity is depicted in a Warner Bros. cartoon, but also someone who loves the subject and wants to have fun with the music they listen to.

 

Most Hollywood movies and cartoons from the first 40-50 years of our film history is just going to have objectionable material, whether it's meant to be harmful or not. Sometimes it's preserved for historical reasons like Birth of a Nation, or sometimes because it's still entertaining, like Little Rascals or Our Gang. Either way, when this stuff is released on DVD, you can make the argument that the publishing company is perpetuating racism by selling it as a product or if it's in a museum you could say that they are giving these pieces of media value that they otherwise should not be allowed to have by putting them on a pedestal.

 

Not everyone was as progressive as Charlie Chaplin who refused to do any blackface gags in his film because he didn't find them funny. But the guy also never depicted or hired black people in his films either.

 

But in the end, I don't think there's any harm in releasing any of this stuff on DVD, because it's all old. No one except an aficionado buys these old cartoons and both Disney and Warner Bros. have gone to lengths already to offer different sets with different packaging styles for parents who want to expose their kids to these old cartoons. I think even if you left out the disclaimer recordings, it wouldn't matter because the people who buy the big boxsets know what they are getting into. With the amount of cartoons these days that are available on DVD and TV, I think you'd be hard pressed to get views from kids or passive watchers affirming their racial and sexist beliefs.

 

I think maybe my generation was the last to experience these old cartoons on rotation on TV networks. By then a lot of stuff had already been clipped or censored by Ted Turner's company, who unfortunately also butchered them by having the black and white ones traced, frames ignored, and colored badly in Korea. Ho hum, the animation world... My wife's younger sister (younger by 12 years) had no idea who Droopy is when seeing I had the new set. I was kind of shocked Droopy is no longer on TV as I think Dixieland Droopy is a cartoon everyone should see. But really, there's newer stuff with more time slots to fill. The fact that these cartoons have lasted so long with audience over the decades really is a testament to the power of animation over a lot of older silent films and monster movies which haven't been as preserved or even reappeared on TV as much if at all.

[Anjin]

So many things to say now:

 

• Raising a daughter has been absoultely insane. My wife and I have done our best to avoid the gender stereotyping, but she has bought it wholesale. The first time I wore my Gaming's Feminist Illuminatti shirt, it absolutely blew her mind. She didn't know how to process a boy wearing pink. So that's a challenge.
• Anita was a great fit for the podcast. I hope you contrive an excuse to get her on again.
• I'm assuming that, since Campo Santo is associated with Panic, some of the Thumbs must know Greg Maletic. That guy knows his Disney. The podcast he is on, The Golden Horseshoe Review, is really great. Also, if you haven't seen his California Adventure posters, check them out. I think they are better than that park deserves.

[tegan]

Two that I really like despite all of the blackface and stereotypes are the Bob Clampett ones, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs and Tin Pan Alley Cats. It probably doesn't make much of a difference, but Clampett was a huge jazz fan and apparently liked hanging out around the jazz club culture at the time. I think what you get is a strange combination of a cartoonist only knowing how to show everything in exaggeration for the sake of a gag, just like how every celebrity is depicted in a Warner Bros. cartoon, but also someone who loves the subject and wants to have fun with the music they listen to.

 

I'm pretty sure that the official reason Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs doesn't get a modern release isn't because of its depiction of black people but its very deliberate wartime anti-Japanese sentiment in one scene (though I'm sure that the black characters didn't help).

[syntheticgerbil]

That wouldn't make sense then because all of the Private Snafu cartoons have been readily released by Warner Brothers among multiple sets as well as Mr. Hook, which is even worse. Often times the Chinese or Japanese stereotypes have been ignored in the past and even were not part of the censored or cut stuff when Turner was rotating them on regular TV. I'd bet even Tiny Toons has some of those types of jokes.

[tabacco]

It broke my heart at the end of the podcast to hear Anita take as given that these forums would become a frothing sea of toxic shit because of her appearance on the podcast. And then my heart broke again to hear Sean try to reassure her but not really be able to articulate how it'd be different without discounting her experiences elsewhere.

 

We were legitimately ready for a giant influx of jerks, to the point that I had extra mods watching out and everything. I'm really happy we had to do zero moderating. As a side benefit of that preparation, though, the forums now check a bunch of RBLs when you register, so you can't register via tor or a bunch of other known open http proxies.

 

Edit: Oops Mike already said that. That'll teach me to read the rest of the thread before replying

[tegan]

That wouldn't make sense then because all of the Private Snafu cartoons have been readily released by Warner Brothers among multiple sets as well as Mr. Hook, which is even worse. Often times the Chinese or Japanese stereotypes have been ignored in the past and even were not part of the censored or cut stuff when Turner was rotating them on regular TV. I'd bet even Tiny Toons has some of those types of jokes.

 

I'm talking about the hitmen who advertise that they'll kill "japs" for free. It's not an offensive caricature or stereotype, it's just a straight-up statement of "we hate this race so much that we will murder them."

[Argobot]

I had those parents as well (when I mentioned to my dad we were going to Disneyland this time I think his entire response was "Why?"), and so even when I ended up going to Disneyland as a kid/teen with friends, I was still basically neutral on it. I certainly had fun (it would be hard to have NO fun at Disneyland I think) but my overall impression was really primed to be really skeptical, so my memories of those visits are very scattered. It wasn't until I was an adult that I actually appreciated it the way I now do.

 

I tend to ignore the death of sincerity trend pieces that crop up every few months, but I suspect that they all contain a kernel of truth; cynicism and cool detachment are definitely prized over genuine enthusiasm (tangentially related to the discussion of adding China scenes to big blockbuster movies, which reads a cynical cash grab). While I do think it's essential to remain wary and not accept the world at face-value, I worry that I personally give that too much weight in how I act. Until a week ago, I knew nothing about Disneyland except that it is owned by a very large corporation and I had a very sneery, I'm-above-it-all approach to it. Having that knee-jerk reaction turned on its head was a really rewarding experience that will hopefully help me stay honest about these kinds of things in the future. Anyway, I want to go back to Disneyland.

[Brodie]

Some things-

 

1. Anita is an incredible bad ass with super human perseverance and it was really cool that you invited her to be on the cast. 

 

2. I have, at times, been annoyed with how much you all talk over each other but, in this case, I feel that adjusting that for the sake of your guest would have come across strangely seeing as that really hasn't been a thing in the past. Thank you guys for just being yourselves.

 

3. I was on about it on twitter earlier but, Danielle, Amateur Boxing. Fuck yeah. After hearing that and having the idea of Idle Thumbs boxing gear put into my brain, I sort of drifted off for a while into a daydream where Chris introduces you with a theme song sung to a confused audience while you enter the ring wearing a monogrammed S.J.W. robe, Idle Thumbs trunks and boxing gloves that say 'GOLD' 'BLUM' on the pads. Your opponent coalesces from the tweets of a million trolls- into an actual troll made of tweets who you proceed to battle. Sean and Jake hang out in your corner of the ring between rounds and offer up well meant but inaccurate advice on the fight, Nature Box snacks and water. This is totally how amateur boxing works, right?

 

So, yeah, that happened in my brain this afternoon. 

 

All weird Idle Boxing thoughts aside- If you do end up trying out the Amateur thing, good luck and kick all the asses!

Edited September 19, 2014 by Brodie

[mike]

As someone from a country that is only occasionally represented in mainstream media, I can say that for us there is a dumb bit of "Oh hey, sweet!" when you see your local area has been included even if it's dumb. And after all... you go into Transformers movies expecting dumb by now.

 

Yeah I guess it's not a huge deal now that I think about it. My own hilarious example is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is a fine (if not silly) movie that contains a weird fake version of the Bay Area. Basically every time they go somewhere in that movie it makes zero sense, and they do stuff like go from downtown SF to the Golden Gate Bridge in maybe two minutes (they're on opposite sides of the city) and immediately into Muir Woods after the bridge (it's like another 30 - 45 minutes of driving from the bridge) and I am just like "yeah okay whatever". So maybe "offensive" is too strong a word Certainly it's dumb though.

[SuperBiasedMan]

  Certainly it's dumb though.

 

It's definitely a double whammy of dumb, both because the movie is being dumb and then also my thought process goes

 

"They're going to Dublin! That's cool. Oh yeah, I recognise that place! Wait... why do I care if the Muppets have a scene that takes place in areas I vaguely recognise? I'm being dumb."

[BobbyBesar]

There's a Hong Kong film called Gen Y Cops where somebody BASE jumps off a Hong Kong landmark and lands in Singapore.*

 

 

(*Actually, it could be the other way around.)

[Bjorn]

I get stupidly excited when Kansas shows up in any kind of media, I think it's a pretty typical reaction when you are from someplace that doesn't typically get mainstream attention (unless it's for the dumb shit that my fellow Kansans do to get us in the news, in which case it's horrifyingly embarrassing). 

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm talking about the hitmen who advertise that they'll kill "japs" for free. It's not an offensive caricature or stereotype, it's just a straight-up statement of "we hate this race so much that we will murder them."

It's all still very much a treatment of Japanese people like they aren't human, the caricatures were just as much a part of that, and for whatever reason Asian stereotypes have been less taboo for a longer period of time in entertainment. Is there some information on why that would be the reason Warner Bros. banned the cartoon and not the constant blackface? It's pretty much the sole reason for the rest of the censored 11.

 

 Until a week ago, I knew nothing about Disneyland except that it is owned by a very large corporation and I had a very sneery, I'm-above-it-all approach to it.

I think Disney would be one of the most ideal examples of the type corporations where that sentiment is more than fine. To me, the theme parks are one of the veins that keep the multimedia behemoth going, which is no good. That said, I'm sure it's fun and well constructed. I went to Disney World as a kid, that's more than enough for me. I also had Astroworld, a shitty sub version of Disney Land with all Looney Tunes crap. I must have went multiple times a year especially when my friends got cars, but it was a stinking hellhole the few years before they closed it down. Good riddance.

[SecretAsianMan]

Yeah I guess it's not a huge deal now that I think about it. My own hilarious example is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is a fine (if not silly) movie that contains a weird fake version of the Bay Area. Basically every time they go somewhere in that movie it makes zero sense, and they do stuff like go from downtown SF to the Golden Gate Bridge in maybe two minutes (they're on opposite sides of the city) and immediately into Muir Woods after the bridge (it's like another 30 - 45 minutes of driving from the bridge) and I am just like "yeah okay whatever". So maybe "offensive" is too strong a word Certainly it's dumb though.

 

Honestly, the Iron Man stuff did offend me in a way.  I was born and raised in the US but I'm of Chinese descent and it depresses me when the sole thing that makes me excited about a movie is that there's an Asian person in it.  They're usually not the main character and if they are it's usually because they know martial arts, which is a separate problem.  What bothered me about Iron Man was the method of appealing to a Chinese market was basically tokenism.  They added a couple extra scenes that made no sense and had 2 known actors appear in completely irrelevant roles which I guess is somehow supposed to be enough to entice the Chinese market?  That's a really lazy and shitty way to attract people to your movie.  Don't get me wrong, I still like seeing Asian actors in movies, I just wish the reason to have them wasn't just so they could try and appeal to a demographic.