You know there are Americans who are batting eyelids at this in this very thread, right?
I figured this was a gotcha somehow. The problem in trying to use this as a get-out-of-jail-free card, though, is that plenty of Australians are in turn using this incident to call out the US about sensitivity to Australian racial issues.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with criticizing both incidents and raising sensitivity on both sides of the world. I understand that others might feel differently, but in either case it seems hard to defend the idea that it’s OK for criticism to flow in one direction but not the other.
Well, try as I might, I can’t think of any context in which a sitcom character could use that phrase without it being offensive.
I’ve not watched the show, so whatever I say about it is automatically the suspect bloviatings of a self-important Internet blowhard. That said, what I’ve heard from folks who watch teh show is that its humor depends significantly on racist stereotypes.
America isn’t monolithic. Sure, we’ve got a crapton of racist jerks here, more than enough to keep afloat a racist sitcom. But those folks probably aren’t the ones criticizing blackface shows in Australia. And the folks criticizing blackface in Australia are probably on-board with criticizing this show for its racist humor.
The only way there’s any hypocrisy here is if a single individual (not a nation) criticizes blackface but defends this show.
I don’t watch the show either, but I’m failing to see how a racist script writer indicts all Americans as hypocrites. At the most, it means that a show’s creative team thinks they can get away with some racist jokes but not others. But that doesn’t mean that their assumption is correct.
Or if someone (an Australian, say) criticizes this show but defends blackface. OP, where do you stand on blackface? You evidently take umbrage with Americans criticizing its use in Australia. Are you OK with it?
Smeghead’s a pretty smart guy, so I’m going with sarcasm/parody.
Yes, which is fine. But the fact that nobody noticed when it actually aired–certainly not enough for the U.S. media to care–is interesting.
In reality, I think Australian Aborigines exist in the same category of mythical being as hobbits, centaurs and pygmies, at least for the average sitcom writer. It’d be like making a “racist” joke about Vulcans.
But it’s deeply ironic that, had the line substituted a minority that Americans are familiar with, where they actually know a real, live African American, say, the joke would have caused a firestorm of controversy. The principles of racial sensitivity apparently only extend to people who are identified as “one of us”. But isn’t that the basis of all racism? IOW, it doesn’t count if you’re only racially sensitive to people you somehow consider to be actually human.
What is does is reveal the larger U.S. media’s concerns regarding racial sensitivity to largely be a sham. It’s not about sensitivity–it’s about which minorities have a voice and which don’t. You can make fun of anyone, as long as they (or their advocates) can’t speak up.
What, you think the US media isn’t hugely racist? How familiar are you with the US media?
Now, it seems plausible to me that this line didn’t get as much attention as a line about an African American woman would have gotten, for two reasons:
- Generally speaking, protest against media assholery is loudest from the objects of the assholery. This is not anything surprising.
- A great mass of Americans are literally unfamiliar with aboriginal Australians and might have had no idea at all what the line meant.
I find it baffling that, first, anyone would find this show worthy of exporting and second that anyone on the other end would find it worthy of importing.
I don’t see anything there that disagrees with my point. “We only care about being sensitive to those who can talk back” is exactly what I’m talking about.
As for people not getting the joke, it hinges on the cliche of “She has a great personality” being a euphemism for “She’s incredibly ugly”. This is not a difficult joke to parse. Anyone paying attention can figure out “She’s half [racial group] but has a great personality” has a clear implication that should be a mystery to no one. You don’t need to be familiar with [racial group] to comprehend the sentence and the intended humour.
As someone who has watch maybe two episodes if you add up the times I’ve stopped to watch it, I’m willing to bet they have made much worse jokes towards African Americans. If the show has been on in Australia for a while I find it amazing that it took this long for them to realize the show has jokes in bad taste. Every single joke in every episode. And even worse, unfunny jokes in bad taste. Or maybe it didn’t matter when the butt of the jokes were stereotypical Eastern Europeans or Asians or women or Latinos or…
Have you even seen the clip that you made this thread for?
The character is Asian American.
I’m willing to bet they haven’t. If they had they would have been pulled off the air within two days after Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson made a huge media uproar about it.
“Libertarian” has many meanings and connotations, but “liberal minded” is not really one of them, and if that’s not what you meant, you might wanna 'splain.
It’s a pointlessly race-bating comment, IMHO, especially in an era of TV so determined to be race-blind that a racially-matched couple is something of a rarity.
I’m not sure where you got that idea. The show has always been criticized for being racist and it’s still on the air. In 2012, a Q&A between the show’s cast and crew and TV critics got very heated on the subject, but it remains on the air.
Just loving all the references to “Australian blackface shows”, as though they’re commonly seen over here and we’re all ok with them. In actual fact, the blackface skit was performed by members of the public during a variety show’s “talent” segment (the joke being every act got cut off by the gong), representing at most a couple of minutes of airtime on a one-off appearance on a segment that featured weekly in a show that ran for nearly thirty years. The producers made an appalling decision when they decided to allow it on the show, but it’s not like “Australian blackface shows” are a thing.
The person who brought up blackface was the OP, your countryman. I agree it was an odd tangent that detracts from a legitimate complaint about a disgusting joke. He could have just lectured the show creators; no need to suggest that people were out of line to complain about the blackface incident.
Another article from the same time period where the creator defends making fun of minorities because he is gay.
2 Broke Girls creator Michael King says he is entitled to make fun of minorities because he is gay | Daily Mail Online
Basically it is a show based on raunchy humor filled with racial stereotypes which caused no controversy in Australia until there was one throw away line that focused on an Australian minority. It’s an awful unwatchable show but it seems like some are picking and choosing what to be offended about.
Eh, not really. I was just genuinely not paying enough attention. My bad. I’ll back out now.
Libertarian does have many meanings which is one of the reasons I used it. Im fairly relaxed about racist comments in drama and comedy. As long as the comments are not outright offensive then im not going to try and censor people. I realise what I find inoffensive others may find offensive. I don’t have a great way of squaring this circle other than where possible to give the benefit of the doubt to free artistic speech. Im rather tired of tv and movies with overly strict censorship. We have fallen into our very own Hays Code.