Bwhaaaaa? Now I’m so confused I scarcely remember what the issue is. So, what do you, as an Australian, suppose the idiot character who made the idiotic joke is refering to? What *is *the sterotype of Aborigines? This American did not come to the conclusion of “ugly” but I’ve been told otherwise, so, what are we supposed to think the speaker of the line was getting at?
“They” : the audience of this program.
“It” : “aboriginal.”
Not so much. It would be unlikely for most members of the American TV audience to be in a position to do direct harm to Australian aboriginal people, though presumably for a well-distributed show a few viewers would eventually go there, or meet Australians here.
It’s a nasty little speck of hate to put out there in any case.
That would be nice. But again, I think the presentation of negative stereotypes can be worse when the recipient doesn’t have any other knowledge to go on.
Maybe, but lack of attractiveness isn’t what gets tossed around when playing with stereotypes. Lazy, uneducated, alcoholic wife-beaters are what they get targeted with most often.
I’m trying to see your point but I can’t see how one can internalize a stereotype of something they have no knowldege of to begin with.
Scenario 1: Stupid American (wish I knew how to do the trademark symbol) hears joke refering to Aborigine but has no clue who or what that is so pretty much disregards it and waits for the next childish joke.
Scenario 2: American who has a modicum of familiarty to the word gets that the stupid character is being a racist douche (as is his wont) and chalks it up to another in the long line of sophomoric jokes that are the basis of this show,
Well, don’t use me as a representative of typical American attitudes. I think the intensity of present hatred of blackface is rooted in confusion and stupidity.
And I do watch Two Broke Girls, sometimes, because the leads are cute, and because I want Garrett Morris to have work. But it is pretty dire sometimes.
Let me break it down:
“She has a great personality” -> she’s ugly
-> “She’s [of racial group X] but she has a great personality” -> [racial group X] are ugly due to their racial characteristics
This chain works as long as you’re aware of the implication of “She has a great personality”, which most Americans do.
But really, [racial group X] could be any native population. “She’s half pygmy… but she has a great personality!”
The intent from a U.S. standpoint with no special knowledge of Australian races is almost certainly, “Haha, non-European native peoples are funny looking”. It’s kind of an 18th century attitude for a 21st century sitcom.
I disagree. As I mentioned, I have (very little) knowledge of the Aborigne and based on that, I would have assumed the comment was refering to a possible backwardness, poverty or general not moderness. What makes you keep insisting that this is the American mindset?
Also, didn’t you just say ugliness is not the typical stereotype of the Aborigine people?
Ahh, OK, I’m with you on that.
I don’t agree at all.
While it is often used in that manner, it is also used to offset any number of other characteristics: being fat, dumb, illiterate, lazy, shy, unable to speak English etc. Ugly may be the default in US television because US TV is so damn shallow, but the term doesn’t imply ugly all by itself. That is certainly not an “established” meaning.
My point: it’s not trading on a local Australian stereotype. Why would it? It’s an American show made by Americans for an American audience. Why include a joke requiring knowledge of a people or culture from half-way 'round the world?
No, it trades on the shared understanding that “She has a great personality” implies ugliness.
I keep insisting that “She’s got a great personality” means the person is ugly because that’s what it means.
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/sex-and-the-fat-girl-shes-got-a-great-personality
*Thank you *(backhanded compliment aside;) )
Now who’s the perpetrator of stereotypes, huh?
While I agree that it’s an 18th century attitude, I don’t agree that it implies ugliness, just freakishness. I think it’s probably stupidity akin to saying “She’s a headhunter but has a great personality”. The implication is that she wears a loincloth and a bone through her nose or something along those lines.
The show is badly written crap, and the joke is poorly thought out and poorly delivered so it’s hard to work out what the writers meant, if anything. I suspect, for no particular reason, that the joke may have started out with a girl from the Congo who was Pygmy, but the writers thought that was too offensive to Blacks, so they changed it to what was, in their tiny minds, another “weird” race. They just wanted a cheap laugh because someone was so “desperate” that they would date a woman from some “strange” cultural group. After ruling out the obvious groups like Eskimos and Pygmies as being too insensitive, they settled on Aborigine because it creates a perception of cultural strangeness and undesirability in the minds of the ignorant freaks who watch this crap.
That doesn’t make the joke any less offensive, quite the opposite. But I don’t think there’s any good reason to assume it was meant to imply ugliness. As already noted, nobody in the US is going to associate Aboriginal with ugly or anything else much. The US perception of Aboriginals is of the Aborigines seen in “Crocodile Dundee” or “Priscilla”: culturally odd rather than ugly. i think that’s the “joke” the writers were likely going for: the girl is a primitive hunter-gatherer, not that she is ugly.
Still offensive shit, but shit with a whole different strain of blowflies.
I am condemning US TV writers, not USians. It’s not a stereotype that most US sitcoms are shallow garbage, it’s a statement of fact. 
Have you actually watched “2 Broke Girls”, “2 1/2 Men”, “Family Guy”, “Big bang Theory” etc.
These are not shows that explore complex philosophical and social issues.
Actually, Blake, I agree 100%. I almost referenced bones through noses myself, and I think your assessment is almost certainly correct.
You are severely underestimating the power of Kat Dennings’s charisma over men. This is the kind of response she gets:
Haha, no. Because, “not being attractive to a South Korean immigrant,” is not really even much of an insult, and it certainly isn’t a violation of anyone’s civil rights. Sharpton and Jackson aren’t programmers, they aren’t TV critics, and the sexual tastes of television characters are not their concern.
Han is a parody of a South Korean: Kind of devout Christian, physically stunted to the point of being childlike, and super-nerdy. And yes, he gets the worst of it.
But Oleg is terrible, Sophie is nuts, Max constantly talks herself down, and even Earl (the old black guy) is a wee bit of a stoner. They’re all really broad characters, and that’s OK.
I think the treatment of Han is the most offensive, generally. But the idea that a Korean (or Japanese, or Chinese) would say that about an aboriginal Aussie? Not only not their own nationality, but a “black” race? For someone from any of those countries, that’s either wildly progressive or pathetically desperate. It’s a freakin’ *compliment *compared to how northeast Asians generally view “black” races. So it works as part of the show’s continued humiliation of Han as pathetic and desperate.
Just for, you know, context.
:cough: I am a redhead. And I understand that while some people find red hair to be the most attractive possible coloring, other people find us hideous and subhuman. Because beauty is *in the eye of the beholder, *and that’s OK.
That’s why jokes like this don’t warrant this level of snit. The unattractiveness of a given phenotype is subjective.
That’s precisely the point being made.
:eek:
So the context is that the show has a main character who is virulently racist and views Black people as subhuman. A character who is never, as far as I know, mocked or criticised for such a virulently racist attitude.
And the humor derived from this is that he is so desperate that he would “even” date a subhuman?
And the fact that he has been “forced” to date a Black person is meant to be seen by the viewers as a humiliation of him?
Is this supposed to make the make the show, the writers, the viewers and the joke less racist and offensive?
No, the context is that *in real life, *people from northeastern Asia are typically really racist toward blacks. Not in a, “conquer your country and forbid you from living there,” way, but in a, “I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one,” way. Try to keep up.
Han, on the other hand, has been mocked so mercilessly for years by the giants who work for him that he really doesn’t care anymore. And maybe never did. He’s tiny, awkward, and a social misfit, but he seems to be a nice Christian boy under it all, and he’s not been shown to be a racist in any other ways.
Seeing the clip, the character is plainly Chinese, not white.
Do Americans only see white and black, err I mean “African American”?