Starting this the idea was to do two or three stories for a week and two fall right in my lap right out of the gate, do not know if this for things to come or if it is just a busy time for idiocy, but here we go.
Yale Calls Out Samurai Jack
You know when I think of experts in animation Yale comes to mind just like laundry detergent in an open bar. Imagine my surprise when the Yale herald, who also claims to be the school’s most daring publication since 1986 has a bone to pick with the new cartoon. If you want to read the full piece about them you can do so in the link below, so you can get the full context in case of the future quotes.
http://yaleherald.com/reviews/tv-samurai-jack/
Normally reviews do not bother me as they just are someone’s Opinion. However spending just a cup of coffee’s worth of time in art school has made me respect those who can do it. There is really one paragraph that stuck in my craw enough, and it showed something of a problem a lot of stories I have been seeing recently also have so this one kinda picked it.as the figurehead this week for all the problems.
In defense they do go over the detail and style that was put in to this work exclaiming how each frame could be in the MoMA. Well, here is the problem though that stuck in my craw.
“… Jack’s first villain, Scaramouche, with his flamboyant dress and mannerisms which include ending every sentence with “babe,” reads as somewhat tone deaf and homophobic. The portrayal of samurai seems to be rooted in a Wikipedia level understanding of the historical figure and feels appropriative at times. While this season introduces the strong, nuanced female character of Ashi, women’s bodies are often depicted as hyper-sexual, a fact made uncomfortably clear by the daughters of the Scotsman in the latest episode. The show has wandered into this territory before, most notably with the character of “Da Samurai” in the fourth season, who was nothing more than a racist caricature.”
Now, seems like they have some pretty simple gripes, but let us do something that most of these reviewers don’t and put all this in perspective starting with the first villain being somewhat tonedeaf. Unfortunately one cannot be homophobic because he ends every sentence with “babe”. The word babe is not homophobic, and this kind of shows the problem. We have here a character whose actions which is often one of the bigger pieces of character building not being a problem or even a tirade or even a constant direct issue. It is a single word that could very well be an illumination to something else in his context, but according to the great minds at Yale the word babe is homophobic. Just in case I am wrong let me go check something.
Definition of homophobia
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: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
Okay, now let us check the word babe, from Merriam-Webster babe is defined like this.
Definition of babe
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1a: infant, baby bslang: girl, woman cslang: a person and especially a young woman who is sexually attractive
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2: a naive inexperienced person —used especially in the phrase babe in the woods
I am not an Ivy League educated professor here, but I do not see anything about the homophobic issue here. I see that also the villain in question could be calling people babe as a jab at his own perceived superiority. You know that would be something a villain might do. I leave you to figure this conundrum out with the evidence of reality before you. Next point, the portrayal seems appropriative with a Wikipedia level of understanding, and yet these people couldn’t look up the word “babe”. Anyway, the supposed appropriation and Wikipedia-level knowledge of samurai could also be to the fact of character growth considering someone spent 50 years having their spirit and will to fight ground to fine powder, but that couldn’t be it because that would make sense.
Women’s bodies being hyper sexual is the next point, now, I have seen this animator’s work through the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and this. he is known for a very strong style that leans away from natural form to go to a streamlined design with more simple curves and edges, and I am sure it is at least less of a pain in some cases to animate. To see if this is true I have gone through all of season 5 which is worth a watch to see if this is the case picking out every major female character I could find. The only one I did not get was the various rave dancers in a single episode because A. they had about a couple minutes of airtime for a song and B. they were at a rave and it didn’t look out of place because you know characters like those extras have to fit into their surroundings during things like this. I got a bunch of pics at the top so let’s take a look.
I see pretty, I see strong, I see mothers, I see cult members, I see young, old, and families, but nothing hyper sexy seems to pop out of this lineup. This all makes me wonder if this comment about them being hyper sexual just shows that they have some serious kinks and are projecting it. Different strokes for different folks, but if you think all this is hyper sexy then there is this thing called hentai and you can enjoy it to your little heart’s content Yale students. I will not judge you for that.
Overall, despite this review not having a grasp of the English language, the style of the person, the storytelling elements, and even of their own sexuality. This review states at the end this nugget of idiocy.
“… Samurai Jack is thus flawed in the many ways that most mass entertainment is flawed, and thus deserves the same critical eye. With this in mind, whether the show is still worth experiencing should be left to the discretion of the individual viewer.”
This view that an entire world of an art or a version of entertainment is flawed just does not hold water. If you want an example you can look the animator’s previous works stated above or search him on IMDB for more. Tartakovsky has worked hard of his career to do a lot of different things and claiming that they all as they are all part of “Mass Entertainment” is insult at best and sheer stupidity at worse. Being critical is fine and dandy but beware when you do not know what you’re doing because some asshole could come out of the woodwork and make you look like gibbering lemurs. Each work of art has in itself a set of problems and responses to issues it may come up with. Putting your nose up saying how it is all the same marks you as absolutely clueless to many facets of storytelling, design, and character these people face. In short to the tribune, you are a complete bunch of idiots, and for such a prestigious place of knowledge, the dictionary seems to escape you. All those resources and you would think they would get pretty early in the life of the school. Do not worry Yale because if anyone reads this, and you really want to get back at me you can always check my grammar because it’s atrocious.
Nordstrom Sells Faux Muddy Jeans
For those that now me I am not a fashion diva. I wear black t-shirts and either Jeans or shorts because they work. Seeing the previous trend of worn jeans going in designer shops at high prices was pretty stupid. The businessman in me was smiling about the whole thing while the rest of me was wondering how far we as a species has fallen.
Ladies and gents, this is not a test we now have major brands selling pants that are made to look dirty. We have gone full circle straight into pure lunacy. What happened to just wearing jeans that worked for you and you stressing them or dirtying them yourselves. Also, side point when it comes to girls jeans why don’t you just put pockets instead of things that look like pockets because women deserve the space to put things away just as much as men. Seriously I had to help my girlfriend find clothes and the jeans had no pockets they had these fake ones that made no sense.
Let me make a deal, do you want something like this, well here we can stain them to your wish. We can stain them with mud, oil, even paint splatter, all you need to do is send your jeans to us, and with a fee of $750 we can stain it and send it back to you. You get custom stained jeans, and I get some money because we all know I can do better with it.
I can go on stating how even the creation of a market for stuff like this is mind boggling, or how people who cash in and need stuff like this are trying to look like they work, so maybe they don’t work so hard. Fashion wise it looks like crap, and how that in fashion looking bad is the goal makes me wonder if people just completed the circular logic of being ahead of everything straight to bad decision making. This could fill pages, but you could get the scene of how stupid this is by running full steam into a cement partition.
Oxford Cries Racist Over Avoiding Eye Contact
Well, it seems colleges just are having a crap week earning two of my three spots this week, but is it really that bad?
Yes, yes it is. According to the school avoiding eye contact is part of a list that makes up a group of Racist micro-aggressions. I had a good bit of chat about this with different people to kind of bring my opinion to completion. It will also anger some people, deal with it. Recently, Oxford University had sent out their newsletter, and they have already released an apology about this, but I still want to bring it because of a couple factors. Unlike many news outlets, that would just give you snippets here is also the address to the newsletter in question where you can read it with your own eyes. We will be going over the article “Everyday Racism“. Read it if you want and come back because a lot of people will want to be outraged for nothing and will look like a pinhead doing so.
Good, back? Going from the title one can probably guess which part sticks in my craw. For those who can’t guess or are speed reading the taking of avoiding eye contact as a racist action in this format is just to me the greatest idea of trying to join the crowd and here is the problem with it.
For some people, though there is something, I will need to put here first.
Definition of racism
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1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
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2a: a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles b: a political or social system founded on racism
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3: racial prejudice or discrimination
A reason that we have this here is that people like to throw around the word nowadays without actual thinking if it is true or not. What presents as a problem in this article is a couple things. One is that it does not take into any value the context of the people around the world from their cultures or their upbringing or their education. These things do not gravitate around race as a major factor and in fact, really many of these facets do not care about race. Another thing is the little thing up top that says a belief because we will get to that. Just in case people try to jump the punch to get all hot and bothered over my words let me add some gas to the fire.
Definition of prejudice
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1: injury or damage resulting from some judgment or action of another in disregard of one’s rights; especially:detriment to one’s legal rights or claims
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2a(1): preconceived judgment or opinion (2): an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge b: an instance of such judgment or opinion c: an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics
Racism is based on opinions, it is based on judgments and while their article states that it can be a racist action what it does not state is how everything can be a racist action. The problem is right now there is a climate of people branding others as racists and discriminatory without even thinking about if it is true or not. Groups get together to call foul when in many cases there is no foul, creating an environment where the law of diminishing returns comes into play. For those who do not know that it is below just for you.
This means that while everyone calls everyone else and everything racist we will not get the change we need to on the things that are actually PROVEN to be racially destructive.
We need to know the opinion of the person committing the action if it is a new one not steeped in offense or based in serious numbers to even call it such a thing. Without such things might I add that another problem is that even with the lesser returns on it there are so many things being deemed it nowadays that really no one will be able to work on them all so you make it where people have to pick their battles making the return even less. Stating an action without any evidence to back it or learning about it from people is a bad idea and these schools that do these things to promote an image of togetherness show themselves as people acting a part when really they need to truly pick up the role.
I get no small amount of mirth as the school has already apologized because a group of people representing students with social anxiety and learning disorders claims that it was hurtful to their students. A group of people trying not to be racist just so happened to piss on another group of people.
This post is not to claim how racism does not exist. It does. All forms of discrimination exist, but we need to open conversation before even knowing if something is discrimination because we need to form an opinion or learn it. On top of that it must be something that has to be discrimination and not anything else otherwise you will make yourself out to be that which you hate.
Now, this leaves with this. This article should not have existed. It does no good, and it just left the school with egg on their face specifically for their band of pinheads pushing supposed micro-aggressions over actual problems over there at the school while sporting how they have an equality and diversity group.
If you still think this is racist because you need to bring evidence how this is racist than I can only really mirror the sentiment of Adam Cole in this video. He is in the red trunks.
I think you should click here for it.
So tell me what you think, that was opinion time. If you liked it the best things you can do is share it with others. Hate it or love it if we can maybe start some conversations that are constructive than maybe we wont be living in a fire pit in a century, one can always hope.
This post first appeared on One Guy In Portland | The Misadventures Of An Unhipster Character, please read the originial post: here
