Author Topic: Media decolonization  (Read 3549 times)

acc9

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Media decolonization
« on: March 01, 2021, 09:51:58 pm »
The following Ganten water commercials are revealing of the lack of self-confidence in the Chinese when promoting their products - adopting what they call the 'aristocratic' quality of their brand by highlighting the 'Western touch'. Still a long way to go in their psychological decolonization!



« Last Edit: February 02, 2022, 05:06:22 am by 90sRetroFan »

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90sRetroFan

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Re: Re: Psychological decolonization
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2021, 12:02:02 am »
These are the literally most cringe-inducing commercials I have seen in my life; the level of Eurocentrism is off the charts! I found one more:



There are also fans doing screencap/collage galleries:

https://www.po369.com/tupian/%E7%99%BE%E5%B2%81%E5%B1%B1%E5%B9%BF%E5%91%8A%E5%A5%B3%E4%B8%BB%E8%A7%92.html



When I try to explain to people how bad the Eurocentrism is among most "non-whites", most people think I am exaggerating. These commercials show that if anything I have been still understating it!

BOYCOTT GANTEN!

Contrast with the anti-colonialist themes in Counterculture-era commercials such as the following:



I miss the 90s.....
« Last Edit: March 02, 2021, 10:11:49 pm by 90sRetroFan »

Prite

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Re: Re: Psychological decolonization
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2021, 12:35:35 am »
How about these Japanese MVs? The musics are used for an anime named "Violet Evergarden".




90sRetroFan

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Re: Re: Psychological decolonization
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2021, 11:45:29 pm »
This may well reflect what many "non-white" Eurocentrist parents subconsciously hope will happen ("non-white" children will grow up into "white" adults!) when they violently force their offspring to spend thousands and thousands of hours of their childhood practicing Western classical music. If this were satire on the part of the MV designers, it would actually be good. But I don't think it is, and that is what makes it terrifying.....

Again, it wasn't like this during the Counterculture era; back then Western classical music and Western decor in general were associated with villains (1:35-2:10):


« Last Edit: March 03, 2021, 11:47:42 pm by 90sRetroFan »

rp

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Re: Re: Psychological decolonization
« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2021, 11:49:50 pm »
"spend thousands and thousands of hours of their childhood practicing Western classical music."
Amy Chua (Gentile) is a good example of this.

90sRetroFan

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Media decolonization
« Reply #5 on: March 08, 2021, 09:34:08 pm »
OLD CONTENT

I have noticed a resurgence of ZC media in the post 9/11 era, such as the show “South Park” created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (Jew) which deliberately promotes ethnic stereotypes. This has been popular among teenagers who view it as “rebellious”, hence the popular meme among rightists that they are “red-pilling” Generation Z. Contrast this with 90s entertainment, which reflected a much more non Westernized climate.

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90sRetroFan, what are your thoughts on people playing videogames together and their intrinsic value to social interactions? With online multiplayer each person has a different experience and initiates a potential for Aryanist conversation. Surely decolonization of trolls and griefers can be appropeiately discussed. I say this from experience; nearly all gamers embrace the social norms of the West and it's a problem that must be dealt with.

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What social norms do you mean?

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I'd guess he means the usual. Modern gamer culture has a reputation for harboring sexist, homophobic, and even racist sentiments. One burning example would be the Gamergate Controversy.

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We should look at different subcultures and figure out why some have managed to avoid degrading as you describe. For example, the subculture I am closest to (though I left after the graphics started becoming 3D) is the fighting game community (FGC), where bigotry has never been an issue:





The only attributes that earn respect within the FGC are: 1) skill in playing the games themselves; 2) contribution to community events. We should try to figure out why other gamer subcultures have failed to replicate this kind of folkish attitude. If I had to take a first guess, the FGC has a rather high threshold of minimum skill required to even join in a serious capacity, which might have an effect of on one hand filtering out the rabble and on the other hand inculcating mutual respect between those who have reached that grade of skill (regardless of background). This may not be the case with other genres where in-game performance can be enhanced by levelling, purchasing powerups, etc., and where PvP action is not primarily based on one-on-one duelling.

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forward.com/fast-forward/433338/p-is-for-palestine-library-new-jersey/

Quote
Jewish groups have issued a legal threat against a public library in New Jersey if librarians proceed with a public reading of a book called “P is for Palestine,” the Bridgewater Courier News reported Monday.

The two groups - the Central Jersey Jewish Public Affairs Committee and the Zachor Legal Institute, a legal group that fights the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel - sent a letter to the Highland Park Library threatening to file formal complaints with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education should they hold the event on 2:00 p.m. on Sunday as scheduled. The groups claim sponsoring the book reading would be anti-Semitic and thus violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The book, which teaches children the alphabet while using concepts from Palestinian history and culture, attracted controversy soon after it was published in 2017 because its entry for the 9th letter was “I is for Intifada. Intifada is Arabic for rising up/For what is right, if you are a kid or grownup!”

“Intifada,” the Arabic word for “tremor” or “shaking off,” was used to refer to Palestinian uprisings in the 1980s and 2000s, which included violent terrorist attacks as well as nonviolent protests. More than 1,000 Israelis and 5,000 Palestinians combined were killed in the two intifadas.
...
Jewish groups are also expected to protest outside the library should the reading commence, though attendance is expected to be depressed because that falls a few hours before the start of the holiday of Shemini Atzeret.

A New York bookstore that hosted a reading of “P is for Palestine” in 2017 was protested by the far-right Jewish Defense League.

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China bans "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood": www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-cancels-release-tarantinos-once-a-time-hollywood-1248652

The film is a typical ZC wet dream that shows Brad Pitt, the archetypal Westerner with a mesomorphic build subduing Bruce Lee's character with ease due to his ectomorphic build and smaller stature, despite the obvious disparity in combat skill.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/bruce-lee-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-quentin-tarantino-mike-moh-kareem-abdul-jabbar-a9063721.html

Quote
Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, argued last month her father, rather than being arrogant on sets, would have had to work far harder than Booth as an Asian-American in the late 1960s.

She described her experience watching Tarantino's film as “uncomfortable” as she had to listen to people “laugh at my father”.

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Regarding Bruce Lee, I have lost count of the number of times I have had to remind people that he was American. A genuinely American nationalist US would try to take credit for Lee's achievements (indisputably among the most influential of the Counterculture era) as American achievements. But I have rarely seen such attempts. Instead, I more often see both his fans and his detractors speak of him as if he represents anything but America!

Lee himself went to considerable lengths to emphasize his Americanness, but was rejected:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_(TV_series)#Bruce_Lee's_involvement

Quote
In her memoirs, Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, asserts that Lee created the concept for the series, which was then stolen by Warner Bros. There is circumstantial evidence for this in a December 8, 1971, television interview that Bruce Lee gave on The Pierre Berton Show. In the interview, Lee stated that he had developed a concept for a television series called The Warrior, meant to star himself, about a martial artist in the American Old West (the same concept as Kung Fu, which aired the following year), but that he was having trouble pitching it to Warner Brothers and Paramount.

Even in his own movie The Way of the Dragon, Lee made a point of portraying Chuck Norris' character (an American mercenary) as more honourable than the Italian villains:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_the_Dragon

Quote
In a decisive ten-minute battle, Tang disables Colt. When Colt refuses an opportunity for mercy, Tang kills him with reluctance. Tang then places Colt's gi and black belt atop his dead body as a gesture of respect

And this Tarantino scene is the thanks Lee gets for loyalty to his country.....

"Brad Pitt, the archetypal Westerner"

Pitt literally played Achilles in Troy. No, this is not a coincidence.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2021, 09:42:54 pm »
OLD CONTENT contd.

people.com/books/dr-seuss-books-racist-problematic/

Quote
“Findings from this study promote awareness of the racist narratives and images in Dr. Seuss’ children’s books and implications to the formation and reinforcement of racial biases in children.”

The study continues by explaining that some of the most iconic characters relay the troubling messages of Orientalism (the representation of Asia and Asian people based on colonialist stereotypes), anti-blackness and white supremacy.

“Notably, every character of color is male. Males of color are only presented in subservient, exotified, or dehumanized roles,” the authors write as part of their findings. “This also remains true in their relation to White characters. Most startling is the complete invisibility and absence of women and girls of color across Seuss’ entire children’s book collection.”
...
Theodor Seuss Geisel, whose pen name is Dr. Seuss, published his first children’s book in 1937, and his works are filled with problematic portrayals that coincide with the culture of pre-Civil-Rights-Movement America. For instance, in If I Ran the Zoo a white male is carried by three Asian characters as he holds a gun. The caption beneath the Asian males describes them as “helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant” from “countries no one can spell,” according to the study. The only two characters identified as African appear in Horton Hears a Who!. Sporting grass skirts and wearing no shoes, “they are placed in a subservient role, carrying an animal to a White male child’s zoo,” Ishizuka and Stephens explain.
...
In September 2017, Cambridgeport Elementary School’s librarian, Liz Phipps Soeiro, made a political statement that quickly went viral when she turned down a shipment of Dr. Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump.

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At least people are pointing it out:

www.yahoo.com/entertainment/disney-criticised-after-minor-white-aladdin-character-gets-a-spinoff-064607422.html

Quote
Disney have been roundly criticised after it was revealed that they’re developing a Disney + spin-off for a minor white character from Aladdin in the same week that its leading star Mena Massoud announced he couldn’t even get an audition for another movie.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that the studio were working on a show for Billy Magnussen’s Prince Anders, who only had a handful of scenes in the billion dollar grossing live-action remake.

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I have seen rightists brag about how "whites" and jews are more creative/innovative, hence why most inventors are "whites" or Jews. They often cite this as a rebuttal to the success of "non whites", whom they characterize as mere "worker drones".

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This claim takes for granted the progressive position (unfortunately shared by False Leftists) that invention is always good:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/leftists-against-progressivism/

This progressive position is what as True Leftists we are here to challenge:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/truth-knowledge/

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/western-civilization-is-a-health-hazard/

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/if-western-civilization-does-not-die-soon/

We must as far as possible avoid the False Left/neocon approach of trying to encourage "non-whites" to be machine inventors, as this will just enlarge the problem. Instead, the quickest way to discredit the "worker drone" stereotype is to point to Counterculture era "non-white" artistic contributions. I first noticed this as a video game fan. Western releases were constantly trying to be cutting-edge in graphics, sound, interface, etc. but the games themselves sucked:



compared to non-Western releases with 'outdated' presentation and technical features but infinitely more engrossing story, characters, mechanics, etc.:



The same is true of movies, TV dramas, etc. also. Unfortunately, the relatively limited exposure of non-Western movies and especially TV dramas among Western audiences during the Counterculture era has largely obscured this from mainstream awareness. This is something else we should aim to change by introducing more people to Counterculture era works from non-Western countries.

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The Witcher series, Halo, Assassin's Creed, the Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy, Uncharted, God of War, Bioshock, Borderlands, Fallout New Vegas, Alan Wake, Dragon Age Origins, Far Cry 3, Gears of War, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Metro, and the Prince of Persia Trilogy would like to know your location.

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"The Witcher series, Halo, Assassin's Creed, the Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy, Uncharted, God of War, Bioshock, Borderlands, Fallout New Vegas, Alan Wake, Dragon Age Origins, Far Cry 3, Gears of War, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Metro,"

All these are post-Counterculture-era franchises. After the Counterculture era ended, even non-Western video game developers shifted towards 3D (ie. became Westernized). This was why I totally lost interest in new games by the mid-2000s.

"Prince of Persia Trilogy"

I am happy to discuss Prince of Persia, however, as it is actually an example of what I was talking about:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)

Quote
Mechner used an animation technique called rotoscoping, with which he used footage to animate the characters' sprites and movements. To create the protagonist's platforming motions, Mechner traced video footage of his younger brother running and jumping in white clothes.[9] To create the game's sword fighting sprites, Mechner rotoscoped the final duel scene between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood.[8] Though the use of rotoscoping was regarded as a pioneering move, Mechner later recalled that "when we made that decision with Prince of Persia, I wasn't thinking about being cutting edge—we did it essentially because I'm not that good at drawing or animation, and it was the only way I could think of to get lifelike movement."[10]

This reinforces the thesis of my previous post. Even in 2D, Westerners were always trying to make sprite animation imitate realistic motion as closely as possible:



The excessive realism made controlling the character just plain irritating due to the lag between input and response. For example, when you press jump, the Prince doesn't jump right away, instead he begins his Realistic Jump Animation Sequence which consists of coiling up and then jumping and then uncoiling, during which you may have already changed your mind about what you want him to do but have to wait for him to finish the whole move before you can tell him to do something else. Therefore the whole game experience is of trying to send delayed instructions to the Prince, rather than ever being able to feel that you are the Prince.

Compare with non-Western sprite animation which thoroughly disregards realism:



yet result in far more player-friendly control (you instantly feel like you have become Mario) and hence ultimately far more captivating games.

For the record:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Mechner

Quote
Mechner was born in New York City, into a family of European Jewish immigrants.

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“ After the Counterculture era ended, even non-Western video game developers shifted towards 3D (ie. became Westernized). This was why I totally lost interest in new games by the mid-2000s.”

Yes. I remember growing up in the mid 2000s, I was never interested in the video games released during that era. They seemed very dark and gritty and weren’t to my liking (probably a reflection of the times more than anything). I specifically remember playing Metroid Prime on the GameCube at a toy store and hating it. I spent most of my time playing games from the 90s my dad had purchased earlier. There was something about those games that appealed to me, almost like they were the supreme antithesis to the mood of the 00s games. It was almost like playing those games transported me to an earlier era (the 90s) that I felt I belonged to, and resonated with, even though I myself was born in the 21st century.

Just compare the aesthetic design of the GameCube console, to say, the SNES FFS!

This to say nothing of the games themselves:

Super Metroid (SNES):


Metroid Prime (GameCube):


Unsurprisingly, by the late 2000s I had completely lost interest in new releases altogether, which by no coincidence was due in part to the heavy influence of Zionist war propaganda present in the games. I would thereafter spend my life looking to rekindle that spirit that I felt as a child...

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"Metroid Prime"

Ah, yes. While everyone else was focused on the Prime series, I ignored it completely and only played Fusion and Zero Mission. Did you play these two?

---

No, since I’ve never owned a Gameboy Advance.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2021, 09:52:35 pm by 90sRetroFan »

90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2021, 09:52:08 pm »
OLD CONTENT contd.

www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/opinion/opera-racism-puccini.html

Quote
This fall, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto gave a botched face-lift to “Turandot,” a Puccini opera about a barbaric Chinese princess in “ancient Peking” who executes her suitors.

To try to mask the racism of the opera, the director changed the names of Ping, Pang and Pong, three of the main characters, to Jim, Bob and Bill, and swapped their Chinese costumes for black suits. My father, a Taiwanese-American tenor, performed the role of Pong (or I guess, Bill?) for the production’s 2019 run. But the characters continued to play into stereotypes of effeminate Asian men as they pranced around onstage, giggling at one another.

Alterations like these have become part of a broader trend as opera clumsily reckons with its racist and sexist past. But if it hopes to win favor with younger listeners like me, opera needs to realize that shallow changes can’t erase the problematic foundations of season fixtures like “Turandot,” “Madama Butterfly,” “The Magic Flute” and “Carmen.”

The Orientalist stereotyping in “Turandot,” for instance, seeps into the music itself. The only way to get rid of it would be to rewrite the opera entirely, a revision that would destroy the classical canon. So how do we bring opera into the 21st century? How do we preserve the beauty of Puccini’s music, the likes of which will never be composed again, while also recognizing that it taints how we perceive Chinese women like me?

What beauty? And why should it be preserved at all? This is why False Leftists will never be able to kill Western civilization: they aren't even trying to do so.

Quote
Some critics argue for retiring problematic operas from the stage. While newer operas written by people of color tell their stories responsibly, they aren’t going to replace the classics anytime soon.

Firstly, we do not necessarily need "newer" operas. There are plenty of non-Western classics available. The fact that the author presumes "the classics" to automatically mean "Western classics" is a problem in itself.

Quote
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive to diversify operas, both in composition and in casting. In fact, that’s ideal. But in the meantime, doing away with these works would destroy the art form, preventing us from reshaping otherwise beautiful compositions in powerful ways.
...
The music in “Turandot’’ is entrancing; there is no feeling comparable to the force of an operatic finale. My hope is that more people will feel comfortable in the opera houses of my childhood. If we can hold Puccini’s musical genius in tandem with the racism of his time, there may be hope.

Secondly, it is not beautiful or entrancing or incomporable or ingenious. All who think it is are useless to us. To criticize Western ethics while promoting Western aesthetics is like trying to suppress the symptoms of a disease while encouraging the disease itself. The unflattering stereotypes of "non-whites" that the author complains about are direct products of the very same Western aesthetic standards that she admires, standards which - when applied to view "non-whites" - cannot help but see them as crude caricatures, precisely because they can never fit organically within the Western aesthetic pantheon. The radical (and only thus truly meaningful) solution is to reject Western aesthetic standards altogether:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/western-civilization-is-ugly-48/

Quote
REPORT: 100 Years of Hollywood Islamophobia

A new report from the Pop Culture Collaborative details depictions of Muslims on screen—what the entertainment industry must do to uplift Muslim narratives that don’t damage the community.
www.colorlines.com/articles/report-100-years-hollywood-islamophobia

Quote
‘Death to the infidels!’ Why it’s time to fix Hollywood’s problem with Muslims

The US government wants the movie business to help counter Isis propaganda. But from shady sheikhs to detonator-happy terrorists, Hollywood’s pervasive Islamophobia is already a big part of the problem.
www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/08/death-to-infidels-time-to-fix-hollywoods-problem-muslims

Quote
Arabs in Post-9/11 Hollywood Films: a Move towards a More Realistic Depiction?

Classical Stereotypes of Arabs in Hollywood Films Prior to 9-11 Events

Edward Said has pointed out that the prejudiced values which western culture had assigned to the Orient have been advocated through a discourse that helped to justify them. Said believes that “The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be Oriental in all those ways considered common-place by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be–that is, submitted to being–made Oriental.” (Said, Orientalism 5-6) Said argues that the truth about the Orient has been constructed and does not necessarily reflect how the real Orient is. Said makes his concern very conspicuous: he is not interested in the way western culture perceives the cultural practices of the Orient, particularly Arabs, as much as in the representative structure that generates general statements about the Orient, which he describes as uncritical, distant and reductive. Moreover, Ibrahim Kalin argues that the present misgivings about Muslims are due to the set of negative connotations that have often been allocated to the religion of Islam. These notions consistently present Islam as being inherently anti-reason, fixed and traditional. Kalin also relates the existing
3 misconceptions about the cultural and religious beliefs of Arabs to the deep-rooted prejudices about Islam that emerged upon its fast expansion in the eight century (Kalin 166). Kalan explains that Europe’s reactionary attitudes towards the fast growth of Islam have been manifested in the relentless attempts to distort the image of Arabs and their religious doctrine.
docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=revisioning

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Responding to this post:

Quote
All these existed in pre-colonial storytelling all over the world. The difference was, they existed unnamed, and as such as pure artistic inspiration unique in each instance of arising, that other civilizations tacitly understood was not to be arrested by categorization lest it spoil the literary experience itself. Only Western civilization was spiritually coarse enough to explicitly name them all, and thus reduce them to dead "devices", as Duchesne so eloquently put it. Henceforth anyone acquainted with such terms can never again appreciate a story (let alone write one) as innocently as before learning of such terms (and as we all did before such terms existed), but is forced to perceive a network of butchered devices. To the artistically sensitive, Western dissection of literature is almost as violent as Western vivisection of animals, and is certainly motivated by the same utterly insensitive Western thinking. In each case Westerners thinks they are doing the world a favour, totally disregarding what the "favour" feels like to their victims.

This dissection is not only limited to literature. I have noticed that Western film (and video game) critics (mostly on YouTube), for example are extremely snobbish in their criticism and think that by nitpicking all the supposed "flaws"* in movies and games (esp. non-Western movies/games) they sound smart and are doing their audience a favor by polishing their tastes. What's more infuriating is that they will not concede such tastes are subjective, and will instead instead there is objective metric by which they can measure the quality of the media. What do you think?

*While from an idealistic perspective, expecting perfection is acceptable and thus would warrant pointing out flaws, Western critics perceive "flaws" based on Western standards such as whether a certain movie/game is "realistic" enough, which is of course not in line with our views.

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"nitpicking all the supposed "flaws"* in movies"

A peeve of mine is the semantic degradation of the term "plot hole".

During the Counterculture era, a plot hole meant an event that contradicted an earlier event inside the storyline. For example, if the hero had just finished putting his handgun into a drawer, then someone breaks into the hero's house and the hero picks up the handgun off the table to shoot the intruder, that is a plot hole, because the handgun should be in the drawer. So far so good.

These days, however, a so-called "plot hole" mostly means any character failing to choose the best possible strategy available in a given situation. For example, if someone breaks into the hero's house and the hero reflexively tries to pick up the handgun off the table only to then remember that it is in the drawer, that is a "plot hole" according to many present-day critics because the hero "should have remembered" where his handgun was.

Bonus video:



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90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2021, 10:33:43 pm »
Latest:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/my-mother-found-dr-seuss-book/618225/

Quote
In Our House, Dr. Seuss Was Contraband
...
My mother went to what I now realize were enormous lengths to shield us from negative images of Black people, a seemingly impossible task for someone raising children in 1970s and ’80s South Carolina. The intensity of her displeasure over a Dr. Seuss book being in her home—and not even one of the objectionable titles—speaks to how much labor her plan required.
...
In addition to banning Dr. Seuss and pork-related literature, my mother was very intentional about limiting our contact with white people. My three sisters and I were homeschooled during our elementary years. We lived in a Black neighborhood, attended a Black church, and were citizens of a country that once dreamed up an idea called “segregation,” so we didn’t have much contact with white people anyway. But my mother also altered the cover of children’s books or sometimes removed them completely if they had white faces. When she read bedtime stories, she’d substitute our names for those of the characters. She would even record cassette tapes, so that when she worked the night shift of her second job, we could still fall asleep to the sound of her reading. (Later, when I read the Encyclopedia Brown series myself, I thought, This sounds like a white version of Encyclopedia Mikey that my mom used to read!)

I knew that white people existed, of course. I had seen them at the Piggly Wiggly and on television. Arthur Fonzarelli seemed cool, when we caught him on TV, and Phillip Drummond was nice enough to invite Arnold and Willis Jackson into his home. At our house, though, no white dolls were allowed. We couldn’t watch reruns of The Jeffersons or Sanford and Son simply because they depicted white people’s versions of Black people. Our entertainment catalog was mostly limited to World Book Encyclopedia, four-days-a-week church services, Sesame Street, and all the “outside” we could handle.
...
A few years ago, I asked my mother why she put so much effort into concocting this Caucasian-free cocoon. She informed me that our childhood was part of an experiment she had envisioned before we were even born. “A Black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness,” she explained. Not a single day has passed since in which I have not thought about that sentence.
...
Most Black children are exposed to an infinitely wide variety of whiteness, but the available depictions of Black people have been, until recently, extremely limited. Such portrayals aren’t necessarily negative as much as they are dichotomous—sassy or subservient; poor or lucky; the criminal or the hero. These are mostly white people’s versions of Black people.

Black people’s entire existence is defined by these perceptions, while white people get to be everything. And because most Americans can’t unsee whiteness as a default, they don’t recognize that the hero of the story is nearly always white. Sometimes the villain is too. And so is the victim. And the victim’s lawyer. And the judge. And if you’re reading this and pointing out all the times when the hero or the judge in a TV show or a movie was Black, ask yourself this: Why did you notice?

90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2021, 11:25:02 pm »
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-dr-seuss-got-away-220025990.html'

Quote
Dr. Seuss' illustrations reveal just how ingrained anti-Asian racism is in America

One illustration shows an Asian man with bright yellow skin, slanted eyes, a pigtail and conical hat, holding chopsticks and a bowl of rice over the words “a Chinaman who eats with sticks.” Another depicts three Asian men in wooden sandals carrying a bamboo cage on their heads with a gun-wielding white boy perched on top, next to the rhyme, “I’ll hunt in the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant / With helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant.”

The drawings are from “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” two of the six Dr. Seuss books that the company in charge of the author’s works announced last week will no longer be published because of their racist imagery, some of which includes stereotypical portrayals of Asian people.

Though Seuss’ art has been around for decades — “Mulberry Street,” his first children’s book, was published more than 80 years ago — widespread criticism of his work is relatively recent. Karen Ishizuka, chief curator at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, said Dr. Seuss' books have been able to get away with this racism for so long in part because of the persistence of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. since the 1800s.
...
One of his most infamous political cartoons suggested that Japanese Americans were a threat to the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Titled “Waiting for the Signal From Home … ,” the cartoon depicts countless characters with the same slanted eyes and glasses — who are meant to be Japanese Americans — marching along the West Coast and waiting to pick up TNT from a store labeled “Honorable 5th Column.” The cartoon was published on Feb. 13, 1942 — just six days before President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of more than 110,000 individuals of Japanese descent.

Some of Dr. Seuss' other political cartoons during this time use the slur “Jap,” depict Japanese people as animals, and include captions that replace the letter R with the letter L to mock the way Japanese people speak.

Ishizuka is working on developing a new core exhibit for the museum that she hopes will bring greater attention to Dr. Seuss’ political cartoons by featuring original drawings from the library of the University of California, San Diego — including “Waiting for the Signal From Home ... ”

“It’s important to draw attention to the racist images in Dr. Seuss’ cartoons and children’s books because they’re almost insidious,” she said. “The harm they cause is more difficult to identify than when someone calls you a ‘Jap’ to your face. It’s harder to combat.”
...
In 2017, Ito’s children, Rockett and Zoe, who were 11 and 10 at the time, created and distributed flyers to their classrooms on Read Across America Day — which was founded by the National Education Association to coincide with Dr. Seuss’ birthday — to educate their peers about Dr. Seuss’ racist work.

“Ever since the kids started elementary school, my husband and I decided it was important that we taught them about the darker side of Dr. Seuss,” Ito said of her children, who are Chinese and Japanese American. “We did this every year around Read Across America Day, and one year the kids came up with the idea to create a flyer, unprompted.”

The kids came home that day telling their parents they got in trouble and had their flyers confiscated, and that evening Ito and her husband received an email from the school saying the flyers were inappropriate.

rp

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2021, 04:03:25 am »
Funny kids video criticizing colonialism:


I like that the actress was able to capture the haggard, ugly, look of Victoria. Speaking of which, why are the British "Royals" all so butt-ugly? ;D ;D

Contrast this with the mythical Queen of Camelot, Guinievere, whose exceptional beauty was nothing short of a goddess:


For examples of the vomit-inducing ugliness of the "Royals", see this thread:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/'royal'-family-hate-thread/msg4814/#msg4814
« Last Edit: March 14, 2021, 04:18:06 am by rp »

90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2021, 11:45:45 pm »
"Contrast this with the mythical Queen of Camelot, Guinievere, whose exceptional beauty was nothing short of a goddess:"

I think the whole point of the story is that Arthur falling for Guinevere (who later betrayed him) was a mistake (which ended up causing the fall of Camelot). So if we praise Guinevere's beauty, we would in effect be encouraging the mistake to be repeated! Nimue, in contrast, was the one truly trying her best to help Arthur all the way through (but Arthur was too stupid to appreciate it):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_the_Lake

Quote
the Lady of the Lake traps Merlin in a tomb, which results in his death. She does this out of cruelty and a hatred of Merlin.[27] In Le Morte d'Arthur, on the other hand, Nimue is still the one to trap Merlin, but Malory gives her a sympathetic reason: Merlin falls in love with her and will not leave her alone; Malory gives no indication that Nimue loves him back. Eventually, since she cannot get rid of him otherwise, she decides to trap him under rock and makes sure he cannot escape. She is tired of his sexual advances, and afraid of his power as "a devil's son", so she does not have much of a choice but to ultimately get rid of him.[7]

After enchanting Merlin, Malory's Nimue replaces him as Arthur's magician aide and trusted adviser. When Arthur himself is in need in Malory's text, some incarnation of the Lady of the Lake, or her magic, or her agent, reaches out to help him. For instance, she saves Arthur from a magical attempt on his life made by his sister Morgan le Fay and from the death at the hands of Morgan's lover Accolon as in the Post-Vulgate, and together with Tristan frees Arthur from the lustful sorceress Annowre in a motif taken from the Prose Tristan. In Malory's version, Brandin of the Isles, renamed Brian (Bryan), is Nimue's evil cousin rather than her paramour. Nimue instead becomes the lover and eventually wife of Pelleas, a gentle young knight whom she then also puts under her protection so "that he was never slain by her days."

In an analysis by Kenneth Hodges, Nimue appears through the story as the chivalric code changes, hinting to the reader that something new will happen in order to help the author achieve the wanted interpretation of the Arthurian legend: each time the Lady reappears in Le Morte d'Arthur, it is at a pivotal moment of the episode, establishing the importance of her character within Arthurian literature, as she transcends any notoriety attached to her character by aiding Arthur and other knights to succeed in their endeavors, subtly helping sway the court in the right direction.

« Last Edit: March 15, 2021, 12:06:17 am by 90sRetroFan »

rp

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #12 on: March 15, 2021, 08:39:05 am »
"So if we praise Guinevere's beauty, we would in effect be encouraging the mistake to be repeated!"

Ok. Do you know any other examples of pristine beauty in Medieval history that we can praise instead? I want to highlight the aesthetic inferiority of the "Royals".

Starling

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Decolonizing Cinema
« Reply #13 on: March 29, 2021, 07:27:33 pm »
Colonialism & The Lost World


An excellent vlog. Stays within PC, yet makes very valid points that show a good direction.
An overview of the 5 major screen adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" with a focus on colonialist tropes and Western bias.

Opening quote:
"...a deep sympathy for (indigenous) people as an ideal while being hostile
towards those (Natives) who fall short of that construct." ~Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Critical Points Made:
*9:13* - a take down of "A Patriots' History of the United States" which is described as a "a self-congratulatory white supremacist fantasy fable" and a fave of Steve Bannon.
NOTE: The common opposing piece (not mentioned in the vlog) "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn (Jew) is not mentioned.

*10:15* - Facts about Christopher Columbus, including the one that many of his own men hated him for his treatment of Americans. Columbus was arrested, stripped of his titles, and imprisoned by the Spanish Empire itself.

*11:31* - "The first whites to explore many parts of the Americas therefore would have encountered places that were already depopulated. As a result... all colonial population estimates were too low. Many of them, put together just after epidemics [due to plagues from cattle herding "explorers"], would have represented population nadirs, not approximations of pre-contact numbers." ~ Charles C. Mann, "1491" (2005)

*11:58* - Tawantinsuyu, the name the "Inca" used for themselves.
They were hit with the first smallpox epidemic in 1524, seven years BEFORE meeting Europeans.
Half of them died.

*12:56* - town names explained --> basically Europeans arrived onto already cultivated land.

*25:22* - a quote from one of Columbus's men:
"While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful woman, whom the Lord Admiral [Columbus, there's his title] gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked - as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. I them took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought she had been brought up in a school for ****."
This was during Columbus's second voyage and shortly before his arrest.
And to think, it was ONE OF THESE GUYS that grew to hate Columbus.

*27:18* - Take down of the "white savior" trope
"The Desire to make contact with those bodies deemed Other [aka goy?], with no apparent will to dominate assuages the guilt of the past... even take the form of a defiant gesture where one denies accountability and historical connection" ~bell hooks (aka, Gloria Jean Watkins)

*28:07* - "advancedness"

*28:05* - Native tech and tools, it was BETTER than European stuff.

*29:05* - "Natives didn't yet even invent the wheel" = total bullshit. They did, just on a small scale (kids' toys) and didn't have horse and cattle carts since the in dense jungle, mountains, streams, rivers, etc it's just easier to carry stuff.

*29:39* - Tenochtichlan had a bigger population that Paris and better food security. Americans were generally very well fed, tall, and muscular. Incoming Spaniards and Anglos were hairier and shorter (lol).

*29:52* - Africa was very well developed (aka "advanced") for its people's lifestyle, they had EVERYTHING they needed and they made it all themselves.

*30:55* - intro to "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney
"Most African societies raised the cultivation of their own particular (food) staple to a fine art. Even the widespread resort to shifting cultivation with burning and light hoeing was not as childish as the first European colonists supposed... and when the colonists started upsettig the thin top-soil the result was disastrous."

*31:34* - "Mono-culture was a colonialist invention... In Africa, this concetration on one or two cash-crops for sale abroad had many harmful effects. Sometimes, cash-crops were grown to the exclusion of staple food - thus causing famines."

*32:00* - "Zimbabwe was a zone of mixed farming... Irrigation and terracing reached considerable proportions. There was single dam or aqueduct comparable to in Asia or Ancient Rome, but countless small streams were diverted and made to flow around hills in a manner that indicated an awareness of the scientific principle governing the motion of water. In effect, the people of Zimbabwe had produced 'hydrologists,' through their understanding of the material environment."

*33:26* - The vlogger's own best quote:
"...if you read more than two books about the history of capitalism, you'll learn there's no such thing as an 'under-developed' country, only and over-exploited one."

*38:40* - It was Indigenous men taking "white brides" but rather Western men taking Indigenous brides, yet the "The Lost World" (1999) makes it seem like the former.

*42:24* - "The Lost World" (2001) and it's themes of Western religion. Interesting take.
"The Christian missionaries were as much part of the colonizing forces as were the explorers, traders and soldiers. The church's role was primarily to preserve the social relation of colonialism, as an extension of the role it played in preserving the social relations of capitalism in Europe. Therefore, the Christian church stressed humility, docility and acceptance."
     ~Walter Rodney in "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"

NOTE: What's not mentioned is that Old Testament part, the root is the Jewish religion and feeling "chosen" and thus eshewing the simpler and humbler vague Buddhist-like parable and stories that Jesus told in favor of bowing to YHWH.

*45:20* - intro to "Decolonizing Methodologies" by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
"The ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world's colonized peoples... just knowing that someone measured out 'faculties' by filling the skulls of our anscestors with millet seeds and compared the amount of millet seed to the capacity for mental thought offends our sense of who and what we are."

About the "Charter of the Indigenous Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests" from 1993:
"The Declaration calls on governments and states 'to develop policies and practices which recognize indigenous peoples as the guardians of their customary knowledge and has the right to protect and control dissemination of that knowledge and that indigenous peoples have the right to create new knowledge based on cultural traditions.'"

Search link to actual Declaration:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Charter+of+the+Indigenous+Tribal+Peoples+of+the+Tropical+Forests%22&t=ffsb&ia=web

*46:41* - "...belief in the ideal that benefitting mankind is indeed a primary outcome of scientific research is as much a reflection of ideology as it is of academic research. It becomes so taken for granted that many researchers simply assume they as individuals embody this ideal and are natural representatives of it when they work with other communities."

A final point made in the 2001 version, and also here by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
*50:20* - "Moreover, it is also important to question that most fundamental belief of all, that individual researchers have an inherent right to knowledge and truth."

90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #14 on: May 16, 2021, 12:00:48 am »
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/why-is-aggressively-racist-orientalist-opera-still-a-thing/ar-BB1gx5f6#

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For those unfamiliar, Madama Butterfly is the story of a 15-year-old Japanese geisha named Cio-Cio-San. She marries an American naval officer named Pinkerton, who takes advantage of a law that allows him to temporarily marry her. Pinkerton returns to America shortly after their union. In her infantile innocence (musically represented by simplistic melodies that also symbolize the “Orient”) Cio-Cio-San believes Pinkerton’s deceptive promise to return. Eventually, after three years, he does — with his “real” American wife Kate. They want to take the son Cio-Cio-San birthed after Pinkerton left and give the child a “proper” American upbringing. Unable to live without Pinkerton, Cio-Cio-San kills herself.

Orientalist operas like these remain exceedingly popular in the United States. Many find them to be a space of beauty or escape. Yet, as an Asian American woman, I can’t help but associate them with violence and dehumanization. For nearly two centuries before the current rise of anti-Asian violence in America, our opera culture has glorified violence against, and profited from the objectification of Asian women.

To earn my living as a professor of music, I find myself in the absurd position of having to teach this material. Orientalist operas are included in every major introductory college music history textbook, where their musical contributions are uncritically lauded. Of the five textbooks I’ve used over the years, only one bothered to give the issue of Orientalism any serious critical consideration.
...
The most nefarious forms of Orientalism arose in the latter part of the 19th century. The great composers and rising stars of opera including Verdi, Puccini and Bizet created works like “Aida,” “Madama Butterfly” and “Carmen.” These productions featured lurid treatments of sex, violence and opulence that would have been considered offensive if they depicted European women in a European setting.

Reports of scandal and brilliance fueled the public’s desires to see these Orientalist spectacles for themselves. And American demand for these works has remained consistent ever since. The repertory report of the Metropolitan Opera, America’s oldest and most established opera house, shows that Verdi’s “Aida,” set in ancient Egypt, has been staged 1,175 times. After Puccini’s “La Bohème,” it is the second-most performed opera since the company’s founding in 1883. “Carmen” comes in fourth with 1,023 performances, and “Madama Butterfly” eighth, with 891. At the Met, these works are an essential part of a venture that drew $120 million in operating revenue last year — even during COVID-19.
...
I’ve long loathed having to teach these operas. But now, amid the tragic and abhorrent rise in anti-Asian violence, I find it impossible to look at the students in my class and explain that the “Oriental” woman’s role in opera is to die. That her death is essential to ensuring the tormented, tempted male tenor-hero, unable to resist her exotic allure, will be redeemed. That these are important musical conventions worthy of study.

In Bizet’s Carmen, the naïve but “good” hero Don José cannot resist the seductive power of the Romani woman Carmen. So, he kills her to destroy his temptation.

Some redemption!

These Orientalist narratives are so trite it’s shocking that anyone would take them seriously. Yet they map directly onto the narrative of “sexual addiction” that the Atlanta shooter offered, and that many Americans — including the police who investigated the shooter — readily accepted.

My students deserve better. And they know it.

In the days that followed the Atlanta shooting, my class shifted gears. Opera, and the history of Western classical music, is a story. We talked about who gets to tell the story, for whose sake, and at what costs? The students have their own questions — about musical debts, and about their future roles in shaping musical institutions.

My class recently finished its survey course textbook. That story has been told. For my students, it’s about the choices they will now make, and the new chapters they get to write. Who gets to have agency, and who must stay an archetype of sacrifice and victimhood? Freed from bigoted tropes, who could Cio-Cio-San have become, how could she have changed the world and what stories would she want to pass on to us?