this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
112 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

22781 readers
323 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

For me it's Dragon Ball Z, that was a pretty fucked up show tbh.

Like holy shit, all the characters are terrible people except maybe Gohan and Trunks.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Disney's Aladdin is pretty racist in that ”if you steal, we'll cut off your hand” depiction of Middle Eastern society, and it never questions whether having a monarch who lives in a massive palace and forces his daughter to get married is actually bad.

Plus, when Aladdin becomes Prince Ali, the song says he has slaves cringe

[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Aladdin's first instinct upon gaining access to incredible cosmic power was to catfish a sheltered underaged girl.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I instantly remembered that back and forth dueling choirs "both sides equally right and wrong" song. centrist

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There's a much worse song that is just straight up about how the indigenous people are "barely even human". That's a line in the song! There's also the moment where Pocahontas first realizes there's white people invading and she's all crawling around on the ground like an animal trying to spy on them.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a much worse song that is just straight up about how the indigenous people are "barely even human". That's a line in the song!

It's pretty obvious the audience isn't supposed to agree with that. It's still bad in how it both sides's it, but the point of that line is to depict the people saying it as bad and racist.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

This is a weird one but the nihilism of Robot Chicken used to really get to me. Just vignettes of characters dying horrible ironic deaths. Its funny I guess in a group setting but alone and stoned in my room, not so much. I think the elephant in the room is South Park. Especially around 2013/14 when they helped bring the term "PC" back into the political zeitgeist, which was the buzz word the right loved before "woke".

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Everyone realized South Park's messaging was horrible even back then, but ”that's the joke bro, they're being misanthropic edgelords for the lulz!”, which in itself led to some even worse stuff from South Park poisoned people.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Everyone realized South Park's messaging was horrible even back then

I wish that were the case. I still get into go-nowhere arguments, sometimes, with fans that claim that "Matt and Trey make fun of everything and everyone" and therefore it's also so wholesomely nonpolitical in the balance.

I doubt South Park often makes fun of smug enlightened centrism, apathy as a lazy response to actual political issues that actually affect living people's lives, or for that matter the rich white asshole libertarianism of Matt and Trey.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The Harley f-slur episode did it for me. A couple years prior, my closest friends all got together and agreed to stop using the f-slur. We had no out queer friends (god it took me so long to admit dicks are good actually), and we were just "this is dumb to just use constantly". The word was so ingrained in our lexicon and a bunch of idiot 13 year olds decide amongst themselves that enough was enough. Then like 2 years later that episode came out. Was a quick "well this is dog shit" realization.

I doubt South Park often makes fun of smug enlightened centrism, apathy as a lazy response to actual political issues that actually affect living people's lives, or for that matter the rich white asshole libertarianism of Matt and Trey.

They embrace it. There was an ep where Stan starts drinking to accept things. It's literally "caring will make you unfunny, lonely, and lame".

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Every time I hear someone claim that entertainment has no effect on people's attitudes, beliefs, or behavior, I can glance back in time at the cultural ripples that occured each time South Park programmed its consumers to do something like, say, dismiss climate change entirely as a concept by getting credulous smug "nonpoliticals" to say "MANBEARPIG LOL" to terminate further thought. doomer

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Watching this is definitely not one of my proudest life phases. I remember it really got to me with neurodivergence and how they chose to depict that. Also it's incredibly violent to fat people, the way Cartman gets portayed and what the supposed reasons are for his behaviour.

Someone posted a Red Sails article here yesterday that goes over the way entertainment conditions us to the status quo. I think South Park is a perfect example of that, in making horrible be supposedly mainstream.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Soooooo much shit I enjoyed as a kid had a plot where a dude 'wins' a woman as a prize for completing the hero's journey, and I genuinely think it messed up the entire millennial generation

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

Completely agree, this messaging that you get a woman as a treat for good behavior is the basis of the Nice Guys beliefs system.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It's a low bar, but all the copaganda shows (CSI, Castle, Brooklyn 99, Bones, etc) for obvious reasons. Even the heckin' wholesome funny NYPD detectives in B99 talk about defense lawyers being scum, all suspects being guilty (otherwise they wouldn't be suspects, would they?) and of course even when they did touch on the rampant racism in the NYPD the solution was "be a better pig and change from the inside!" (Don't laugh!). I could go on about the others too, but it's a topic that's already been covered better by other people

Long post short, even light-hearted cop shows where Malcolm Reynolds plays a goofy man-child writer have dogshit politics

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago

Andy samberg found out that cops are bad after a decade of making a cop show and it's honestly pretty funny how they try to cram it into the last season

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

1980s GI Joe is the most glaring example I can instantly think of.

I am still baffled by the fact that decades later some blue curtain bazinga in my guild in one of the games I played insisted that the good old days of cartoons had zero political messaging, unlike today, and his example was... GI Joe.

After I gave exhaustive examples of the political messaging of that show (everything from the plain as day glorification of the US military, the OPEC oil crisis being simplified as being backed and perpetuated by a bunch of terror-loving puppet governments... puppets of Cobra of course) and what I got back was, verbatim, "did anyone ever tell you... the curtains are fucking blue?" smuglord

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was too young to watch the G1 Transformers cartoon (although I did have Transformers toys and comics), but it had a Gaddafi expy called Abdul Fakkadi (back when Libya was Amerikkkan non-Soviet boogeyman #1) who ruled a country called Carbombya.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

but it had a Gaddafi expy called Abdul Fakkadi (back when Libya was Amerikkkan non-Soviet boogeyman #1) who ruled a country called Carbombya.

That's exactly the episode I was bringing up when it came to the OPEC stand in and summary for little kids to absorb. yea

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would actually hunt someone down and kill them for this

barthes-shining

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, which takes place in colonial India, and is about a mongoose defending a white settler family against evil indigenous cobras. The mongoose kills all 3 snakes and squashes the mother cobra's eggs, then a bird sings about how that is good actually, and all the snakes never dare enter the white colonist family's garden again, the end

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Looking back, with the political education I've had, a case could be made that Paw Patrol contains some subtle pro-police messaging. Can't be too sure tho.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Paw Patrol is among the most egregious; but as someone who is very involved in checking out what my kids watch, copaganda is pervasive in a lot of TV shows these days.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Stickdeath.com, although I was already a teenager at that point. Stuff like ”Crackhouse Clean-Up” where the bad guy green stickmen were obviously supposed to be black stereotypes, but back then I didn't know enough about joker-amerikkklap racial politics to realize.

After 9/11, the guy started doing cartoons of racist Middle Eastern caricatures being killed by US soldiers while Korn played and racist caricatures being tortured in Gitmo, and the fucked up messaging was no longer hidden what-the-hell

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're awakening years of newgrounds and flash memories. So much overly racist shit post 9/11. But hey it also brought me into furry shit so..... yeah fucked me up.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The first Ace Ventura movie is unwatchably transphobic now. kombucha-disgust

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

As a kid I thought the United States of America was the best in the world. Hell I pledged allegiance to the flag nearly every day.

Turns out its just a racist fascist shithole run by and for corporations.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Finding out that the author of Death Note's absolute dogshit way of writing women wasn't just the usual shonen author bullshit and fanservice but he's actually a big misgynist chud who writes women badly on purpose.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

Worst one is I thought Jeff Dunham was hilarious up until I was like 10. Glad I was done with that before middle school lol

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Redwall. Such a fun book series, but when you think about it, it strongly endorses something that pretty neatly maps to racial essentialism (the "bad" species, e.g. rats, stoats, ferrets, etc, are portrayed as inevitably irredeemable, even when raised by "good" creatures).

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Donalc Duck. It has a status where I live, it "teaches kids to read". One of our brainwormed metal music artists who is a fan even did the whole "woke-mind virus" outrage in the media after it was suggested we remove the most obviously racist and colonial images from it.

Tbh I have noticed and known how problematic it is from the start, as a girl reading the way women are framed in these comics was eternally annoying to me as a kid. So was the way it Others anyone who isn't Western.

But it took me longer to notice how incredibly white it is, how it frames people who do crime and how Scrooge McDuck is a settler colonialist image that worships billionaireism/getting rich. Pretty sure most of my age group also were in a Scrooge McDuck Club where the comic would send you tips on making money, saving money and essentially idolizing the figure by making sure we think he got that rich by wit, by being smart with his money and by courage alone.

Another offshoot of this here is the Italian versions of it where the incredible meanness and kind of violent framing of life always bothered me a lot as a kid, the way Donald got put into basically slave labor for lols and such.

I read it on the toilet sometimes still, mostly to re-educate myself on the framing in it. Just the other day read a story with Mickey Mouse and the Goofy Indiana Jones where language like "the savages" is just casually used. It has been an effective tool for Othering here for sure.

The comic was brought to this country by a right-wing capitalist and framed as project to get the kids to read. I get it now.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have you read the book How to Read Donald Duck? It was written by two Chileans and published right before Pinochet's coup yea

But yeah, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is rich guy bootstraps bootlicking shit with some seriously racist parts bootlicker

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

007 spy shit, along with stuff like Mission Impossible and MacGyver being used to romanticize US imperialism and anti-communism.

There's also Tomb Raider's Lara Croft engaging in plunder of other nation's indigenous artifacts and outright killing delicate, endangered wildlife.

There's also the trend of rock, metal, and various other similar type bands showcasing nazi and white supremacist symbolism and rhetoric (Pantera's lead singer comes to mind) (from nazi salutes to iron crosses (Lemmy's guitar from Motorhead had these on them), to brown shirts and nazbol flags (Combichrist), to more subtle dogwhistles), stuff like confederate flags (Combichrist), and a few instances of members turning out to be perpetrators of SA (Tool's lead singer), and even things like vulgar misogyny and anti-LGBTQ+ themes (also Combichrist).

There's a lot of insidious far-right influences in a lot of shit, and it's quite sad.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Tintin. It took me until I read "tintin in the Congo" to realise something was up. It really hit a second time when I found out Hergé was Belgian.

Then of course the whole cowboy stuff that was sooooo popular. Karl May, Lucky Luke etc.

Even a lot of lullabies or play songs are so plainly racist its mindboggling. I was worried about having to check what media my kid is consuming when he gets older what with all the copaganda and other korra-like liberal messaging but the overt racism in songs for babies really blindsided me.

And then others look at us like "why are white people so racist?" My friend, we've been fed this shit before we could even understand speech.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (6 children)

As a kid I played a game called Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, a flight sim by LucasArts designed by the guy who would later do X-Wing and TIE Fighter (I guess the latter was also bad because you fought with the space fascists). You could fly all kinds of Nazi planes that never saw action in real life like jet fighters, and it wasn't until much later whenI realized that glorifying cool Nazi superweapons was bad, actually.

Same with Panzer General, which was a fun lite strategy game otherwise, but you literally played as Nazi Germany. I can't believe that actually wasn't considered a big deal at the time.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

All cartoons, which are for babies. They have the fucked message that they're not for babies.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (9 children)
load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Upon introspeecetion, I didn't like that Goku spared Freiza. Goku was clearly told by Vegeta that Freiza's a genocidal space tyrant responsible for annihilating the Saiyans, Goku believed Vegeta, but spared Frieza anyway. Because Frieza put up a good fight or was pathetically groveling.

Also the Saiyans inhibiting Bulma from finding Gero & The Androids/Cell before they were supposed to show up. The TeamFourStar joke about Piccolo being more of a father to Gohan rings really true.


For me though:

Attack on Titan, but during Season 1/2.

Eren's "kill or be killed" mantra was a red flag. Then the government being controlled by a secret leader/conspiracy stuff. Whole series was a fascist dog siren.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Noted fantasy writer Piers Anthony

Didn't really notice the misogyny or leering at underage girls at the time

Also his writing is just garbage even ignoring the problematic content

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

1984 used to be my favourite book as a child 💀

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I was a huge NCIS fan in my early 20s. Realized looking back that's it's just a big patriotic circlejerk

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I absolutely love the movie hackers but it has a surprisingly homophobic/transphobic scene considering how queer coded many of the main characters are. Maybe to appease the censors. It was the 90s after all.

It also packs a lot of patriarchy and misogyny despite also making Acid Burn the most bad-ass character.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] HeneryHawk 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pepe le Pew. I haven't watched it since I was a kid but thinking back he'd mad stalker/rapey vibes

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›