Well, I think some, especially American Indians, must have at least rolled their eyes.
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Yeah I never quite understood how that term applied and had to look it up. It was basically a difference in the way cultures approached trading. Though I still feel like the term applies more to the US than the Native Americans.
Though fun fact, the potato IS a New World crop. The Old World for the longest time thought they were poisonous to humans and grew them for hogs. IIRC a French guy finally convinced people to start eating them. He put guards around his potato crop to make them appear like they were valuable enough to steal, but he told them if anyone wanted some, to let them bribe the guards for some. And they were the ones to popularize cutting them up into “fries” and frying them. And eventually this spread out to the rest of Europe including Ireland, and even saved people from starvation from a few famines.
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What current commonly accepted notions will our grandkids be horrified by in 2066? (I mean, aside from Trump.)
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I really love Short Circuit. I haven’t seen it in years, but yes it’s terrible that one of the lead actors was in brown face. The actor that played that role has spoken about it and he’s equally as regretful for it.
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Exactly, I was going to say that too, in fact started writing it and deleted it from an earlier comment. Probably Europeans and Native Americans had different understanding of what a gift was, or ownership in general, sharing with the rest of the group. Instead of recognizing that difference in culture, the Europeans assumed their way was universally understood and The Correct Way.
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Many must’ve known, but younger fans of the movie probably had no idea. In the link i posted about the actor talking about it it mentions a stand up bit by Aziz Ansari looking up to the character in that role as a positive thing… thinking it was an Indian actor. It wasn’t until years later that he found out the truth, likewise with me as i found out waaaaay later it was a white guy.
As an aside, it’s odd how many of these tired stereotypes end up being flaunted openly by the very people it’s meant to mock. There’s probably way too many movies with overtly racist latino/mexican roles. Probably some as recent as the last couple of years. As a latino i find them equal parts amusing and insulting, but at least i have enough of a sense of humor to let it go.
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The horrific wealth gap, I hope, both domestically and globally. And the general indifference to climate change. And that so few of us see a connection between those two.
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My family like to listen to the Great Courses when we travel. In this course, http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/language-a-to-z.html it talks about the origins of the pidgin English attributed to Native American speakers (in N is for Native American).It was surprising to learn that there actually was a pidgin language that was used by English speakers and Native Americans to communicate with each other that sounded a lot like the Hollywood version. It wasn’t really a language that was used by either group to communicate within their own groups, but a language used for trade between two groups that didn’t share any common languages.
I actually thought Bert Lahr was super cute in this, playing both roles - I mean, it’s not like that was an authentic Pilgrim either. He seemed to be having fun with both stereotypes.
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In a case like this, I agree it’s OK to judge historical racism by modern standards. This commercial was aimed at and considered acceptable by a majority of children and teenagers in 1966, AKA the white Baby Boomer generation that has used its demographic clout to preserve all kinds of outmoded and awful ideas (or at least their vestiges) to the present moment.
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Just curious: why let them go? Seems to me that popular culture plays a pernicious role when it perpetuates and thereby reinforces stereotypes.
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I can only speak for myself, but i’m not the kind of person that holds grudges for long. I have no room for anger or negativity, so i just roll my eyes at the situation and move on. There are times where the people acting or making the movie are having fun with it (like Machete), it tends to be too much for me though so i solve that by just not watching it. Though Three Amigos is totes one of my favorite movies of all time still.
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Expressions of thoughtless consumerism. A single advertisement from 2016 won’t suffice to exemplify a notion with that breadth to people who will have to carefully consider the financial and environmental costs and utility of everything they consume (including water) as a matter of course.
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Yeah, I don’t think that qualifies because plenty of people now are horrified by those things. I’m talking about something like old Bert here, racially stereotyping in a commercial, and no one bats an eye at it then. So I guess I’m asking the impossible – to identify some innocuous thing now, that people 50 years from now can’t believe.
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Total for 3 years at Harvard Law 53 thousand dollars!
Hahahahahahaha
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This chip commercial was in high rotation when I was studying in Australia. Aside from the most obvious “Japanese tourists” stereotypes it’s notable that all the men in the commercials have obvious bulges in their pants EXCEPT the Japanese ones.
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Er… why draw the bulges at all? That… is just weird.
The really ironic thing is that no Japanese tourist would be amazed by chicken flavored chips. They would probably laugh and tell them to call them when the get more than a handful of Dorito flavors.
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I got a good laugh out of that when i rewatched the trailer this morning.
The usual pop-etymology explanation for this has to do with the potlatch custom of ceremonial (but not inherently permanent) giving vs. the more binary European it’s-mine-or-it’s-yours sense of ownership. A Native American would pay a social call on the local mayor, and expect to receive back some trinket he’d given as a gift the last time. Rude by one standard, civilized by another, and the reason we call it “Indian giving” rather than “White guy taking” has to do with who ended up on the wrong side of a larger genocide.
No idea if that’s the 100% finally true explanation, but it sounds plausible and doesn’t rely on one or the other culture being fundamentally and objectively awful, so I’ll go with it for now.
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Just watched that movie with the kids last night. Relieved to report that as a cultural artifact it’s mercifully light on “things that seem really racist now” compared to other films from its era like Dumbo and King Kong.
Inspired by your post to do some serious close-reading of cartoon crotches, I notice that at 0:53 in that clip, when the Japanese tourist is marrying the trickster tour guide, he does acquire a healthy bulge. No doubt in anticipation of the connubial delights of the honeymoon suite, or at least the fleshly pleasures of eating chips.
So I’d posit that this was less a suggestion that Japanese men have negligible penises, and more an admission that most Australian men are walking around with erections straining against their pants all day.
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