[ SECRET POST #4444 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4444 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.
[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]


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03.
[Mary Skelter]


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04.
[The Final Table, Charles and Rodrigo]


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05.
[Altered Carbon]


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06.
[Katie Perry/Orlando Bloom engagement]


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07.
[Fandom: Fruits Basket]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 17 secrets from Secret Submission Post #636.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I just... don't even understand what the word racism means anymore or how it applies in this context.

[(Anonymous)]

people of different cultures presented as evil caricatures for the furthering of the hero's plot? what's hard to get?

[(Anonymous)]

But it wasn't EVERYONE in the different culture portrayed as evil. It was the you know....evil people.

[(Anonymous)]

Come on. You don't have to portray every single Indian as a brainwashed homicidal cult killer in order for there to be legit racism.

[(Anonymous)]

no, right, they just all sit around eating chilled monkey brains and live bugs and what the actual fuck is wrong with your brain

[thewakokid]

Yup, that's how I help people to see things from my POV. By insulting them. Works a treat.

Sad thing is, the monkey brains thing is a fine example of stereotyping and you could easily have made the case for that as racism.

But you needed to put people down to show you good and smart you are so you just fucked the opportunity.

[(Anonymous)]

No, but you have to make a legit attempt not to make the different culture look like a cartoon of a xerox copy of a stereotype of something someone dreamed up while taking a shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Who just happened to be brown. Total coincidence, amirite?

[thewakokid]

Yeah, not only was a whole heap of the good guys also brown - More of the brown ppl were good than evil actually.. but the 1st 3rd and 4th Indy film had all of the villains being white.

Now if they wanted to go with saying it held a lot of stereotypes (CHILLED MONKEY BRAINS!) and that makes it racist, I could maybe hop behind that but even then I'm not quite sure I'd fully endorse an old film being considered bad because we have different standards today.

[(Anonymous)]

Your English is showing. A good chunk of the rest of the world had already figured out Temple of Doom was kind of racist when it premiered in the 80s.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, Temple of Doom has a not-all-Hindus thing going on. Although the good Hindus are framed as pious peasants who depend on their faith in Shiva for their agriculture and health, so I'm not sure that's a pass out of racism there.

But that's overshadowed by the screen time devoted to big bad as a cult leader. And we're not just talking any run-of-the-mill cult, we're talking about Kali, who is a protector, demon-slayer, destroyer of delusion, and worshiped by millions as as an aspect of the great Devi who creates and sustains all existence and will liberate all creatures eventually. Temple of Doom takes a beloved character from one of the major religions of Asia and turns her into cinematic Satan.

Temple of Doom takes its inspiration for thuggees from English imperialist propaganda and penny dreadfuls. But, there's considerable grounds for skepticism that they existed as either a cult or widespread criminal organization, many of the people identified as thuggees were Muslim rather than Hindu, and they probably didn't exist in the 20th century.

This is in stark contrast to Raiders and Last Crusade. Both are fantasies but the reality that Nazis were practicing genocide and slavery has been documented beyond a reasonable doubt. The plot of Temple of Doom requires us to believe in something that's about as ridiculous as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Blood Libel.

[(Anonymous)]

How is this in any way a confusing use of the term. The movie presents Indians as either poor savages, or evil savages who eat monkey brains and are literally part of a murderous mind-control cult and pull out people's hearts until the brave British army pluckily stops them. It's not... It's not, like, hidden.

[11thmirror]

+1

[thewakokid]

Or it shows them as a group of people who are suffering under the boots of an oppressive ruling class...

Indie meets two groups if you remember, the poor "Savages" (I genuinly don't remember anything savage about the group who helped indi) who are under the boot and Indi offers to help (You'd have a point arguing white saviour) and the rich people who're inbed with the British who have been largely blinded by a cult or by the opulence and wealth of their surroundings.

[(Anonymous)]

the rich people who're inbed with the British who have been largely blinded by a cult or by the opulence and wealth of their surroundings.

This is not at all how it plays in the movie. The movie goes out of its way to portray the cult as a rival of ancient Indian religious practices, and the cultists are explicitly presented as anti-British and anti-colonial, even the chancellor guy who was educated in England. The monkey brains scene - for instance - is nothing other than an an attempt at an othering, horrorizing portrayal of Indian culture.

[(Anonymous)]

Have you actually seen this movie? It's really not confusing at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Also see: Short Round

[(Anonymous)]

I mean there are probably a few dodgy moments with Short Round but I think it barely registers compared to the rest of the movie. I always liked Short Round. The basic idea is good!

[(Anonymous)]

See, Short Round honestly gets a pass with me because he wasn't doing anything that was like... a terrible Asian stereotype. He just had a really strong accent. But that's how that kid actually spoke! Aside from the accent, he was just a spunky kid sidekick.

[thewakokid]

EXACTLY

[(Anonymous)]

Considering the character was Chinese and presumably spent most (if not all) of his life in China, as well as being quite young, I don’t think his accent was the problem. More like the broken English. He seemed to understand a lot yet made basic mistakes.

I don’t doubt for a second that they deliberately picked that actor because of his accent though.

[thewakokid]

Nah, I'm down to have this conversation in general terms, but in specific terms you gonna have to leave short round outta it. Short round was awesome. I wanted to BE short round when I was a kid.

To this day, I will still insist that instead of making Indy 4 an attempt to cram in shia Labouf into indies boots they should have made it about Short round as a grown up going on adventures when he meets the aging Dr Jones and they go on one more adventure.

I'd have paid money to see that.

[tree_and_leaf]

That would have been amazing. (I think the portrayal of the cultists is massively racist*, but Short Round was great and seeing him again would have been much more interesting than ripping off Wrath of Khan's suprise angry son plot).


* Some of this may have been inadvertent - I think I remember reading that the banquet scene was supposed to imply the cultists were trying to gross out Indy and co in order to make them go away, and was supposed to be them deliberately exploiting racist stereotypes, but that's not what came over).

[(Anonymous)]

In the years after Last Crusade, I always thought that if they made another Indiana Jones movie they should have a teen/grown-up Short Round in it. I would have loved that.

[(Anonymous)]

Huh, criticisms of Temple of Doom have been pretty overt for decades that it honestly blindsided me that this was the first reply.