[ 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)]

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)]

Not everything is about teaching. People don't have some sort of responsibility to teach everyone who is racist not to be racist. Sometimes it is okay just to be pissed off at racism.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but if you believe the person you are talking to is being a racist, you have three option in front of you:

1. Try and understand them, and if you are right try and help reduce the amount of racism by bringing them round.

2. Disengage and walk away.

3. Don't bother with any of that, Be angry, be hateful, be insulting, fix nothing and be an infant because it feels better to go off at someone than actually trying to make the world a little better does.

People who care about fixing racism do the first two.

People who care about being seen to be angry about racism do the third one. Too many people too eager to give in to self indulgent tantrums because it feels good. Myself included, mind. I typically also take the "I don't want a solution, I want to feel good approach." but as i'm sure you'll find out from many people here I'm not a very good person. Not that I try to be a bad person, but yeah, you can't take the easy fun option and still call yourself any kind of moral arbiter.

[(Anonymous)]

Making racism socially unacceptable is a useful tool in fighting racism.

[(Anonymous)]

For shutting down the assholes out there, sure. Kindly explaining shit to people who are merely ignorant, but not hateful is even more useful.

Signed,

Minority anon

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, I'm willing to agree with that. But I don't agree with the idea that calling someone a racist means that you don't actually care about ending racism, as was said.

[thewakokid]

But that's not what I was talking about:

"fuck is wrong with your brain" was open hostility towards someone who was not expressing any hostility of their own.

All that will do is increase this person experience of hostility related to race, and make the next person who talks to that anon about racism have a harder job.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that it was rude (I also get where they were coming from; it really is kind of a gobsmacking question to ask) but I don't think it means that the person who said it doesn't care about ending racism.

[(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.

[thewakokid]

So what race IS a group of villains allowed to be in your opinion?

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt: Any race.

But the entire plot of Temple of Doom depends on having superstitious and primitive Shaivites on the one side who are dependent on the divine intervention of the stones for their well-being. On the other side you have evil Shaktaas who practice slavery and ritual human sacrifice. Both sides represent Victorian-era racist propaganda about both religions.

[thewakokid]

But the point i was arguing against is not that it's racist because stereotypes.

I was arguing the above anons point that "it's racist because bad guys are brown"

[(Anonymous)]

The original post didn't say it was racist because the villains were brown, it said it was racist because they were evil caricatures for the furthering of the hero's plot.

[(Anonymous)]

And my comment that they were not all evil, in fact most of the non-white characters were neutral if not outright good.

[(Anonymous)]

The movie is full of racist caricatures of Indians, some of whom are villainous caricatures. There's a pretty complete lack of characters portrayed with any kind of depth or sensitivity, and all of the Indian characters with actual agency are villains. And people have pointed out the specific details of this many times in the thread.

[thewakokid]

YES, and in fact I myself have pointed out the stereotypes, but the origional comment I was arguing about, the point I am making which is somehow being missed is that the while there are many angles you could criticise the move from and still claim it as racism, the "people of different cultures presented as evil caricatures" is not one of them. Because the majority of the characters that are from that culture are not evil.

[(Anonymous)]

First, I would suggest that presenting characters of different cultures as evil caricatures would still be bad and racist even if other characters from that culture were depicted well. It's not a good thing to depict characters from different cultures as evil caricatures.

Second, as regards the actual movie, I think all of the Indians are presented as racist caricatures (I can't think of any counter examples off the top of my head, at least) and the ones who are most important to the plot and have the most agency are specifically villainous caricatures. So it's not really a great situation by any standard.

[(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.