Community's "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" pulled from Netflix due to use of blackface
Aux Features TV
The world of TV continues to evaluate its depressingly widespread use of blackface this week, as two more NBC sitcoms—The Office and Community—both have their syndicated or streaming runs altered to remove instances of the racist practice. In this case, that means the full removal of Community’s otherwise-celebrated “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” from Netflix, and the removal of a single scene from The Office’s ninth season episode “Dwight Christmas.”
The latter scene featured actor Mark Proksch briefly dressed up as Black Pete, a Christmas-adjacent figure in European folklore that typically involves a white person putting on blackface. Series creator Greg Daniels issued a statement this weekend about the decision to edit out the scene:
The Office is about a group of people trying to work together with mutual respect despite the inappropriate actions of their boss and assistant manager. The show employed satire to expose unacceptable behavior and deliver a message of inclusion. Today we cut a shot of an actor wearing blackface that was used to criticize a specific racist European practice. Blackface is unacceptable and making the point so graphically is hurtful and wrong. I am sorry for the pain that caused.
Per Variety, the scene has been cut from both Netflix and syndication, and will not appear when the show runs on NBC’s own Peacock service. The decision to cut Community’s D&D episode, meanwhile, appears to have come down from Netflix itself, with Hulu quickly following suit. (That’s per The Wrap.) That being said, the show’s production studio, Sony Pictures Television, has made it clear that it “supports” the decision. The episode shows Ken Jeong in blackface in multiple scenes, with his character Chang claiming he’s playing a “dark elf” in the study group’s game.
These removals come as Hollywood continues to figure out a proper reckoning for these moments—a reckoning that has, so far, mostly involved scrubbing the material from the internet and airwaves in as thorough a manner as possible, as has happened with episodes of 30 Rock, Scrubs, and W/ Bob And David.
474 Comments
Nobody tell them about Pierce.
I’ve seen Community fans really upset about this (what a surprise, another Harmon show with almost toxic fanatics) when to be very blunt the “joke” adds absolutely nothing to the episode. His use of blackface is only referenced for one bit of shock value and the rest of Chang’s contribution to the episode makes absolutely no use of it.It wasn’t done as some commentary on D&Ds weird use of racial rankings or to make a point about racism. It was solely about shock value that an already horrible character was even more horrible than previously assumed.
Its a very small bit in the episode and if one were so inclined it could be easily removed and the episode could remain as is.
It really can’t though. It’s not simply that seen and he disappears but instead it plays a large chunk of the first part of the episode.
Yes you could. The Chang in drowface is not a very big part of the episode. You could easily edit it out, and the episode wouldn’t change that much.
scene*
That’s what I don’t get. Why go to such extremes for something that takes up maybe 10–20 seconds of screentime?
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Oh and when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
If these companies are so keen to have a reckoning with casual racism, then why dont they take their fine toothed comb of a butcher’s axe to the catalog of Quentin Tarantino, and stop messing with shows I like?
I imagine that eventually will happen, right? It’s so easily removed.
I love Community but boy they did not know what to do with Chang.
Chang was such a shit character. I know people hate the “Changnesia” arc in S4 (because hating S4 is mandatory apparently) when it was the first actual arc of his since S1 that did anything.
I liked him in S1, but yeah they really didn’t know what to do with him after that. He was almost always at the center of all the show’s worst ideas in S2 and 3.
I know people love season 3 but the whole “Chang becomes dictator of the school” arc was just to egregiously cartoonish that I had a hard time staying invested in the show after that.
The show was never particularly grounded, honestly (e.g. paintball).
I think seasons 1-2 were able to tread a very fine line between the ridiculous and the mundane, but by season 3 they tip over into live-action cartoon territory.
I respect that, but to me it felt like a natural evolution. Things really did get pretty fantastic with the dreamatorium, but I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. I may just be too used to the whole Channel 101 Ethos, and wild thematic, stylistic and genre changes from episode to episode.
I mean hating a lousy season of television isn’t “mandatory” but it makes sense.Season 4 isn’t a crime against humanity or anything but it’s by no means good, IMO.
s4 probably is legitimately the worst season, though I’ve always been annoyed at the attempts to write it off as if there wasn’t plenty of bad shit in S3.
Remedial Chaos Theory allows the rest of the season to coast IMO.
Honestly rewatching Community I came in prepared to hate S4- but honestly Season 6 was worse? The puppet episode, the one with Malcom McDowell tied up, and the one about their origins was all really fun. I also liked how the foosball episode developed Shirley’s character- I felt it gave Yvonne more to do than the typical “Shirley is a mother” and “Shirley is an obnoxious Christian” bits they gave her most of the show. But things just weren’t the same once they lost Troy.
Yeah, S4 wasn’t the best but it was hardly “meh” either. Didn’t help it was half the episode order with most of the senior creatives having left (it wasn’t just Harmon).S6 however is just so tired and drawn out with episodes like the RV one feeling phoned in.
Yeah- I liked both Buzz Hickey and Elroy as superior replacements for Pierce as I found him pretty vile as a character, but Paget Brewster’s Frankie felt more like a half-done sketch of a character than a full one (the constant comparisons to Annie made it apparent that they were aware she wasn’t a full interesting character but never bothered to work it out). Not to mention they seemed to give up on giving Jeff a good character arc once they brought him back. Annie taught him he could teach law… but then the next time we see him in the classroom he’s drinking and has Planet Earth on again. Also it wasn’t clear why they kept saying in seasons 5+ that he didn’t know anything about law- they said he skipped undergrad, not law school and you need to graduate from law school in CO to take the bar exam and get your license to practice. And law school is where you learn most of that stuff. It just felt contrived because they wanted him to seem more useless
Yeah that always bugged me. There was always that con artist side of Jeff, but he was strategic. He may be a good speaker but that alone isn’t going to win you any court cases. He skipped undergrad because it was a useless requirement to becoming a lawyer. Pre-Law isn’t a major for a reason. But he should have known enough about the law to teach a community college class.
Yeah, he never said he cheated at law school or on the Bar which says he knew enough about the law to pass a test that’s often fairly tricky. It would have made more sense to say he didn’t want to write lesson plans or grade papers
Yes. Lazy corner cutting winger is perfectly in character. Winger not being good at the thing he excelled at is not.
Not to mention his character is at a worse place at the end of season 6 than he was at the end of 4. He goes from wanting to help people with the thing he’s good at, to basically holding down a job with minimal effort helping no one. It would be one thing if they showed that he was helping students and guiding people towards or away from law school. This was something that Crazy Ex Girlfriend handled a bit better with her at least setting up a system for pro bono law advice for prisoners. Community basically concluded that there’s no way a lawyer could help someone and keep a roof over their heads at the same time.
Season 6 was good
Foosball was S3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_(season_4) Not according to Wikipedia or the episode listing on Netflix
I stand corrected. I have fond memories of that one. S4 has some good eps reviewing the list. It doesn’t hit the highs and has some rough episodes, but it’s not all bad.
You were right. It’s in season 3.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foosball_and_Nocturnal_Vigilantism
Ah- see I totally forgot about the episode with the Germans in the study room
If I talk long enough I can make anything right. So either I’m God or morality is relative. BOO YA!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foosball_and_Nocturnal_VigilantismSeason 3. I just watched that ep a bit ago, and have skipped season 4 in my rewatch, so I knew it wasn’t in that one. Wikipedia confirms. It’s the episode with the Shirley backstory and the dumb as shit “lol random” anime scene.Season 4 has an episode with foosball in the title, but that episode isn’t the one that fleshes out Shirley’s background, and is an instance of season 4 retreading stuff done better earlier.
“An instance”?S4 IS “retreading stuff done better earlier.”There’s nothing else there…and that puppet episode is the perfect example of why S4 fucking sucks, and has no real redeeming qualities.
Fuck. I was right. Should have stuck to my guns. S4 sucks!i take it all back!!! EVERYTHING!!!!!
The foosball episode was in season 3 and the actress’s name is Yvette.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Not now.
As far as your criticism goes, I agree. It’s still a bummer to lose one of the best episodes of one of the best shows in television history on the basis of a joke that—like you said—didn’t add all that much to the proceedings.
Yeah. It’s stupid how an otherwise great episode with themes of acceptance and depression had to be removed (and I agree why) because they put a character in Blackface who is around for much of the first act.
This is such a great episode. I hope they can re-edit it or something, or maybe digitally get rid of the “blackface.” It was worth the show having to endure Chevy Chase just for this episode, which needed Pierce as the antagonist. Also Annie sexing up the elf maiden & Britta’s concern for the gnome servants were peak them.
Remember when Britta’s defining character trait was that she was naive and cared too much rather than just being too dumb to live? Good times.
Britta was the best, but the show did not always remember this
Britta was the worst.
Kinda, she gets outed as an overconfident activist poseur in S01 (complete with her misunderstanding of very, very basic facts), but you’re right that she does lose her occasional role as the voice of reason in later seasons. (Just rewatched the whole series.)
Eh, I dunno so much about the “caring too much” part. She was always a bit of a hypocritical phony. Her subplot in the second episode of the series is literally all about how her ‘activism’ is mainly for cool points and she doesn’t do anything meaningful to help.
So basically Britta was like 99% of today’s young woke liberals.
I know that every show as they go along dumbs done their characters, but Britta was really a well written, three dimensional character in the first season. She was the most mature of the bunch. And then they made her into an idiot. On the one hand, I kind of hated how much the writers dumped on her but on the other hand, she was a lot funnier in the later seasons.
I hope they digitally remove the blackface because then Shirley would just be referring to Chang in general as a hate crime.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
What needs to be cut is any and all references to Shirley and Change having a chick. Britta and Annie can screw Jeff left and right but the black woman gets drunk and doesn’t remember having sex and then had a baby out of wedlock. I’m surprised she didnt have a scene about her having to sign up for welfare. Smh
1. Annie never slept with Jeff.2. The baby wasn’t Chang’s and wasn’t born out of wedlock.3. The “black woman” as you so put it, was a conservative, religious woman.
4. Troll a little better and smarter than this.
Don’t ever call a black person a troll. This is one of my favorite shows and excuse me for not knowing some of the small details. Damn, people like make sites like this insufferable. Don’t you see all the comments about toxic Harmon fans? You just smacked right into yourself.
1. Whether you are black or not, you’re still wrong. And stupid.2. You’re still a troll.
Wow, must be a hit with the ladies. I didn’t intentionally post wrong info to start a fight. I honestly believed Annie fucked Jeff and that it was Chang’s baby. So get off your high horse and realize not all people are as intentionally ugly as you are. One would think you would have paused and noted that I shared I was an African American, and during one of our nations most difficult moments for black folk, you continued to dig in and shit another human being… who is black. Only in American.
Using your race and racism to try and excuse the fact you made a totally incorrect comment and are acting like a weird jackass of a troll just confirms what an terrible human being you are.
You take care and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
she didn’t get drunk. she ate contaminated army surplus ground beef that turned everyone into a zombie, and had her memory wiped by the military.
She’s deeply Christian and he’s crazy, so neither were going to have condoms, and it was a spur-of-moment decision based upon a shared emotional connection and the belief that they were both about to die (which also makes safe sex a bit irrelevant). Then her memory’s wiped by the military. Drinking isn’t referenced anywhere in the episode, and it was her third kid, with the first two being from a marriage that ended after her husband cheated on her. She’s also the only character who runs a profitable business during the course of the show. I feel like you’re remembering it differently than how it happened.
I must have. I’ll admit I watch my favored episodes over and over and some I’ve re-watched and don’t even remember them. Then there’s season six which despite wAtching with buffer from hell on yahoo tv and didn’t remember most of the episodes. When I think of that arc, I thought it started during the episode where they were all at the bar and Shirley drinks, for what I remember, was one of the few times she self confessed. So is Chang the dad?And all my life I have been circled around strong black women of faith and sleeping with someone like Chang, would never ever ever ever happen. I always felt the food booth and it’s success was an apology to the actress, not the character. And let’s not kid ourselves Yvette Nicole Brown made no secret her concerns about the direction of her character. And even Dan Harmon acknowledged it was a struggle to write a fully fleshed out black female character with growth. Maybe it would have helped to have black writers who had the freedom to illustrate black stories. Even Abed and Troy, as iconic as their friendship displayed a friendship between two males we had never screen before outside of Scrubs, could easily been played by white actors and there wouldn’t needn’t be much script revisions. In the real world, it just doesn’t ring true. Sure we have black and brown geeks. But the layered intersectional challenges and even for those folks who refuse to allow their ethnic identities to define them, they still with either inter-cultural rejection or racism that it’s an issue. So that Shirley arc just never felt true to me. Now what redeemed the show for me, not the food business that the rich while Pierce funded to make happen don’t for forget, was the holiday episode with Shirley voicing agreement that government wouldn’t allow Jesus and prayers into public schools. That moment and her sing lyrics were all of my black aunts and I actually think I jumped for joy when she sang. It’s also the sentiment that caused Trumps election but I’ll save that for another day. Thanks for accepting my thoughts, even if they were based on false memories.
Yeah, the zombie episode was the one where she slept with Chang. The bar episode was unrelated, but came just before she learned about the pregnancy, so that’s probably why they blended together. Shirley’s ex-husband turned out to be the father, and by then they’d remarried.
I’m a white male, so I can’t honestly say I know how you feel, but I definitely noticed that Shirley was sometimes reduced to one or two character traits, and never got a real character arc, with a much more generic send-off than everyone else had. I think the best defense I can give is that all the characters save Troy deteriorated as the show continued (especially Britta, who became a stereotype of a blonde white woman.) I’m on even shakier ground talking about Troy and Abed. I think Abed’s backstory at least fits with him having faced discrimination and cultural clashes, but I do see your point.
Wow! I had my own Streisand Effect that went know where. Thanks! Now I’m going to have watch those episodes over again. actually, now that I if it: D&D is actually one if the episodes that sold me on my love. From mid season 2 up to Remedial. By the time Remedial Chaos Theory concludes, I had the fever that I hadn’t felt since Twin Peaks. FYI: I geek out on music, not TV shows. So, yeah, I guess that makes me a target for being perceived as a troll. Sue me earlier person who called me a troll. lol
I agree. They should’ve hired an actual drow elf to play the part. Cosplayers beware.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Jesus Christ nobody look up what the Orcs looked like in LOTR.
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this one. For one, his color is so unnaturally black it’s almost not black. He isn’t supposed to be a black person, but an elf creature. And Chang doesn’t imitate or do an offensive stereotype of a black person either. It’s riding a very thin tightrope I admit. All I’ll say is, as a person of color I was not offended by it at the time and Shirley’s ‘are we just gonna ignore that hate crime’ comment made me laugh.
I think the problem is that in being “unnatural” it reminded people of minstrel shows and given how it plays no relevance into the wider episode it felt redundant and therefore more shock humour than anything else.Pierce is a racist but he typically gets his comeuppance in relation to that while Chang just gets killed in the game early but it’s completely detached from his facepainting.
The typical minstrel show make up left the eyes and area around the lips white. Part of what makes Chang’s appearance funny is the total commitment of it, and the absurd silver wig, to the point he looks more alien than black.
Blackface has been redefined to mean any use of makeup to make one’s skin appear dark, whether it incorporates other features of minstrel shows is seemingly irrelevant at this point. Also seemingly irrelevant is what the motivation was for darkening skin – was it to comment ironically on blackface to comedic effect (tropic thunder)? to impersonate a specific black celebrity (Fallon, Kimmel), or, in this case, to showcase Chang’s over-the-top dedication to D & D. Glad i re-watched this episode a couple of months back, seems a shame to cut it as it is one of the best episodes of the series. Thanks progressives, for (ironically) seeing everything in black & white.
>in being “unnatural” it reminded people of minstrel shows It didn’t remind anybody of minstrel shows at the time. Probably because he looks nothing like a minstrel. His face is completely black and he’s wearing a bright white wig with straight hair. It could only vaguely be described as ‘blackface’.And the ‘joke’ regarding his appearance was that he went to all that effort to get into his role then died immediately and left.It’s really sad that probably the best and most important episode of the entire show has been binned because a character dressed up like a fantasy creature.
I cringed at that scene when I rewatched it because it came off as one of those things where they might claim it’s not being done for shock value, it really was. There’s no point in doing that joke if they didn’t mean to put him in black face
The joke was that it was racist and that Chang clearly didnt get it. Which is weird since he is the racist prover.
Community fans are toxic?
Think it’s a reference to Rick and Morty fans.
I’ve never found them particularly toxic, at least not on the Rick and Morty level. They can be pretty profoundly irritating at times though.
“Toxic” is predominantly used as a meaningless buzzword to dismiss the arguments of folks you don’t want to acknowledge.
I think some staff at McDonald’s a few years ago might disagree.
They sure as shit were back in late 2011-early 2012.
I think you’re being unnecessarily harsh on Community fans. This was the top comment on the Community subreddit thread: “Pretty sure it’s been said already but… it’s so frustrating to see corporations ignore the acutal, substantial demands of those seeking real racial justice and instead doing this kind of low-level thinking crap. Nobody was upset about this. They just want some woke-looking PR. No need to hire black filmmakers or directors or producers, just yank a top 5 episode of a top 5 show on your platform that actually has one of the most redemptive arcs of any episode in the show.”
Surely the joke is that he isn’t wearing ‘blackface’, he’s cosplaying as a Drow; and it is Shirley’s lack of familiarity with D&D that leads to the comic misunderstanding between the two?
This reading *would* add to the rest of the episode, because it first establishes how invested he is in the game, to the point of dressing up like a LARPer; which is then expanded on by his OTT “I am Brutalatops!” introduction; and is paid-off by him having to leave the game early when he’s killed off – the one player who seems to actually want to be there, and the wasted effort he – alone – has put into the game.
I personally don’t see a reading of the joke as “Chang’s impersonating a black person / racial caricature”.
Later on Pierce repeats the first joke, referring to Chang as “Al Jolson” – but Chang isn’t made up or dressed to look like anything like Al Jolson’s act. In fact, the wig he is wearing to more look like a Drow is an element that explicitly differs from traditional portrayals of minstrelsy.
If the joke were “here’s blackface, isn’t it outrageous!” then it would be reliant on a depiction as close to the caricature as possible.
A poster below suggested a reading of “the joke is that Chang doesn’t get it’s racist” – which is possible, in which case there’s a point being made of “it doesn’t matter that you’re not portraying a stereotype, or even an actual black person; it’s racist even if the use of dark skin make-up is entirely coincidental to issues of race” – which I’m not sure I can see, but it too would contradict your assertion that there’s no deeper point being made about race / racism.
well, if they had chosen to give his skin black with a blueish hue, maybe it wouldn’t have registered as blackface. but they just did solid black, which makes it easier to mistake for blackface (as Shirley does in the episode). So yeah i can see it being problematic, sadly, because it really is an absolutely phenomenal episode of television. definitely in my top 3 episodes.i know he wasn’t actually in blackface. he was cosplaying a drow elf. but in the current climate, it’s simply not worth fighting that battle, since winning it would only mean real racists would probably take it as an opportunity to start using “cosplaying as a drow elf” as a way to gleefully be racist with a technical escape hatch.
Louder for the people who missed this memo:THE DROWS ARE THEMSELVES A RACIST STEREOTYPE
Unless that racist stereotype is literally that of a blackface caricature, then that’s entirely tangential to what the OP said and my reply to him.
The article you quote, and the citation within it, don’t support that assertion. They seem to be concerned with the idea that a race with black skin is portrayed as (near) universally and intrinsically evil – not to do with blackface caricatures. The fact that WotC think that adding moral complexity variety to Drow (and Orcs) remedies the problem strongly suggests that they aren’t “themselves a racist stereotype” intrinsically.
I couldn’t easily find articles discussing the issue that weren’t directly related to the above article (whether preempting it or reacting to it), and as such they pretty much all took exception with the notion that all Drow are evil.For example:
John Kim argues “the drow don’t match most stereotypes of Africans — but I also don’t
think that it a coincidence that the only black-skinned elves are evil.”
I did manage to find something approaching the point you’re making circa page 98 of “Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom” – from a chapter called “Elf Stereotypes”. It was certainly interesting, and presents a valuable perspective, but I am not sure I am convinced. Also, it doesn’t attempt to draw a parallel between blackface caricatures and the Drow – instead focusing on the portrayal of their matriarchal society and the Underdark.
So, to put it another way, would the episode have been pulled if Chang had been greened up as an Orc? As per the article you link – Orcs are equally a racial stereotype (arguably more so and worse).
I don’t think so, because the issue of the racism inherent to fantasy races – an issue whose origins predate D&D thanks to Tolkien and the folk-cultures that inspired him – isn’t the issue the OP, the Show (which specifically references blackface as a cultural phenomenon in the jokes), and my reply were related to.
You could certainly make the case that even if Fu Manchu were portrayed by an Asian actor, the “yellow peril” themes are intrinsically racist and thus any such hypothetical film true to the source material should be pulled even in the absence of yellow-face.
Likewise you can make the (tangential to this discussion) case that the episode of Community should be pulled because Drow are an intrinsically racist conceit, despite not counting as Blackface.
However, all that been said: Looking for articles about this topic obliged me to wade through a lot of social-media-y comments and blog posts.
A noticeable proportion of the people arguing in favour of Drow cosplay did so in a manner that was a bit right-wing-talking-point shibbolethy, which gave me the impression that side of the argument was being unavoidably co-opted.
There’s certainly a case to be made for discouraging Drow cosplay in order to deny bigots a tool to offend black people.
Likewise, there were a few people of colour voicing their discomfort at seeing fellow con-goers dressed in a way reminiscent of blackface.
I don’t think they should be offended solely because I’m personally not 100% convinced of the rationale at work equating Drow with a representation of black people.
I think a lot of jokes in Community where there for the nerds watching to go “Hah, a!”For instance, when I saw that episode I thought “Hah, Chang’s a drow!”, or in Critical Film Studies I thought “Hah, Abed is doing My Dinner With Andre”, but the problem with the former example there is that people who aren’t nerds who know what drow are based on sight are going to think “Ugh, Chang’s in blackface”.
i think you’re confusing Community with Big Bang Theory. The former was usually pretty clever and witty with its references, and used them in service to the plot, and/or a greater point … while the latter was definitely more about just dropping nerd references for cred points.second — yes, it’s definitely possible to mistake Chang’s cosplay for blackface, except that about 5 seconds after he’s shown, he immediately explains that he’s playing a Drow Elf.i understand why the episode was pulled, though, and i’m not mad. i’m saddened, though, since it really is such an awesome episode.
I think a lot of jokes in Community where there for the nerds watching to go “Hah, a!”well that’s exactly what the showrunners behind season 4 thought.
Shouldn’t you be all virtue signaling against the AV club for not calling out Commmunity for this disgusting offense in their review then, too? I mean, the author CELEBRATES Chang’s performance, the racist bastard! And I didn’t notice a single commenter complaining either! Racists, the whole lot! If you’re going to be so obnoxiously high-horse during your Kinja tirades, could you at least have the common decency to be consistent?
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
CHANG WAS NOT DOING BLACKFACE. What on earth is wrong with you people? He was cosplaying a Drow, or dark elf. Have you seen the episode? Shirley calls him out for it and he explicitly shoots her down.Or are we going to remove every episode or picture of anybody who’s ever cosplayed something that requires body paint? Is that what you want?
Oh and when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
If it’s not ABOUT laughing at black people, it needs to remain. It isn’t wrong, and this kind of half-assed PR activism isn’t helpful.
It’s a knee jerk reaction, and that’s the problem I’m having because it means that when they return it, it’ll be without learning the reason why people are upset at blackface jokes. If they’re pulling Gone with the wind to add content for discretion, perfect. But this scene? That’s not enough nor the correct response. Here, they’re just trying to protect the viewership numbers.
But nobody was offended by it at the time (and i seriously doubt anyone who isn’t extremely White with a pathetic Savior Complex is actually mad about it NOW), so then why are they so offended now? And if blackface is so bad, why is Ralph Northam still Governor of Virginia?
You are an idiot,thanks for playing.
Should change your name to Moral Dictator
This is generally considered one of the best episodes of the show and would be on anyone’s top 5 lists. It seems like they could have just excised the images. or censored the shots of Chang (not that I think they needed to or that any of these shows should be doing this). To pull the whole episode is ridiculous.
Why am I suddenly in the grays?
Really? Because we understand context and understand the character is supposed to be a dark elf(not a black person or even a caricature of a black person) that makes us toxic. Fuck you.
The problem isn’t editing out the black face but removing the episode entirely. It’s one of the best episode in the shows history.
To the contrary it’s like everyone has forgotten why earnest blackface was considered bad and are treating the concept like some sacred Hindu cow. It’s a good example of SJW culture acting like a religious cult.
I read it as a comment on Chang being a subset of D&D fanboy who is obsessed with Drizzt Do’Urden. A deep cut, but a sharp one.
This is one of my favorite epsisodes of Community so I’m bummed. The drow-elf-face wasn’t that great of a bit but the entire episode is fantastic.
you can still get that episode on Amazon, buy it quick before those bastards take it down.
I’ve seen Community fans really upset about this (what a surprise, another Harmon show with almost toxic fanatics) when to be very blunt the “joke” adds absolutely nothing to the episode. His use of blackface is only referenced for one bit of shock value and the rest of Chang’s contribution to the episode makes absolutely no use of it.Agreed. Of all the instances, it’s the only one where the blackface makes no sense. No joke, no commentary, just lol random. I still don’t get why they can’t cut around it though. It’s not like it affects the rest of the episode. And that episode is one of their most pro-social ones.
I’m working my way through both Community and 30 Rock (Community final episode of S3 and 30 Rock episode 4 of s7) so I’ve already seen the ones that were pulled, hopefully nothing else in advance will be.
That Community episode “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” is legit fantastic, damn shame to lose it as it’s also pretty key in S2 character arcs. Netflix renumbered the season so you don’t notice a episode is missing at 23 episodes. That’s insidious. Amazon Prime Canada still has it and 24 episodes.
Amazon Prime Canada still has itYeah, it’s crazy isn’t it? And Netflix didn’t pull Gone With The Wind. It stayed on there, no historian, no introduction, completely uncut. I guess this is next on the chopping block:
“Amazon Prime Canada still has it”Shut up before they notice!
On the one hand, I’m sad because this is one of the best episodes of Community and arguably one (if not the) best D&D episode ever on mainstream TV.But on the OTHER, much more important hand…. an entire race of dark skinned beings that live underground and are all inherently evil EXCEPT that ONE we all agree is ok….? Yeah, that’s been racially fucked up for decades. It’s an idea that shouldn’t have made it out of the design phase back in 1976 or so.
“But they’re not, like, Black people-colored, they’re black-black. Completely different. So it’s okay…?” —Gary Gygax, with increasing flop sweat
As long as they aren’t black it’s ok right? Warhammer Fantasy dark elves get a pass? Or of we keep it to DnD, Beholders, Mindflayers, etc., etc. It’s the color of their skin that is the issue, not the content of their character?
That’s been the argument of some folks over on ENWorld, the big D&D forum.
This feels like a hill that WotC won’t actually be dying on — I’m expecting a new, differently colored drow sooner rather than later.
Already happening:https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/23/21300653/dungeons-dragons-racial-stereotypes-wizards-of-the-coast-drow-orcs-curse-of-strahd
to be fair, I’ve never played with a DM who actually used that “lore” about Drow. I always had the impression the point was, “all the surface-dwellers perceive them as evil” versus, “they’re all evil”.
Well in the first edition of the Monster Manual, they were monsters. Didn’t even appear as a playable race until the late 80’s or so and even then they were only supposed to be evil alignment. Nobody really ever did it as a ‘non-evil’ character until Drizzt came along and made it a thing. Then all the cool kids wanted to play the anti-hero drow, never mind Drizzt wasn’t an anti-hero. Like at all. He was just one of the ‘good’ kinda of black characters, which is all kinda messed up.That impression you’ve got is really just re-conning the race after the fact because it was a serious problem.
The only exception with Drow was in Eberron, where there was the Drow that Drow that worship a scorpion god and live in the jungle, the Drow that use fire magic and serve Giants, and the Drow that live underground and fight Eldritch Horrors. Neither factions were portrayed as exclusively evil.Also WotC is committing to moving away from portraying Drow, Orcs, and Goblinoids as exclusively evil races.
Yeah, they started that around 2004 when they realized “Drow = evil” was really eating into that mad Drizzt cash cow. It wasn’t until around post-President Obama era/circa 2010ish they started realizing “Drow are Black and evil” was a real issue.Honestly, I’m not sure they’re going to be able to walk this one back. Drow being evil was never really the problem. Drow being BLACK was the problem.
They’re not even the only dark-skinned elves. You’ve also got “Wild Elves” who are “insular and savage” and have skin tones comparable to indigenous Americans. But the most civilized elves are either pale-skinned (Moon Elves) or read as elitist blonde Europeans with a St. Tropez tan (Sun Elves).
Yeah, I was born in the late 80s, so I’m not familiar with anything pre-3.5E, and I’m not denying their book portrayal being problematic, I’m just saying that the writers of the books making something didn’t force all the players to use them that way.I’m not trying to ret-conn what the Drow were created as, I’m just pointing out the gap between that and how people use them.As an aside, Drizzt is lame, and the only people I know who thought he was ‘cool’ were the ninja-wannabe kids.
No, sorry, I wasn’t trying to suggest you were ret-conning specifically. WotC started around 2000 or so trying to do that to salvage as much of the Drizzt cash cow they could. The entire design of Drow being “not evil” kinda started around 2000, then the Eberron setting in 2004 made a whole other set of non-evil Drow that was an attempt to make the “Drow = evil” association less strong.
I’d like to see what are they going to do about Lord of the Rings.
That’s the thing, a lot of our fantasy entertainment springs from really racist old-world Europe folklore and works inspired by it. And I shouldn’t have to point out how entrenched fantasy RPG culture is with modern racist trolls. I don’t even know where to begin to sort it out.
Well shit, better cancel all literature ever then.
Or 101 Dalmatians.
Of all the blackface-joke-removals recently this is the only one that felt still relevant as I read it not some as comment about “clueless white character thinks something that went out with minstrel shows in the 40s is still a thing” like 30 Rock but instead about how a very popular cultural phenomenon has a significant amount of racial weirdness. Drow are probably the most glaring but there’s also a tremendous amount of Antisemitic and Orientalist material, not to mention what happens when you get into “tribal cultures”..I’m not going to make a passionate argument to leave the episode in, though I’d have rather seen it just edited or have a disclaimer added since it is one of their best, but racism tropes in fantasy settings is probably a discussion we all really need to have.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
What are the antisemitic components of D&D? (Asking sincerely. I have some guesses about what you mean, but I’m not honestly not sure.)
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
DnD’s approach to race is apparently being updated rn, so that’s something to keep an eye on.
Two at least Drizzt and Viconia Devir from Baldurs Gate. But yeah a completely evil race is dumb.
almost like it was pointing that out jesus christ does anyone realize they DIDN’T make these connections before TV showed them?
Well most people never heard of the Drow… they were busy partying and having sex in high school instead 🙂
what is this….sex…you speak of
It’s how half-elves are made.
meanwhile the plight of the gnome waiters continues to go ignored
They’re practically un-gnome.
…… I’ll see myself out.
*eagle cry*Kyle…
Fantasy media, especially in the tradition of Tolkien, is often full of racist bullshit. “Let’s all imagine a world where race is real and pronounced and easily delineated, each group with their own inherent natures, some noble and others savage. Isn’t this fun?”
To try and get me to watch Community, she showed me this episode. I was laughing pretty hard when Jeong’s elf character died.
To be fair, she’s a well known proponent of blackface, which is why we as a society have taken to referencing her only obliquely.
If only we had canceled Louis CK and Kevin Spacey so effectively.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Who is the she you guys are referencing? Did something get edited?
The joke is that in otm shank’s comment they were probably referring to a female friend, family, or significant other trying to get them to watch Community, but they neglected to include a more specific designation than “she,” so Honeybunchesofgoats is riffing on such vague pronoun usage.
Normally explaining the joke lessens the impact but I’m laughing more that you wrote up this explanation for it
it all started when it was discovered she don’t use jelly
She uses Vaseline.
I always took THIS as the joke. “Chang tried so hard to get into something with the group that he paints himself an unnatural color head to toe, then dons a wig and eyebrows, only to die immediately.” That’s a bit more in character too. All that effort wasted. Never read it as it’s being read now. Seems like a lot of white people (like me) taking about this, though. Maybe I missed it, but could someone Black weigh in on this? Don’t really want to do the white savior thing and assume I know best either way.
We should have one election where people get to vote on what jokes get to be on TV and which statues get to stay up; and then a separate election where we vote on actual issues like healthcare and military spending.You can’t vote in both, you have to choose one. So all the right people get to feel incredibly productive, but removed from actual levers of power.
Fortunately, they only had to pull half of the Star Trek episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”
COTD.
“I’m half-white on the left and half-pixels on the right, but he’s half-white on the right and half-pixels on the left!”
Do they scrub out one half of each alien? So it just looks like two halves of a person yelling at each other?
In all seriousness, I wonder if that episode will be on the chopping block. Should it be, considering the message of the show?
The message actually does feel pretty off these days, very much a “good people on both sides” BS thing.
I’d say the message is more like “racism is simply two groups of exactly equal influence and power who hate each other irrationally,” which is definitely off nowadays.
You think that was true in the 60s?!?!?
The point of that episode was that there are bad people on each side.I think that message still applies.
The interesting thing about watching Star Trek moral tales is that you get to see where an era’s social understanding was of ethics. Though to be fair to “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, I think there was a bit more depth to its message; the episode is more an analysis of Dr Seuss’s Sneetch tale from perspectives in a utopian society. The distinctions that the Cheron aliens make to justify hate are lost on Kirk’s crew, as the differences are only skin deep- worth celebrating & uniting over. Then, despite being faced with the truth that they are the only two left in their civilization, they are not pushed to unite but further justify their hatred. There’s some great truths to the moral of the story, but most of the monster-of-the-week moral tales just only grasp the surface of the issue.
if they had Gorshin painted in “brown as black” skin tone and left his “white” half as is, it might be a thornier issue, but he was literally black (beyond skin tone range) and white (beyond skin tone range).maybe they could re-colorize it as half red and half blue.
too soon?
Wasn’t chang also painted black beyond skin tone range? its been a couple of months since i rewatched but he didn’t come across as looking human in that makeup.
Thats an interesting point. The klingons were made up much more realistically You could make a much stronger case against the klingons, but then you would have to face the “how come the bad guys are all black” backlash. I think Worf was the first Klingon played by a black actor
I’m going to assume that it won’t, as what denotes the divide between the aliens is so tooled down that it’s hard to draw a direct comparison to the racist minstrel-style blackface. I’ve been rewatching the Star Trek series for the first time since I was a kid, and now that I’m mostly through TNG, the clumsiest episode I’ve found is TNG season 5’s Violations. The intent of addressing sexual assault & consent are well-intentioned, but hoo boy! That episode flew too close to the sun.
That and the klingons, who are pure blackface mixed with Yellow Peril. And The Paradise Syndrome, which is pretty offensive to native americans. And TNG episode Code of Honor.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Half blackface on one guy, plus half blackface on the other guy, equals one full blackface.Cancelled.
I, uh, get most of the removals except the Community one. Can’t they just edit the episode around that? Hell, just blur Chang out completely and you still sort of get the joke: Drows resemble blackface.
I’ll be honest, I’d totally forgotten about the whole dark elf thing, and when I heard the news I actually assumed it was about Annie playing a male character and acting out a messy sex scene.
You assume that about everything!
Nah everyone is cool with Hector the Well Endowed
I’d thought someone took the suicide references the wrong way.
Can we stop pretending anyone is harmed by blackface?
Once you stop pretending that people aren’t, maybe someone will consider it.
OK, what black kid didn’t get his/her PhD because of this episode of Community?
Your mom?Be consistent. There is a difference between blackface as an aspect of culture being harmful to society and individual people being harmed in specific ways by specific instances. Pick one to stick with.
“Harmful to society” is meaningless.
So the combined effects on groups of individuals are meaningless? Even libertarians would say, “I wouldn’t go THAT far.”
Ugh I hate censorship of any kind, regardless of what it is…that’s a great episode of Community, one of the best, though I haven’t seen it in a few years. I don’t remember the blackface scene at all.
Most of the examples of blackface being removed are either 100% harmless or are actually a commentary on racial dynamics and the stupidity of blackface. God this push this week to remove these particular episodes are dumb as fuck.
My first instinct, as a white dude, is to defend these specific episodes and incidents as well, and point out how they’re actually lampooning blackface, etc. But the fact of the matter is that blackface jokes, even if they’re making fun of blackface or come at the expense of obviously racist characters, still normalize the use of blackface humor for everyone and open the way for people to treat the issue with considerably less nuance (if not fully embrace it). It would be one thing if blackface was entirely in the past, but every Halloween I read about idiots who still think its okay to use blackface as a costume and don’t understand what the big deal about it is. We’re undergoing a cultural and moral sea change right now and, again as a white dude, I’m trying to be cognizant of the fact that I’m the last person who should be deciding what is and isn’t “harmless” humor.
I disagree with the idea that privileged people can’t have a valid opinion on what’s offensive or not. People from marginalized groups can be wrong too.
More defending of blackface from from Dino Ironbody: Defender of Blackface
Laserface1242: Denier of Nuance
You’re such an awful person. You realize you’re the bad guy right? Like you think you’re being good and brave in this situation? Defending censorship by mob? Look in the fucking mirror.
You live on here to type comments day after day to people that don’t respond except to troll you.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
The world would be a better place if you killed yourself
T R I G G E R E D
Lol. Shut up. You don’t matter.Shut up.No one gives a shit or asked for your opinion.And yet you’re a dumb piece of shit with no insight into anything ever.Great no one asked you or cares.It’s too bad your opinion means jack fucking all.
People from the dominant group telling people from the marginalized group “we’re not being offensive toward you” is, at the very least, missing some important context. By definition, they don’t know what it feels like to have their ethnic identity turned into a costume in a societal environment that already sees them as lesser, so I don’t know why a well-intentioned person would feel so confident expounding on why it’s okay this time.
In reality, it’s usually significantly more malignant than that, essentially saying “these echoes of your oppression and the effect they have on you are less important to me than a show that I like.”
What if some of the people in the marginalized group actually find it funny? Should they be overruled by others who could simply not watch the thing they find offensive?
The hypothetical pro-blackface black person clearly isn’t a significant enough chunk of the audience for these corporate behemoths to feel like walking a middle ground is worth it.
And you and I both know they’re not the ones leading the charge against this.
How would you have ANY insight into if that’s true? Anyone who’s against the mob right now is getting massive backlash. People aren’t comfortable saying what they really think. Make more claims you have zero basis for.
Was there a major charge in favor of removing those scenes/episodes or was it just to pre-empt any potential backlash?
The charge was millions of protestors speaking out against systemic racism. Did you miss it?
I don’t see how using blackface as the butt of a joke is indicative of racism, systemic or otherwise.
Yes, you’ve made it clear that you don’t get it. But blackface in media is over whether you’re on board with it or not.
Even if no one ever uses it from now on, I don’t see why that’s a reason to remove things that used it in the past.
#CancelJustinSimien
Black people aren’t a monolith nor does one speak for all of us. Now I do find it kinda funny sometimes but it also makes me uncomfortable and cringe and even if it didn’t, I’d be much better off not seeing my skin color being made a mockery of. Whether trying to be smart about it or not which you lot love to think negates any criticism of black face. But hey if you just really need to see a scene of a dude or woman painted in black, buy the DVD, blu ray, hd dvd “if you can find it lol” or pirate. It still exists lol
Would you be fine with the episodes being kept up but with a warning?
No because like most warnings, people will ignore them
Including the people who’d be offended by the content?
Just dismiss his replies. He’ll just keep moving the goalposts on the argument.
Black people are not a monolith. It’s perfectly okay for some black people to not be offended and for others to be offended. The point is that it is not up to you as a white person to tell ANY black person whether they should or shouldn’t be offended by someone using their racial plight as a joke. Once again, not a single black person asked for any of this. These white creators are deciding to check themselves and remove themselves. Nobody told them to do it, nobody forced them, nobody bullied them. They are all grown adults capable of making their own life choices and decisions with their art. If they feel they want to remove their art or remove themselves to make room for black voices they’re more than welcome to.
I think the people who keep saying “no one forced them to do this” are missing the point. I don’t think it’s about whether they have a right to do it, it’s whether it’s right for them to do it. I think we’re capable of making our own choices about what to watch, and I don’t think it’s good for them to deny us the choice.
Also Dino Ironbody seems to forget that he can just choose to buy the DVD collection if he wants to see blackface. Or hell he can just pirate it. His choice to see blackface hasn’t been taken away, Netflix and NBC have a right to do what they want with their own platform.But I’m sure he’ll just move the goalposts of the argument like he always does.
“Where will Black people who think blackface is funny get their blackface now??”I guess that’s just collateral damage that I’m comfortable with.
I understand the logic there, but these episodes were also pulled by Netflix, possibly acting at the request of Black employees, but equally possibly acting because a white PR employee decided better safe than sorry. I’ve looked and haven’t found so much as a Change.org petition asking for this episode to be pulled. If a lot of people really were watching this and feeling attacked, then I certainly agree the episode needs at least a message of context, but this doesn’t seem to have been a remotely controversial episode until Netflix labelled it ‘The one with Blackface.’ Without trying to sound petty (and I obviously don’t know your own background), for all I know, most Black people react to the episode the same way most white people do, by thinking it’s a funny line by Yvette Nicole Brown, the Black woman who reads the joke’s punchline.
Don’t you mean Chang.org?Sorry
Somehow I doubt their black employees cared about a few episodes more then they cared about Netflix actually hiring more people like them and treating them properly.
[Looks around, in comically exaggerated fashion, under chairs, couch, etc., for where I said “privileged people can’t have opinions”] Of course privileged people can have opinions, valid and otherwise. Take a stroll down every virtual avenue in the internet and you’ll find privileged people expressing their opinions with supreme comfort and confidence. Here I am, a privileged person, freely expressing my opinion. I do think, as a privileged person, it’s probably healthy for me to examine where all these opinions of mine are coming from, and attempt to understand why, e.g., what looks like “harmless” humor to me might in fact be interpreted as extremely harmful to others. I might come out the other end still disagreeing but hopefully I’ll have gained some empathy and perspective along the way.
For context Dino Ironbody has spent at least two threads defending blackface. At best he doesn’t see anything with it and that in itself raises questions.
No one cares. You’re an awful person.
Just gonna re-post my reply to Robot_Jox who dismissed it:Always nice to know who my fans are. Especially ones who throw hissy fits over a voice actor choosing not to voice a character anymore.Also it’s really poor form to like your own comments…
Kinja wouldn’t let me edit.
I’d like for you to read the posts Laserface linked to and tell me if you think his characterization of what I said is fair(BTW, he’s resumed his pattern of dismissing responses to my posts, even when they’re in response to one of mine).
Lazerface is right up there with recognitions as being one of the most irritating and worst of the woke trolls.
He’s had this weird thing against me for a while now. He keeps posting what I imagine he thinks are “gotchas” about something I’ve said(or he imagines I’ve said).
It’s part of his shtick because outside of the fanatical and trollish wokeness, he never has anything good or smart to say other than resharing the same comic book images over and over. Just ignore him and dismiss him like most people do and don’t cave in to him. It’s what he wants.
Always nice to know who my fans are. Especially ones who throw hissy fits over a voice actor choosing not to voice a character anymore.
Noticed you dismissed my reply. Don’t worry, I’ll just re-post it:Always nice to know who my fans are. Especially ones who throw hissy fits over a voice actor choosing not to voice a character anymore.
Isn’t there a blackface party that you two need to get to?
Except you are wrong here.
Is that all you have to say?
They are the people speaking sense to racist pearl-clutching nonsense oin this thread.
Right down to the exact same digging through your posting history for something you said six years ago to link everybody to. Maybe they are the same poster.
They aren’t. Its just what the commentariat of G/O Media and the AV Club has turned into thanks to these sites focusing on identity politics these days.
Says the fanboy of a racist conspiracy nut who gives a platform to Nazis…
I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and I’m not pursuing whatever old comment you’ve dredged up to fling poo about. Eat ass.
Self righteous douche
If you’re not black, you don’t get to say whether or not black people should be offended by blackface. It’s not your call and it never will be.
If someone is black, do they get to say whether other black people should be offended?
But was this episode pulled because Black people were offended by it, or because of Netflix’s likely white PR department? Because if white people at Netflix pulled the episode unprompted, then isn’t pulling it already a case of white people telling Black people what they should be offended over? This episode doesn’t seem to have been controversial among anyone until they made this decision, at least to my knowledge, and Netflix’s decision doesn’t elaborate on who made the call or how the call was made.
“Should” has nothing to do with it. I’m sure some are offended and some aren’t. This says nothing about whether any offense a given person takes, for whatever reasons, is relevant or worth heeding.
Agreed, just because a person is non-white or non-straight does not automatically mean they are correct about everything.
What you can’t really have in a way that’s meaningful is an opinion about what is offensive to those marginalized groups. Particularly if your opinion is something along the lines of, “They really shouldn’t be so upset about that.”
Removal is dumb because it’s only done to erase ones own sins, not make up for anything.All removal does is piss off moderately liberal people who understand blackface is wrong. Whereas people who would still dress in blackface aren’t going to care anyway.Makes progressives look like the granny state the right attempts to make them out to be. Put a disclaimer, put some information and link to more information.
I don’t really know the way to go, and my guess is that we’ll eventually settle on the “yeah, we acknowledged this was pretty fucked up; here’s some added context” route a la Gone with the Wind, but I don’t blame folks for going “fuck it, let’s pull this until we can figure our shit out” under the current political climate.
It’s also worth noting that the people pushing for this are white bourgeois teenagers whose attention spans have lapsed after a month, and are now searching for a new avenue of instant external online validation.
I highly doubt most white teens who even care about shows like “It’s Always Sunny”, “Community”, “Golden Girls” or “Scrubs”.
…aughts comedies are the only thing white teens watch other than video game streams, haha.
I mean, you can still but the DVD that has the episode. Netflix and NBC just don’t want it on their streaming platform.
Or, people can grow.A disclaimer can be placed that says “comedy has evolved. Somethings that are offensive weren’t treated as such. And at times, shows attempted to be too clever to subvert something that didn’t need to be subverted. You can watch knowing this or skip ahead, your choice.”Because if Netflix starts going through their catalog and removes everything like blackface, brown face, homophobic etc, they ain’t going to have a lot of content left.Edit: I’ll never support erasure. Erasure leads to history being written. The type of rewriting that leads to the belief that the Civil War was about state rights and not white supremacy. Because they leave all that out when teaching the Civil War in schools.
It’s not erasure, you can still but the uncut version on DVD. It’s their platform and their property. How they choose to handle this controversy is their business.Do I think it would be better if there was a warning? I don’t know because it’s a complex issue and it shouldn’t be my call to make. But the episode isn’t gone. You can still watch it on the DVD collection. It’s probably on Amazon if you look for it. There’s no need to get upset just because Netflix and NBC choose not to have on their streaming platforms. Forcing them to do otherwise against their will would just be censorship.
It’s 100% erasure.Scrubs DVDs, out of print, no Blu-ray’s.30 Rock and Community, out of stock and prices already jumping from fear that they’ll put them out of print due to current climate.
Episodes are generally removed from purchase too.A disclaimer is always better. Knowledge is always bettwr. Telling people, “hey there’s something here that is offensive and maybe you won’t like it and maybe you’ll laugh and empty but know that part of it’s hurtful to people” is 1000% better than locking it up and letting time forget that it happened. Because nothing good happens when people forget.
Trust me, nobody’s in danger of forgetting racism. Nobody’s erasing the history of racism, they are just putting it in the evil context which it derserves, instead of cynically weaponizing it for profit.
See the problem is, that’s never been the case.You know what puts it in context, putting context.Erasure just means forgetting and punishment.Remove Gone with the Wind and you lose out on people actually seeing Hattie McDaniels Oscar winning performance.It’s throwing out the baby with the bath water. Nuance is important. People need to actually grow not just ignore.
Agreed, though I also recognize this isn’t exactly a nuanced time, this is a time of action. And, fucked up as it is to say, in times of action a lot of shit gets wrecked. The hope is that, afterwards you put the pieces back together better than they were before. I disagree with many of the current actions RE: Media, all the POC I know do as well, but I also get why they’re happening (a mix of creatives with their heart in the right place, people wanting to signal what side of history they want to be on, and cynical corporate flag waving that needs to be backed up by real action. None of the POC I know give two fucks about an offensive episode of a TV show, but they do care about jobs, about discriminatory and racist company practices and about media companies backing up institutional racism with silence, lies, or outright encouragement) and we’ve been picking our battles. I disagree in most cases about wiping out history, especially the bad stuff. Context is what teaches truth, instead of pat lessons peddling pleasant falsehoods. I’m a 90’s kid, they taught us racism was a dying problem, because they shielded us from unpleasant, offensive, things. Hiding history is a defensive gesture, it is attempting to distance oneself (or ones multi national streaming platform) from the foibles of your era, and present yourself as clean. Nobody is clean. That’s the fucking point. The statues of racists should bear a list of their crimes, maybe displayed in a museum, or where they stand, as a testament to the amount of revisionism we engaged in. (Actually, I hope the ones pulled down are gathered, and displayed somewhere in their current state, to show growth.) And nuance should be applied, in time, to the creative works that make people uncomfortable. We should lean into uncomfortable, it should be flagged, we should be uncomfortable more. Comfort with our perceived cleanness is what perpetuates this mess. A disclaimer might make people think, an absence makes people forget. Forgetting makes people lazy.(As a big ol’ nerd, I also have very wordy and long winded views on the perception of orcs and drow as racist- in short, I think it’s a reductive view that misses the point of history and myth regarding fictional non-human races(the only way you can have other races, there is only one human race, we killed all the other ones tens of thousands of years ago) as an avenue of exploration of our own psychology—but I’ll spare you the long digression, in part because I think the time for that discussion is for when people aren’t being shot in the street for being black.)
what “controversy” though? I don’t see what any of this has to do with police brutality, that’s the weird part, there weren’t any petitions asking for this.
It’s hardly erasure if you can still buy the originals. It’s more like bleeping out a swear word.
kinda hard to do that with Scrubs season 5 as that DVD is basically sold out everywhere right now(so you’ll have to shell out for the expensive series box set if you want it on DVD), fortunately you can still access those removed season 5 episodes if you buy the entire season 5 on Google Play, so do it quick before those bastards take it down there too.
not to mention it doesn’t address the problem of the lack of diversity at the networks in question, many black folks like Michael Harriot have made that point-they don’t give a damn about a few episodes featuring black-face or a few minorities voiced by white actors in animated shows-they want REAL tangiable progress on seeing more minorities hired and so do I.
I didn’t want to open up another can of worms as well. And maybe I’m wrong or it’s two separate issues, but, I’d say these specific shows having done questionable blackface while actually having black and minority leads is far less of a problem than the numerous shows which just don’t have black faces or any minorities with significant roles in front or behind the screens.
Yes that’s far less of a problem then all these big prestige dramas like Mad Men that have no non-white people in them whatsoever.
Who fucking gives a shit what color you are? This episode caused no one anywhere pain *ever* and now it’s been disappeared to appease zealots. Does intellectual honesty not matter anymore?
You live on here to type comments day after day to people that don’t respond except to troll you.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
So you’ve decided to argue from the lens of identity politics, got it. Your lack of melanin renders your opinion unwarranted, got it.Context is important. If we’re unwilling to rationally see this point because we believe our skin tone informs our opinion and/or privilege, we’re actually perpetuating stereotypes and judging people by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. Which is fucking racist.
Our skin tone informs our opinions to the extent that we live in racialized society over which we have very little individual control, and which to a very large extent shapes our experiences, narrows and widens our opportunities, and determines our access to various cultural, institutional and material resources. Race isn’t real in any biological sense, but it’s profoundly real in its consequences, embedded as it is in countless systems of power. Acknowledging that fact is neither irrational nor racist. Arguing that racism can be overcome simply by pretending that race no longer exists (and thereby ignoring centuries of racial oppression and their economic, cultural, and psychological impact on both Black and white communities) is, in fact, pretty fucking racist.
Couldn’t that logic be applied to any depiction of racism, though?Like, there’s another episode in Community Season 2 where the climax of a B-plot involves revealing a guest character has a swastika tattoo, but that ep doesn’t seem to have been removed.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that you can’t depict any racism, but there are always cultural thresholds that creators should be wary of crossing. Matt Walsh’s trampoline guy character might have been a swastika-tattooed Neo-Nazi, for instance, but I highly doubt the writers would have been comfortable putting the n-word and other explicit racial epithets in his mouth. What should and shouldn’t be depicted on movies/TV will always be subject to renegotiation—who’s to say that won’t collectively change our minds on swastikas in the future—but I think there’s a pretty compelling case for avoiding blackface, specifically, altogether.
I think there’s a pretty compelling case for avoiding blackface, specifically, altogether.I completely agree. The only problem I have with any of this is that Chang’s makeup… isn’t blackface? 1) He’s Asian, not white. 2) He’s wearing makeup to make him look like a specific fantasy race that itself is not based on Black people, Black stereotypes, or anything of the sort. 3) His performance and role in the episode has nothing to do with Black people whatsoever.I’m not one to try and defend “we should keep this depiction of blackface just because it’s meant to mock racists” e.g. the David Cross sketch, the 30 Rock episodes, etc. I realize that such things can still upset a lot of people and be seen as normalizing and justifying offensive stereotypes, even if they’re meant as trenchant cultural analysis or whatever. But I also don’t think that every instance of someone wearing makeup that makes their skin darker is automatically blackface: case in point, Chang as a drow.
The Drow are a congenitally evil race of dark-skinned beings. That *is* fucked up, and rooted in harmful stereotypes of blackness, as WotC recently acknowledged.
Are they? I was always under the impression that the similarities began at ended at the stereotype of “dark = evil,” and that none of the details had any resemblance to stereotypes about Black people.
I’d say, in terms of the character’s actual intent Chang going all-out with the Drow makeup isn’t itself blackface, but it’s very much a joke about blackface and how anyone who wasn’t familiar with a D&D fantasy race would very easily interpret it as such. E.g., Shirley’s response of “are we just going to ignore the hate crime going on here?” and Pierce referring to Chang as Al Jolson later on in the episode.
Sure. But is a joke about blackface the same thing as blackface?
If you’re a Bernie Bro tired of the work that goes into effecting actual change?YUP!#CancelJustinSimien
If it’s a joke about blackface that literally includes someone blackening their skin, even if the character in question doesn’t explicitly intend to mimic a Black person, I…think that’s treading an extremely fine line, and I think it’s significant that the show had Chang doing it and not, say, Britta or Jeff.
I agree – it IS significant that the person they had doing blackface had been established, over multiple seasons, as being an oblivious, insensitive moron!Otherwise, it might have confused the clear, unambiguous, “Blackface is bad. Even in situations where you think it might be justified, it isn’t. Blackface is bad.” message of the bit.
Eh, I think if the writers actually felt that way they probably would have followed their own advice and not depicted anything resembling blackface. Instead, they had one character express momentary discomfort while the rest just kind of shrugged it off, and another character make an oblique reference to a minstrel performer that I’m guessing flew right over the heads of many fans. Chang doesn’t face any sort of comeuppance for his behavior and his “death” is unrelated. The bit is pretty clearly about shock value rather than any serious attempt to confront or satirize blackface.
Ah, but David Simon was comfortable putting the n-word in characters mouths!#CancelTheWire!
Network TV situation comedy not equivalent to M-rated cable crime drama, more at 11. That part where I said “what should and shouldn’t be depicted on movies/TV will always be subject to renegotiation”? That applies to stuff like genre, context of depiction, and intended audience as well. If The Wire was a wacky network sitcom that routinely featured white characters shouting the n-word purely for the shock humor of it, yes, it probably would have (and should have) been canceled long ago.
His logic leads pretty irrevocably to the conclusion that the Dear White People show should be cancelled, and the movie should be removed from Netflix.Which is, y’know, nonsense.
Actually, “as a white dude” you’re just as capable of determining what is funny as anyone from any other race. I mean holy shit black people aren’t a different SPECIES. Humor is not a race based trait. And i don’t see anyone removing all the shows and movies with whiteface in them.
Yeah. you as a white dude shouldn’t decide what’s harmless humour. The white guys who run the network and are now pandering to a tiny group of mostly white twitter activists should.
Do we really have to keep eliminating tv episodes until you see zero blackface halloween stories? Yes it happens, but it’s literally as rare as the plague.
from what i’ve seen a lot of black folks really don’t give a rat’s ass about these episodes(Michael Harriot on the Root said as much) as to them it seems like the networks desperately want to look like they are doing something to combat racism, and removing a few episodes is easier then actually going to the trouble of hiring more minorities, I say keep the damn episodes where they are and simply hire more black folks.
Based on this…it’s pretty clear now that “Dear White People” should be removed from Netflix, for “normalizing the use of blackface humor”!!!After all, that movie shows asshole characters doing blackface, in order to show that blackface is bad and only assholes engage in it!Yer man who directed it should clearly be #cancelled by all the white people who’ve gotten bored of how long it takes to effect meaningful change, and are now desperate for instant gratification!
Well, one’s a film specifically about race by a Black creator and the others are network TV sitcoms about a television studio, community college, and paper company office, respectively, all by white creators, where the inclusion of any blackface humor would be entirely incidental and tangential. Yes, context matters, and I didn’t mean to imply that literally all depictions of blackface should be banned forever. I do think that if you’re a white sitcom writer you should probably think long and hard about including blackface on your show, even if you think you’ve discovered some clever workaround.
I don’t think it’s “a clever workaround” to have a bad person do blackface to show that that they’re a bad person, and have that bad person be the but of the joke.It’s just saying “Blackface is bad. Blackface has always been bad. Anyone who does blackface is bad.”This whole wave is the EPITOME the “White Liberal Fox” nonsense that Malcolm warns about.
I’m not sure which example you’re referring to, but both Chang in Community and Jenna in 30 Rock are frequently given sympathetic depictions and neither are portrayed as outright, unambiguously “bad,” even within the episodes in which they’re doing blackface.
“Chang eats the sun and drinks the sky. We all go with him when he dies.”Meanwhile, Jenna’s entire personality is that she’s an insane, selfish monster incapable of recognizing that anything could possibly matter more than her immediate desires.
And yet there are multiple episodes where Liz realizes she’s been a bad friend to Jenna and attempts to make amends. And yes, even after Chang becomes an insane dictator and takes over the school, he’s still eventually welcomed back into the group. Neither character is portrayed as an outright villain and certainly neither character faces any sort of comeuppance for donning blackface.
If you can’t tell the difference between a show produced by black artists that centers and a show made by white people and centering on whiteness, this is the time in the cultural conversation where you need to be quiet and listen.
It’s more about being able to recognize nonsense from rich white brand managers afraid of bored, rich white teenagers.“Bad person does blackface to show blackface is bad” is a very simple thing, which everyone genuinely interested in social justice understands.DWP wasn’t particularly smart or innovative in creating its central conflict – the movie was just brilliantly done.
You’ve said it more articulately then I ever could, but this was basically the case I was trying to plead back when Tropic Thunder came out. (The movie that might be responsible for the resurgence of the blackface joke, since it predates every one of these comedies’ blackface episodes.) That was the big film that put this practice in the mainstream again- and I always sort of worried if people might take away the wrong lessons from its success (as people often do).
My first instinct, as a white dude, is to defend these specific episodes and incidents as well, and point out how they’re actually lampooning blackface, etc. But the fact of the matter is that blackface jokes, even if they’re making fun of blackface or come at the expense of obviously racist characters, still normalize the use of blackface humor for everyone and open the way for people to treat the issue with considerably less nuance (if not fully embrace it).In the same place tbh. And wondering why we don’t distinguish between when the blackface was making a specifically anti-racist point, when it was contextless just for shock value, or when it was used as a shorthand to criticise racists. Also wonder why NBC (and these are all shows that originally aired on NBC, except Mr. Show) decided to remove the episodes completely, rather than cut the scenes/put a disclaimer. I thought a disclaimer was standard. There’s an old Law & Order (from 1990) about AIDS being so terrible it makes sense to kill someone who has it. When A&E reran it, they put a disclaimer.
I can see what you’re saying, but this particular episode of community was not meant to be social commentary. Ken Jeong was meant to be dressed as a dark elf. They painted his skin pitch black and his hair was pure white. This is not black face, this had zero to do with race, or culture, or anything like that. Nobody, even without knowing the context of the episode, would have mistaken an image of Ken Jeong dressed as an elf as ‘blackface’.
Interesting that you choose to disregard the fact that many of the removals are a bunch of white people that agree that the way they used blackface was stupid to begin with. That’s pretty important.
People are telling the hysterical book burning mob what they want to hear? I wonder why?
Exactly. Ftr, all these removals and cancellations and quittings were decisions made by WHITE people. Not that the self-awareness isn’t welcomed, but nobody actually asked for any of this lmao
yeah I didn’t see any black folks demanding Missi on Big Mouth be voiced by a black person(truth be told until recently I honestly had no clue she was voiced by a white woman, though i’m OK with her being re-cast as I never liked her voice that much anyways).
That’s pretty easy to debunk, tons of people asked for it for a long time.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
It’s netflix executives saying that the show’s creators were wrong. Not the same bunch of white people.
Greg Daniels is in the article, if you want to go back above & read it, so yes- the “same bunch of white people”. For further context, showrunners for 30 Rock & Scrubs have made similar comments asking for removal of their blackface material, and support for removal has also come from the production/distribution studios behind the shows in question.I won’t assume what your perspective on this is as I don’t have enough context to assume, but people are acting like this is Orwellian historical erasure, like it’s a bunch of pearl-clutching; when the makers of the questionable material want it removed as well, it’s not Orwellian. The real pearl-clutching is the ones abrasive against other people committing to growth & accepting mistakes.
Non-white here. The Golden Girls episode removal because they wear mud was absolutely idiotic.
Hysterical people aren’t known for their thinking ability. Nazi’s love to book burn.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
I think there’s a point where you have to face it and cut a line, keep in mind these episodes weren’t written that long ago and had writing rooms with people of color involved and it either felt normal or they felt uncomfortable to speak up or went unheard. Blackface is offensive as fuck and there needed to be a full stop moment where everyone is so embarrassed that they thought it was ok. We don’t need the “lessons” anymore, we have the line.
I’d be open to a discussion of at what point satire comes into play, but you undercut yourself a lot by suggesting the examples are “harmless.” That kind of thinking is kind of the problem.
children better realize that this zero sum bullshit is not going to have a GOOD END
Whine more, KKK
When people clip gifs or screenshots of an episode and share it online, any nuance and commentary is gon . Instead you just have Celebrity X wearing blackface in the comment section of Sharon’s facebook post about how she couldn’t find a nintendo switch at Target.No, they aren’t harmless.
How long until every episode of Star Trek that features the Klingons is pulled? (Including TNG/ DS9 but excluding ones where it is just Worf)
On second thought after my knee-jerk reaction… removing Paradise Syndrome and the blackface Klingon episodes from TOS rotation in syndication and streaming sites might not be a bad idea. The flagrantly sexist Turnabout Intruder could go as well.Star Trek is about positivity and fighting racism, so sacrificing episodes to stand in solidarity with progress might be a good move for the community.
Calm down. It’s an asshole move to profit off blackface during a national crisis over racial justice. So did the non-asshole thing and pulled the episodes so they can (hopefully) finally check in with the black community before they exploit racist imagery for personal gain. Nobody’s burning the prints. I’m sure they’ll be back in some form so y’all can get your blackface fix.
Trust me, I am far from satisfied with racial justice and equity in Hollywood or anywhere else. I just think the people losing their shit because some white guys took a moment to read the room and and reflect on what they’ve done is ridiculous.
If your point is that white society will fight tooth and nail to prevent deep change, I totally agree. It also doesn’t mean that a some white guys who profited off black face can’t take a moment to reflect try and be better. You seem to be under the impression that BLM will be placated by this and drop their campaign for racial reform. I assure you they won’t.
We’re at the point where they’re literally getting rid of episodes where people are wearing mud face masks at a spa. It’s getting ridiculous. And yes it’s already souring other people’s opinions of the movement and distracting from the main issue, which is that police are STILL fvcking killing and assaulting and arresting black people disproportionately, even as recently as this fvcking morning. We won’t fvcking rest until the police are defunded/abolished.
“I was going fight to stop the killing of black people by police, but they stopped streaming those two episodes of a cancelled TV show I like,” said nobody, never. The BLM movement is not going to be derailed because a couple white guys took a moment to stop profiting off blackface and try to educate themselves before moving forward. Might some racists use it as cover to stop supporting it? Sure, but they never supported it anyway.
I feel like stuff like this is being done to make the BLM’s demands seem absurd. Discrediting it by equating it to “cancel culture” when in reality none of these Hollywood changes were being marched for.
Most of the examples of blackface being removed are either 100% harmless or are actually a commentary on racial dynamics and the stupidity of blackface. God this push this week to remove these particular episodes are dumb as fuck.There was no push. This is corporate activism CYA from NBC. I guarantee you there have been no protesters with signs that say “Justice for George Floyd and also I have thoughts about 10 year old sutcoms.”
Many of the examples this week gesture vaguely in the direction of racial dynamics but the real humor is meant to be found in the transgressive shock of a character “cluelessly” doing something offensive. As a fan of Community, 30 Rock, and Kimmy Schmidt, my kneejerk reaction was annoyance but it didn’t take much effort to recognize that they were going for cheap laughs and not any real effort at social commentary.
LOTR edit coming next
This one hits a little closer to home because I’m a bigger fan of Community and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons specifically than I was of 30 Rock and its blackface episodes. But, I think this might be what it takes to hammer home to sitcom writers that even if they think they’ve found a clever and ironic loophole for including blackface jokes in their episodes, just…don’t do that.
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Dark elves aren’t allowed to be represented on TV?
Only by dark elves
What’s next? Leprechauns only being played by Leprechauns? Warwick Davis should be ashamed?
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for
doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an
offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Meanwhile, Soul Man is still available to stream on Amazon Prime. Watch party! Who’s in?Edited to add that my not being able to post Amazon links on this website in particular is the most delicious irony ever served on American soil. Let’s try a tinyurl link – https://tinyurl.com/y9fqcxs6Edited again to add: Hurray! CUZ I’MMA SOUUUUL MAAAAN
White Chicks is still available on Amazon Prime, too. Or is that one still culturally acceptable? It’s so hard to keep track these days.
An ex of mine loved that movie, and often quoted it without reason. ‘Hold my poodle!’
Of course. Because of systemic structural systems of historic systemic structures … and something about “spaces”
I demand that The Simpsons season 1 episode 3 be stricken from the Internets.
Episode 3 of “Netflix Presents: The Characters” (2016) is still online.Started watching “The Comedians” (2015) on Hulu yesterday because I wanted to see what Billy Crystal was up to and there’s fucking Josh Gad in brownface.
You’re so brave. Did you alert the press? Your feelings must have been so hurt
Maybe he was he doing a tribute to Billy Crystal’s blackface?
Blackface mocks black people. An impression of a specific person doesn’t really do that.
That distinction doesn’t seem to matter any more. Jimmies Kimmel and Fallon both apologized for putting on make-up to portray specific black people. Historically blackface has mocked and denigrated black people, but most of the shows that have been pulling episodes lately for blackface were jokes at the expense of the white person wearing blackface to show how ignorant or uncaring they were. I think we have passed the point of any nuanced discussion.
I’m not sure what significance it has exactly, but a quick search of that 2011 AV Club recap you linked to of the AD&D episode and its 511 comments returned the use of blackface exactly …… once.(And even that was a “man I wish I could get away with that at my office D&D games”) …Make of that what you will, but 2011 was obviously a different time indeed …
I vividly remember an AV Club article referencing that Fuck You song. The writer closed the post with “just thought you should know, n****a.” That would never fly today.
Yes… AV Club had decent writers who could craft an article back in 2011
And intellectual honesty still mattered.
Which is funny because as Emily VanDerWerff has said, she really finds those to be some of her weakest writing: https://emilyvdw.substack.com/p/the-community-reviews
That’s really interesting, thank you for sharing. Season 3 was where the show fell apart for me in a huge way and its interesting to see many of the site’s writers felt the same way.The worst was the nonsensical Chang stuff, and the increasing reliance on “See, we’re being meta!” humour.That and the toxic, militant hardcore fans who were incredibly unpleasant throughout late 2011/early 2012. Fuck them.Given the show was already feeling played out by season 3 when it didn’t really seem to know what to do with several of its characters, and the increasingly weak later seasons, bringing Community back even in movie form seems as pointless and ultimately disappointing as the Arrested Development revival.
Community fans in the A.V. Club made me dislike the show in the same way the fans of certain presidential candidates made me actively dislike the candidate
They acted like total fuckwits over an extended period of time.
I meant in general— not necessarily this specific article. Bring Sean O’Neal back!
Well, 2011 was a very different time. 1930 wasn’t, but 2011 was.
2011 was a NORMAL time. 2020 will be looked back on as a period of dangerous mass hysteria and shared delusion.
2015 apparently too, when they loved the bob and david bit.
Oh the review, like that of all the shows being pulled is incredibly positive and doesn’t once mention the blackface (that is even mentioned in the show directly).AV Club, like a lot of blogs need to begin to come to terms with the fact they helped enable blackface to continue in popular culture by continually praising it.
This is literally so scary, it’s like in the USSR….just erasing parts of the story we are not supposed to like anymore, and have been labelled “heretic”..
Yes, dude from 25 years before streaming services existed and everybody had zero access to vast of programming, that is exactly what’s happening.
You know you can still just buy the episode from iTunes or whatever, right?
‘don’t worry, you can still look at blackface’oh thanks for looking out dude!
Yeah, though the USSR/1984 was doing it to exert totalitarian control and this is just entertainment mega-corporations trying to generate positive PR (and free advertising) by pretending to care about topical social issues.I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these episodes quietly return in a year or two.
I won’t be surprised if in some cases, they just take a week and slap on a disclaimer or an intro/outro about it a la Gone with the Wind. The ones that will be cut like The Office will just be cut.
I hope you’re all proud of yourselves. Your stupid moral crusade’s resulted in an environment where intent means nothing and nuance doesn’t exist. If you don’t think there’s going to be a backlash to this you’re out of your mind.
Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks that scrubbing things clean and pretending no blackface ever happened is worse than acknowledging how culture has changed by putting a warning before the episode.Sweeping things under the rug doesn’t change anything. Recognize the past, learn from it and move on. Don’t hide from it.Next they’ll remove every scene of Chandler embarrassed of his father? Then every episode where a gay panic joke happened?
Ironically, it’s this sort of censorious pearl clutching that is going to lead to this
To be fair, Gone With the Wind was removed and then returned with cultural context later. These other removals might follow a similar pattern, it’s just that they need time to add in the context and they don’t want to leave themselves open to criticism by leaving the episode up while they work on that.
No one who has removed any of these episodes recently has said that they’ll be put back yet. And what would the message say? “Our culture has drastically changed since the distant past of 9 years ago. We can’t joke about anything that’s bad anymore”?
“For all the Bourgeois white kids looking for something to feel personally victimized over – this is something called ‘satire,’ meant to show largely white audiences that blackface is bad.”
“Dad, what happened to those episodes?”“Oh we got rid of them because they had blackface in them. It’s a bad influence on people, that kind of stuff.”“So….you watched them, though?”
“So Dad, what about the show we saw yesterday where that guy ripped a woman’s head off and tore a guy’s chest open?”“Oh, that’s not nearly as bad as wearing blackface.”“Oh, OK. Got it, Dad.”
i’m sure there will be zero blowback whatsoever from eliminating all traces of blackface which satirize how wrong it is and only keeping the ones that state how prevalent and tolerated it is
No one’s burning the original recordings. They are just acknowledging that it’s hugely insensitive to be promoting and profiting off cynical blackface usage while we’re in an ongoing crisis regarding racial justice. I’m sure they’ll be available at some point, so y’all can get your blackface fix.
Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks that scrubbing things clean and pretending no blackface ever happened is worse than acknowledging how culture has changed by putting a warning before the episode.I technically agree, but you have to remember these shows were designed to make you laugh when you watch them, not be remembered decades from now. It’s completely normal, for ex, for Tintin to quietly not release its few books with racist caricatures of black people. It’s not censorship, just recognizing that the market doesn’t want to see it so why display outdated work that makes the consumer uncomfortable? That’s fine when you’re making ART that’s supposed to hold a mirror to society and whatever, but not for entertainment. Maybe as time goes on, Friends won’t be a show people watch for fun. It will be like I Love Lucy or the Mary Tyler Moore Show, for comedy nerds and historians only. It happens to nearly everything.
This episode is art that holds a mirror up to society.
Just cut the scene with Chang cosplaying as a Drow.
Oh no, I’ll just have to spend 5 minutes looking for a torrent if I want to watch it. The important thing is the corporation is getting that PR.
Cool. Cool, cool, cool.
That was a lie.
It’s going to be interesting watching the push and pull of this vis-a-vis the desire to make money by actually getting viewers. I mean, I’m not going to complain about this, I’m just going to torrent the show and watch it that way. I imagine it won’t be a huge number of people that follow suit. But much in the same way that pulling one show doesn’t make people flee a service, the cascade effect of people choosing to just pirate something rather than be subject to the whims of a streaming service will probably have a ripple effect down the line. Should be fun to watch.
Maybe a shorter list would be shows that don’t have to delete or alter any episodes due to blackface.
Who knew this many shows were leaning on blackface for jokes?
OK, when are we going to cancel Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy for doing whiteface and white voices in their acts. Eddie even does an offensive Anti-Semite jew voice character.
Ridiculous decision, this is why you should buy physical media.
Norman Lear used to get tons of fan mail from people who loved Archie Bunker and thought Meathead was on the wrong side of history — which they assumed the show intended (it did not). Lear was unsettled by the pleasure these viewers seemed to take in Archie’s ignorant rants about women and race and various nationalities:“Lear’s most successful character managed to defy his creator, with a ‘Frankenstein’-like audacity. ‘A funny thing happened on the way to TV immortality: audiences liked Archie,’ Austerlitz writes. ‘Not in an ironic way, not in a so-racist-he’s-funny way; Archie was TV royalty because fans saw him as one of their own.’ (source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/07/the-great-divide-emily-nussbaum)At some point well-intentioned white writers will have to learn that at a certain point the depiction of slurs and racist acts as satire generates much more hurt than enlightenment.
I legit thought the Chang character was in blue! Albeit a very dark blue. . I am a 30+ black female who happens to be a huge Community fan! I never found it offensive because the absurdity was addressed in that scene and it was soo clearly over the top and bizarre. I know the Community episode is considered one of their greatest episodes, it wasn’t ever my favorite but I still enjoyed it.
Maybe I did some mental Olympics to justify it cause I love the show. I thought it was blue! Was I wrong to not be offended? Most overt black face depictions like black pete (Zwarte Piet) are so clear and blatantly offensive. I am impressed Robert Downey Jr has not had articles regarding his Tropic Thunder character! (yet). It was offensive cause that was clear cut black face, but his character (not his depiction of the black person) was ultimately the butt of the joke if I recall correctly.
Sigh.. all these moves by Hollywood are cool, I guess.. sure. Whatever. They all seem like knee jerk response to the BLM. I still find these gestures empty. When the crux of BLMs outcry has been police reform/defunding and getting justice to the perpetrators (Breonna Taylor’s killers). If it also leads to changes in corporate america culture that’s great! The emails these companies sent out sure make it seem they are ready to face their own systemic racism right away! (:/) Puuh-lease!In regards to problematic entertainment rather than scrub it all away like it never existed I’d much rather Hollywood address it head on. For example I think HBO plan for Gone with the Wind is to eventually have content explaining the problematic (ie racist) context and historical circumstances behind it. The gap of knowledge between what the general public does and doesn’t know about racism and history is huuuuuugggeee. Any opportunity to educate the masses should be taken.I hope Hollywood is reckoning with their issues with systemic racism by listening to current employees of color and hiring diverse talent behind the camera, in front of the camera and in positions of influence and power. Taking clips from tv shows is a step, that I am not entirely sure is the right one. TLDR: I thought he was Blue and if my response to all these gestures:
Apparently there’s two videos attached to Gone with the Wind now on HBO Max, one of which is literally an hour long, that places the movie in a better context. No idea how many people will actually watch them, but I guess you can’t accuse HBO Max of failing in their due diligence.
I don’t think any reasonable person would presume to tell you what to be offended by; I’m glad if you weren’t offended by the Community episode, but I certainly wouldn’t castigate you if you were. I think you’re right in that hiring more people of colour to work in the industry is the bigger struggle; if nothing else, it’d hopefully mean no more blackface incidents going forward.
Dark Elves are not traditional black in the sense of human if African decent. They are almost a metallic black that can hint at blue. It’s still clearly meant as a black face joke based on Shirleys response but it’s complicated
Switching Chang’s makeup to blue actually seems like a doable CGI solution to this. Even the hate crime line would still kind of work as a stupefied reaction, but there wouldn’t be any blackface.
But the expurgated Tropic Thunder is gonna suck
Switching Chang’s makeup to blue actually seems like a doable CGI solution to this. Even the hate crime line would still kind of work as a stupefied reaction, but there wouldn’t be any blackface.Eh. It makes Shirley look easily offended, and that’s a Britta joke.
That’s what they did to Mr. Popo on Dragon Ball Z when it aired on Saturday mornings.
look at all the opinionated people so sure that this is a good idea vehemently disagreeing with you… :/
I’m really glad you brought up Tropic Thunder since I think that is an even WORSE depiction compared to how sitcoms like Community have handled it. The movie is funny, but audience’s overwhelmingly positive response
to RDJ in particular- often calling him the best thing about it- raised my eyebrow. His character not only changed
his skin, but unlike these other examples, he also changed his lips, the
way he talked, etc- and it wasn’t played to upset or anger us. It
wasn’t meant to shine a light on anything about people or the real
world. It was the whole joke. It’s literal minstrelsy. But it was
defended as being “a riff on method actors.” That’s how to get away
with anything. Turn it around. (Somehow we’re supposed to see Russel
Crowe in there more than we’re supposed to see a black caricature? Whatever. It worked. People bought the excuse.)
“and it wasn’t played to upset or anger us. It wasn’t meant to shine a light on anything about people or the real world. It was the whole joke. It’s literal minstrelsy. “Wow, you are really, REALLY fucking dumb.
RDJ has been called out on Kirk Lazarus, but most are dismissive because it’s a A- comedy and B- “commentary on how wypipo keep stealing black roles” wherein “he learns his lesson and takes the makeup off by the end of the movie.”Then we have C.Thomas Howell in “Soul Man”….
(Sorry, Tommy, you know you’ve had some call you out on this, too!)
I am impressed Robert Downey Jr has not had articles regarding his Tropic Thunder character! (yet). It was offensive cause that was clear cut black face, but his character (not his depiction of the black person) was ultimately the butt of the joke if I recall correctly.As I understood it, Ben Stiller went to the NAACP and explained exactly what he was going to do, how the whole point was to illustrate the point about white actors taking roles that should logically go to minorities (real prescient) and they said that made sense. Honestly, Greg Daniels could have done the same. Even Tina Fey for the Amos and Andy gag, maybe, but that one’s a lot iffier.
I guess this is better than arresting Breonna Taylor and Elijah Mcclain murderers…
edit: well, tbh this is not hollywood’s responsibility per se. Still I agree with your suggestion of hiring more black talent
Removing statues of Confederate statues & flags is one thing (and totally justified), but this entire movement of retroactive content scrubbing maybe the most (and I use this in the truest definition of the word) retarded woke flavor-of-the-week bullshit I have ever seen!It accomplishes nothing (except for creating alt-right fuel) and is true hollow PC pandering fuckery.
5.958 Seasons and a Movie!
Comedy is a science. A well-written joke has an OBJECTIVE point. The point of blackface was how funny and stupid black people look and act. The point of the joke in Community is how stupid Chang is, and also a little about knee-jerk reactions to blackface, even when it’s a Chinese man getting into character as a fictional race of elves.Learn to parse comedy or stop opining about it.
The joke was pointing out how problematic Drow Elves were by transplanting it onto a human, and a very oblivious character at that, and how ridiculous it was that Chang was the one going all in on D&D, and showing how that would look to another character without the D&D background.
See, I didn’t even know enough D&D to fully understand the joke, apparently. Thanks for explaining that.
Sounds awfully SUBJECTIVE to me, then…
Nope. I was wrong because I didn’t have the knowledge needed to get it.
literally a critique of DnD that now is being unmade ‘because duhhh we all know it’s problematic now’ ok well could this have had something to do with it? or are all these commenters on a TV show website about to say TV didn’t influence them
comedy: presenting the absurd as real against the realall comedy does is point out inconsistencies. this shit wouldn’t be funny if it were acceptable.
I see comedy as making new connections that tickle the brain, so yeah, absurdity reached through a kind of logic is a huge part of it. Forming new connections feels good so that we are incentivized to learn, and comedy that crosses boundaries is important in defining those boundaries and rounding out understanding.
there’s plenty of logic behind satire and zero logic behind these removals. this is the ‘i would have voted for obama a third time’ of 2020, but instead of trying to please real people, we’re doing everything via media outlets because we’re all stuck online so this is our reality right now.
I agree. It’s corporate PR appealing to a culture obsessed with rigid rules that allow for easy punitive justice.
it’ll backfire when they realize it paints a portrait of us as having no self-awareness of blackface as bad and literally tolerating or encouraging it up to the present day (since the only remaining examples frame it as such)but nobody has wondered ‘what about people who grow up not knowing these episodes existed’ yet
I mean, couldn’t they just censor Chang’s face in the Community episode? Actually, that might make it funnier — that way, you don’t understand why everyone is so shocked when he shows up, you have to imagine what he’s wearing on his face in your imagination.
A. You have no idea what’s funny. B. This is what you get for ignoring any nuance in this shit for years. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
I won’t be surprised if they just use editing software to replace the black paint another color and cut Shirley’s joke out tbh. Just can’t do that in an hour.I doubt the episode will be gone forever, but they probably are taking the time to figure out how to adjust the editing to fix the issue.
i think it’s way easier for them to do it this way, so when they lose a bunch of money from people canceling their subscriptions, they’ll know to just not do it next time.
Then you still loose his insane “the magician!” Line
Ugh. On one hand I can understand why they’d take this decision as Chang dressing up like… that was not good. On the other hand, blackface aside, it’s one of the best episodes Community ever did and they made its wrongness pretty clear from the start. But if I were black, I’d probably have a (legimitately) hostile reaction to this episode, and I respect the decision to pull it from that perspective. It’s not about how I feel, as a white person.
I wish there was a way to keep this episode in circulation, but Chang’s in it just enough to make an edit unworkable, so…
Why do you assume that black people automatically have “hostile” reactions to harmless jokes?So far I’ve only seen WHITE people getting offended by these things. Black people have more important things to worry about.
I have a feeling the episode will be back. Harmon et al know it’s one of the more popular episodes and also know that they can’t just leave it as is and say screw you. In 2020, they definitely have the tech to change the color of the character if they choose to. I don’t think it’s uneditable. I think it’s just going to take time to actually do.
It’s tricky because Shirley explicitly identifies it as a hate crime (which, yeah) so any edit to make him inoffensive throws the episode out of kilter, or makes it seem like Shirley is overreacting which isn’t any better. And you can’t take him out entirely because if I recall, his ‘death’ establishes the stakes (such as they are) for the episode as a whole.
So maybe not uneditable, but not a job I’d relish if I was tasked with it.
I agree, but I do think that it’s possible to change is skin color and edit Shirly to just say “Are we not going to mention this…” and cut the hate crime part out.I’m with you that it’s not a job that I’d want, but I also suspect that because of the popularity of the episode, they’ll do something more like that than never show it again.
They should’ve found a drow elf actor to play the role. Shameful.
We’re coming for you next, Stiller.
“I am sorry for the pain that caused”Wow…. If blackface on a TV show causes you “pain” you really are a fragile child
Christ, this is fucking dumb.
The Office episode is referencing Zwarte Piet, an absolutely racist Dutch Christmas tradition, in order to mock white racists.The Community episode has Chang dressed in actual-black paint and white wig to portray a fucking elf, with the joke being that he’s really into Dungeons and Dragons.I don’t know when we horseshoed around to have liberals being the puritanical scolds instead of the old days when it was conservatives, but here we are. I hope you guys like Big Bang Theory because we’re in for another generation of broad, banal comedy with zero risks taken.
Also interesting power dynamics at play here. Anything remotely touching on blackface gets cut but Sixteen Candles (Long Duk Dong) and the numerous jokes about Raj in BBT (accent, culture, India) and Temple of Doom (chilled monkey brains? In a country that has a significant vegetarian population?) stay in heavy rotation as “quality” family entertainment.. Well, per Napoleon, some minorities must just be more more equal than others. All of which is to say that I am not in favor of pulling or erasing history. We absolutely need to supplement that history with context and critique and add new voices and perspectives (e.g. isn’t in interesting that a man so concerned about Antisemitism had such fun with the darkies) but denial has rarely worked as an effective strategy in the long run (and doubters should check the latest US Covid numbers).
there is now approximately ONE thing we cannot show in our comedies. everything else is still fair game and people still understand satire elsewhere apparently.every country has one i guess. we have blackface, germany has the swastika, and china has…winnie the pooh.
they missed the S4 episode with actual blackface (And brownface!) which is just an awful racist joke and played as suchbut you know…no one watches S4 so…
Really, I’m probably as hard-left as you’ll find (at least in my region), and, man, this sorta shit is profoundly stupid. And this dumb shit adds to the broad strokes with which the right loves to paint us. I hate it.
When it comes to paintball, Chang is “one of those douchebags that brings my own equipment.” This joke is again Chang going way too hard at things.
This is the dumbest reaction to a non-issue I’ve ever seen.,jeezus.
I’m waiting for the episode of Mad Men where Roger straight up does Blackface while singing My Old Kentucky Home to get brought up. I wonder if the historical context will give it a pass or not. I was surprised that the Golden Girls episode and this one got jumped on before that.
I haven’t seen Mad Men (I know, I really should) but from what I’ve heard, that bit in Mad Men wasn’t supposed to be a joke at all. I understand it was presented as purely horrifying, not some joke about the character. I think something like that is more acceptable than these comedic depictions of blackface, which show really hurtful images just to make a joke. Even if the butt of the jokes are the characters and their stupidity, it’s not worth the pain it causes.
It’s definitely not a joke and they do show the reactions of black people who are present. I was just surprised I hadn’t seen it thrown in the “But what about…” pile. I’m also definitely not saying that this one show should therefore mean that everything else is acceptable. I was just surprised to not see it brought up.
It’s not a joke, but it’s also gratuitous and never comes up again. Arguably, it’s a valid thing to note about the character in question, but it certainly made me a lot more uncomfortable than Community’s scene did (though I’m white).
Apparently, Mad Men has been off streaming, and will be returning July 15th. They just mentioned that the episode will have a disclaimer that includes that the reason that it happens and why they have decided to keep it in.
drow are not black people. this is pretty ridiculous.
We need to stop redefining what blackface is. Blackface has (or had) a very specific meaning. It was the mistrals, it was a white dude with black paint on his face, big red lips, and probably white around the eyes. It was a horrific parody of people from Africa.
What it’s not is Ken Jeong with makeup/wig to look like a Drow. Pulling this episode is inherently stupid.
This purity spiral needs to end.
Isn’t the entire representation of Dr Manhattan in Watchmen kinda blackface?
6 seasons and an apology
Yawn
I know they’re all saying they’re pulling these out of respect but to me every subsequent announcement of a show pulling an episode sounds like a creator just wanting to cover their ass before they get canceled.
I am rather old and was raised in a somewhat isolated rural northern Maine community. I was just old enough to catch the very last community ‘minstrel show’ that, yes, included skits in blackface. Even my youthful brain could discern just how grotesquely offensive and inappropriate the spectacle was. Its hard to imagine how awful it is unless you see it performed live in front of you. I think even the participants figured it out, seemed embarrassed by what they were doing, and never did it again. That must’ve been more than 50 years ago.
You’re not supposed to admit you’re from the County, man.
Did any African Americans actually ask for this? Like, people have been debating the merits of confederate monuments for decades and there seemed to be a pretty strong consensus that they were bad and racist… but I haven’t exactly seen BLM protesters marching in the street to express their anger at decade old NBC sitcoms. I didn’t hear a peep of controversy when these episodes aired (and it’s not like there was any shortage of detailed criticism of TV that decade) and thousands if not millions of black people seemed watched and were seemingly unconcerned about these episodes for years and seemingly viewed them as using the imagery in an appropriately condemning way in context.
Also what I want to know. Even in these comments, I have honestly no idea if the people arguing in favor of this are Black. If a lot of Black people actually were offended by this, then I agree there’s a problem that needs some kind of solution, but this seems like Netflix’s PR department getting overly cautious.
It’s all being done so people don’t come after them with torches and pitchforks next. None of these companies care. There is no social justice reckoning, it’s just one giant PR exercise.
nope nope nope no one at all
And here’s me assuming that Drowface was an acceptable loophole.
this is what you leftist pissants wanted, enjoy reaping what you have sowed you permanently offended histrionic cunts.
kill yourself
I just rewatched all of Community last week and I never expected this though I guess I should have. They literally comment on the offensiveness of his make up and use Chang as an example of racism in D&D which is also being addressed rightfully so. My point is that it wasn’t at the expense of anyone and was highlighting the issue instead as opposed to political leaders in black face as a mockery of black people.By their logic they might as well remove the whole series because Pierce and Chevy Chase himself is way more offensive and problematic more often than Chang.
This is why it’s important to torrent the shows and movies you love. As physical media disappears from the market and more and more move to the cloud, we risk content owners removing access to media on a whim.
The Community one seems odd as it’s not a white person using blackface to be a African American but Chang, played by Ken Jeong who is the child of South Korean immigrants being a pitch-black elf (a drow in D&D terms).
He looks less like a racist caricature and more like The Negative Man from Spider-Man.
Wow. I’m stunned. They actually did it.Not only have they removed one of the best episodes of a show in television history, they have essentially destroyed the character of Fat Neil and reduced him to a bunch of fat jokes.AND they removed Charley Koontz’ star performance from Community rebroadcasts. Fat Neil is now just a fat joke. His last appearance is just fatshaming.
Oh well. At least we still have this gem from Season 4!Fucking morons. I’m done with Netflix. And you’re all fucking stupid for defending them.Edit: By the way, I’ve had this post written and ready to go for days (thus the pre-saved screenshot of Pierce) because I KNEW they’d miss the fucking Season 4 episode. I guess because no one watches Season 4. Or because hands != faces. Either way…fuck it.
I also found Abed’s use of a stereotypical “goblin” voice to be quite troubling in “Advanced Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,” and expect it to be pulled. You’re next, all of Star Trek!
Has Dan Harmon weighed in on this? He must be gutted
I think the removal of the Community episode reflects more on what Netflix and HULU think of current social justice movements, than of what those movements think about this particular episode of Community. I don’t know who was clamoring for this episode to be removed, and I don’t recall anyone ever complaining about the episode anywhere. I’ve gone to a couple of cons per year for the better part of a decade now, and I seen plenty of people every year cosplaying Drizzt—typically at least two or three, but in cons of 50k+ people (e.g., DragonCon), if I personally see two or three, my assumption is that there are probably more than I just never across. I seriously doubt it’s ever been an issue, and I doubt it’s going to be an issue moving forward.I understand that an inability to experience or think critically about media results in eliminating content with a broad brush—but this isn’t an instance of a movement going too far or refusing to consider something in context; this is a corporate entity assuming that a movement is so hamfisted and inane in its approach, goals, and aims that it would target something benign, and then trying to nip the problem in the bud.
If this merits removing the episode, how many times does Pierce call Abed a terrorist? How many episodes does Pierce appear in where he DOESN’T say something overtly racist? Why is all that apparently okay when this isn’t?
It looks like people are having a hard time adjusting to such drastic social Chang.
who controls the past controls the future, we’ll just delete anything questionable and all the problems will just magic away
Racism has no place in the D&D community!
This is a bummer, not because I think the Drow joke is worth keeping, but because the rest of that episode is so good and so important to the context of that whole season. I hope they cut something together to get a blackface-less version back into syndication/streaming, because the rest of that episode is totally worth seeing, especially the “Annie ERPs” montage.
Jesus, now I have to buy DVDs again.The same people celebrating this are the ones who criticize media corporations for censoring and removing content to appease China.
I just finished a rewatch and while in the past I found the gag uncomfortable, it definitely felt super unnecessary this time. Chang is an idiot and I get “night elves” but it’s too esoteric to land and the ultimate joke is still Shirley’s zinger. It doesn’t exactly make a strong or powerful satirical point. My hope is that they edit around Chang’s parts. He’s almost entirely unnecessary to the episode, which is one of the series’ very best. (Also: I enjoy season 6 but I feel like the writers decided to entirely lampshade or lean into the ‘chang has no real point’ narrative. Outside of one or two pieces, you literally could remove him and not disrupt the narratives or even individual scenes. He’s an entire non-sequiter.)If they don’t, I own it on dvd and I’ve seen it seven or more times. It’s not necessary to keep up and it’s not going to pushing discussion.
Sigh. This is the absolute least they could do – because doing their part of advance non-white creatives and listen to legit concerns isn’t that cool. I hope they’d consider putting those episodes back with appropriate context: further point out how fucking wrong Black Pete is and how epically fucked up it is that there are “well meaning” white people who will willing say that the “helper” is just ‘dirty’ and it’s a-OK for a former minor colonial power to don a 4C wig and brown face paint for a character who’s only a fraction of their history (which: WHY? WHO IN THE FUCK DOESN’T SEE WHAT THAT SHIT IS???) and how euro-centric fantasy leans deep into the “dark = bad/shady/untrustworthy” which got codified by JRR Tolkien’s ‘orcs are evil twisted elves who are dark and subservient’ and ripped off of by D&D who then went and went extra via more subclasses and the like, basically making the venture white male ‘70s-’80s fodder that did, in the future, turn into “ZOMG they made Thor a woman!!!” whiners that spend more time railing against a female Ghostbuster than how little is being made new, original, and diverse by the comic and movie industries.
I got a black face notification for this?
“The episode shows Ken Jeong in blackface in multiple scenes, with his character Chang claiming he’s playing a ‘dark elf’ in the study group’s game.”i wonder how many African-Americans were actually offended by Jeong’s ridiculous Elf-face?
this whole thing reeks of broad, panicked oversimplification in an out-of-control outrage culture.and i can’t be sure, but let me check . . . yep, this article (like seemingly every other one like it) was written by a Caucasian person, probably feigning anger for an issue that neither they nor i will never *truly* understand.
probably trying to show the world just how down the are and always have been . . . appropriating a historic racial movement for their own casual benefits.
and frankly contributing not much more than further ire and impotent rage.
nice work. try harder. i know you can, and the people actually IN the fight deserve much better.
This is cool and whatever, but how about legislation to protect us PoC from police brutality? If all of these Hollywood muckity-mucks would take a few minutes from self-scolding themselves to use some of their power to force the hand of change I’d appreciate that a whole lot more. Nobody is mad at Chang, all of these gestures are missing the point.
….they can’t just put a warning on it? Warner Bros. has been doing just that for years.
Once again, another highly praised original review (an A no less), with no mention of the blackface.AV Club (and other culture review sites), need to begin to own up to their hand in furthering the use of blackface in popular culture by praising the episodes it was featured in.
Especially in this case, it seems like it would be easy to excise the offending material and repost the episode. I hope something like that happens; it is on the whole a good episode of television and stands without the blackface.
Community is not a funny or good show.
So I’ll say as a white person (clarifying because my opinion on this doesn’t doesn’t matter the most, and no that isn’t sarcasm) I find the Community one dumb to remove. It was both a commentary on D&D lore and slightly on real world race, but it wasn’t black face in the sense of The Office or 30 Rock ones at all. I wouldn’t fault cutting it from the episode if they decided to, but I also think that would be hard to do.
Now, if any POC has different feelings about it then I’ll defer to them. But I haven’t seen any complaints in my friend group from any of my POC friends.
This is actually one of the best Community episodes, and it is frequently referenced within the D&D community (little “c”). I really hope they find a way to just remove those scenes from the show. Removing the entire episode seems drastic and a little tragic. The joke, at the time, was both funny and awkward. It felt like they were pushing it a little too hard. I’m fine with losing that one gag, but the whole episode?
I just started rewatching Community, and was kind of looking forward to that episode – I completely forgot the existence of Chang in it, because I always try to block his existence from my mind.But I does make me think of the second episode of the series, Spanish 101. That’s the one where Pierce and Jeff have to do a conversation, and it ends up being a ridiculously long thing that has nothing to do with the class. Two problems with it – at one point, Pierce and Jeff are both wearing white gloves and fake afros – they have not painted their faces, but they have done every other part of blackface, and in a manner clearly taken from the minstrel shows where this originated. There is also a bit where they have dragged Annie into the presentation to be a captured native American, complete with a single feather sticking up.Now, I have no idea how bad the AD&D episode actually was, and whether or not it is somehow worse than Spanish 101. But it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that episode is pulled fairly soon. It will be interesting to see what else may be lurking in there.
This type of nonsense is right up there with removing Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom from store shelves in the category of “Empty Gestures To Ease White Guilt That Will Have Zero Real World Impact On Black American Lives”.Congrats!