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[PA Comic] Friday, May 4, 2012 - Incredibility
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If only the rest of us who don't agree with you hadn't been so thoroughly programmed by the Disney Swarthiness Conspiracy.
Are you concerned Lux is going to be targeted for a hit by the anti-hairiness Gestapo?
Please stop you are hurting me.
You did forget Shan Yu from Mulan, but if I'm not mistaken he has a fairly large fan base of ladies who find him sexy. Though I don't know if that makes a difference. But in a film of bland character models, his is perhaps the most compelling.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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Can you provide some?
My complaint, which you adroitly ignored, is that no one has provided evidence of what the hell this Disney bullshit is about. All that Sage Catharsis - and now you - have been doing is setting up a lot of pretty weak strawmen. I invite you to provide a genuine argument and until then I reserve the completely rational right to make light of the entire matter. Suggesting that a thing is not bogus because someone argued that it's bogus isn't a valid rhetorical device.
Don't sell the guy short, it was a line in his song!
"...and every last inch of me's covered with HAIR!"
Except his face. Also he's got nothing on the "hero" of that movie in the hair department.
Then exactly what traits do you see in Mr. Videogames that you identify with yourself, pray tell, if they are not ones of physical appearance? Because besides what he looks like, literally all we know about him is that is A) he knows jack shit about video games and B) he wants people to donate money to him on Kickstarter.
What part of that resonates with your heritage, homeland, genetic journey, or ethnicity, exactly?
oh yeah, the beast is mega swarthy. but I'm not sure if it counts if it's just dark fur color
1. The guy in this strip looks like a stereotypical scammer: hefty hairy guys of an indeterminate-but-definitely-not-American ethnicity are probably out to scam you.
2. The stereotypical scammer is a hurtful stereotype because the idea that people who look like this are sketchy scammers is untrue and is also ingrained in our culture, such that when you see someone who looks like the guy in the PA comic, it brings the idea of scammers to mind (why else was he drawn like that?).
3. It is bad to use hurtful stereotypes.
∴ This comic is bad. (In the moral sense, not in a humor sense. It's still hilarious, of course.)
You can contest premise 1 and say that the guy in the comic just happened to be big-nosed, large, and hairy for some big coincidental reason and that nobody would ever think that this calls to mind the stereotype. I would say that's a very weird claim (that's a pretty big coincidence!) but feel free to argue for it.
edit: I also just realized you could claim that the stereotype doesn't exist, although then the question is what the hell are Sage, Billy, and I bitching about? Have we all gone collectively insane? Or have perhaps we hit on a stereotype that is thankfully falling out of favor, such that only some of us have heard about it? I mean, clearly Mike has, because the guy ended up drawn into the comic, and clearly Sage, Billy, and I have heard of the stereotype, so if your argument hinges on the idea that the stereotype doesn't exist, I think the best course of action would be to say "whoops, sorry guys, I didn't realize this was a real thing, I was raised in a much more tolerant community that didn't teach me this sort of shit, if I had realized that this was actually a thing I wouldn't have been arguing with you."
You can contest premise 2 and argue that although this is a stereotype, it's not one of those bad stereotypes. Maybe "Asians are good at math" and "Jews have large noses" are stereotypes that aren't bad, whereas "Chinamen can't be trusted" and "Jews are greedy" stereotypes, and this scammer stereotype is more like the former than the latter.
You can contest premise 3 and argue that if Penny Arcade wants to draw a comic where a greedy person (say, a game executive thinking up new ways to charge for DLC) is a Jew with a giant nose and a yarmulke, that's totally fine, just like if Penny Arcade wants to draw a comic where a guy who just happens to look like the stereotype of a scammer tries to scam people, that's fine.
And maybe there are other ways to contest my argument. Go ahead, I'm happy to have the dialog.
Please don't equate "I have to shave my unibrow" with the oppression of racism. I'm a lady so I have to shave my legs and I am fine with this. If I wasn't, I just wouldn't do it, and who cares what anyone else thinks about it. But it's certainly not a terrible burden that makes me weep into my green tea. There is actual, painful, society-breaking racism going on, right now, and equating that with having to shave sometimes cheapens the real struggle.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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And again, no one's provided an actual instance of this stereotype beyond the comic in question, or evidence of how Disney's related. I guess just keep crying wolf? I'll put my energy and sympathy with people who have legitimate beef with the way society portrays them.
I think this is the crux of where everyone is disagreeing with you. Because when I saw this guy, I saw "obviously American." Especially because of how unkempt he was, and the wife beater (like some white trash criminal on Cops). What are the cues that he's not American? The pencil moustache? Pencil moustache doesn't read to me as foriegn, it reads to me as "really old fashioned." Like everything about this guy reads as someone who doesn't understand what other people like, doesn't understand video games, doesn't understand anything. If we saw below his waist, I'd expect to see his pants pulled up past his belly button.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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*Guess how far back in the archives you have to go to find someone with a skin tone this dark or darker who isn't an established character from a videogame/real life already? Aside from the bronzed Draw Something model, I think you have to go back to October 7 2011 to find the black prostitute.
edit: and are you trying to say that the only reason this guy is hairy is because hairiness is unfashionable and being unfashionable suggests sketchy scammers? Really? Would it have worked just as well if he were wearing parachute pants or a pink mohawk or the suits that Gabe and Tycho wear in the Downton Abbey strip? Being unfashionable doesn't make you look like a scammer. Looking exactly like the stereotype of a scammer makes you look like a scammer. That's why he was drawn this way in the comic and that's why he's a stereotype.
So for example, flares are acceptable right now, but a dude in a 70's style jump suit is going to have a veeeery hard time pulling it off without making everyone around him uncomfortable.
Additionally, just by having the guy in a wifebeater, you make the guy appear sketchy. A wifebeater is the stereotype of a criminal because no professional business man is going to make his pitch in a wifebeater.
I mean you're saying he's the stereotype of a con man. Sure he is - he's disheveled and he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. That's the stereotype right there. What I don't get is how you drag race or foreigness in to that.
Origin ID: jazzmess
Amazon Wishlist
If you want proof that we're not making this shit up, here are some results from page 1 of a Google image search for "con artist" which I think capture the idea:
Here's are one from "Snake Oil Salesman," one of the the only ones from page 1 who isn't one of those old timey literal snake oil salesmen:
Which is what I'm actually saying. If you read above, you'll see I did agree that it's a stereotype of white Americans.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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Any point can be argued. I am not sure if anyone here believes in any truth outside of their own perception. For me, someone says ouch, I say sorry. No muss no fuss.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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The thing is, you and Sage at least have different ideas of what is being displayed. Sage was sure that this absolutely white character is "swarthy" and is portraying a dark-skinned stereotype. You're certain it's a Jewish stereotype. The character is obviously the villain of the piece; it's like a Rorschach test, everyone is seeing the thing that most offends them.
I mean the one thing you could possibly hang your had on is the nose, if it weren't for the fact that Gabe apparently likes to draw exaggerated noses.
Origin ID: jazzmess
Amazon Wishlist
then spend more time on google search and find evidence that actually supports your position
all the guys you did find were unkempt and had questionable fashion, but weren't of some mythical stereotype that you're creating
moreover, the fact that more people than you, sage and billy see a different race/none at all kind of points to the fact that yes, it is pretty much something you three are all simultaneously reading into the comic that wasn't intended
Just throwing my hat in the ring. I also read this into the comic. I was not personally offended but that's not really the point, is it? Sage, you're not crazy.
Yeah, gonna have to side with Tube on this one!
It's one thing if your "people" really do have a "plight" where weeping would be a normal response. I don't doubt that some people look at an overly-hairy dude in a wifebeater and say, "Hm, that fellow looks untrustworthy!" because they're stereotyping or whatever. I'm a 140 lbs., 6'0" skinny white dude with glasses and little musculature. I get stereotyped as a dork or a nerd all the time, and people are always asking me to fix their computers/do their math homework/whatever. I also get the, "Whoa there killer, don't go showing off those guns in here, the ladies won't be able to hold themselves back." I'm not going to cry about it.
Everybody gets pigeonholed a little bit. Unless you're talking about a specific racial persecution, weeping is way over the top.
He is saying that his people have a plight that made weeping his response.
Sorted.
Edit: forgot the "goosey" quotes to make it "seem" completely "disingenuous"
No, he's saying if weeping was a remotely reasonable response for a majority of humans, it would be okay. Weeping, in this case, is not a reasonable response. A fictitious character in a webcomic was drawn in such a way that it bothered a guy. Thus far that's about all that's going on here, vis a vis the plight industry. On the plight scale it is below Weeping Alert.
You've got (relatively) darker skin tone, black hair, hyperpigmentation around the eyes, and a moustache combined with grossly exaggerated eyebrows and nose. Together, they seem like pretty clear indicators of a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern ethnicity to me. The nose and eyebrows in particular look like a caricature.
Of course, there's plenty of overlap between Mediterranean and "White American."
I really appreciate your contribution here.
Oh, you mean that well-known, universal scale by which his reaction shall be judged? Do you think he was lying? If not, it was above Weeping Alert, because that's what happened. I don't know why everyone has to shit on his reaction. He's been very polite about it while getting a lot pile-on from everyone in the "i laughed, therefore not racist" crowd.
My point was that I have never come across this stereotype before, and it is entirely possible that neither has the artist, it doesn't appear to be terribly common at all since you can't think of any examples, and your attempt at googling for con man provided no examples that matched the stereotype.
It just feels a lot like you're reaching for this stereotype to exist in the form you suggest, to me, and it's really weird.