Satire Or Racism?
Last night on South Park, the Native Americans who opened a casino nearby bought the town so they could bulldoze it and build a highway through it to Denver. However, the South Park residents refused to move away and camped out on the streets, so the devious Native Americans gave them SARS-infested blankets to weaken their resistance. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever watched on TV, the Native Americans dragged out a bunch of naked Chinese men, held them up like chickens and smeared them all over the blankets. I don't remember laughing so hard in recent memory. This segment was even funnier than the one in which a Chinese restaurant owner, at the townspeople's request, built a great wall around the city to protect the children from potential abductors from outside of South Park, only to suffer bitter defeat at the hands of Mongol invaders.
After I finished watching, I wondered why I didn't feel offended at all by the usual Chinese stereotypes used. You know, the slitty eyes and the weird noises they make when they talk. But I have felt insulted as a Chinese American by other acts of racial caricaturing recently, such as when Abercrombie & Fitch sold T-shirts with slogans like "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White." Or that time when I read in the newspaper about DJ's at a Canadian radio station calling a Chinese restaurant to make fun of the people there.
Now, I am a very very liberal person who is usually very sensitive to cultural issues, but I am definitely not prone to the type of knee-jerking reactions exhibited by those ultra PC-types who can't seem to laugh at themselves. I think part of the reason I found the South Park episodes inoffensive as compared to the other incidents mentioned above is that Matt and Trey poke fun at everyone, be they black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American or Arab, whereas A & F seems to be one of the most Anglo stores out there. I don't shop there because I hate it for other reasons, but on the occasions that I did walk past A & F stores I never ONCE saw a non-white model. It's as if only white people live in the A & F universe. And one of the things that really bugged me about the whole incident is that the company claimed they weren't worried about offending people because one Asian person in their office did not find the designs offensive. What kind of lame excuse is that? I wonder if they would ever try to sell hilarious slavery tees or Texas border patrol shirts and defend their actions by saying hey, if that black/Hispanic dude working in the cafeteria found it funny, why shouldn't all black/Hispanic people find it inoffensive? In the Canadian radio station case, I doubt the DJ's would have made fun of a Hispanic or black establishment the same way they did that Chinese place because they would have generated a media firestorm and enough bad publicity for the station to get them fired.
I think another reason I give South Park much more leeway is that I really enjoy the show because of its consistent brilliant satire. Out of that familliarity I feel that the creators are not being malicious or trying to single out us the way A & F and the radio station did.
On the other hand, I don't know how valid these reasons are. Should South Park be given free rein just because it's an equal-opportunity offender and a great show? I feel a little uneasy laughing at those scenes since they did employ the same kind of demeaning stereotypes to which I am very sensitive as an immigrant myself.
Maybe I should just enjoy South Park for the great show that it is and stop fussing over it.
Last night on South Park, the Native Americans who opened a casino nearby bought the town so they could bulldoze it and build a highway through it to Denver. However, the South Park residents refused to move away and camped out on the streets, so the devious Native Americans gave them SARS-infested blankets to weaken their resistance. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever watched on TV, the Native Americans dragged out a bunch of naked Chinese men, held them up like chickens and smeared them all over the blankets. I don't remember laughing so hard in recent memory. This segment was even funnier than the one in which a Chinese restaurant owner, at the townspeople's request, built a great wall around the city to protect the children from potential abductors from outside of South Park, only to suffer bitter defeat at the hands of Mongol invaders.
After I finished watching, I wondered why I didn't feel offended at all by the usual Chinese stereotypes used. You know, the slitty eyes and the weird noises they make when they talk. But I have felt insulted as a Chinese American by other acts of racial caricaturing recently, such as when Abercrombie & Fitch sold T-shirts with slogans like "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White." Or that time when I read in the newspaper about DJ's at a Canadian radio station calling a Chinese restaurant to make fun of the people there.
Now, I am a very very liberal person who is usually very sensitive to cultural issues, but I am definitely not prone to the type of knee-jerking reactions exhibited by those ultra PC-types who can't seem to laugh at themselves. I think part of the reason I found the South Park episodes inoffensive as compared to the other incidents mentioned above is that Matt and Trey poke fun at everyone, be they black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American or Arab, whereas A & F seems to be one of the most Anglo stores out there. I don't shop there because I hate it for other reasons, but on the occasions that I did walk past A & F stores I never ONCE saw a non-white model. It's as if only white people live in the A & F universe. And one of the things that really bugged me about the whole incident is that the company claimed they weren't worried about offending people because one Asian person in their office did not find the designs offensive. What kind of lame excuse is that? I wonder if they would ever try to sell hilarious slavery tees or Texas border patrol shirts and defend their actions by saying hey, if that black/Hispanic dude working in the cafeteria found it funny, why shouldn't all black/Hispanic people find it inoffensive? In the Canadian radio station case, I doubt the DJ's would have made fun of a Hispanic or black establishment the same way they did that Chinese place because they would have generated a media firestorm and enough bad publicity for the station to get them fired.
I think another reason I give South Park much more leeway is that I really enjoy the show because of its consistent brilliant satire. Out of that familliarity I feel that the creators are not being malicious or trying to single out us the way A & F and the radio station did.
On the other hand, I don't know how valid these reasons are. Should South Park be given free rein just because it's an equal-opportunity offender and a great show? I feel a little uneasy laughing at those scenes since they did employ the same kind of demeaning stereotypes to which I am very sensitive as an immigrant myself.
Maybe I should just enjoy South Park for the great show that it is and stop fussing over it.
posted by Gary at
9:23 AM
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