Racism in 2000AD: Judgement Time

[Dark Jimbo]

I don't really agree with the article's conclusions, but that's neverthless a fairly thoughtful, even-handed approach to the subject matter. All their 2000AD articles have been pretty good, come to that.

I think the crucial mistake it makes is failing to distinguish between racism and racial/cultural insensitivity - a small distinction with worlds of difference between intents.

[Echidna]

The speech patterns of Jim Jong / Jong Jim / Bing Bong would be shameful in 1995, let alone 2015, and just typing those names made me want to throw up. Lord knows the North Korean regime is ripe for satire ... but that's not satire, it's just mocking a foreign culture

Mocking a foreign culture; that would be terrible.

Anyone mortified by the use of ethnic stereotypes and speech patterns for comic effect should avoid Asterix, Blackadder, Dr Strangelove, The Pink Panther movies, the work of the Zucker brothers, the Marx brothers, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, or pretty much anything written, drawn or filmed prior to 1990.

I agree that editorial should have known some people would have found the naming conventions and idiom of characters in The Stix Fix insensitive, but that's not the same as saying they are.

"Shameful" was probably too strong a word. Mocking foreign cultures isn't necessarily racist (and I'm fond of most of the works you mentioned), but in this instance I found it lazy and unfunny and I honestly would have enjoyed the story more without it.

[Frank]

Hooray! We all love each other again

[Dark Jimbo]

Mocking foreign cultures isn't necessarily racist (and I'm fond of most of the works you mentioned)...

Exactly. There's 'racist' and there's 'racially insensitive'.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Oh, it's written by Kelly!  Nice woman - met her at Lawgiver II.

Yes, I thought so too...until I accepted a friend request on facebook.  I then endured for a while, as I read a variety of posts that where as racist, sexist, or generally prejudice as those she complained about....but of course you can't be a sexist if you are a woman....and only white folks are racist.

[Eric Plumrose]

I've only skimmed her appearances so can't speak of how positive a portrayal it is but there's an Asian Judge in ANDERSON: PSI DIVISION.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I think you are all twats but entitled to be twats in your own right free from my lazy assumption that you are twats. Except you are.

[locustsofdeath!]

It was an okay read until she busted out with the "white privilege" stuff. After that I caught onto what I felt was her agenda.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Hooray! We all love each other again

Feckin' Greeeeks!

They invented gayness!

[Steve Green]

Regarding Stogie, from the blog.

"What got me was the lack of effort, the fallback on lazy stereotypes, and, in Stogie's case, the defense of those stereotypes. Several robots point out—accurately—that Stogie is a racist caricature, but then get blasted into bits by the protagonists. The implication is that if we call out racism, we're no better than interfering robots."

I just re-read this strip.

Those robots do not get blasted into bits by the protagonists, they turn on each other and Sam stops the remaining one destroying itself with an anti-virus programme.

From re-reading the strip I don't think Sam shoots anything at all.

There's plenty to comment on without inventing things.

[TordelBack]

Stogie as racist caricature then or now is a shallow reading: he's a robotic cigar, an actual PRODUCT imbued with all the Cuban stereotypes its designers could muster, he's an affectionate parody of a beloved creator, and ALL the robots in RoboHunter are one-note idiots, that's often the whole gag. Plus I always viewed Stogie as the hero of the strip in its heyday - brave, loyal, supportive, ingenious.

True, Robohunter had some egregious and regrettable moments (even beyond Blakee Pentax) which were firmly rooted in the naively racist tradition of British boys comics of earlier decades, but Carlos Sanchez Robostogie wasn't one of them. And that's not to deny the validity of the response a modern reader may have to the caricature - I just think that it's a response that misses the 'reality' of the character. Like correctly being repelled by the humourous treatment of Father Jack's lecherous violent alcoholism, without appreciating that the biting humour and essential role of the character as predictable immovable obstacle is why is its there.

Something that does need emphasising is the (perhaps subtle) distinction between national stereotypes and racism. Most of 2000ADs transgressions mostly arise from the former: from Fort Neuro to Murphyville, national stereotypes are mined for humour and sometimes counterpoint. Generally no-one is pointing at a (say) immigrant Mexican underclass of exploited sharecroppers or ghettoised urban African-American youth and laughing at their subhuman foibles (well, not for a while anyway), it's more in the way of exploiting national iconography for visual texture and, well, easy laughs.

Not saying this is either right or sensitive in our more informed present, but I find it hard to see dressing futuristic French officers in bicorn hats or revealing Scandinavian characters as (inevitably) actual vikings as racist, especially against a background level of chinless teadrinking English toffs, drunk Irish and brawling incomprehensible Scots.

[TordelBack]

But 'racially insensitive' I agree is fair. If people find this stuff offensive and backwards, then that is clearly the case.

[IndigoPrime]

I suppose it depends on your reading of things. To my mind, Stogie is also a product, designed and programmed specifically to act in the manner he does. He's intentional caricature by design on multiple levels (script; in-universe manufacture; in-universe behaviour). But the Strontium Dog stuff, notably the naming, rubbed me up the wrong way. In the 1980s, fine, but in the 2010s it felt a little like the kind of unthinking built-in racial insensitivity of my grandparents' generation. It felt like part of the past—an unnecessary throwback. And even though Strontium Dog is frequently played for laughs, would it have made that much difference had the names not effectively been insults, and had the translated English been better? (Note that I'm not against a certain amount of stereotypical English rendering, though, given that nations do tend to have their way of implementing other languages, and that even includes translators, who are rarely perfect. But even then, you have to be careful when there's other dodgy stuff floating around, because it all becomes one ball of mess.)

[Bad City Blue]

It's a good article, I agree with most of it.

I cringe at the lazy stereotypes that sometimes crop up. Was great to see the Irish treated with actual respect recently. Ennis should have been ashamed of the shite he wrote back them be it satire or not .

[TordelBack]

Really? I found Emerald Isle hilarious at the time, as did all my Irish prog-reading mates (We were 18 or 19). What's shameful about lampooning the idea of Ireland as a shamrock-festooned theme park and the incompetent terrorists that resist it? It is exactly how we're viewed by many, and largely how we present ourselves. I walk past a Leprechaun Museum most days, and frequently work outside a vast city-centre shop that sells nothing but Guinness teatowels, tricolour bodhrans and green bowler hats. I think Garth's take was right on the money, while Mike's follow-up (while much the better story in terms of character) was a bit bland in the exagerrated future satire stakes - more like the low-key approach of modern Wagner.

And yeah IndigoPrime, I do agree that the Koeeans in The Stix Fix was a misstep, albeit only in the handling of real-world race. At the same time nothing about Wagner would ever lead me to believe he is a racist, or that racist humour was his intention. But that doesn't alter the effect.