I still remember Adult Swim removing the Cowboy Bebop episode where they are flying in the Space Shuttle Columbia.
I’m pretty sure that episode was put in rotation after while. It was very shortly after the real Shuttle exploded.
I was super confused when I got to the second D&D episode of Community. Turns out, streaming banned the first one because an Asian man wears drowface. He appropriated dark elf culture. Eventually I pirated the episode and was very happy. Good story.
because it was too close to blackface, i assume?
Probably, but like, that’s silly in this case
Thought I’d get a pic for reference:
aaand, I can see why it’s offensive. The joke is that he’s tonedeaf about blackface, and he didn’t wear any other elf clothes… so at first glance, it’s a guy in blackface with a white wig…Meanwhile, Aerodynamics of Gender is good to go:
One of the best episodes of the show though for sure.
Yep. And that’s the joke.
Anyone notice that we never see All in the Family or The Jeffersons media, and haven’t for a decade or two? How odd. Two of the most popular sitcoms of all time just… disappeared.
Those shows taught my young self more about racism and it’s ills than anything else in life. Yes, Archie and George were racist AF! And they were the buffoons, always losing because of their boolshit. (OK, maybe it was too heavy handed for today’s audiences, I’ll grant that.)
Liberals: “NAOOWW! THAS RACISTH!”
Conservatives: “WOKE!”
What a damned shame. Fucking meatheads.
i feel that… it’s becoming a thing that can’t be talked about anymore.
on the other hand, if allowed more it’d be an excuse people make to make racist jokes… stuff like, “no the character is racist, and i’m showing why it’s bad”.also worth noting, they kept making Chevy Chase’s character racist on that show and he hates the writers for it and got in a lot of arguments.
As I’ve heard it, they kept putting in the scripts the kinds of things Chevy would say in real life, and he hated the writers for doing it.
utter bullshit
Not every joke lands. I think this is one of those where there’s some obvious intent behind it but the joke is a bit too high concept (and not really that funny tbh) in relation to the controversy. And I say this as a big community fan - they went for shock value and it didn’t really work because there was no punchline besides “it looks like blackface but technically isn’t blackface.”
Anyone who thinks a drow looks like a black person is racist
The first D&D episode is so good, and it’s unfortunate that you miss what was an excellent story because of overreaching insensitivity.
I really disliked the first D&D episode, because (a) why are they pretending D&D is a turn-based game, it’s not like they’re in combat. (Nobody ever portrays D&D accurately on TV.) (b) this is actually peak Pierce-being-an-asshole. I rewatched the series and didn’t hate him nearly as much as my first watch, and I believe this episode’s omission is why.
Not saying it should have been removed, but I wouldn’t have picked any other episode over this one.
It’s the best and most heartfelt episode of the series. I feel bad for the actor that played fat Neil.They even address the blackface in the episode. I don’t know who are the mental midgets who make these decisions. Also, the cut episode of Bob and David is also idiotic.
That one pissed me off because the whole joke was him being blissfully unaware of the potential racial connotations of his dark black face makeup and everyone being like “Woah what the fuck man.” Like the joke wasn’t “Haha look at this caricature of black people” it was “Haha look at this dumbass doing something racist by mistake.”
Boo
Imagine going to thrift stores for 15 minutes after work and ending up with all of these on DVD?
Imagine going straight home after work and steaming whatever you want instantly because you have Stremio + Torrentio?
Imagine pirating all that, not paying for it, AND having Blurays?
What else are you doing with those 15 minutes, working on world peace?
Don’t know what they’re but I would just go to Sonarr and add Southpark and at some point they’ll appear in Plex.
Well with Stremio you don’t need to do that, because it’s laid out like Netflix. That’s why I prefer it over Plex; no downloading, no transferring files over (and if you add a Debrid service to the mix, no waiting on seeds, either). Just pick what you want to watch with your TV remote and enjoy. It’s convenient enough that your Boomer parents could navigate it with ease.
Problem is shows like “it’s always sunny” that i wanted to do this with, stopped making physical dvd releases after like season 10. Disney + also removed a bunch of episodes for “being offensive” which if that worries you, why are you watching its always sunny?
Dont support the service. Plain simple. Well, I know you guys dont, but yea… just my 2 cents nobody asked for :D
So dumb, the episodes exist and can be watched without much hassle. Why even ban them? It’s not changing the fact they exist and some of the best episodes.
Because most people eople are stupid, emotional animals that couldn’t critically think their way out of a paper bag.
It’s the answer to SO many questions.
Thanks, I have been meaning to get the full series on Blu-ray. Any idea if the older stuff has the vhs segues of Trey and Matt’s skit shows?
I just checked and ufortunately, the older seasons don’t seem to have much special features.
Do you suppose older DVDs have them?
The stupidest censorship I’ve seen like this is Community’s first DnD episode. Chang dresses up as a drow and that is considered “blackface” even though they address it in the episode that he isn’t black but a drow. So goodbye episode on streaming.
they could have avoided this crap by just choosing grey. drows and variants come in various shades. it’s so fucking stupid
The joke wouldn’t work as well if they did that. They joke about blackface, so you need black. This doesn’t look like a black person does anyway, so I don’t see how gray would make it better.
They joke about blackface, so you need black.
Yeah, making a racist, bad take joke was so worth it. It surely wouldn’t have made Shirley look out of touch that way, making a different joke that wasn’t as SUPER EDGY.
I’ll bet you don’t understand Tropic Thunder’s humor either.
I guess I’m out of touch with the race politics jokes of 1890s, so the parody seems out of time for me.
EDIT : Maybe if they threw in a tin pan alley, player piano or travelling curio joke, I’d have gotten it a bit better.
Well, the first problem is that you think the Drow makeup is blackface or that Shirley being out of touch is a bad thing. Shirley’s character was out of touch initially and she developed over time as part of her character arc. Yvette Nicole Brown knew it wasn’t blackface and that the joke went over some people’s heads.
Cast member Yvette Nicole Brown mentioned that it did not seem the joke was understood by those criticizing it, as there was context that in her view made it different from blackface.
The joke was that it was a passing resemblance, Shirley makes an assumption, and everyone else moves on because it isn’t actually blackface. This is very different from the other shows like 30 rock and always sunny where the characters were in actual blackface while mocking blackface. I still think those shouldn’t have been removed since they were mocking blackface, but this is completely different.
OK. Let’s break it all the way down explicitly.
The joke is that Chang’s character is in Drow makeup, and because Shirley is out of touch with games, she thinks that the Drow make up is blackface.
The depiction of the Drow makeup has chosen an “ambigious” shade of black/grey that made it seem to some viewers or people who want to see it that way , as blackface, in real life, not as a character in the show. This caused problems.
The suggestion, is that if they chose grey or some other ashy shade , and or gone more elaborate with the make up, like red contacts, or pointy ears, they could have done EXACT joke, but made it not “ambigious” and avoided the heat that the episode has actually gotten.
I would even say that having a LESS blackface looking make up would further accentuate Shirley’s out of touchness, making it funnier, as it would be more ridiculous that A) She would think that make up is blackface and B) Shirley thinks that’s what Chang thinks making himself look like a black person would entail, red eyes and pointy ears and a non human shade of darkness.
Furthermore, expanding on my other point which was not adressed in your post :
I guess I’m out of touch with the race politics jokes of 1890s, so the parody seems out of time for me.
Maybe if they threw in a tin pan alley, player piano or travelling curio joke, I’d have gotten it a bit better.What the fuck are it’s always sunny et al doing making fun of this outdated shit in the first place? Did they get that mad at Spike Lee making Bamboozled and using blackface as an analogy of people acting up to stereotypes to get ahead in life , that they had to address it as a commentary on blackface, an “artform” from the 1890s as a target?
Reminds me of how that horribly racist musician Michael Jackson did whiteface 😮💨 I was beyond offended, we need to address behaviour like this more often, absolutely deplorable.
Michael Jackson had a skin condition called vitiligo, which causes patches of skin to lose their pigmentation, resulting in a lighter skin tone. He used makeup and skin-lightening creams to manage the appearance of his skin, which led to public speculation about his changing appearance. He never did “whiteface”, his face was literally white.
Born black, turned white?
Sounds like cultural appropriation.
How tf did u lot acc think I was being serious 💀 ik, I’m satirising
Poe’s Law
Oh, man. A Drow in a long-sleeved Guayabera. That’s an insult to my Cuban heritage. Keep it banned. /s
He’s one of those weird seldarine drow that hangs out with the humans.
That’s subversive and funny for all of the right reasons.
They managed to take corporate money for product placement in a pretty funny way, too.
Community is great at that.
Do you think this isn’t an obvious reference to blackface? The joke doesn’t make sense if blackface had never been a thing, so it’s a joke about blackface. And that’s bad.
Community is my favorite show and this episode is fantastic. But pretending it’s not blackface just because “he’s actually a drow!!!” is so stupid.
Haven’t seen the episode, but it seems clear they’re making fun of blackface.
You’re right but it seems like most people still missed that as the majority of comments think the joke is that it isn’t blackface (rather than very clearly too close to blackface and Chang, somehow, not registering that).
It is a setup to a joke about how anything vaguely similar to a terrible thing is assumed to be the terrible thing, and that Change is too clueless to catch on.
The drow makeup is not blackface any more than black face camo is blackface.
I mean, I guess if you’re a drow and see this, you might be offended.
Not because it’s drowface, but because it’s a human, therefore not drow, and thus is beneath the drow.
They kind of have an extreme isolationist, and borderline racial superiority thing going on.
But they are also praying to a giant spider and kill their own children, so not exactly nice people.
Not offensive, but fucking terrifying!
And they even clown on those who think it is blackface
So are we gonna ignore the hatecrime?
Literally one of the first reactions.
Whoever thinks black people look like that is racist
Great. Now I know which ones to watch.
Proof that piracy is the best solution to overcome authoritarianism.
And corporate bullshit
The original (and true) definition of fascism was corporatism.
Reminds of the the time that Sony made a pretty advanced root kit to fight piracy. The only people that were not infected were the pirates who wouldn’t have bought their CDs.
The real surprise is why anyone wastes money on any of those overpriced steaming services. It’s not a typo. I’d rather take a minor hit in resolution than pay those crap companies.
I have some good news, you don’t have to take a hit to resolution. In fact, piracy probably provides better quality (blu ray rips)
The irony of pulling cartoon wars
Those family guy writers will surely stop picking out idea balls now.
That recent episode of The Reversal is coming to mind…
Ahoy, Mateys!
Man South Park used to be one of my favourite shows but I considered it dead when it moved to paramount+ my country didn’t even have access to paramount for like a year, now nobody cares
Can you access https://www.southparkstudios.com/ ?
Never checked, tbh once the Tegridy farms thing started I lost interest in the show
I’m not a regular watcher, but there are some specific episodes worth seeing, like jesus and super friends, Tom cruise in the closest, scientology explained and Prince Harry.
I get that, had the same initial reaction, but I felt it picked up and got good.
