Way back before the Internet, O Best Beloved, there was a comic called The Tick. It was written by Ben Edlund. It had a three-part ninja storyline basically lampshading that every comic line in existence was doing something, and usually something stupid, with ninja at that point. The whole joke was that one branch of the ninja clan was selling out ninjitsu for profit and basically trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
So in one of these comics was a little insert, a fake brochure for the Ninja World theme park that was the main source of revenue. The brochure featured the theme park mascot, Lil' Nip.
I suspect you see where this is going.
People were offended, and there was rather a large debate that pretty much went like this: "This is gross and racist" vs. "This is using the worst, cheapest stereotypes of ninjitsu and Japanese culture because that is the point of the joke - that in selling Ninja World the manager decided to use these cheap gross stereotypes to appeal to, well, idiots."
The interesting thing is that, at least in my recollection, no one debated that the character was racist, or that depicting a Japanese accent by switching the "L" and "R" in every word wasn't, you know, racist.
So. You know. It's 24 years later. Just putting that out there.
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Way back before the Internet, O Best Beloved, there was a comic called The Tick. It was written by Ben Edlund. It had a three-part ninja storyline basically lampshading that every comic line in existence was doing something, and usually something stupid, with ninja at that point. The whole joke was that one branch of the ninja clan was selling out ninjitsu for profit and basically trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
So in one of these comics was a little insert, a fake brochure for the Ninja World theme park that was the main source of revenue. The brochure featured the theme park mascot, Lil' Nip.
I suspect you see where this is going.
People were offended, and there was rather a large debate that pretty much went like this: "This is gross and racist" vs. "This is using the worst, cheapest stereotypes of ninjitsu and Japanese culture because that is the point of the joke - that in selling Ninja World the manager decided to use these cheap gross stereotypes to appeal to, well, idiots."
The interesting thing is that, at least in my recollection, no one debated that the character was racist, or that depicting a Japanese accent by switching the "L" and "R" in every word wasn't, you know, racist.
So. You know. It's 24 years later. Just putting that out there.