Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Cannibalism and Censorship

Here's a post of mine about censorship and cannibalism.
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5 comments:

Scott W. said...

Remind me not to fly with you.

Pretty moderate response, by the way! What are ya, a Johnny Depp fan?

2:56 PM
Anonymous said...

I am in total agreement with Anton here. In fact, I think we need more portrayals of cannibals in pop culture. It's about time we recognize that Disney and Hollywood are actually doing us a cultural service, exposing us to the enormous variety of the human experience. I'm sure that in depicting Caribs eating other people, Disney would demonstrate the same cultural sensitivity it showed in depicting the struggles of Pocahantas, and that little princess, Anastasia (Russian royalty being one of the most persecuted groups on Earth). Cultural imperialists, Bahh! These are the same folks who made "It's a Small World, After all," the beginnings of my (and I'm sure, countless others') political education as an internationalist.
Shame on those who would call for a boycott. We need to really think about this -- what's going to happen next? Only non-human meat eaters allowed on film? Only vegetarians on TV?
I'm tired of the Hollywood-haters, the Disney-haters -- those people who would only bring our culture down. Come on you guys, be positive! Movie-making is hard! Maybe if you dialogued with Disney, if you gave them a little POSITIVE feedback, and some constructive criticism, they would consider your point of view, but all this negative stuff just doesn't build bridges. Multi-national entertainment conglomerates using slave-made plastic toys in fast food restaurants to sucker little kids into nagging their parents to see the latest commodification of indigenous culture deserve to be heard too. The world is a beautiful mosaic and if we just learn to respect each other's differences, we can all get along. Disney is people too.

11:54 AM
Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, I forgot to sign my previous post -- anonymous is Paul Gilmore

11:55 AM
Fons said...

Do people profit from racist depictions of colonized people, yes. Should this be encouraged, no. But that does not mean that we should falsify history. If Caribs were eating people when Europeans showed up that's fine, why deny it or protest it? They should have eaten more of them from my perspective.
We can't just whitewash certain aspects of our history because the current context frowns upon it. To me it's like denying that Africans were an integral part of the slave trade. Do we need to understand that European colonialism massively expanded the slave trade and created the opportunities, yes, but this does not excuse the black people that were involved in the trade. The same for Jews in the camps that worked for the NAZI's. Do we not talk about them because we are sympathetic to those who were victims or those who resisted?

8:20 AM
Anonymous said...

: yes!

4:50 AM

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