With a lot of discussions lately, a repeated refrain is “a product of [their] times” and “that’s how it was, then”. And tt’s easy to dismiss that as just an excuse (because it is), but there is a ring of truth in those statements.
The media we grow up with shapes us. Songs, television shows, movies – things we find in them are all things that not just one person thought were okay to say out loud, but an entire industry and buying public were fine with.
A lot of it was not fine. This is a thread for highlighting the things we grew up with that have stuck around (if only in the background), or pop up occasionally. Mainstream things that no one questioned, or if they did question them they got mocked as a killjoy. Things we should look at and question.
So, what are the songs/shows/films/stories that you grew up with – sang along to, quoted, recorded – that now you change the channel when you see/hear it? What are the old hits you remember that now you realise are so, incredibly skeevy?
ETA: given the topic, note that there is a blanket trigger warning on anything within. This is about facing problematic media and recognising it for what it is. Proceed at your own risk.
ETA #2: Given the nature of the topic, “likes” do not necessarily signal approval of the media, but a recognition of the validity of the choice to include it.
In the '80s in Canada, we heard Gino Vannelli a lot. Lately, he’s been doing one of those old-timer tours of casinos and such, and in a recent interview talked about how he was doing mostly fan-favourite songs. Two of his cause me to change the station the moment I know it’s on, and yes, they still get airplay today.
Wild Horses which is a straight up rape song:
As the sun goes down on the arizona plain
and the wind whistles by like a runaway train
hey hey hey it’s a beautiful thing
well it’s me and you and a flatbed truck
my heart kicking over like a whitetail buck
hey hey hey in the middle of spring
You can cut me deep
you can cut me down
you can cut me loose
don’t you know it’s okay
you can kick and scream
you can slap my face
you can set my wheels on a high speed chase
hey no matter what you do
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
As the sky falls down from the midnight blue
spittin’ like bullets on a hot tin roof
hey hey hey it’s a beautiful sound
well it’s me and you in a flatbed truck
in a foot of mud just my luck
hey hey hey a hundred miles out of town
You can call me a fool
you can call me blind
you can call it quits
can’t hear a word you say
cause if I had you once
I’m gonna have you twice
I’m gonna follow my heart instead of good advice
hey no matter what you do
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
As the sun goes down on the arizona plain
and the wind whistles by like a runaway train
hey hey hey it’s a beautiful thing
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
Wild horses…
Wild horses could not drag me away from you
Well, I know a lot of people get seriously triggered by classic Saturday morning cartoons, because they’re ridiculously violent and offensive in terms of stereotypes, but I still miss seeing them on TV:
One of the pictures I found that I hope won’t trigger.
This and the Wizard of Oz were my favorites when I was a kid (pre-kindergarten).
I just don’t know what I’d do if I had kids who discovered it out in the world. Deny its existence? Forbid them to read it? Knowing kids, they’d read it because I forbid it. Would it hurt to explore it together and have a serious discussion about racism and how people are unfairly portrayed in the media? My gut tells me the latter would be best. Is my gut instinct correct?
I know the basic story, but I have no clear memory of reading Little Black Sambo. I’ve heard it said that it’s really the original illustrations that are problematic, not so much the words. (Except of course, that “Sambo” is now racist.) What’s your take on this?
There aren’t that many things that I loved as a dumb ignorant kid that make me cringe to the point of changing the channel. Even Van Halen’s pretty indefensible “Hot for Teacher” is still a song that gets my toes a-tappin’ and my fingers drumming on the steering wheel. I won’t try to defend its music video either, except for what it subjectively means to me.
I mean, Christ, look at that shit. Talk about indefensible! Talk about objectifying women! And those kids! Looks like the boys are having the time of their lives (and why not? The whole thing is presented as every horny straight schoolboy’s daydream), but what about the girls in the video? Or the millions of them who saw it on MTV? What message did it send them?
It’s a Bad Thing, this video, and so is the song itself. And yet, somehow I still value it. The reprehensible messages it communicated were not what stuck with me all these years. There was a joy, a freedom, a rebellious upswelling of rich, sun-drenched California life that rose from that song. For all the damage that song and that video might have done to the young people who consumed it and absorbed the message that women and girls are to be ogled and judged and consumed by the horny boys (even the woefully age-inappropriate ones)… somehow that message was rejected by me. I don’t ogle girls. I’ve never actually lusted after a teacher. But so many aspects of that song and its video, aspects that largely exclude the egregious sexism, now represent to me a surprisingly vivid slice of my own middle-school years. I was 14 when this song came out, a grade or two older than most of the kids in the video. I don’t have to perform this song for anyone else. I don’t feel the urge to share the video with my kids, even if I do give my son a stern “Sit down, Waldo!” when he takes too long getting in the car. But now the song lives in my Guilty Pleasures folder, and I rock out to it in the car at every opportunity.
'Cause as lyrically and thematically terrible as the song is… it truly rocks my socks off. And apparently always will.
Yes, the images in LBS are at the same time crude and artistic. Sambo is represented as a very dark-skinned south Indian boy who loves pancakes and butter (ghee). Sent out into the jungle, he encounters four tigers willing to forgo eating him in trade for his new shoes, umbrella, jacket, and pants. They argue over who is best dressed and chase each other around a tree so fast they turn into a stream of butter.
Many counterfeiters reprinted the book with a different representation…a young African-American boy from plantation life. Langston Hughes criticized it in 1932 for being another “pickaninny” book.
Well, these days it is kinda easy to notice that MST3K was more than a tad homophobic. Perhaps no more than the culture of the time, but their treatment of Tommy Kirk in Village of the Giants is noticeably cruel.
When I was first getting into chapter books, the library we went to most frequently had a whole set of the Uncle Remus books. I read every single freakin’ one. I loved those books. I’m not sure why they were still on the shelves and why my parents just let me read them without any comment that I recall, but I’m kind of sad that they aren’t really in anymore because it was such a big thing for me to read the whole set as a brand new reader. But yeah, those aren’t ok.
I have a pattern for knitting a golliwog in one of my grandmother’s old pattern books. I was especially gobsmacked about it because my grandparents were very pro-civil rights and would get into the face of anyone who said anything racist while they were within earshot.
I’ve got close to throwing it out a few times, but her favourite charity patterns are in the same book (published in the late 70s). For now I’ve decided it’s a reminder of how easily casual racism slips into things.
