Deprogramming

The Goodbye Girl. Liked it when it came out, but I can’t watch it now because of the jokes making fun of gays.

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Yep. This is why pretty much all 90s sitcoms are off-limits to me.

See, it’s funny because he’s not only gay, but he’s actually gay, but he watches sports and doesn’t have a lisp and works a normal job, so none of the other characters have figured this out… :roll_eyes:

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Couldn’t you just carefully cut that page out?

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:open_mouth: And deface a book???

Besides that, it’s not just “a page”. Dolls are usually rather complex constructions, so the instructions go on for several pages. Usually the next set of instructions for the next doll start immediately afterwards, too – the back of one page will have different instructions.

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Oh, I see. I somehow pictured in my mind a crafting paperback that had somehow slipped past the standard timeline for ridding publications of such nonsense, not an older hardcover.

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For a number of years my British aunts and uncles sent me a Rupert Bear Annual.


I still have one. It includes this story:

Cringeworthy. The golliwogs are presented as kindly and helpful, but childlike, and the tone is patronizing. In another story, Rupert meets a Chinese friend, and although Chinese culture is not portrayed as inferior, the story is full of stereotypical “exotic” elements.

The other stories, games, etc in the book show Rupert on his home turf in England and are innocuous.

From Amazon reviews, there are apparently six of the albums with offensive stories: 1946, 1947,1954 (mine),1960, 1961, and 1962.

So can we classify Rupert as Mostly Harmless, or does the racist content taint the entire series?

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That’s a tough one. I know Hergé redid some of the TinTin panels to make them less racist. Once he realised how racist they were.

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Pretty much everything.

But I view them as products of their times. A non-violent edit of a 3-Stooges show or politically-correct rendition of Huck Finn wouldn’t be the same. Billy Idol’s Cradle of Love or Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen wouldn’t be better if they were edited to be about senior citizens. ZZ Top’s Legs wouldn’t be better if it were made gender-neutral.

If a modern show came out where the husband routinely threatened to punch his wife to the moon that wouldn’t work, but it worked then. (Partly because we all knew that Alice was really in charge and that was just bluster.)

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The Three Stooges were cartoon violence. That’s a far different category than real violence.

Huck Finn was about racism, so setting it in a context with no (or less) racism would dilute it.

LOL. They really wouldn’t.

Although it’s telling that Chuck Berry went to prison shortly after “Sweet Little Sixteen” for transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes. It turns out sweet little sixteen was actually thirteen.

Why not? I have legs. It’s already more gender neutral than if they named it “Boobs”.

That show always made me uncomfortable. It was normalizing abuse. “Product of its time”, shit no.

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I was a big fan of the restaurant, sort of Howard Johnson’s meet IHOP. Big emphasis on tiger, boy was depicted as Indian with turban. Wasn’t aware of the racist conotations until much later.

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This is a good thing?!?

I used to work nearish to an IHOP, so I’d go in there when I wanted big, real, breakfast in the morning and couldn’t be arsed to cook it for myself. That being said, the food was barely palatable, and it was too generic. They don’t have redeye gravy, and if they have sawmill gravy it’s woefully inauthentic like everything else.

I have been to a Hojo’s, once. I had the worst service ever. The waiter came by literally every two minutes to lean in my face and ask how I was enjoying my mediocre fried chicken and if I was done with that or still working on it… :rage: Gah. That was 25 years ago, but it was enough to put me off of all HoJo’s anywhere for life.

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Wasn’t Rupert Bear a comic strip from the Daily Express, who are second only to the Daily Mail for shitty behaviour?

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Was, and is. I haven’t seen a Rupert comic in many years, so I don’t know what the tone is today. But I don’t think a children’s comic can be held responsible for the editorial policies of the paper it runs in.

From what I recall from my childhood, apart from the lapses I described, the main fault of Rupert was that it was stuck in a cozy, pre-war, Little England sort of fantasy.

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I’d say that also describes what the Daily Express wants.

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Peaches by The Stranglers.

I like the music, but hate the sexually objectifying lyrics.

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Wow. Never heard that one before. That’s one hell of a groove.

And sounds kinda like I’d expect a band called The Stranglers to sound.

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They became well known as a punk band, but were willing to experiment outside that.



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I know I have heard this before but I have no idea where. I’m gonna guess college as it seems like a lot of the music we listened to had that vibe. Is it bad I like it??

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Sort of the point of this thread, isn’t it?

Y’all know my vote: no, it’s not bad that you like it.

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