Oh, for sure. They are satirizing English chauvinism in typical F&S fashion.
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It’s not even subtle, or about mixed signals or “different social meanings” like the classic discussed downthread. It’s blatant “I don’t care what you say, I don’t care if you violently resist.” yet it’s a “fan favourite” and the classics station plays it all the damn time.
But if that’s what we were being fed on a daily basis, some of it definitely sinks in on some level. And people look at you funny because they’ve internalised it and never examined what isn’t even subtext.
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Not necessarily bad. It’s bad if you pretend that there’s nothing problematic about it, but one of the reasons for this thread is to highlight the waters that we grew up swimming in, and just how polluted they were, and the subtle (and not so subtle) ways being immersed in those media oceans has affected us. How much they normalised bad and even toxic ways of thinking and behaviours, and how little we thought about it.
And to help us recognise just what was seeping into our brains, which can help explain why some people still defend the indefensible. Until you recognise danger, you can’t save yourself.
ETA: dangerous media become a lot less so when you see them for what they are. You can like something without endorsing the message, but you need to know what it is to do that.
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I had no idea what was being talked about either. I don’t think Gino Vannelli has had any big hits in the US since the 70s.
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Oh, nothing is new, but CanCon rules increase the odds of airplay.
Stupidly, because there are plenty other bands and songs to use.
But this is the kind of garbage we grew up with as kids, people singing along on the radio. The fact that it’s not US, and it’s not necessarily a touchstone for you is why I included the lyrics. But those of us who grew up with it, or listen to classic rock radio in Canada know exactly what song it is.
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This routine spoke to me:
Not that Rock himself isn’t prime material for this thread.
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During the famine, I worked in food aid. This sounds glamorous and important; the truth is I was an administrative assistant for a government contract that did very little except siphon money off the government’s purse into the salaries of the people who worked on the contract. However, the two women I worked with who had Masters in Nutrition were actually knowledgeable about the field and taught me a lot. One day, a photographer visited with us. He specialized in photographing famines, and he showed us some of his photos from Ethiopia.
Here’s the devastating thing about what he told us. You’ve heard it before but it takes on a whole different context in this case. “The camera really does add 10 pounds.” It was really hard for him to capture how truly thin the people he was photographing were.
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I’d never heard of him.
I assume he was a Canadian singer who had some territorial hits in the 1970s.
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In the US, we have no frame of reference because everybody here is fat. Compare the average American to the average Asian, or even the average European. We can’t imagine everybody being thinner than we can possibly imagine, because of starvation and scarcity. Eating maybe a couple times a week is the norm there.
It didn’t take me long in life to figure out that there is no cure for world hunger, because as soon as more food sources became available, the wealthier nations would feel entitled to all of them.
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You can feel the magic at 3:12.
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Oh bloody hell. I’ve just remembered something abhorrent we used to chant at play in the late '70s/early '80s (Australia, white, working class, for context). Used to select whose go it was next at whatever game…
‘Eeny meeny miney mo
Catch a n****r by the toe
If he hollers let him go
Eeny meeny miney mo’
Fuck. We had dark-skinned neighbours (Sri Lankan, maybe) too. I feel I should apologise but I don’t even remember their name.
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Oh, wow. The variant we used in my corner of the States involved a tiger. I’d never imagined people used the one you mention, but of course I’m not that shocked.
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My God, these lyrics are so horrible.
I’m kinda bad with lyrics, so they just pass through one ear and out the other. I’ve always assumed this song was about heroin, because of the title, and because it’s the Stones.
I reallyREALLYreally wish this song was about heroin instead.
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In Canada in the fifties, we said “tiger”. We knew how the original verse went, but we knew we’d catch hell for it if a teacher or parent heard us, at least in our middle-class neighbourhood.
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it makes since that the N word was the origin version but even I never heard that and I grew up in Alabama.
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I was vaguely aware that such a version existed like way back in the day, but I had never heard it, and nobody I knew ever heard it either.
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This line of dialogue from Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Elevator:
“It is very difficult to phone people in China, Mr. President,” said the Postmaster General, “The country is so full of Wings and Wongs, every time you wing you get the wong number.”
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Mildly amusing, but vaguely racist.
Roald Dahl was also a lot more than vaguely racist. Keep in mind that the original Oompa-Loompas weren’t orange, but black… and this was representative of how he portrayed people of color.
He also said this about Jewish people:
Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason
He was also the author of Switch Bitch, a collection of four of the longest rape jokes ever written down.
I have long admired his work, but he is deeply problematic.
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No, that would be this Brown Sugar:
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