Spongebigot Squarepants
Proving an idea I've come to lately, that there is no area of life that cannot be twisted into the basis for an accusation of racism by a person employed by academia, the latest in this is a cartoon sponge man known as "SpongeBob SquarePants."
From Reuters (byline unlisted):
Who lives in a klavern under the sea? SpongeBob SquarePants, apparently. Beloved by children and stoners the world over, the wacky adventures of the animated sea sponge actually mask a "violent," "racist" message, one prof claims."SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing the settler colonial takings of indigenous lands while erasing the ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland," University of Washington anthropology professor Holly M. Barker wrote in her paper called 'Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom.'
According to Barker, SpongeBob's residing in the underwater town of Bikini Bottom is disturbingly similar to the US' use of the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands for nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s. This is based on a fan theory that the real Bikini Atoll was inspiration for the mutated cast of creatures that inhabit the fictional Bikini Bottom.
That's not all, though. By living there, Barker argues that SpongeBob (isn't Bob such a terribly white, masculine name?) exercises the privilege of "not caring about the detonation of nuclear bombs."
The character's Hawaiian shirts and pineapple-shaped homes? Cultural appropriation. The show's female lead, Sandy Squirrel: A token female in a world of men.
Even the show's jangly theme song, which promises children a world of "nautical nonsense," ridicules the indigenous homeland of Bikini Bottom as a "place of nonsense," Barker continues, without a hint of irony.
Barker gets paid more than $150,000 per year to come up with this - assuming her salary is on par with her fellow University of Washington professors. And academics wonder why people consider them out of touch.
Basically, we've got universities churning out racism they call "scholarship."
PS I know and respect a number of anthropologists. However, the anthro arena is an often-wildly unscientific shithole that went after Napoleon Chagnon largely because they found him a swashbuckling asshole who didn't kowtow to lefty ways. He was. But that doesn't mean you get to bring down his career.
via ifeminists
Don't we all? Unless it's exploding near your house, when would a nuclear test affect you directly?
When's the last time there was a protest over the 1950s detonation of a test bomb on a remote Pacific atoll? Even if there were one tomorrow, what would such a protest change?
Seriously.
Instead of trying to understand indigenous peoples, or human development, or society at large, she's spending her time and effort watching and deconstructing a children's cartoon. The world's collective body of knowledge is not being enhanced with this paper.
What's next? Fred Flintstone as a purveyor of the patriarchy? Scooby-Doo normalizing drug culture? Star Trek as a tool to desensitize us to colonialism and imperialism?
Margaret Mead is spinning in her grave.
Conan the Grammarian at October 14, 2019 4:23 AM
Her article shouts this as loudly as it can: "Holly M. Barker has an unsatisfying relationship and sex life."
Fred Flintstone is easily seen as that savage who eats dinosaur ribs while owning a smaller one; a bowler, he is readily deplorable already, without a 6-figure pearl-clutcher having to tell us.
Damn, anybody can get published. (Crid, write a damned book!)
BTW, Star Trek's Prime Directive was a plot device used to demonstrate how stupid a bureaucracy was in the face of reality, as lived by Captains Kirk and Picard, who were obviously smarter than anyone at Starfleet Command. We don't observe any such thing today, and we won't in the future, either. The Vorlons and Shadows sure don't.
Radwaste at October 14, 2019 4:47 AM
I'm going to generously assume that Professor Barker was joking. Any other interpretation puts her on the same intellectual plateau as people who find backwards messages in Led Zeppelin albums.
Re Conan: "What's next? Fred Flintstone as a purveyor of the patriarchy? Scooby-Doo normalizing drug culture? Star Trek as a tool to desensitize us to colonialism and imperialism?" What makes you think it hasn't been done, especially the last two?
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at October 14, 2019 6:52 AM
Are you sure this isn't some type of Alan Sokol type hoax where someone was trying to prove how absurd academia is?
Shtetl G at October 14, 2019 7:28 AM
Radwaste mentions Startrek. Interesting because progressives love the show, but it is a purely authoritarian paradise: there is a rigid (though benevolent) dictatorship, everyone's needs are taken care of by the state, there is no poverty, and there are no people who are self-employed or own a business. Nothing except the state, nothing outside the state.
Since success and order and rules and civilization are all signs of the patriarchy, which we as woke people must destroy, it is easy peasy to find targets which symbolize this racism/sexism/hegemony. Virtually any sign of civilization will do. Yet curiously, none of these people can be observed to move to a hut in the Amazon. They want all the benefits of the patriarchy while trying to destroy it. Sort of psycho, no?
cc at October 14, 2019 8:27 AM
It is hard to say what is going on in the greater world of Star Trek CC. Kirk and Picard are captains on military vessels. DS-9, former military owned mining space station, and still militarily managed. There is some sort of civilian government somewhere, but it is rarely shown. You actually get more about the various alien governments than you do of the Federation.
Ben at October 14, 2019 9:03 AM
"Margaret Mead is spinning in her grave."
Hate to say it, but Margaret Mead was a contributor to the problem, although she wasn't nearly as off-the-chain as this Barker character is. But yes, the social sciences are living in the bottom of the dumpster and then complaining about all of the trash around them. As Reynolds likes to say, when the day comes that the citizens have had enough of this sort of thing and vote to cut off the funding, the Barkers of the world will then complain that the citizenry is anti-intellectual, totally failing to see the irony.
Cousin Dave at October 14, 2019 9:11 AM
*Publish or perish, Professor*
"But what if my ideas are crap and I have nothing to say because I'm merely a diploma-collecting processmonger with no real intellectual prowess and I really, really like the perfesser-level salary and perks and I don't want a real job?".
*What's your point?*
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at October 14, 2019 9:39 AM
Sisko tackles the Federation problem: It's easy to be a saint in paradise.
https://youtu.be/ncWh6JluusQ
Kirk and Picard are captains on military vessels.
Kirk's Enterprise was much more a military ship than Picard's. Kirk never had a 10 Forward, nor did he have dependents aboard. See also the DS9 Episode The Jem'Hadar where the captain of the Odyssey, a sister ship to Enterprise has to take time to offload the non-essential personnel.
The Prime Directive makes sense when you're drafting a mission statement (or creating a long standing macguffin for your show). It sucks when you're out on the bleeding edge and your ass is on the line. Much harder to be a saint, then.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 14, 2019 9:43 AM
I honestly understand her desire to point out the wrongs done to indigenous peoples by so-called "more sophisticated and civilized" types. Hey, it was a rotten trick the U.S. played on the good folk of the Bikini Atoll - booting them off their sacred domain and irradiating it without so much as a "by your leave", but - as other people have pointed out, it's a FREAKIN' CARTOON! Get a grip! If anything, the denizens of Bikini Bottom (who are NOT invading the land for their own nefarious purposes) have more claim to this area than people do, even indigenous ones. Why? They may be anthropomorphic, but they are SEA CREATURES! It's their environment! Amazing how people don't even give a thought to the ANIMALS they're displacing, as if they don't even count! If anything, Spongebob and friends ought to be suing US for polluting their ocean realm! Fortunately, he's too good-natured.
Denise Mayosky at October 14, 2019 12:49 PM
Worse, Chagnon was likely right.
Richard Aubrey at October 14, 2019 1:35 PM
Scott Adams (Dilbert) is right--parody is no longer distinguishable from reality.
Rex Little at October 14, 2019 8:15 PM
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