The issue with Song of the South is not that it's super racist and "problematic" and whatever (which it REALLY isn't), but that so many people that have never seen it THINK - or rather, "know" - that it's super racist and "problematic". No matter how many people complain about scenes in Peter Pan and Dumbo and the like, enough people out there have seen those movies and know what they're about that the movies can never get THAT heavy a stigma against them.
But Song of the South is a movie that's unfortunately best known these days as "that movie that's so super racist Disney banned it forever", and Disney knows that no amount of disclaimers thrown onto it will prevent an explosion of "Disney exposes children to infamous racist white supremacy alt-right WAK propaganda and must be boycotted" outbursts from people that have never seen the movie, and that's something they'd rather be without.
Precisely. Different strokes for different properties. Song of the South can't be compared to ANY other Disney feature, and will NEVER be released on Disney+ in any form, or with any type of disclaimers in front. No use even dreaming about it.
Is there a definitive list of the changes that have been made across the volumes? Or is it only with recent volumes that changes have actually been happening?
As That Duckfan mentioned, this series has Voodoo Hoodoo unedited. From what I've seen, Voodoo Hoodoo is one of the most well-known stories surrounding Scrooge and Donald - or, rather, it's infamous for the concept and the depictions of characters like Foola Zoola. Maybe my logic is off, but would it not make more sense that that one, of all stories, would actually need to be edited? If the assumption that the changes were made to avoid backlash in regards to the negative depictions of certain races is true, why edit issues that aren't quite on people's radars, but leave issues where a decent amount of people are aware of the insensitive caricatures untouched?
I don't know. Maybe they've just changed their minds, maybe there have been complaints, maybe there are reasons that have eluded me... But, unless there are more changes that I'm not aware of (Admittedly, these collections are my first exposure to many of these comics), the fact that the changes are happening now for no apparent reason is a little fishy.
Voodoo Hoodoo was printed in a book released in 2011, while the kind of cancel/censorship culture that's rearing its ugly head here didn't really start until 2015. Today, anything that can be thought of as racist or misogynist in any way can result in someone screaming about it on Twitter, tossing in some hashtags to get the attention of similarly-minded people that never saw the book/film in question, and then result in a couple dozen people demanding censorship, public apologies, boycotts and firing.
And until companies wake up to the fact that 50 people that never bought your product calling you racist on Twitter because someone else told them to take 10 seconds to do so is not at all equivalent to 50 of your customers individually writing you angry letters calling you racist, everything has to be censored to prevent someone somewhere from finding something they can be offended about.
This kind of mob culture is the biggest issue with social media and a more unified Internet.
Is there a definitive list of the changes that have been made across the volumes? Or is it only with recent volumes that changes have actually been happening?
As That Duckfan mentioned, this series has Voodoo Hoodoo unedited. From what I've seen, Voodoo Hoodoo is one of the most well-known stories surrounding Scrooge and Donald - or, rather, it's infamous for the concept and the depictions of characters like Foola Zoola. Maybe my logic is off, but would it not make more sense that that one, of all stories, would actually need to be edited? If the assumption that the changes were made to avoid backlash in regards to the negative depictions of certain races is true, why edit issues that aren't quite on people's radars, but leave issues where a decent amount of people are aware of the insensitive caricatures untouched?
I don't know. Maybe they've just changed their minds, maybe there have been complaints, maybe there are reasons that have eluded me... But, unless there are more changes that I'm not aware of (Admittedly, these collections are my first exposure to many of these comics), the fact that the changes are happening now for no apparent reason is a little fishy.
Voodoo Hoodoo was printed in a book released in 2011, while the kind of cancel/censorship culture that's rearing its ugly head here didn't really start until 2015. Today, anything that can be thought of as racist or misogynist in any way can result in someone screaming about it on Twitter, tossing in some hashtags to get the attention of similarly-minded people that never saw the book/film in question, and then result in a couple dozen people demanding censorship, public apologies, boycotts and firing.
And until companies wake up to the fact that 50 people that never bought your product calling you racist on Twitter because someone else told them to take 10 seconds to do so is not at all equivalent to 50 of your customers individually writing you angry letters calling you racist, everything has to be censored to prevent someone somewhere from finding something they can be offended about.
This kind of mob culture is the biggest issue with social media and a more unified Internet.
2011? Geez, time flies, huh...
As for the idea of cancel culture, I think it's highly situational; it absolutely can go too far (Song of the South being the easiest example of everything you've described), but I've seen at least a few cases where I fully agreed with the idea. In one of the Steven Universe artbooks [Steven Universe: Art and Origins], there was a page of character concepts. One concept for a character, Concrete, looked an awful lot like a racial caricature (Right down to the pitch black skin with puffy lips) and had a character trait of "Can't read ". Even a cursory look at most of the crew behind Steven Universe will tell you that there was no malice behind the character, but given the show's major focus on inclusivity, it was certainly a blip that people weren't happy about. After a controversy, later editions omitted the concept art.
In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Mr. Game & Watch was made to be more expressive, and his attack animations were made to look like the original games they came from. One of these included an attack that had him donning a stereotypical Native American headdress, as it appeared in the Game & Watch game 'Fire Attack'. Following a minor controversy, the game was patched and the feather was removed, though the attack was unaltered otherwise.
I'm sure there are more examples that one could come up with, but those are two that have stuck with me (Mainly because of my adoration for Steven Universe and Smash Bros).
While I do agree that cancel culture and the like can go too far, I think that these are positive examples. Despite the fact that neither case was done out of any intent of racism or offense, they were problematic. Their removal had no major effect on either property, but it was something that meant a great deal to people.
Now, I have no doubt that, in both cases, there were complainers that had no actual interest in either property. People love to hop on video game controversies, and Steven Universe is a show that, unfortunately, has a lot of hate surrounding it; like you say, there are people that hop on the hate train for no reason other than 'they can'. However, in both cases, the requests for censorship started from a positive place and the end result was, in the eyes of many, a net positive.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily apply here; the fact that some blatant depictions of racism go uncensored, yet minor dialogue is changed to remove racist implications, makes the attempt at censorship questionable. The inconsistency makes it feel much more like an attempt to pander or avoid controversy rather than actually correct these depictions. On the same note, this could easily have been avoided simply by putting a warning at the beginning of the book, as Disney and Warner Bros. have taken to doing with their more offensive material. I feel that works like this almost require such a comment; if it's not censored, a simple comment explaining the background wouldn't be difficult. Likewise, if it is censored, a comment explaining why the changes were made and what the changes were would go a long way.
As you say, however, most of the people that would complain aren't buying the books. The fact that there's been no controversy surrounding them, and the fact that the changes only seem to be happening recently, seems like they're sneakily trying to prevent a controversy... at this point it seems odd, but I rarely understand how these things work.
So, at the end of all that... it, admittedly, feels like a bit of a pointless ramble. It's not like I don't understand your point; you're mainly speaking against people who take things too far and behave unreasonably in regards to censorship, and those who make it personal rather than about the media itself. I suppose I just wanted to throw one of the positive aspects of censorship out there. Even if it doesn't necessarily apply here (Unless there's a controversy that I'm unaware of), I figured I had a chance to throw out some food for thought; censorship is something that I find really interesting, and while it's often extremely situational and can be a bad thing at times, I do think there's something to be said for it in certain situations.
Whether or not this is one of those situations, of course, remains to be seen.
Resident autistic, diabetic duck fan.
I love hearing about bizarre/obscure Disney works - recommendations welcome!
The fact that there's been no controversy surrounding them, and the fact that the changes only seem to be happening recently, seems like they're sneakily trying to prevent a controversy... at this point it seems odd, but I rarely understand how these things work.
Cancel culture is not just another word for censorship, it's perpetually offended people actively looking for things they don't approve of, and then rallying together giant mobs to threaten and harass whoever is (or is implied to be) responsible by whatever means necessary to get whatever they didn't approve of removed. And Disney knows that all it takes is ONE of these people to post a photo from The Lovelorn Fireman on Twitter and getting such a Twitter mob retweeting it and adding angry comments to potentially result in all kinds of news outlets spewing out articles about how "Disney makes anti-semitic jokes in recently released childrens' comic book" written by people that didn't even know Donald Duck comics were a thing until they saw that picture. That's a PR nightmare Disney doesn't want to deal with just because a few Barks nerds would like uncensored comics in the hardcovers.
And that's why companies that have interests beyond their comic book purchasing audiences can't release what their actual audience wants anymore. Fantagraphics isn't going to get hurt by angry tweets like this because the make their money from people that know comics from the 1950s weren't written yesterday. But Disney makes a lot of money from people that barely know what a comic book is, and they really don't want those people to learn that Donald Duck said the word holocaust in something recent.
That's cancel culture, and that's why it unfortunately works.
The fact that there's been no controversy surrounding them, and the fact that the changes only seem to be happening recently, seems like they're sneakily trying to prevent a controversy... at this point it seems odd, but I rarely understand how these things work.
Cancel culture is not just another word for censorship, it's perpetually offended people actively looking for things they don't approve of, and then rallying together giant mobs to threaten and harass whoever is (or is implied to be) responsible by whatever means necessary to get whatever they didn't approve of removed. And Disney knows that all it takes is ONE of these people to post a photo from The Lovelorn Fireman on Twitter and getting such a Twitter mob retweeting it and adding angry comments to potentially result in all kinds of news outlets spewing out articles about how "Disney makes anti-semitic jokes in recently released childrens' comic book" written by people that didn't even know Donald Duck comics were a thing until they saw that picture. That's a PR nightmare Disney doesn't want to deal with just because a few Barks nerds would like uncensored comics in the hardcovers.
And that's why companies that have interests beyond their comic book purchasing audiences can't release what their actual audience wants anymore. Fantagraphics isn't going to get hurt by angry tweets like this because the make their money from people that know comics from the 1950s weren't written yesterday. But Disney makes a lot of money from people that barely know what a comic book is, and they really don't want those people to learn that Donald Duck said the word holocaust in something recent.
That's cancel culture, and that's why it unfortunately works.
True; my ramble did end up being pretty tangentially related to the topic at hand... by the time I had it all typed out, I felt that I may as well leave it there and hope that a few people found it worth thinking about, if nothing else!
Personally, I tend to avoid platforms where cancel culture is most prevalent (Twitter and Tumblr being the main ones, to my knowledge), so I suppose my understanding of its impact is probably somewhat skewed.
I have no doubt that you're right that that could happen - Der Fuehrer's Face is pretty solid proof. After all, how many people parrot that Donald Duck was a WAK, which clearly shows that they haven't actually watched the short? Or, again, Song of the South - whether or not it is racially insensitive is up for debate, but most people who will call it a racist film probably know nothing about it outside of it being the film that Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah came from. To be honest, I wouldn't really expect it to go any further than a few clickbait articles, but I suppose that's not going to be how the executives at Disney see it.
I often have to remind myself how quickly people can latch onto opinions that they have no basis for. It's not quite the same situation, but as a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, it's absurd how people will, word for word, give opinions of certain Youtubers without having any knowledge of the games themselves. It's so disheartening to hear, about the third or fourth time, an incorrect argument given verbatim. I know that it's, of course, not even close to being of the same magnitude, but that's what I think of in these situations. People will strongly hold opinions and fight for them, even if the topic has no significance to them and they have no actual basis for their arguments beyond "I heard someone say that..." despite not having interacted with the subject whatsoever. On the topic of racism, I'd bring up Der Fuehrer's Face and Song of the South again - people feel so strongly about them and will argue to the bitter end about both of them. It's even more worrying when some of these things are so readily available - Song of the South has been utterly buried, fair enough, but Der Fuehrer's Face is a short that you can easily find on Youtube. I have to remind myself that people can and will argue vehemently about something much more quickly than they will actually experience it and form an opinion for themselves.
It's so easy to forget that. I always think "It'll just show up in a Cracked article about how Donald Duck has actually done some pretty weird stuff!" And yet, like you say, it often ends up being much worse than that.
Apologies if I came across as dismissive of your original argument - I totally get where you're coming from, and I'd even agree for the most part! I suppose I've just been lucky enough to see the subject handled reasonably well in certain circles, which makes it easy to forget that people can leap to outrage over things that have no real significance to them and, as you say, that can have disastrous results.
Resident autistic, diabetic duck fan.
I love hearing about bizarre/obscure Disney works - recommendations welcome!
Cancel culture in itself is nothing new, but the rounds it's been doing on the internet have in some cases more harmful than good. It's been abused, misapplied, hijacked, etc., by Twitter hate mobs, who really don't deserve the exposure they get. I understand the cautiousness in releasing a piece of media that may trigger traumatic reactions from people. I appreciate that some businesses are so unethical, they deserve to be ignored (though good luck getting around that one). Alquackskey provides some good examples.
Is the Barks volume really comparable to all that, though? Does the use of the word 'holocaust' to refer to a fire, or 'shanghaied', or the phrase "Indian war chief" cover quite the same ground? I mean, compared to how Daisy is portrayed in some of these stories... there's a lot more about Barks that has aged than a few of these phrases.
How bad was censorship in the '90s, when Gladstone released their albums?
alquackskey: We discussed some of this, and Song of the South in particular, on my review thread a few months ago if you want to take a look.
Last Edit: Nov 11, 2020 23:50:02 GMT by That Duckfan
It's so easy to forget that. I always think "It'll just show up in a Cracked article about how Donald Duck has actually done some pretty weird stuff!" And yet, like you say, it often ends up being much worse than that.
Case in point, Cracked actually publishing an article where they outright say that if you want Song of the South on Disney+, you're racist. That site is no longer what it once was either.
Cancel culture in itself is nothing new, but the rounds it's been doing on the internet have in some cases more harmful than good. It's been abused, misapplied, hijacked, etc., by Twitter hate mobs, who really don't deserve the exposure they get. I understand the cautiousness in releasing a piece of media that may trigger traumatic reactions from people. I appreciate that some businesses are so unethical, they deserve to be ignored (though good luck getting around that one). Alquackskey provides some good examples.
Is the Barks volume really comparable to all that, though? Does the use of the word 'holocaust' to refer to a fire, or 'shanghaied', or the phrase "Indian war chief" cover quite the same ground? I mean, compared to how Daisy is portrayed in some of these stories... there's a lot more about Barks that has aged than a few of these phrases.
How bad was censorship in the '90s, when Gladstone released their albums?
alquackskey : We discussed some of this, and Song of the South in particular, on my review thread a few months ago if you want to take a look.
I can agree with you there - even if I've seen some positive outcomes, I know that there have been some horrible negatives, too. Careers destroyed, massive problems for productions in which many totally innocent parties are harmed... it can do serious damage. It's sad to think that, in many cases, it's completely pointless - as you say, there are certain businesses that actually are extremely problematic. The thing about cancel culture seems to be reach and effort; it's a lot easier to destroy someone's life over some foul humour or call for cancellations of media that is perceived as offensive than it is to make any lasting changes to companies that do some pretty horrible things.
I think your middle point is one of my main issues with the changes being made; as much as I love Barks' works, some of them would be seen quite differently under a modern lens. Some stories only require edits to dialogue or the like, but some of Barks' work has fundamental issues and concepts that you can't edit away. It just seems pointless to remove an odd mention here or there, but have other elements that would be perceived as much more offensive to a modern audience left in.
I'll give the thread a look, I bet it's an interesting read!
Resident autistic, diabetic duck fan.
I love hearing about bizarre/obscure Disney works - recommendations welcome!
It's so easy to forget that. I always think "It'll just show up in a Cracked article about how Donald Duck has actually done some pretty weird stuff!" And yet, like you say, it often ends up being much worse than that.
Case in point, Cracked actually publishing an article where they outright say that if you want Song of the South on Disney+, you're racist. That site is no longer what it once was either.
...wow. I know that the site changed a lot, but that's something else. I stopped using it years ago; I really didn't like the change to the layout (Red background and a few articles listed clearly was perfect), but it's sad to think that it's so different now.
Resident autistic, diabetic duck fan.
I love hearing about bizarre/obscure Disney works - recommendations welcome!
Case in point, Cracked actually publishing an article where they outright say that if you want Song of the South on Disney+, you're racist. That site is no longer what it once was either.
...wow. I know that the site changed a lot, but that's something else. I stopped using it years ago; I really didn't like the change to the layout (Red background and a few articles listed clearly was perfect), but it's sad to think that it's so different now.
Cracked had a pretty popular YouTube channel as well, until one day in 2017 new management came in and kicked out all of their talent. After Hours, Some News... it was some of the best material of its genre, with a set of very promising rising stars, and then: boom. Some of them continued on their own, but it wasn't the same. One of the great tragedies of 2010s video communities.
The fact that there's been no controversy surrounding them, and the fact that the changes only seem to be happening recently, seems like they're sneakily trying to prevent a controversy... at this point it seems odd, but I rarely understand how these things work.
Cancel culture is not just another word for censorship, it's perpetually offended people actively looking for things they don't approve of, and then rallying together giant mobs to threaten and harass whoever is (or is implied to be) responsible by whatever means necessary to get whatever they didn't approve of removed. And Disney knows that all it takes is ONE of these people to post a photo from The Lovelorn Fireman on Twitter and getting such a Twitter mob retweeting it and adding angry comments to potentially result in all kinds of news outlets spewing out articles about how "Disney makes anti-semitic jokes in recently released childrens' comic book" written by people that didn't even know Donald Duck comics were a thing until they saw that picture. That's a PR nightmare Disney doesn't want to deal with just because a few Barks nerds would like uncensored comics in the hardcovers.
And that's why companies that have interests beyond their comic book purchasing audiences can't release what their actual audience wants anymore. Fantagraphics isn't going to get hurt by angry tweets like this because the make their money from people that know comics from the 1950s weren't written yesterday. But Disney makes a lot of money from people that barely know what a comic book is, and they really don't want those people to learn that Donald Duck said the word holocaust in something recent.
That's cancel culture, and that's why it unfortunately works.
It's a weird aspect of social media. This bizarre phenomenon seems somehow mostly connected with Twitter, the one place where single unknown users, celebrities, news outlets and companies all exist as same entities, each as 'an account'. The very structure of that social media seems a perfect stage for unbalanced voicing to act. There is no measurement of relevancy of voices. We almost used to have the inverse problem: you say something 'in the real world', people look at you instead of actually listening to what you say, and in any case they hardly pay attention to you. On twitter, every tweet potentially resonates more than it deserves. It's the very basic idea of the platform. The danger of misleading voices on twitter can go beyond dumb Disney executives firing James Gunn from a movie. French investigation about the recent beheaded of an history teacher nearby Paris by an Islamic extremist has unveiled a similar situation. One student's dad, who happened to frequent the more identitarian/extremist side of muslim twitter, by exaggerating the situation has started a fire in a niche of the social media that has ended with a random young man going to decapitate a school teacher with a kitchen knife. This guy here below has written books on how social media can ruin one's life, starting from that one woman that before taking a plane for an African country twitted the lame joke 'let's hope I won't take AIDS' and by the time the plane landed her face was on the news, she had lost her job and other bad stuff:
Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Nov 12, 2020 15:21:02 GMT
Going back on topic, one of the stories I am more attached to is Volcano Valley, which I only have in French. Let's hope they won't change it not to often the Mexicans, or the Texans. (The Texan dude in the jury ahaahaah )
Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Nov 12, 2020 15:26:46 GMT
By the way, just to keep laughing. Sometimes the historical notes can work the other way around. When I read Mickey Mouse's Oscar the Ostrich from Fantagraphics's Gott Library volume 4, I had no idea that the dude who sold the Ostrich to Mickey looked and talked like a bad outdated racist portray of Italian immigrants in America in the early 20th century. I discovered it after, when I read the preamble that Gerstein usually does at the beginning of each story. (Which I always read after.) Thank you very much, I was not offended until youtold me.
It's a weird aspect of social media. This bizarre phenomenon seems somehow mostly connected with Twitter, the one place where single unknown users, celebrities, news outlets and companies all exist as same entities, each as 'an account'.
That's precisely why it IS a Twitter thing - Twitter is used by so many, including companies, celebrities and journalists, that it's possible to actually get seen by the people you're complaining about and demanding changes from. alquackskey mentioned tumblr, and while that site definitely had a well deserved reputation of being filled with "everything is something-ist and something-phobic" people... anything posted there mostly fell on deaf ears because nobody ELSE used that site and got to see this raging. Twitter makes it actually visible.
This guy here below has written books on how social media can ruin one's life, starting from that one woman that before taking a plane for an African country twitted the lame joke 'let's hope I won't take AIDS' and by the time the plane landed her face was on the news, she had lost her job and other bad stuff
And as he says in the video, writing that book he talks about there got HIM branded a racist and white supremacist on Twitter. Just coming to the defense of people getting harassed on Twitter can direct the Twitter hate your way as well.
And that's why Disney would rather just have these books censored from the get-go instead of risking Twitter deciding Disney is a chapter of the WAK because Donald Duck said "shanghaied" in a comic once.
And that's why Disney would rather just have these books censored from the get-go instead of risking Twitter deciding Disney is a chapter of the WAK because Donald Duck said "shanghaied" in a comic once.
Muahahahah this very platform on which you are writing is afraid of letting you write Key Key Key or N A Z I. You cannot even write down a work with the sequence N A Z I within, literally the two consecutive syllabus 'na' and 'zi'. Like, what if I want to talk about A Disney-related event organised by the Associazione WAKonale del Fumetto (Italian for National comics association)? I can't. That's ridiculous. How do we get rid of N A Z I s or the Key Key Key if we forget the words to talk about them? I want a world without WAK's, not a world without the word (or the diphthong!).