Current Events > Will Seth Green apologize for his black man impersonation on Robot Chicken?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JukFJN5TDug

I mean, come on. That's not ok. That's whole lot worse than the stuff Allison Brie and company are apologizing for.

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Pretty much nobody should be apologizing for any of this shit.

It happened years ago, and in context it's fine.

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joe40001 posted...

and in context it's fine.

Is it though?

I'd actually rank this with the Simpson's Apu and say it's actually not fine. It's just that people have excused it because it doesn't personally upset them.

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animation =/= live action

Voicing a character is not the same as playing a character in live action. It's the act of putting on makeup to mock someone's ethnicity which is demeaning, not having somebody pretend to be something they're not. That's called acting.

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FortuneCookie posted...

Voicing a character is not the same as playing a character in live action. It's the act of putting on makeup to mock someone's ethnicity which is demeaning,

But that's not true. We have recognized that stereotypical speech is also demeaning.

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I understand complaining when actors lose roles because a white guy is playing a character of another ethnicity, but it's pretty silly to retroactively treat animation like blackface.

I hate moral objectivism being retroactively applied to social standards. It's not objectively wrong for someone to pretend to be someone they're not in an acting environment. We've simply reevaluated our social standards to be more inclusive. It's not meant to give license to people to go out and try to ruin people's careers. This would be like going after 80s cartoon shows where the girls wear pink and claiming that the people who made them encouraged damaging sexist social standards.

If you're looking for an excuse to hurt people, you're as bad as your standard bigot. It doesn't matter what pretense you use.

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will Seth Green apologize for Robot Chicken

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BeyondWalls posted...

Is it though?

It is. Any race can impersonate any other as long as it's for comedy.

Robot Chicken was made for stoned people who don't have something more fun to do at 2AM. The bar is probably too low for anyone to care.

When was the last time anyone cared about Seth Green anyway? like 2002 in the Italian Job? or maybe like 2006 when people still liked Family Guy?

If you are making fun of the way that somebody talks, yeah, that's pretty bad.

I understand Apu getting canceled because it is a White guy doing a bad impression of an Indian accent. For what it's worth, the accent was done without ill intent. Cartoons are often exaggerated for humorous purposes. If the Simpsons saw a reboot, I would hope to see Apu return, voiced by a man of Indian descent, and still as disconnected from reality as the Yellow/White cast members.

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BeyondWalls posted...

Is it though?

I'd rank this with the Simpson's Apu and say it's actually not fine. It's just that people have excused it because it doesn't personally upset them.

I'd rank it with the Simpson's Apu too in that it was cartoonish in a cartoon, it isn't an implication that all or most people of any race are bad in any way.

Like you have to eventually come up with a rule rather than saying "this isn't ok AND this isn't ok AND this isn't ok..." just forever.

Because
1. What if literally 99.9% of people are ok with it?
2. Any rule like this leads to a kinda ridiculous world.

"Only people of a certain group can voice somebody in that group" Is that the rule? To what end? Age? Country of origin? Ability? Religion? Fat people voicing thin people? Any of the talented minority voice actors should lose all their non-minority roles? What's the endgame? Is there any rule? Has anybody doing any of this canceling thought it through?

I'm going to make a sane request that for some reason the cancel fetishists don't seem to want to do:
"Decide on a rule. Lay out the rule clearly. THEN implement the rule."

I allow for the possibility that there is some stuff out there that might offend a large group of people willfully and unduly. But the rule simply can't be "somebody claimed that this is offensive, and so we should get rid of it and apologize."

If that's the rule then literally anything can get removed because literally anything can be claimed to be found offensive.

"I find TC's claim to be an attack on Seth Green and as he is an Ashkenazi Jew I find it to be a racially motivated attack and extremely offensive. I believe TC should apologize at the very least if not be moderated."

I claimed offense, should TC have to apologize?

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FortuneCookie posted...

but it's pretty silly to retroactively treat animation like blackface.

Is it though? Because everyone thought blackface was fine until enough people stood up to say it was wrong. Even then there were people who were like, "look it upset some people, but we're not going to apologize for it. Mammy was just a cartoon."

thrashmetal14 posted...

It is. Any race can impersonate any other as long as it's for comedy.

Uh... I think most people would disagree with that given the horrible things that were done in the name of comedy in the 50s.


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BeyondWalls posted...

Is it though? Because everyone thought blackface was fine until enough people stood up to say it was wrong. Even then there were people who were like, "look it upset some people, but we're not going to apologize for it. Mammy was just a cartoon."

Blackface was done with the intent of reassuring White society that Black people were not a threat to them. It was meant to demean and to create social disparity.

It's not comparable to simply playing a character. And blackface was always controversial.

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FortuneCookie posted...

Blackface was done with the intent of reassuring White society that Black people were not a threat to them. It was meant to demean and to create social disparity.

It's not comparable to simply playing a character. And blackface was always controversial.

I've always been of the mind that skin changing makeup should have a different name than minstral show blackface.

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BeyondWalls posted...

Uh... I think most people would disagree with that given the horrible things that were done in the name of comedy in the 50s.

Dave Chappelle in white face is funny as fuck. Matt and Trey's asian accents on South Park are funny as fuck. Those jokes have nothing to do with things that happened 50+ years ago.

"You took anabolic steroids in the 1980s? Then you should be arrested."
"But it didn't become illegal until 1990."
"Then you should've had greater foresight."

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=138x9MCUjE0

Forget about the Green Mile, Try walking the Brown Mile.
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The political affiliation is all that matters. Jimmy Kimmel is safe because?

muchdran posted...

The political affiliation is all that matters. Jimmy Kimmel is safe because?

Was he safe? He had to do this huge apology self humiliation thing.

I don't think many people have just been given a pass, some don't get fired if they bow to the cancelers though.

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joe40001 posted...

Was he safe? He had to do this huge apology self humiliation thing.

I don't think many people have just been given a pass, some don't get fired if they bow to the cancelers though.

Everyone gets a pass if they stick around long enough for people on Twitter to move on to something else.

Voice acting should be viewed as different. All that should matter is does the voice properly convey what is being looked for in the character.

Saying that only a black persons can sound like a black person is racist itself. What does a black person sound like? And it goes for all races.

Any race should be able to voice act any race.

Two of the most iconic characters from my childhood were voiced by actors of a different race than the character

Destro from Gi Joe, a Scottish character voiced by an African American actor

Shredder from TMNT, a Japanese character voiced by an African American actor.

I couldnt imagine these characters with different voices, the race of the actor means nothing.

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ghettoraider81 posted...

Shredder from TMNT, a Japanese character voiced by an African American actor.

Splinter (Hamato Yoshi) was voiced by a white actor.

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Clearly Darth Vader should've been voiced by a white man

I like Doug Walker, so many times we he does a black voice it is just horrible.

Also the Falcon does how Powers he can talk to birds .

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cjsdowg posted...

I like Doug Walker, so many times we he does a black voice it is just horrible.

That's completely different. That's like somebody reading a book out loud and giving each character a distinct voice. Surely we haven't gotten to that point.

"And so Sam said... Hold on a minute, children. I'm not allowed to give Sam a voice. Joe... Joe, can you voice Sam for a minute?"
"Sure. And so Sam said, "I don't know where the marshmallows have all been hidden."

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Besides, even if Nostalgia Critic wanted to let a black cast member do the "black guy voice," it wouldn't make sense. It's meant to represent the thoughts in his own head.

Either Nostalgia Critic does a bad Shaquille O'Neal impression or Malcolm plays the voice inside Nostalgia Critic's head. Because it's not voicing Shaq, it's voicing how Shaq sounds to Nostalgia Critic. And it's not a race thing. It's a Shaq being a bad actor in a lifeless, poorly written movie.

Either way, it's still a member of one ethnicity voicing another.

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FortuneCookie posted...

Either Nostalgia Critic does a bad Shaquille O'Neal impression or Malcolm plays the voice inside Nostalgia Critic's head. Because it's not voicing Shaq, it's voicing how Shaq sounds to Nostalgia Critic. And it's not a race thing. It's a Shaq being a bad actor in a lifeless, poorly written movie.

All black people must down like sound of the south stereotype to him .

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If the issue is that he's stereotyping black people, that's a problem. If it's that he does critical narration on behalf of a character, I don't see that as a valid complaint.

There's an NBA game on. One of the players (who is black) just missed a free throw and is staring dumbfounded into space. I'm watching as a fan, with a group of people, and I make fun of him saying, "Aww, gee, guys. I'm really sorry I missed. That was really bad on my part." Does that count as audio blackface on my end?

That's what Nostalgia Critic's doing. He's not voicing a character. He's piping in additional dialogue in a snarky manner.

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I don't think anyone will ask him to apologize unless he is currently in the public eye for some reason, so probably not.

Performative wokeness is stupid. Please stop.

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I cannot believe Robot Chicken is still going on, this is what happens to Adult Swim because they wanted to ride that Tim and Eric garbage

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