“the technical, artistic merit, while leaving all the garbage behind.”
November 19, 2017 8:21 PM   Subscribe

Cuphead and the Racist Spectre of Fleischer Animation [Unwinable] “When asked in a Rolling Stone interview about the unfortunate associations of Cuphead‘s 1930s aesthetic, lead inking artist for the game, Maja Moldenhauer replies: “It’s just visuals and that’s about it. Anything else happening in that era we’re not versed in it.” But these visuals are weighed down by the history that brought them into being, despite the developers best efforts at stripping them of the more overt caricatures that are rife in cartoons for most of the first half of the 20th century. By sanitizing its source material and presenting only the ostensibly inoffensive bits, Studio MDHR ignores the context and history of the aesthetic it so faithfully replicates. Playing as a black person, ever aware of the way we have historically been, and continue to be, depicted in all kinds of media, I don’t quite have that luxury. Instead, I see a game that’s haunted by ghosts; not those confined to its macabre boss fights, but the specter of black culture, appropriated first by the minstrel set then by the Fleischers, Disney and others -twisted into the caricatures that have helped define American cartoons for the better part of a century.”

• Pickaninnies and Pixels: On Race, Racism, and Cuphead at E3 [Not Your Mama's Gamer] [Contains Autoplay Video]
“I say all of this to say that while I recognize that the cel shaded beauty and style of Cuphead is new to games and something to be appreciated, seeing the trailer for the game this week elicited a visceral reaction in me. It made me feel physically ill. I got queasy and my head swam a bit. It was one of those moments when you are sure that your blood pressure has shot up 20 or 30 points, a true WTF moment. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept waiting for the next boss to be a thick-lipped, black-faced, spittle-dripping caricature of an African American man (probably holding aloft a terrified, screaming, blonde, Caucasian woman just to show what a threat he actually was). And looking back at the trailer for the game that was shown at last year’s E3 we see that the devil who is after the souls of our heroes (Cuphead and Mugman) is strangely reminiscent of caricature (NB that this year’s trailer devil was grayscale, so the color is unclear, with less pronounced lips). The jazzy score with the almost tribal undertones calls to mind not only the savage portrayal of men of the African diaspora, but also the savage sexualization of its women. ”
• Cuphead: creating a game that looks like a 1930s cartoon [The Verge]
“But the most striking thing about the game is how it looks. It’s a game that tries to capture the surreality inherent in cartoons from the ‘30s, like Betty Boop or Steamboat Willie. Enemies in the game include a towering cigar with a sinister grin, and a giant carrot with psychic powers. There are also plenty of sight gags, like a fish going fishing, or a coin who doesn’t trust banks. And, of course, the main character in Cuphead is, well, a guy a with a cup for a head. Capturing that style — and doing it in a way that both looked and felt authentic — required a lot of work. It meant utilizing most of the same techniques that gave early Disney and Fleischer Studios cartoons their distinct look. The backgrounds in the game consist of watercolor paintings, while every frame of animation was hand-drawn on paper, before being inked and ultimately inserted into the game. The only part of the process that was digital was the coloring. “When we did our tests at the beginning, we hand-painted each cell and then we colored it digitally, and we did a comparison,” explains Moldenhauer. “There really was no difference. So that’s why we took the easy path.””
• 'Cuphead': Why 1930s Animation Continues to Grip Contemporary Culture [Rolling Stone]
“But if you take a step back, you can find traces of Cuphead's distinct style across a wide swath popular culture. The game's aesthetic roots have been springing up for years in everything from children’s cartoons like Adventure Time and Ren and Stimpy to the latest Jay-Z music video, offering major studios and indie animators alike a boundless, surrealist palette – one that never quite reached its full potential back in the 1930s. Created by Canadian development Studio MDHR, Cuphead draws its influence directly from the animated shorts of Fleischer Studios, which introduced the world to Betty Boop. Fleischer's style is defined by "rubber hose" animation, where animators drew characters with no joints to save time and effort, and Rotoscoping, a method for illustrating cartoons in which every line is constantly wiggling and waving. ”
• How Cuphead nailed the look and feel of classic 1930s cartoons [Gamasutra]
“Another key to capturing the feel of the classic Depression-era toons was exacting recreations of the technical imperfects of the era. "If you go back and study old film—not just cartoons, any old film from the period—nothing was perfect," Moldenhauer says. "It's nothing like the digital crispness we're used to." "We studied the line weights, how the thickness of the tapers would change from frame to frame on all of the old cartoons," he adds. "We mimicked that to the best of our ability." Focusing was imperfect as well in classic films, so everything in Cuphead is slightly blurred.But, aside from just the art inspiration, there was another element from that era that the team implemented in Cuphead. Moldenhauer mentioned how film used to have a lot of noise and scratches on it. Fittingly, Cuphead has on-screen noise and for such effects, it literally borrows from film. "It's actually scanned from film, it's not digital ... the dust and the hairs and all of that noise is like, real life stuff," Moldenhauer says. The details didn't stop there, however. They recreated old typefaces, and also designed custom fonts based on lettering from 1930s comics, as well as animation and film title cards.”
• Cuphead's Animation Process and Philosophy [YouTube] [28:18]
“For those enthralled by its art style, a keynote behind Cuphead's animation process has now released on the official Games Developers Conference (GDC) YouTube channel. Despite taking place back at GDC 17 in February, the session has now been made available to the public. Hosted by an animator at StudioMDHR, Jake Clark, the talk covers how the concepts behind Cuphead's bosses evolved into fully animated characters. Running just short of half an hour, Clark explains how a simple idea progresses, while exploring both the artistic philosophies and technical feats overcome during development. For those interested in visual arts or any form of design, the talk is worth a watch simply for the artist's breakdown of Cuphead's animation process.” [via: Windows Central]
• Cuphead: The Admirable Lunacy of Hand-Animating a Video Game in 2017 [Select/All]
“It was personal preference, but later as we were studying what makes those cartoons click to us, I think there’s two major things. The one side is that this was pre–Hayes code, before people knew that they should maybe make cartoons a little more catered toward children. There’s a bit of a creepier, surreal vibe. The cartoons just stood out as — something was always a little bit off and they weren’t packaged up in some neat, perfect story. The other side of it is, back then, the artists didn’t know that you could get away with animating everything on the twos — which means you draw every second frame — the frames are held longer, so everything was drawn on the ones — which means 24 drawings per second of animation — which adds quite a bit more life to it. Almost more real. I think those two things are the main themes that caught our eye, even when we were kids. We didn’t know why we loved it, but, I think, now that we’ve studied it, those are the main reasons.”
• Betty Boop Snow White 1933 HD Fletcher Studios [YouTube]
“Snow-White, also known as Betty Boop in Snow-White, is a film in the Betty Boop series from Max Fleischer's Fleischer Studios directed in 1933. Dave Fleischer was credited as director, although virtually all the animation was done by Roland Crandall. Crandall received the opportunity to make Snow-White on his own as a reward for his several years of devotion to the Fleischer studio, and the resulting film is considered both his masterwork and an important milestone of The Golden Age of American animation. Snow-White took Crandall six months to complete.”
posted by Fizz (76 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
[Cuphead previously.]
posted by Fizz at 8:22 PM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh and for anyone who's maybe a little bit out of the loop and wondering what Cuphead is. Here's the video game trailer. [YouTube]
posted by Fizz at 8:31 PM on November 19, 2017


The game looks amazing to me, but yeah, those early Fleischer cartoons get really painfully racist, and it's a tricky needle to thread.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:39 PM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Are there other instances of an aesthetic being panned as inherently racist? Or is this just a cause-de-jur for an otherwise slow day in the video game news cycle?

....

Here's a bit more background on Fleischer Studio and Jim Crow Laws.
posted by tarpin at 9:11 PM on November 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Are there other instances of an aesthetic being panned as inherently racist?

I’ve certainly seen folks pan artists for mining older forms that had racist elements. Craig Thompsons’s Habibi, for instance, uses some dubious faux-Arabian imagery. I’ve certainly seen art get reassessed in ways that cause it to be panned now. (There was a post a while back here about some gorgeous magazine covers from the twenties that had decidedly racist elements.) I’m not sure if that’s happened in video games, but video games are growing up.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:25 PM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


That said, I always find the blanket argument against decontextualizing material to be a little tricky. That is, it seems like the problem that the first two articles have is almost that the piece isn’t decontextualized enough. There are bits and pieces that recall Cab Calloway’s representation and gambling motifs. The devil is problematic. Without those things, would the alarms be raised?
posted by Going To Maine at 9:31 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The complaint isn’t that the Fleischer aesthetic was inherently racist. It’s that this video game is making use of tropes that the Fleischers deployed in racist ways, and whitewashes the racism.

There is a lot that could be taken from the Fleischers that was not racist — and the game seems to have grabbed some of that. But the hot Harlem jazz, the tricksters, the dice gambling? Those were deployed in racist ways (sometimes by the Fleischers, sometimes in general), and if you’re going to treat the art of the past as a grab bag of context-free images, you risk accidentally bringing the context along anyway, and that context was sometimes racist.
posted by maxsparber at 9:33 PM on November 19, 2017 [37 favorites]


Are there other instances of an aesthetic being panned as inherently racist? Or is this just a cause-de-jur for an otherwise slow day in the video game news cycle?

Lawn jockeys.
Mexican in a sombrero sleeping under a cactus.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 9:35 PM on November 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


There was a controversy a while back about some of the Nazi-esque imagery in Vlambeer’s Luftruasers. The devs apologized and stated that the symbolism was unintentional, but it shows the risk inherent in adopting an aesthetic for a piece of entertainment without thinking deeply about the historical associations of that aesthetic.
posted by murphy slaw at 9:38 PM on November 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's odd that Cuphead and the Racist Spectre of Fleischer Animation actually references very little Fleischer animation guilty of racist depictions. The examples of actual Fleischer animation given, The Old Man of the Mountain, Betty Boop in Snow White, seem to be called out for not depicting Cab Calloway as black. Except perhaps for the short live action sequence of Calloway and his band at the beginning of The Old Man of the Mountain. The sin here is thus whitewashing?

I dunno... it looks to me like a stretch to beanplate the game's 1930s cartoon aesthetic too much. The argument seems to work best if one considers that aesthetic itself as racist. I don't buy that.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:44 PM on November 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


The complaint isn’t that the Fleischer aesthetic was inherently racist. It’s that this video game is making use of tropes that the Fleischers deployed in racist ways, and whitewashes the racism.

Not quite. This graph vexed me in the first article:

The answer isn’t to flatten and purify the past, whose lessons many clearly still need. Instead of stripping the burnt black cork from the minstrel and presenting a clean white face, while still singing like Calloway or Armstrong or Waller, modern media that seeks to borrow from America’s conflicted past should do so in a way that reckons with what that past tells us about ourselves.

In other words, there’s no appropriate way to grab from the past in a way that works. And that vexes me, because you can pry Over The Garden Wall from my cold, dead hands.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:59 PM on November 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


(Or, to correct myself above: there’s no permissible way to grab from the past unless you interrogate the racial issues that might be touched.)
posted by Going To Maine at 10:10 PM on November 19, 2017


(Or, to correct myself above: there’s no permissible way to grab from the past unless you interrogate the racial issues that might be touched.)

That's my understanding. It seems like a reasonable opinion for someone to have if race and the history of race is a big part of their identity and life.
posted by value of information at 10:13 PM on November 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


(And I don't think they would say that it's "impermissible", just that you can expect people sensitive to the history to flinch, and you can expect articles like this to crop up and shine light on the parts that Cuphead isn't touching.)
posted by value of information at 10:15 PM on November 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I mean... Yeah. The politics of Fleischer Studios was not great. But, as far as animation studios in the 1930s go, it was in good company in that regard. Pretty much any cartoon output from the thirties, be it Fleischer, Disney, Harman-Ising, Schlesinger, whatever, to say nothing of live-action comedy from the likes of Hal Roach, is equally chock full of the worst racism, to the point that if a little bit of you isn’t dreading what’s around every corner, there’s definitely something wrong with you. The phrase “product of its time” gets thrown around a lot on the disclaimers included in home video release of this stuff; it’s a cop-out — they did, after all, choose to make that product, and did a lot to keep the time rife with it — but, well, it can be a pretty house if you don’t mind tiptoeing around all the dog turds.

Besides the obvious political minefield, another reason not to “borrow” quite so faithfully from 1930s cartoons might be, I dunno... that originality is better than theft? Cuphead is a great case study in “Hey! It’s still possible to do this!” in a way that I hope rubs off on digital animation on the whole (enough with all this stiff shit already!), but as much as I share the creators’ love for the Fleischer aesthetic and animation style, it would probably have been a whole lot better to merely take inspiration from it and make something wholly original that evokes the style rather than basically just tracing it.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:18 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It’s a fascinating perspective and I appreciate that it’s being talked about. I have been loving the game and was really minimally aware of the racial implications of the old toons and was really unaware that rascist tropes were so central to the Fleischer cartoons (were they really “central”? Like, were the Fleischer cartoons’ purpose to create humor out of stereotypes? I really don’t have the knowledge or perspective to say.). Were they just part of the time and place? I’m trying to think of a parallel where an aesthetic is so associated with something odious that it condemns the entire aesthetic. All country music is too closely associated with white supremacy? All gangster rap is too closely associated with misogyny?

I’m not here to say that Cuphead is problematic, but I appreciate the perspective presented as I will likely continue to play through it but with a little different view. There’s obviously no content in the game that is directly rascist, and the artistry is truly astounding and lovingly weird.

I love video games in concept but so many of them are so problematic and so derivative. I really want to support games that try to do something different and aspire to art. I’m not actually convinced that Cuphead is 100% successful— for one thing, each level is way too fucking hard to beat to maintain my interest—but it’s a big step in the right direction for nonviolent smart people who want video game entertainment.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:18 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


In other words, there’s no appropriate way to grab from the past in a way that works.


(Or, to correct myself above: there’s no permissible way to grab from the past unless you interrogate the racial issues that might be touched.)


Yeah, I don't buy that, either.

The aesthetic depicted isn't inherently racial, in my view. Racial depictions in any aesthetic can be offensive. I just found the point made to be stretched too far.

A far more interesting take on animation and race can be found in the link in tarpin's post. The entries in cartoonresearch.com by Christopher P. Lehman are far more substantive on the subject, and could probably make for a good post on the blue in their own right.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:20 PM on November 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


(And I don't think they would say that it's "impermissible", just that you can expect people sensitive to the history to flinch, and you can expect articles like this to crop up and shine light on the parts that Cuphead isn't touching.)

So I disagree with this read of the article. That is to say, I see there being three distinct buckets to think about here:
  1. Using period art with racial undertones. This seems to be where Cuphead lives, with its devils and its Cab Calloway dice. (I think that the Josephine Baker homage of the first scenes of The Triplets of Belleville also lives here, for example - a modern animation trying to pay some homage to the past -and even cleaning up the oversized lip imagery- that goes over the line.)
  2. Using period art to interrogate racial imagery and references. This would be where “The Story of O.J.” lives (albeit with its anti-Semitic lyrics, which are a derail.)
  3. Using period art divorced of context (or so one hopes). This is where I’d like to think Over The Garden Wall is. Perhaps this is where Sylvain Chomet thought he was.
My reading of the Unwinnable article is that it explicitly discusses categories one and two, but the third category is largely unmentioned beyond to reject its use. The Not Your Mama’s Gamer article doesn’t specifically draw out these categories, but rather notes that Cuphead is doing things wrong. That’s a standard that I prefer: identifying wrong things, rather than mandating correct things.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:44 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hah, I was literally just saying in a discord text chat last week that I have no interest in Cuphead because it "looks racist." I mean, I assumed it was deliberate, given the waist-deep piles of racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic horseshit I wade through every week in online gaming interactions.
posted by xyzzy at 11:31 PM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I dunno. At some point, we can't keep interrogating every bit of the past for the rest of the future. I am quite familiar with the history of animation, and, as such, avoid watching much of it. But, I feel, at some point, if someone is trying to recontextualize some of the content in a positive fashion while avoiding the negative connonations, then perhaps we should let them and not point fingers and say nasty things.
posted by Samizdata at 12:03 AM on November 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


I am quite familiar with the history of animation, and, as such, avoid watching much of it.

That is quite a sad state of affairs ... Do you not look at any art made before the 1960's then? Even the ancient Greeks owned slaves and practiced pederasty.

Really enjoying the comments and conversation. :-)
posted by tarpin at 12:12 AM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is reminiscent of both the Golliwog conversation as well as Swarz Piet.

is there a general purpose answer or one that each individual needs to figure out for themselves?

This is exactly how these wretched things ended up back in the shops. Two things have been going on: the ongoing lie that political correctness (basically, manners) has gone so mad that an open display of racism brands itself somehow as an exercise of freedom. Such people always hark back to a time of “innocence”. That innocence is now called white privilege.
posted by infini at 12:20 AM on November 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


I am quite familiar with the history of animation, and, as such, avoid watching much of it.

That is quite a sad state of affairs ... Do you not look at any art made before the 1960's then? Even the ancient Greeks owned slaves and practiced pederasty.

Really enjoying the comments and conversation. :-)


Please read again. I said much, not all. I just try to avoid what strikes me as ones being done out of general cultural deprivation (?), racism, or sexism instead of those that are trying to address it artistically as a commentary.
posted by Samizdata at 12:24 AM on November 20, 2017


Mixed and complicated feelings about all this, and don't feel that anyone is being unreasonable here, but one thing that did strike me: I have a general awareness of the awful racist art of that period, including Fleischer material, but as a result of reading history, not of personal experience. Those particular cartoons aren't aired anymore, and I don't think were aired even during my childhood (late 70s-early 80s). I think it's easier to make a case for a style's not being separable from some of the content it's associated with when you're talking about a "live" trauma--now, of course, the trauma of racism is very much alive but, assuming my memory is correct, people my age and younger (which appears to include the first author) didn't experience these particular cartoons, this particular form of racism, as an insult of everyday life in childhood, not the way, e.g., Mexican-American kids did with Speedy Gonzalez. I think the more remote in time the style, the easier it is to accept decontextualizing it, because the context has to be "acquired" in the first place.

The Mountain Goats did a song called "Sax Rohmer #1." Sax Rohmer was the inventor of, among others, Fu Manchu. John Darnielle wrote "there's lots about [Rohmer's work] that's pretty objectionable...but there's a feeling of menace and threat in his stories that's kind of addictive." The song uses Rohmer-style metaphors to build a Rohmer-style atmosphere, but without the, ah, "inscrutable Orientals." I like "SR #1" a lot. But of course Rohmer's not read by anyone anymore except specialists. Pulpy spy metaphors don't immediately make you think of yellowface.
posted by praemunire at 12:37 AM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


That is quite a sad state of affairs ... Do you not look at any art made before the 1960's then? Even the ancient Greeks owned slaves and practiced pederasty.

I went to go throw some laundry in and was thinking about this conversation. Which led me to the realization you made my point for me. We were able to recontextualize Grecian information like mathmatics, philosophy, art, and more without pointing and going "I won't read THAT! It comes from kiddy-fiddlers!" We needed to separate the gold from the dross.

From everything I see, these devs tried to carefully avoid the hurtful parts of the era of animation they are celebrating while, well, celebrating a certain, for many aesthetically pleasing, art style. Separating dross...
posted by Samizdata at 12:38 AM on November 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


The racism of an historical aesthetic is an interesting question. Choosing to reference the look and feel of the past carries some necessary implications with its backwards glance. Appreciation of the aesthetic on its own terms and finding merit in its best representations is entirely reasonable, but at the same time, trying to separate the good from the bad elements that also accompanied that style and celebrating it for only its best qualities is to deny the same possibilities for association that the more negative elements can provoke.

At the same time, as the first linked article suggests, contextualizing the past is also a difficulty that can favor white washing, choosing the works that did the most to ignore the problematic areas of their time, which is little better in that it too readily echoes the same dynamic that created the problems in the first place. It denies the conflicts by hiding them in preference for showing the dominant culture as the only culture of the time, erasing minority cultures altogether.

The aesthetic of the Fleischer cartoons of the thirties, for those who are familiar with them, can evoke more powerful feelings about race relations in part because they so readily used some aspects of black culture in their cartoons to "animate" their sensibilities. The jazz influenced feel for Betty Boop is a long way from the Silly Symphonies more classical, white culture, approach to their subjects. The feel of those Betty Boop cartoons is much more urban in sensibility and draws on the music of Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong, among others, to provide context for its world. As such it carries a more immediate racial context, even when race itself isn't being dealt with since the feel of the cartoons suggests a broader context than some of its competitors. That isn't always in a good way, of course, where the stereotypes of the era are necessarily dragged along with the more approving references to minority culture. But the opposing choice of ignoring those cultures for a more generic dominant tone is only better in the sense it doesn't carry the same immediacy of association.

Films of the thirties, many of which few people see anymore, were rife with cultural conflict, much of it played for laughs, naive Scandinavians, drunken Irish, emotional Italians, and on and on, because the society was more strongly divided around ethnic lines. Stereotypes reflected the reality of this division through gross excess in exaggeration of alleged tendencies. Blacks, being at or near the bottom of the social hierarchy, were the most likely to suffer damning stereotyped representation in no small part due to the lack of creative input from the community into films. Yet even when there was input, the same stereotypes could persist as a base for the characters and plots of the works they were involved with.

Look, for example, at the beautiful Spencer Williams movie, The Blood of Jesus, where the devil tempts a women to abandon her faith by giving her the option to indulge in the vice. The imagery isn't radically different in what is being represented, but the manner of the representation lends it a different tone than it would be shown from a white perspective.

The same holds for Way Down South, written by Clarence Muse and Langston Hughes. The story is a musical comedy set on a slave plantation and served as a show piece for the would be child star Bobby Breen whose character inherits the plantation when his father dies. If the idea of a musical comedy on a slave plantation alone didn't make it clear, the movie is completely outside the bounds of the acceptable today, and yet at the same time Muse, who also co-stars, and Hughes manage to work against some of the tropes and stereotypes of the time and provide some moments of real meaning to it, but mostly from the relative perspective of its time. The context informs the meaning, absent that and taken from a modern perspective it would likely be seen as unimaginably racist notwithstanding the importance Clarence Muse and Langston Hughes placed on racial pride and social improvement for blacks in their era.

The difficulty then is looking backwards always carries its own context and trying to choose "safe" elements from it is to erase the importance of that context for a revised aesthetic that can serve to whitewash the problematic and the relatively significant elements for guilt free enjoyment alone.

We can't ignore the past. It isn't possible to continually create new aesthetics uninfluenced by times of gross inequality, since even relying on the aesthetic of last year would still be under influence of that unfairness. It won't do to not question aesthetics since they all carry values that inform the culture and how we perceive it, so in that sense, a thirties aesthetic in its noticeable difference makes plain what may be better hidden in current aesthetics by dint of familiarity and feelings of normalcy. I personally don't have an answer for how to best view Cuphead since my feelings are complicated and I'm in no position to offer a definition in any case given how little it would effect me. I think the examination is worthwhile though and I appreciate the post.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:09 AM on November 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
posted by SPrintF at 2:15 AM on November 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


what i'm wondering is what happens when you take this aesthetic debate into music - if one can call out the style of animation as being whitewashed or impossible to pry loose of its racist context, then what of the music?

of course, i think the racial aspects of american music have been discussed a lot more than movies and animation have been ...


the simple truth is, there's too much past, too much controversial past to be remembered as a culture moves on - people pick and choose, devoid of context - right now the cultural memory is such that these 30s cartoons are still remembered for what they were and what they expressed - i'd say in another 50 years, unless there's a significant art movement based on them, only specialists and historians will remember
posted by pyramid termite at 3:11 AM on November 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


> is there a general purpose answer or one that each individual needs to figure out for themselves?

Both, I hope. Writ large, when a country the size of the United State confronts its own history, there are significant chapters of it that should, without qualifications, be recognized as catastrophes -- the genocide of Native Americans for one prominent example. Most things deserve more nuanced consideration because of the conflict between the human cost they wrought and the consequences they have had on world history. Thomas Jefferson's life vs. his accomplishments is the usual go-to example.

It seems right to write it off the U.S.'s artistic legacy when it's too difficult to adapt to hopefully-more-enlightened contemporary culture. It's also easier. But that also seems like choosing ignorance over knowledge. Those things happened, we are the products of it, we have to own that, flaws and all. Trivializing or ignoring our history of bad actions will also trivialize the histories of the people who were oppressed and exploited by it.

Racism in the arts in the U.S. was not always a simple punching-up vs. punching-down; Max Fleischer was a Polish Jew in an era where Jews were also frequently, aggressively discriminated against in the U.S. His studio's relationship with Cab Calloway can't be written off as a simply exploitative one either; the movies helped Calloway's career as a working musician. This isn't to say that performing good deeds mitigates bad actions, but that a polarizing narrative risks misunderstanding history as badly as ignoring it entirely.

The inquiry is happening in contemporary horror literature. The Lovecraft mythos is a rich and alluring literary universe, and problematic as hell because of H.P. Lovecraft's intense racism and ethnic phobias. It is also being interrogated and responded to by people who Lovecraft would have considered anathema. And it's happening in music, through performers like The Carolina Chocolate Drops picking up minstrel music, which has long been a third rail of historical popular culture.

So maybe the problem with "Cuphead" is not that appropriating '30s cartoon styles is wrong, but maybe it's too early to dig into. Or that plowing into a historical appropriation uninformed means unintentionally hurting people who don't view that thing in the same way you do.

I'm a white guy. For the time being I've decided that I have certain feelings about past art and popular media that do not invalidate the conflicting feelings of anybody unlike me. When a black person sees tokens of a racist past in "Cuphead" and I can't, they're not being oversensitive. What I'm not sure about yet is whether I'm not being undersensitive. Trying to project what I think might be problematic means that Some White Guy, no matter how well-intentioned, just tried driving the dialog over race again, instead of the people affected by this moment's issue of representation. So it's probably better if I can both receive a thing based on what I know, and let myself be informed by others' interpretations of the same thing.
posted by at by at 4:35 AM on November 20, 2017 [19 favorites]


Everything is Milkshake Duck all the way down.
posted by acb at 5:11 AM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh, boy, another Metafilter thread that amounts to "Well, I like it, so it can't be racist".
posted by tobascodagama at 5:15 AM on November 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


So the only ways that Cuphead could not have been problematic would have been to (a) get rid of the 1930s thing altogether, or (b) make it a heavy, didactic, completely morally unambiguous message game about the evils of racism in 1930s America?
posted by acb at 5:20 AM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh, boy, another Metafilter thread that amounts to "Well, I like it, so it can't be racist".

I see it more as, "Oh, boy, another Metafilter thread that amounts to "Well, it's complicated".

Oversimplifying the issue does everyone a disservice IMO.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:22 AM on November 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


I love the 30s animation style - I had VHS tapes of a lot of the Fleischer stuff as a kid, I'm 35 now - but some of it has not aged well by contemporary cultural standards. Bosko, for one.
posted by mippy at 5:44 AM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oversimplifying the issue does everyone a disservice IMO.

Just because you disagree with an analysis does not mean that it has been oversimplified, and this tendency to respond to charges of racism by saying "No, it's complicated" suggests that racism, and the analysis of racism, isn't complicated, but instead is a simplification.
posted by maxsparber at 5:57 AM on November 20, 2017 [9 favorites]


This also made me think about Brer Rabbit - I used to read the Enid Blyton (god, there's someone whose sensibilities don't fit with the modern era) versions as a child, too young to know about the racial history of the US or who Uncle Remus was, so to me they were just nice stories about cheeky animals. It wasn't until I saw them in Song Of The South later on video (it was released in full in the UK, probably because The Powers That Be didn't think anyone would be offended, but I don't think it's still available) that I realised they had such a strong, and dubiously portrayed, African-American history.

So stories that were collected almost directly from the plantations in the South, using the dialect and form of the time (if written down by a white man) ended up reading to me as a naughtier Peter Rabbit once the context was stripped out.
posted by mippy at 6:05 AM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Enid Blyton (god, there's someone whose sensibilities don't fit with the modern era)

The fun thing about Blyton is that every time one sees a headline starting with “FIVE” (“FIVE DEAD IN HORROR STABBING SPREE”, “FIVE IN DRUG SEX SHOCKER”, &c.), one can think of it as an excessively gritty Blyton reboot.
posted by acb at 6:10 AM on November 20, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'd have a lot more respect for Cuphead if it had even acknowledged the problems associated with the Fleischer style. Instead they seem to have just ignored it and hoped no one noticed. Hell, even a weak Warner-Brothers-style card somewhere early in the game would've been something.

All actions are political. When they took advantage of that familiar style and refused to even acknowledge the baggage it carries ... well, they're definitely making a statement. That's definitely a choice they made and clearly telegraphed by their silence.
posted by introp at 6:25 AM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Earlier upthread someone mentioned how Fleischer cartoons were rarely if ever seen in recent years. One of the UHF stations in the New England market was showing the Fleischer Superman as recently as the early '80s, probably due to the popularity of the Christopher Reeve Supes. They popped up as early Saturday morning filler before the better cartoons and kids' shows were broadcast. I don't remember anything egregiously racist or "of their time" with these cartoons, but I was waiting for Ready To Go or Bugs Bunny to start.

(FWIW, WLVI in Boston showed the "mammy" episodes of Tom and Jerry as part of their afternoon broadcast, including one episode with the bobby soxer that had the mammy voice dubbed in. Even in the proudly un-PC wasteland of the 1980s that seemed fucked up to my child mind.)
posted by pxe2000 at 6:27 AM on November 20, 2017


But, I feel, at some point, if someone is trying to recontextualize some of the content in a positive fashion while avoiding the negative connonations, then perhaps we should let them and not point fingers and say nasty things.

Who is saying nasty things? Both of the critical articles in the post that say outright that the game is an impressive artistic achievement, even call it beautiful. But they say that its really hard for them to see that art style without being reminded of the racist nature of the source material. How much praise do you need to dump on the heads of white people to be able to discuss the complicated racial questions their work brings up without being mean?
posted by parallellines at 6:42 AM on November 20, 2017 [15 favorites]


They definitely showed the 'mammy' ones on UK TV in the 80s. Maybe it wasn't a recogniseable stereotype here at the time?
posted by mippy at 6:42 AM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Here's another point of interest:

Local artist in my small town, Gary Bedell, who is black, by all accounts conceived of the idea of the 1930's animation-based game, developed a demo, and claimed it was stolen. Original demo and pitch reel here.
posted by sourwookie at 7:05 AM on November 20, 2017 [13 favorites]


I'd have a lot more respect for Cuphead if it had even acknowledged the problems associated with the Fleischer style. Instead they seem to have just ignored it and hoped no one noticed.

I respect this view, but, I don't think they have any particularly strong obligation to do this.

The lead artist says "It’s just visuals and that’s about it." This rings true to me, because it's the same position that I personally landed in as someone enjoying playing this game.

All actions are political. When they took advantage of that familiar style and refused to even acknowledge the baggage it carries ... well, they're definitely making a statement.

Maybe, but the implication here seems to be that "We just want to make a neat looking game with this aesthetic." could never be an ok statement to make. I disagree there, because if the artist goes at this project with positive intent, I don't think we should step on that.
posted by mitabrev at 8:22 AM on November 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Maybe, but the implication here seems to be that "We just want to make a neat looking game with this aesthetic."

I mean, if people want to just approach the past as an aesthetic smorgasbord, that's your prerogative, but you can't complain when there is some pushback from people for whom those aesthetics have historic and cultural resonance.
posted by maxsparber at 8:41 AM on November 20, 2017 [18 favorites]


I didn't mean that Fleischer cartoons ceased airing, I meant that they, like WB and Disney, silently dropped the ones (at least those recognized as such at the time) that were most racist. Now we're talking about my childhood memories, so if someone has contrary evidence, I would accept it.
posted by praemunire at 9:12 AM on November 20, 2017


When I was little, I had my grandfather's copy of Little Black Sambo. This is not, in itself, a racist story: it's just a short tale of a clever boy who outwits some beasts. But with the golliwog illustrations? And the exoticism? Katie bar the door. The story of Br'er Rabbit and the tar baby, likewise, has nothing to do with racism; it's just a comic trickster story.

But here's what I'm not doing: putting my big fat white opinion about these stories out there as if the past two hundred years did not matter. They do. If black folks say that there is too much cruelty and nastiness around those stories to save them, then that is how it is. I understand that one does not speak for all, but one does speak. If a black woman says that the sight of Cuphead made her feel "physically ill," I'm inclined to listen. She is not saying that the developers or the gamers are irredeemable people, but she is saying something that no old cel animation expert is going to tell you.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:15 AM on November 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


They definitely showed the 'mammy' ones on UK TV in the 80s. Maybe it wasn't a recogniseable stereotype here at the time?

Considering this popular show was on the BBC until 1978 suggests that the above may perhaps be more attributable to apathy (at best) than ignorance.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:36 AM on November 20, 2017


Searching MetaFilter for "Confederacy" and "Firefly" brings up some interesting and related discussion.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:34 AM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mean, if people want to just approach the past as an aesthetic smorgasbord, that's your prerogative, but you can't complain when there is some pushback from people for whom those aesthetics have historic and cultural resonance.

Oh, it's really not my intent to complain. I think it's great for folks to speak up about how such things impact and resonate with them, and it's interesting to hear from those folks. I'm just offering up a view from a different perspective. (i.e. from someone who appreciates the art of Cuphead, and maybe the perspective of the game's creators, or at least a possible one.)

You frame this as "approaching the past", but the point I was getting at in my last post was that maybe the artists weren't trying to approach the past at all. The Rolling Stone interview leaves plenty of room for the idea that they're a couple of Canadian guys who liked the look of old American cartoons and decided to make a game in the same style, maybe or maybe not appreciating the full history of the source material.

I think people should have the prerogative to make art in a particular style without being obligated to answer accusations over whether they created a problematic work.

More generally: Doesn't most art have ties to a problematic past? How is this dealt with in all of the other cases?
posted by mitabrev at 10:53 AM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm glad someone brought up music. Isn't there at least as much reason to avoid Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Elvis? I'm fine with ditching all of those personally, but I ask this as a legitimate question, knowing that many people are quite fond of this music.
posted by idiopath at 10:55 AM on November 20, 2017


We just want to make a neat looking game with this aesthetic.

Isn't there at least as much reason to avoid Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Elvis?

"I just wanted to play those neat sounding songs with that aesthetic" is essentially how we got Rock and Roll (itself a bit of a mixed bag). But there's a level at which "white man sings the blues" edges toward straight up blackface.

I don't think people are saying this game, or by extension these musicians, need to be avoided exactly, just that there are some frequently-unexamined problems with them that bear scrutiny. All four of your examples have been the subject of copious criticism along these lines.

Again, a difficult needle to thread, and I still haven't played the game.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think people should have the prerogative to make art in a particular style without being obligated to answer accusations over whether they created a problematic work.

And I vehemently disagree. Artists have to answer for their art. If you paint a bunch of lynchings or take pictures of a bunch of naked tweens, you'd better be prepared to explain that shit.

Doesn't most art have ties to a problematic past? How is this dealt with in all of the other cases?

A. A lot of it. B. In many cases, pretty poorly. This is a subject that has generated mountains of writing in art history, and if you're genuinely curious you shouldn't have a hard time finding it.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:57 AM on November 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


I think people should have the prerogative to make art in a particular style without being obligated to answer accusations over whether they created a problematic work.

But what does this even mean? On one hand, you're saying "I think it's great for folks to speak up about how such things impact and resonate with them"; then you say this, which makes it seem as though you think creators should not be criticized - or at least not expected to engage with criticism.

I am curious about how these aren't exclusive of each other, and how the people "speaking up" are doing it wrong. Because people have spoken up, and now you're saying it's not right that they're reacting a context the creators would rather ignore. It's okay if they react, but as long as it's to something the creator intended?

("It's okay to criticize the president as long as you agree with him!")
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:06 PM on November 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Doesn't most art have ties to a problematic past? How is this dealt with in all of the other cases?

Sometimes well, sometimes poorly. Sax Rohmer was brought up earlier, and he definitely worked in the vein of Yellow Peril that was popular for much of the 20th century, and was coupled with exoticism and Orientalism. Since comic books often drew from pulp sources, a lot of that wound up in comic books.

And so we see contemporary comic movies wrestling with that legacy. Ra's al Ghul is definitely drawn from Rohmer, and the Batman movie sort of sidestepped it by having him first introduced as Ken Watanabe, but then having it revealed that Watanabe is just a decoy, and there is not actually a Ra's al Ghul, but instead he's a figurehead and is currently represented by a hulking Irishman. Since then, Ra's al Ghul has mostly been played by white people, which I suppose subtracts the Orientalism but instead opens it to charges of whitewashing.

Iron Man sidestepped the issue of Mandarin being a Fu Manchu character by having it turn out that he was just an actor hired to play the role as a front for a white dude, and smartly cast an actual Asian dude, Ben Kingsley, in the role.

Most recently, both Iron Man and Dr. Strange, both Orientalist fantasies, got criticized for casting white people in roles that could have gone to Asian actors. (Benedict Cumberbatch, who previously played Khan in a Star Trek movie, seems to be especially unconcerned about the question of representation).

And I think what we're seeing here is privilege in practice. These comics were made by white men in an industry dominated by white men in a world where nakedly racist fantasies could still be drawn from as artistic inspiration in the 70s and 80s. The films are still largely made by white men, and t hey can treat the whole thing as an aesthetic exercise without worrying overmuch about any additional historical baggage, because it will never affect them.

It sounds like Cuphead was largely made by two white Canadian brothers, and they have the privilege of looking at an image like this as a purely creative one, and looking at old cartoons with images like this as just a source of aesthetic inspiration, unmoored from the history of racism.

When black people tackle the same aesthetic sources, we instead wind up with this, which tackles the racial elements of the art head on, and uses it deliberately.

It's possible for white artists to do the same, with more or less success. Ralph Bakshi did in Coonskin, which was controversial, but I recall the NAACP saying it was thorny satire and leaving it at that.

The Flesichers were a big influence on Forbidden Zone, which seemed to delight in the implicit racism of the cartoons, and was criticized for it. I wrote about that here:

The criticism is valid: The first thing we see is a blackface image, they recur throughout the film, and they feel like a legacy of underground comix, where white artists explored the things that shocked and upset them, including racist caricature. However, there, as here, the exploration felt blunt and abstracted, or, worse, intended to be funny, oblivious of the genuine hurt that these sorts of images can cause to people for whom they are not an abstraction.

Speaking of Underground Comix, Kim Deitch's work feels tremendously influenced by the Fleischers. But his use isn't purely aestheticized: He's genuinely interested in the weirdness and savagery of our past, and so selected this sort of approach because it seems well-matched to his subject matter.

So I'd say when it is done well, it is done with an awareness, and often a direct response to, the history of the art. And I'll tell you what I think helps: Making sure you have somebody at the table who is directly affected by the art, rather than simply experiencing it as an aesthetic curiosity. This would probably be a different, and richer, game if there had been some more black people involved in the making of it.
posted by maxsparber at 12:06 PM on November 20, 2017 [16 favorites]


So I'd say when it is done well, it is done with an awareness, and often a direct response to, the history of the art. And I'll tell you what I think helps: Making sure you have somebody at the table who is directly affected by the art, rather than simply experiencing it as an aesthetic curiosity. This would probably be a different, and richer, game if there had been some more black people involved in the making of it.

So (again, because music continues to be brought up), is it your recommendation that anyone who produces music with any sort of jazz, rock, or hip-hop influence specifically seek out the approval of, if not outright recruit black members for their band?
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 12:44 PM on November 20, 2017


Yes, in those instances. Actually, that's my recommendation for anyone doing anything in life.

Always make sure there is more and better representation in the room.
posted by maxsparber at 1:04 PM on November 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


In the comic reference realm, Jim Woodring manages to pay homage to the Fleischers without falling into this trap, although IIRC there was some intimation that Pupshaw was a little borderline. Jim at least seems aware of the possible implications.

is it your recommendation that anyone who produces music with any sort of jazz, rock, or hip-hop influence specifically seek out the approval of, if not outright recruit black members for their band?

This is sort of a disingenuous read on what maxsparber's saying, but mmmmmaybe?
It probably depends on your tolerance for Kenny G, Bob Seger, or Kid Rock.

[on preview, I guess that was exactly the takeaway. Carry on.]
posted by aspersioncast at 1:04 PM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I dunno, though. It's not like there were any black people in the Beatles. Except the fifth Beatle.

Nor any in the Rolling Stones. Except this guy.

You'd be hard-pressed to find successful rock musicians who didn't have significant input from black musicians. They just tended, you know, not to really credit them or identify them as members of the band.
posted by maxsparber at 1:10 PM on November 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


I always assumed Pupshaw and Pushpaw were supposed to be anthropomorphic radios (like so). I didn't see the potential for offensive racial caricature until just now.
posted by pxe2000 at 1:10 PM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Rolling Stone interview leaves plenty of room for the idea that they're a couple of Canadian guys who liked the look of old American cartoons and decided to make a game in the same style, maybe or maybe not appreciating the full history of the source material.

Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I think you may be somewhat underestimating the level to which American culture dominates here in Canada. We are not, on a national level, the least bitignorant of American history. We’re far more aware of it than our own. “They’re from Canada, how could they know?” does not begin to even approach any kind of excuse whatsoever.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:14 PM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


[on preview, I guess that was exactly the takeaway. Carry on.]

It was a takeaway.
posted by maxsparber at 1:16 PM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


It was a takeaway.
I takeback my walkback!
posted by aspersioncast at 2:05 PM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


As a white male musician, playing a variety of music depending on the situation, there absolutely is a need, and has been throughout the history of American popular music, for white artists to interact and intersect with artists of color, instead of outright stealing or appropriating (which has been and continues to be the norm).

You have to find a livable balance - for example, I might feel okay doing a Sly and the Family Stone cover, be super uncomfortable about covering Parliament/Funkadekic, and absolutely veto covering NWA, simply because the originals had varying amounts of intended inclusion for people like me, and I'm part of the oppressive majority. As a white male, that's among the least of the responsibilities that goes along with my privilege.
posted by Kelrichen at 2:26 PM on November 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


> Kim Deitch's work feels tremendously influenced by the Fleischers. But his use isn't purely aestheticized: He's genuinely interested in the weirdness and savagery of our past, and so selected this sort of approach because it seems well-matched to his subject matter.

Kim is also the son of legendary (and still living!) Gene Deitch, which means that Kim's appropriation of problematic material has to be considered as being part of his closer intimacy with its sources and the people involved. This doesn't put his work above criticism, if anything it raises the stakes in comparison to people who are swiping a visual style because it looks cool.
posted by at by at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yes, in those instances. Actually, that's my recommendation for anyone doing anything in life.

Always make sure there is more and better representation in the room.


Can we streamline it? Should we adopt a Consultancy Board? Can we program algorithmic bots to detect and eliminate any future iterations of every conceivable objection?

I guess my point is...let art be.

Let it exist. Let it breathe. Let it inspire. Let it offend.

Let there be mistakes. Let there be teachable moments.

Art is self-expression. Knowledge and sensitivity are part of the learning curve.

I guess what I'm objecting to is any oversight, legislation, or social conditioning of art to any particular Standard. Let it BE. And let us all learn from it.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 2:45 PM on November 20, 2017


I guess my point is...let art be.

This is a terrible policy that has always resulted in white people stealing from people of color and men abusing women, among other horrific results.
posted by maxsparber at 2:50 PM on November 20, 2017 [10 favorites]


Let there be mistakes. Let there be teachable moments.

People making questionable decisions in their art and getting critical feedback about it is literally that. A "let art be" that has a problem with that is actually "give art a free pass".
posted by cortex at 2:53 PM on November 20, 2017 [16 favorites]


"Let it exist. Let it breathe. Let it inspire. Let it offend." sounds like it's a response to government censorship. I don't think that anyone is suggesting this? If there was even so much as a call to boycott the game, I missed it entirely.

I think what a lot of folks want to know is, "how do I make art that makes use of imagery with problematic associations without upsetting people". And it sounds like the answer is, "make sure that you understand the associations on a visceral level and have a valid reason for incorporating them," and the easiest way to do that is to work closely with people who are viscerally affected by the imagery in question.

Which all sounds like an enormous amount of work, but no one's forcing you to make video games based on racist cartoons, right?
posted by Squid Voltaire at 3:10 PM on November 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


So, I studied animation in college. We looked 30s Disney and Fleischer cartoons at a point, discussed them as products of their time, avoided the worst of the racism where possible and discussed it where unavoidable. To the mind of a 20-year-old white guy, it seemed like a pretty responsible way of handling it. Everybody seemed to feel heard and respected.

But it did leave me with the feeling that something like Cuphead is perfectly fine. That one can sanitize the form of the racist content by omission, and everybody could just enjoy the kinetic beauty of the design sense freed from the bigoted subject matter. That the problem was the images, and not the attitude and context that put them there.

Clearly that's not the case, and it's a symptom of a narrow point of view to think that the space left by the absence of those depictions wouldn't bring them to mind in the eyes the viewer, just as sure as they would have if they were still there. A question of degree maybe, but not of kind.

So what's an artist to do if they want to pay homage to the roots of their craft, and not rub the viewer's nose in painful experiences? It seems like it's possible. It seems like Cuphead didn't quite pull it off. Truthfully, I could easily have made the same mistake, and this is part of why having a broad cross-section of people in a creative community (and listening to them) is important.

That's all a very long way of saying that I appreciate the articles, and the discussion. It's given me important things to consider.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 4:08 PM on November 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


Let there be mistakes. Let there be teachable moments.

How do you get the "teachable moments" if you're shutting down criticism of the mistakes and choices? That's not how it works.

Nobody prevented the Cuphead creators from using the visual influences they used and making the art they made. And nobody is forbidden from criticizing the Cuphead creators for apparently being ignorant of historical influences and how their aesthetic choices would come across in 2017.

Let it exist. Let it breathe. Let it inspire. Let it offend.

And let others respond. There's no "I get to put my ideas out and everybody else is prohibited from questioning or criticizing them" option.
posted by Lexica at 4:22 PM on November 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


They definitely showed the 'mammy' ones on UK TV in the 80s. Maybe it wasn't a recogniseable stereotype here at the time?

Linda McCartney's Seaside Woman makes pretty heavy use of that sort of imagery - I think you can safely say was that there was at the very least a spectacular level of obliviousness about the use of stereotypes. The animator, Oscar Grillo, went on to do the 80s Kia Ora ad shown in the UK, which featured an actual literal parade of African American racial stereotypes in crow form, themselves most likely inspired by Dumbo.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:07 PM on November 20, 2017


This is a great discussion. I find the style and animation of Cuphead to be phenomenal. The team did a great job capturing the analog imperfections in everything, and I am very fond of those kinds of choices.

But watching the trailer makes me incredibly uncomfortable because they captured the look, sound, and feel of vintage cartoons *so well* that I expect a grotesque racist caricature to show up at any second.

I think it's way way too soon to co-opt this look wholesale, without addressing the problematic roots of the source material. The aesthetic primes me to expect racist content, so the lack of racist content isn't good enough because it does nothing to challenge or undo the racist expectations.
posted by itesser at 1:51 PM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


It reminds me of racist cartoons, too, but uncomfortable feeling doesn't mean anything, because as you said there is no racist content.

It also reminds me of Felix the Cat.

Cuphead only scratches the aesthetic surface of its source material. Jay Z's video goes much deeper. But all that means is the video is good art, and Cuphead is not. That's not a call for the developers to "do better"; they did their job here. They made a beautiful game with a striking animation style.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 7:11 PM on November 21, 2017


Let there be mistakes. Let there be teachable moments.

But isn't that exactly what is happening here? Some people are finding some fault with some art. Talking about that is what is meant by a "teachable moment."
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:48 PM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Its like I can read Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh without allowing their conversational use of then accepted stereotypes interfere with my enjoyment because its not grossly in your face. The book I absolutely could not get through was GK Chesterton's Father Brown series. It went beyond the casual "I'm free, white, and 21" usage to deliberate framing of the foreigner in the worst stereotypes possible.

I recognized then that my choices were being made for me, as no amount of understanding historical context and whatnot could overcome my sense of being attacked by the violence of the words.
posted by infini at 3:14 AM on November 22, 2017 [3 favorites]




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