#cultural stereotyping

[phoenix-joy]

Author & Timestamp: Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine, April 30, 2024.

Note: this is an emotive topic and it is not one I feel qualified to give an opinion on yet. My sharing of this extract and link neither supports nor argues against any particular viewpoint, it's simply to take note of a conversation that I feel is important.

Extract:

[T]he Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney [has] removed fragments of mummified bodies from public display. Museum staffers also plan to rename the “Mummy Room��� to more accurately and respectfully reflect mummification’s significance in ancient Egyptian culture.

[...]

Egyptologist Melanie Pitkin, [...] a senior curator of antiquities and archaeology [at Chau Chak Wing], is leading the charge to rethink how the museum displays and interprets its Egyptian collection.

[...]

“For hundreds of years, body parts in museum collections have been treated as objects,” says Pitkin in a statement.  “We have become so accustomed to seeing them on show that we often forget they once belonged to living people.”

For now, the remains are being kept in the museum’s “closely monitored collection store” while curators work to “implement better practices with Egyptian communities and authorities,” according to the statement. In the display, the museum replaced the unwrapped body parts with ancient Egyptian funerary portraits from coffin lids and masks. Curators are also exhibiting a painted portrait from the Roman era.

[Two] completely wrapped, mummified bodies [...] along with 3D visualizations based on CT scans of the remains. The CT scan data of another mummified body [...] also remains on view.

[...]

“In renaming the room, we’d like to focus more on the transformation of the body into an eternal being [...], rather than the body itself,” Pitkin says [...]. “We also encourage visitors to critically reflect on the ethical complexities museums face when caring for human remains.”

[...]

“[Modern] cultural stereotyping [of ancient Egyptian mummified bodies] would elsewhere be recognized as a form of racism, but the ancient Egyptians are not here to object to the ways in which we depict them,” Jasmine Day, an Egyptologist [...], tells the Sydney Morning Herald.

[...]

Around the world, curators and policymakers are also reconsidering their approaches to other types of artifacts. Earlier this year, [...] Harvard University removed a book binding made of human skin from its library, while the Field Museum in Chicago covered some of its Native American artifacts.

/end of extract

[writerofstuff]

Dead Boy Detectives was surprising.

It surprised me when, instead of Crystal dropping in and fracturing Charles and Edwin's thirty years of friendship, they went with Crystal sinking into the fold of Charles and Edwin's friendship and becoming an important and unique addition to the group.

It surprised me when, instead of Gay Boy Pining Over Straight Best Friend, they went with Gay Boy Realises Feelings For Straight Best Friend And Confesses Almost Immediately with a bonus of Straight Boy Accepts Confession With Surprising Grace And Nothing Changes, Not Really.

It surprised me when, instead of making the female characters repetitive and semi-rational and ultimately less powerful, they went with characters who are smart and selfish and kind and cruel and strong and flawed and oh, they happen to be female too.

It surprised me when Charles liking Crystal did not affect one bit of how much he loved Edwin.

It surprised me when Jenny talked about spinsters with cats and Niko did not bat an eye.

It surprised me with Edwin and Niko. It surprised me with, we have forever to figure the rest out. It surprised me with Crystal's kindness, Jenny's empathy, the casual and absolute, the good you do will come back around.

Dead Boy Detectives was surprising. One day, I hope I can sit back and watch another show and none of this has to be surprising anymore.

[redditreceipts]

one of the most obviously paradoxical beauty standards is how women are expected to have a lot of hair and no hair at the same time. The same genetics that make it possible for Indian women to have very long, thick and shiny hair and perfect eyelashes and eyebrows, make them grow visible hair over their lips and on their legs. women who don't have that much hair on their body will also not be very hairy on their head, it's just logically impossible. And I've thought about that for a long time, until I understood: It's literally designed to be that way. you will never be enough the way you were born. you will always feel inferior and you will always pay to modify your body so you look like the impossible combination of full hair and no hair at the same time.

[bogleech]

Surprised to find almost no mention on tumblr of the fully traditional animated short "Marmalade is Missing" from just last month and youtube seems to hide the full length version I guess because of all the jiggling asses and nearly naked fat lady and oh okay you already clicked the link now and don't care what else I was going to say I guess, yeah that fucking skeleton with individually floating bones is hand drawn one frame at a time but you saw the words "asses" and "fat lady" and you're already long gone huh, I mean I fully agree and that was me yesterday but I'm already jeff goldblum talking to himself in the jeep here aren't I

[hungee-boy]

should also mention this as a romani person. BIOWARE. HEY. isabela was a racist caricature.

the barely clothed brown woman with a head scarf and gold jewelry that comes from a place of fortune tellers and swindlers, who is also a thief, liar, and very sexualized (also slut shamed vehemently by a white cop)

i see you, gadje. i see rivain will probably be an option to go to in datv too. if you hadnt learned your lesson so help me god......

[idkthisismyusernameiguess]

Could the Ace Attorney fandom stop pretending that Phoenix Wright or Miles Edgeworth or any of the main cast is white? Idgaf if the localized version is set in America. Asian Americans exist. You are consuming a piece of Asian-made media, not everything is about white people

[ndcultureis]

Autism culture is not feeling things in the normal way and hating yourself for it

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[omgellendean]

The long history of the Egtved Girl's dress

The Egtved Girl's burial (1370 BC) // The archaeologist's sketch after the excavation (1921)

Lise Fenger. The first attempt at reconstruction of the dress (1938) // An illustration from "Das Kostüm Werk" by Wolfgang Bruhn, Max Tilke (1941)

An illustration by Aage Sikker Hansen (1944) // Anni Brøgge performing a ritual dance, photo by Flemming Kaul (1999)

Modern reconstruction for the National Museum and Sagnlandet Lejre

Despite being preserved in almost perfect condition, the Egtved Girl's (c. 1390 – c. 1370 BC) clothes have been a controversial topic for an entire century. Because of how unexpectedly revealing (for our expectations) they look, these Bronze Age top and skirt's depictions have been repeatedly changed to be more "modest" and better fit the 20th century's sensibilities. Only by the end of the 1990s, Egtved Girl's clothes have been reconstructed accurately.

Sources:

The Egtved Girl

Spor fra Metallernes tid

Crop top er ikke nyt i Jylland

Bronze Age dance

[artbyfinnbrown]

Garfiel Tinsel becomes ten times as funny a character when you realize he's the fantasy world equivalent of a kid who's really into reading classic literature.

[ghostofsnails]

so did you guys know theres this character called tristan vik disventure camp and

[ishomieokay]

I basically write Homelander fanfiction bc I really want to see latino rep in this fandom and I feel like it's a story that I can and should tell. I won't lie, though. I generally love the idea of this walking and talking allegory of white nationalism falling in love with a woman of ANY minority.

Homelander being inescapably attracted to a Chinese woman? Count me in.

Homelander finding a kindred spirit in a black girl? I really fuck with that.

Homelander going through an enemies-to-lovers arc with a native american? That's some gourmet shit!!

Homelander becoming obsessed with a Russian/slavic girl? I love to see it!

Homelander going weak on the knees for an arab woman??? I'll read it with that ya lili song playing in the background.

Pls, guys, I'm on my hands and knees. Write ethnically diverse stories. I've literally NEVER been fed!!!

[amaltheas-garden]

jon/ygritte lasted 8 chapters and still left a huuuge impact on jon lol saying jonerys won't happen bc "there's no time" is kinda dumb

When Jon was with Ygritte, the chapters were solely focused on Jon learning about the wildlings through his relationship to her. He was an outcast at the bottom of the pecking order clinging to Ygritte as the only ally he had in assimilating himself. ADOS Jon will be a leader in his own right, surrounded by family, and with wayyyy bigger problems than ACoK/ASoS Jon occupying his time. It's hard to see where exactly grrm is going to squeeze in the J/D alone time to develop a proper romance, considering Dany will likewise have her own problems and be on high alert, what with the three betrayals prophecy and having just deposed her nephew, only for a NEW son of Rhaegar with powerful allies to pop up in her quest for the throne. To repeat what I've already said, J/D have one book max together, which will feature the two final cataclysmic battles the series has been working up towards. Undoubtedly there will be a relationship between Jon and Dany, but a romantic one? Jon/Ygritte certainly left an impact, but I'd argue more so for its grizzly end (Jon chooses loyalty to the NW over her, is horrified by her killing of the old man, and is traumatized by cradling her dead body, wondering if it was his arrow that killed her). Jon/Ygritte happened because it was integral to Jon's development, a very different thing to a relationship between two main characters who (I'm assuming) you expect to end the series still in love. Two characters that will meet in the next book, already know a bit about each other, are aligned in political interests and house loyalties, and share the same pain over familial losses is a much easier romantic setup than "hi i'm the most powerful person in the world, i'm invading your kingdom, my dad killed your grandfather, uncle, and tried to kill your beloved "dad" who btw was a userper dog, and also my older brother allegedly kidnapped your mom". I'm sure they'll have some... interesting conversations, but these two characters have such different trajectories that I just can't see grrm forcing a romance plot for the sake of time among other, more significant reasons.

I would also point out that when Grrm does make a sincere attempt at a genuine romance between two fully fleshed out pov characters, a la Jaime/Brienne, he takes his sweet time slowly demonstrating their shifting views of the other, spanning MULTIPLE books, and he's not even done. If Jon is going to have a romance, it will be introduced in TWOW.

In short, the impact Ygritte had on Jon is called trauma, and true love Targ restoration Jonerys ain't happening.

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

NPD + Homicidal Ideation culture is feeling like you’re pushing the NPD stigma more because you actually do want to hurt people

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[jesncin]

I didn't want to talk about MAWS Lois' hanbok any more than I already did in the Asian Lois essay, so this is more of a tiny expansion on what I lightly talked about. It's what the character designer said about her hanbok design that doesn't sit right with me:

“I remember feeling strongly about wanting to inject some aspect of her Korean heritage without disrupting her characteristic as a spunky and resourceful intern/reporter.”

I've covered already that this wording poorly implies that "Korean heritage" (like the whole thing I guess) is at odds with Lois’ "spunky" personality but like, I don't think folks realize how racist their line of thinking was. If you're looking at Korean women wearing traditional outfits like this:

and you think these women can't be "spunky" or "resourceful intern/reporter" people, then what does that leave? What do you think of these women? Are these women passive? Obedient? Submissive? Just because they're wearing traditional clothes? I think back to this essay: Thinking outside the rainbow: women of color redefining queer politics and identity (which I recommend reading), and how the many queer Asian women talk about how they're not clocked as queer people because queer culture defaults to white queer culture.

The point being, if you're redesigning a "tomboy" "hanbok-inspired gala outfit" and you come in with the mindset that traditional Asian clothing = a passive woman, then you're coming in with racist and misogynist biases. I'd be more understanding if there was an explicit desire to design a hanbok for action heavy scenes where Lois needs to run around a lot, but then why say it "disrupts" a character's personality? Why bring personality up at all?

Again, I don't think the MAWS crew are racist mustache twirling villains with malicious intent to make racist caricatures of people of color. But this is a crew that wrote in character design notes for Vicki Vale to design her as "Indian-American or Asian American" (implying Indian people are not Asian when they are in fact South Asian), and casted a Filipino actor as Sam Lane (a contextually Korean character, because the crew think Asians are interchangeable), lazily designed a Native American Lois hologram with a feather on her head and ended S1 on Thanksgiving, made an in-show joke at Black Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry, and had character designers say Korean Heritage "disrupts" Lois' personality. No, I don't think the MAWS crew are racist. I do think they're woefully ignorant about portraying people of color, and have some internalized biases to think through. All of which rightfully deserve criticism.

[cluster-b-culture-is]

Cluster b culture is being mad that your personality disorders are demonized in media and only portrayed as serial killers in horror movies,,,but also having those same characters being your favorites and projecting your disorder onto them anyways bc "omg they're just like me fr"

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[generic-sonic-fan]

Look maybe it is just the hat but my ideal fanon version of game Knuckles would be him being a (reverse) Indiana Jones-type character.

Swashbuckling adventurer who's kinda dense common-sense wise but smart spatially and with a scholarly streak that feels like it comes out of left field compared to his usual behavior. Guy who's kind of a jerk in that he doesn't have the highest cognitive empathy when it comes to stuff that might hurt other people's feelings, but he is genuinely well-intentioned and incredibly heroic in a way that he isn't hiding either.

Protecting the Master Emerald would obviously still be his main duty, but what he actually does all day? Archaeology on Angel island! Finding "treasure", artifacts that he chronicles and studies to learn more about the culture he came from. Have him give lectures about his discoveries. Big jock guy, except he's the world's leading expert in Echidnean ruins. Do you understand my vision?

This also goes metatextually also. Indiana Jones is a character that screws up, gets hit, fails, shows pain, and is sometimes the butt of the joke. Yet he's not portrayed as the mindless or simple comic relief for it! He's still framed as a serious and persistent badass. I want Knuckles to be portrayed in the same way. He might make mistakes due to his own miscalculations, but have him still be well-rounded in personality and considered an unstoppable force of nature anyway rather than just making him the "dumb strong guy".