Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

First, to say this – I'm not bitching about the racism itself, but I noticed something odd about how we look back at stuff.

So recently, I've fallen in love with the following cartoon, The Ducktators:

It's absolutely fucking hilarious but some people might find the depiction of the Japanese as racist.

Anyways, we're going to talk about that actually.

One of the things I love about this cartoon is that, if we take away the context of the stereotypes themselves, we're left with these three ducks going around and being absolute dicks to everyone, until the dove of peace is sick of their shit and kicks their ass. And adding the political commentary on top makes it even funnier, and it's basically saying that the military/leadership of Germany, Italy and Japan were just being dicks and they were idiots, and that we had to balls up and kick their ass into line. (Not saying that the US is known for peace, but "peace doves" were a term for people who didn't want to get involved in wars directly like WWI, as opposed to "war hawks"). Anyways, the only duck that is mainly based on the actual person themselves is Hitler Duck – the other two are blatant stereotypes.

But to be honest, I think a lot of this commentary is lost because people are so turned off by the Japanese caricature.

The thing is, I'm not saying it's not racist – it's totally overtly racist. But… isn't Mussolini's depiction just as fucking racist? Mussolini is basically depicted as a complete idiot who is just following in the footsteps of Hitler and has absolutely nobody supporting him willingly. The Italian stereotypes are played up, especially with his accent (just as much as the Japanese duck really) as well as the cultural references. And to be brutally honest, the Imperial Japanese army, which is what the duck represents, totally deserved it.

But we all know this by now, we're smart kids here. My question is this:

Why are we so much more offended by the Japanese stereotype than the Italian one?

It's no secret that at the time of WWII, the Japanese were viewed less favorably than the Italians and Germans. Japanese Americans were treated as literal spies and rounded up to detention camps. That's fucked up. And yes, we did drop two nukes on them. But the problem is, it's no longer 1944, it's 2016, and we still seem to hold ourselves to a standard as if we're still saying "yeah that was totally okay".

There are people out there who still act like Germany has a little Nazi blood running through them, 70 years after, despite almost ludicrous attempts to prove the contrary again and again in apology for the atrocities committed. Meanwhile, Japan has more victimization in WWII because of the Japanese detention and the use of nukes against them, despite committing extreme war crimes themselves and essentially a total cultural attitude towards world domination. The problem with this whole thing was that Japanese detention of Japanese-Americans didn't really affect Imperial Japan as much as it affected American citizens, and it was racism against our own people, not the country Japan. And the nukes are an controversial issue I won't get into here. But I don't think the use of nuclear weapons justifies this whole racism spiel.

Is it some projection of our culture wanting to change or erase the past or something?

Have we really gotten any better with actually fixing the problem of racism by instilling a gut reaction to stereotypes of what we consider "other peoples"? Or has overemphasis on this issue in our culture caused us to lose the ability to view work objectively? And have we really done much to accomplish anything if we can't even distinguish between Japanese Americans and Imperialist Japan as a culture?

I love this thread and I'm glad we have it. I find WWII propaganda stuff one all sides fascinating.

Part of it may be that the depictions of the Italians and Germans didn't feel as racist, as least physically. Take the three ducks in the Ducktators for instance. While it is obvious given the context of the cartoon who they are supposed to represent, If you took Hitler duck, and Duck Mussolini, gave them different voices and put them in a more normal cartoon, no one would really bat an eye. They are just odd looking ducks, which, for a cartoon, would be relatively normal.

The Japanese duck, however, if you change the context and voice, is still immediately identifiable as representing people from Asia, which is why I think this depiction is felt as more racist.

To be honest, while I do cringe at racist deceptions of certain people made back then, I know it was a product of the time. That's not to say that we should overlook these depictions, but it is important to know how some people thought and why they did to fully appreciate it.

Most often in propaganda racism is used to direct hate at the opponent.

{ The Japanese duck, however, if you change the context and voice, is still immediately identifiable as representing people from Asia, }

They all look exactly like who they're supposed to represent. The Japanese duck is Hideki Tojo, who asked for dentures during his trial so he could speak. That's where the teeth thing is coming from.

I don't think you could put any of those three ducks in another cartoon even with different voices and context if you actually know what the people who they're supposed to represent look like lol. I don't think Tojo's duck is more racist than the others either, they're all ugly caricatures of individuals. Japan is why we entered the war though, so there was undoubtedly more resentment there.

I was about to say if you remove Duck Hitler's mustache would you really be able to tell, but you could just make the same argument of Tojo and his squinted eyes and teeth so that's kinda moot.

Here I am saying we need to consider context I just overlooked some important context. While Tojo's depiction feels racist now, as Lisa pointed out, at the time it was largely a caricature of the actual person. While many depictions of people of Japan who were specifically not Tojo often looked extremely similar… the same can be said for Italians and Germans as well.

Still, the stereotype of Asian people having an appearance like this extends beyond just the the 1940s. While I have no doubts that some of this persisted with depictions of Germans for some time as well, it at least appeared to be more prevalent with Asians, even when they are not deliberately meaning them to be seen in a bad light.

Maybe I'm not seeing Duck Mussolini look as racist because 1. there really aren't as many depictions of Italians after WWII that look like this (which was likely helped by the fact Italy changed sides in 1943) and 2. because he's a bird in that cartoon and he just ends up looking like a pelican.

Ehh, I'm not so sure, Tojo does NOT have buck teeth. The Buck Teeth thing is pretty much a ubiquitous Asian stereotype and while it would explain his lisp it also doesn't cover his really exaggurated accent.

My point really is less that I'm personally offended by it and moreso that by strict definition the Italian stereotype is racist, while the Hitler duck is not since it's clearly more of a parody of Hitler himself than the German people. Both stereotypes ARE racist by strict definition, I want to explore why one form is much more noticeable 70 years later than the other form.

Bringing up the point of the fact that the Japanese are what brought America into the war is a good point though. I didn't consider that. I still think part of it is rooted in this mentality that Japanese people are kind of seen as more "different" than Italians though, and because we wronged them it was less "we were being dicks" and more "we were oppressing people", without clearly thinking about what that oppression actually was (oppression of our own people instead of another country)

American animators had a perspective of Americans during WWII. America, for those who don't know, joined the war late in the game, staying out of Europe's conflict. The bombing of pearl harbor sparked Americans to enter the war with Japan. What ended up happening next was a result of entangled alliances. Japan was allies with Italy and Germany, so America ended up declaring war on them as a proxy, and then joined the Allies forces after diving into the Pacific theater.

Also, if you'd like to talk about oppression, the Italians faced a shit ton of racial discrimination back when they first arrived, as did the Chinese, the irish, the germans, and pretty much everyone who migrated here. The japanese just had the unfortunate luck of having their country declare war on the US while they were still immigrating over. Germans who immigrated during the early 1900's faced similar prejudices during WWI. Look it up, and you'll see reports of massive cultural removal, and many acts of violence and even murder commited against german-americans due to the suspicion that they might be spies for the Kaiser. They even had their own slur for them, "Huns", another 4 letter term designed to make it easy to degrade people based on their ethnicity.

It's just that we don't think in those terms today, because the thought of prejudice being done for more then just skin color and different facial features is absurd to a lot of people. Doesn't stop people from busting out a bad german accent and joking about rounding people up on trains though.