Rap music also started in the black community but that hasn’t stopped white racists from using tropes and out of context snippets from rap music to attack black people.
It’s strange that this concern for context only ever goes in one direction. Symbolism, like words, develop meaning through their usage.
If I were to say that I ejaculated during intercourse with your wife last night, would you take that to be an insult or would you be dying on that same context hill that the verb to ejaculate used to refer to suddenly making a statement and that intercourse used to refer to having a discussion with someone?
Probably not.
Would you say that the swastika isn’t a Nazi symbol because it originated in Indo-European religious and cultural symbology?
Maybe. I can’t speak for you.
The origin of something doesn’t determine its usage.
It did, as a light-hearted joke comparing Xi and Obama walking side by side with a resembling image of Tiger and Pooh. Of course, westerners then proceeded to take it and turn it into their own distortion and elaborate some story about how China is banning Winnie the Pooh and that is why painting a chinese man yellow with photoshop is a sign of resistance against a government on the other side of the globe and totally not racist.
It resembles a lot the same thing that happened with that image that floated the internet around a few years ago of Putin photoshoped as a stereotypically and comically flamboyant homosexual man, which is totally not homophobic even if the punchline is “he’s gay” because you can always make it up that the image is banned somewhere and thus is a sign of resistance and contains no reactionary sentiment behind.
Well, as JucheBot noticed le average redditor instantly connected the dots so i would say it’s purposeful by and for those kind of people. For all we know it might be made by some shit like Serpentza or some local colonized lib. Their numerous presence is confirmed even in China. Also i don’t think i like the suggestion that Chinese don’t know english.
Le average redditor is probably a native English speaker
Also i don’t think i like the suggestion that Chinese don’t know english.
“Knowing English” and “making subtle references that only work if everyone thinks of a cartoon character’s English name” are very different things. I assume that most people seeing Tigger will think of whatever his name is in their native language, regardless of how many languages they speak. You generally don’t cycle through different words in every language you know every time you see an image looking to find a pun.
It’s possible but it’s a really big stretch. It’s definitely not the main thing to be criticizing when people are painting an Asian person’s skin yellow.
Yea that one is pretty easy to connect the dots, I think it’s safe to say people from China, the most populous country on Earth, can be racist, just as any individual from any other country can be.
Yeah, there’s a huge network of far-right media run by/targeting Chinese diaspora, some of which filters back into mainland China. It’s how BLM got roughly translated into “black people are expensive” in chinese media.
But whether chinese people made that connection or not is irrelevent, this isn’t about chinese people on wechat, it’s about westerners on reddit who absolutely did make that connection.
Not exactly, because the meaning changed from “hey look Obama and Xi loojs kinda like this silly little picture of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger” to “the Chinese people yearn for freedom from this censorship-loving yellow man sure hope Xi gets angry about my crackkker posting”.
…didn’t this meme start in China? Pretty crucial context here lol.
I’m pretty sure the original context was like “Hey this picture of two presidents walking kinda reminds me of this children’s book. That’s cool.”
And the current context is “Xi Jinping is a dirty [slur slur slur] and he’s yellow”
Rap music also started in the black community but that hasn’t stopped white racists from using tropes and out of context snippets from rap music to attack black people.
Yeah and that meme had Obama as “tigger”. Wonder why…
The meme starting in China doesn’t mean much. Pretty sure Chinese people can make racist memes too.
It’s strange that this concern for context only ever goes in one direction. Symbolism, like words, develop meaning through their usage.
If I were to say that I ejaculated during intercourse with your wife last night, would you take that to be an insult or would you be dying on that same context hill that the verb to ejaculate used to refer to suddenly making a statement and that intercourse used to refer to having a discussion with someone?
Probably not.
Would you say that the swastika isn’t a Nazi symbol because it originated in Indo-European religious and cultural symbology?
Maybe. I can’t speak for you.
The origin of something doesn’t determine its usage.
Is that context crucial though?
It gets brought up every time its pointed out how this is rascist, and it doesn’t make the use of this mene less rascist
It matters because this meme implies that it’s always racist. I don’t mean to say that it can’t be racist.
I’m not saying that’s what you’re intending to do. Just pointing out how it gets used by people who want to claim its not used in a rascist way at all
It did, as a light-hearted joke comparing Xi and Obama walking side by side with a resembling image of Tiger and Pooh. Of course, westerners then proceeded to take it and turn it into their own distortion and elaborate some story about how China is banning Winnie the Pooh and that is why painting a chinese man yellow with photoshop is a sign of resistance against a government on the other side of the globe and totally not racist.
It resembles a lot the same thing that happened with that image that floated the internet around a few years ago of Putin photoshoped as a stereotypically and comically flamboyant homosexual man, which is totally not homophobic even if the punchline is “he’s gay” because you can always make it up that the image is banned somewhere and thus is a sign of resistance and contains no reactionary sentiment behind.
I wouldn’t really called the original “light hearted” since Obama was compared to character named literally “Tigger”.
I’m not really convinced that they would be making a reference like that that only works in English (and is a bit of stretch even then imo).
Well, as JucheBot noticed le average redditor instantly connected the dots so i would say it’s purposeful by and for those kind of people. For all we know it might be made by some shit like Serpentza or some local colonized lib. Their numerous presence is confirmed even in China. Also i don’t think i like the suggestion that Chinese don’t know english.
Le average redditor is probably a native English speaker
“Knowing English” and “making subtle references that only work if everyone thinks of a cartoon character’s English name” are very different things. I assume that most people seeing Tigger will think of whatever his name is in their native language, regardless of how many languages they speak. You generally don’t cycle through different words in every language you know every time you see an image looking to find a pun.
It’s possible but it’s a really big stretch. It’s definitely not the main thing to be criticizing when people are painting an Asian person’s skin yellow.
Yea that one is pretty easy to connect the dots, I think it’s safe to say people from China, the most populous country on Earth, can be racist, just as any individual from any other country can be.
Yeah, there’s a huge network of far-right media run by/targeting Chinese diaspora, some of which filters back into mainland China. It’s how BLM got roughly translated into “black people are expensive” in chinese media.
But whether chinese people made that connection or not is irrelevent, this isn’t about chinese people on wechat, it’s about westerners on reddit who absolutely did make that connection.
I remember that meme showing up on r/blursedimages, and Le Aberage Redditors were absolutely making the connection.
I didn’t catch that (in my language he’s just called the name of the animal, translated). I am unsure if that was intentional or not, however.
Not exactly, because the meaning changed from “hey look Obama and Xi loojs kinda like this silly little picture of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger” to “the Chinese people yearn for freedom from this censorship-loving yellow man sure hope Xi gets angry about my crackkker posting”.