Notes on life, art, photography and technology, by a Danish dropout bohemian.
When you drink the water, remember the river.
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Wednesday, May 16, 2012
About Prejudice
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.
-- George Aiken
Do you know that brilliantly zany cartoon series, Fairly Oddparents? (You should have a look at it, it's ace.) Plot: 10y/o Timmy Turner, a "nobody", has a couple of fairy godparents, who can magically grant his every wish... within the strict frame of "Da Rules", a bit like the unwritten rules of magic in the Harry Potter universe (except "Da Rules" *is* actually a huge written book ;-). Every episode is a well-meant wish that (predictably) goes awry. Great satirical light fun.
In one episode, Timmy is fed up by his dentist neighbor, who constantly puts him down, under the excuse that having perfect teeth makes him better than the others. Buck-toothed Timmy wishes that "everybody in the world would look exactly the same", so that discrimination would be abolished. Problem: once everyone has become a grey blob, even his godparents can't find which is Timmy to grant him the reversing of the wish! Meanwhile, the dentist still behaves just the insufferable snotty same. Timmy: "What do you mean? Everybody's a grey blob!" Dentist: "Yes, but I'm the greyest one of them all, so I'm better than you." Priceless.
Appearance, color, wealth, "purity", piousness... are just arbitrary means. The true source of prejudice, is insecure self-loathing, projected on others. "Maybe so, but *I* am more self-loathing than you, so IN YOUR FACE, Woody Allen!"
If you were to put all prejudiced people alone in a ghetto, and I mean people with the SAME identical prejudice, mark my words, they'd start discriminating each other over who's more strict than the others. Either that, or the predictable Orwellian oppressive Fearyland. (Got it? "Fearyland"? I made a funny.)
The problem is EO, that quote is the absolute truth. It's sad to say, but true.
ReplyDeleteDo you know that brilliantly zany cartoon series, Fairly Oddparents? (You should have a look at it, it's ace.)
ReplyDeletePlot: 10y/o Timmy Turner, a "nobody", has a couple of fairy godparents, who can magically grant his every wish... within the strict frame of "Da Rules", a bit like the unwritten rules of magic in the Harry Potter universe (except "Da Rules" *is* actually a huge written book ;-).
Every episode is a well-meant wish that (predictably) goes awry. Great satirical light fun.
In one episode, Timmy is fed up by his dentist neighbor, who constantly puts him down, under the excuse that having perfect teeth makes him better than the others. Buck-toothed Timmy wishes that "everybody in the world would look exactly the same", so that discrimination would be abolished. Problem: once everyone has become a grey blob, even his godparents can't find which is Timmy to grant him the reversing of the wish! Meanwhile, the dentist still behaves just the insufferable snotty same.
Timmy: "What do you mean? Everybody's a grey blob!"
Dentist: "Yes, but I'm the greyest one of them all, so I'm better than you."
Priceless.
Appearance, color, wealth, "purity", piousness... are just arbitrary means. The true source of prejudice, is insecure self-loathing, projected on others.
"Maybe so, but *I* am more self-loathing than you, so IN YOUR FACE, Woody Allen!"
If you were to put all prejudiced people alone in a ghetto, and I mean people with the SAME identical prejudice, mark my words, they'd start discriminating each other over who's more strict than the others.
Either that, or the predictable Orwellian oppressive Fearyland.
(Got it? "Fearyland"? I made a funny.)