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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Let's not get carried away. Almost(?) the entire cast of Dallas was White. Most characters in Latin American soaps are White, and Black/Indigenous characters are there as essentially exotic tokens.

So it's not culture then. Back to skin color. Okay, then why was every little girl playing with black baby dolls ("négerbaba") during socialism? "That one was available" is not sufficient because as far as I heard first hand, kids and parents had no problem with it and liked it.

That's not my point. My point is that the characters in those series were still relatable to Eastern European viewers, racially speaking. Had, say, J.R. Ewing suddenly appeared in the business district of any local capital in his Mercedes-Benz and usual attire, he wouldn't have stood out, unless his cowboy hat was on. Everyone'd have assumed he's just another local big shot. With respect to negro dolls, I don't think their popularity, which I assume was real, somehow contradicts my point. Again, we're talking about stagnating socialist economies of shortage here. Seldom was any available product unwanted. People were also happy to watch trafficked Western movies on VHS, which were mostly crap even if one discounts the awful fandub, because at least it was different from anything on the two TV channels that were available etc.

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