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  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
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    4 years ago

    Nerds aren’t on that fucking level, they never were, they never will be.

    It's not a matter of levels. It's a matter of the core assumption that some people deserve to be dehumanized.

    BBT tends to dehumanize women, first and foremost, and couch the behavior in the Nerd context. They also love to vilify and denigrate foreigners. But they still have plenty of self-loathing for their own protagonists, portraying them as gross, emotionless, and otherwise less-than-human.

    That BBT doesn't go to sufficient extremes (I'd argue its humor is plenty extremist) by declaring the objects of ridicule irredeemable or completely inhuman fails to improve the base assumptions that some deplorable behavior is acceptable if performed by a man-child with an Ivy League diploma.

    • gayhobbes [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      I'm talking only about the use of the term blackface. I don't think it's an accurate description and it's tone deaf to centuries of racism at best.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
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        4 years ago

        Appropriating superficial physical characteristics and deplorable personas to create a derogatory stereotype.

        BBT is all about applying Nerd Pastiche to actors and having them behave like sociopaths.

        The big difference between BBT and the Jim Crow character is that the Nerds are painted as lovably naive goofballs who just need to be "fixed" by their normie friends. BBT ends up being an eight season long My Fair Lady. Where as the default assumption in Minstrel Shows is that Jim Crow can never be redeemed no matter how hard naive white liberals try.

        • gayhobbes [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          Appropriating superficial physical characteristics and deplorable personas to create a derogatory stereotype.

          This isn't what blackface is, so I don't know if you're trying to explain how this doesn't apply or it does.

          • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
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            4 years ago

            This isn’t what blackface is

            It's literally putting grease paint, fake lips, and kinky hair on your head.

            • gayhobbes [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Which means nothing without the context of the behavior and the culture from which it springs and what it is intended to achieve.

              It's a bad term to invoke, man, just drop the parallel and your argument can stand fine on its own.