The Simpsons, Marge Racist Towards The Count

Marge Tells The Count From the Sesame Street To go Back to his own Country

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• muppet
• simpsons
• the simpsons
• the count
• count
• Sesame Street

[alessancastel13]

Yeah, that's not racist. The word you are looking for is either prejudice or xenophobe. 

[mountrnatr]

I'm offensive and I find this Romanian.

[armenglish]

@alessancastel13

There are basically two ways to accept a word's usage. One way is through its social meaning, in which the word is used and understood by a majority of people outside of academia. The other way is a word's "official," accepted meaning as per academic circles. In both circumstances, racism extends to ethnicity. Your rejection of both leaves you with no real case other than your own proclivity toward etymological literalism... oh, and your distaste for the UN.

[alessancastel13]

@armenglish Oh I get it. So, race doesn't determine if something is racist or not. That's a horrible definition and I wouldn't follow anything that a de facto, unorganized government figure (the UN) assigns as a definition. I know where you are coming from but I will stick to the anthropological definition which makes more sense than the nowadays loose definition.

This is the same as Webster adopting the word ginormous due to its popular usage.

[kly45]

@kly45 When I say "artificial setup" I mean it follows the formula "have character explain they hold belief x then immediately show x in front of the character". - It's not that clever (anymore) and has been way-overdone by the simpsons.

[kly45]

@Mattjblythe111 agree to disagree on this joke.

[kly45]

@Mattjblythe111 Although i think you are partially right, part of her character is to be scared of change etc. But I just think that racism is too far. Look at the episode where Quimby uses immigrants as a scapegoat for bear tax. Marge gets initially confused and acts like a sheep in the crowd(part of her character), not only does the joke stem directly from the plot, but marge then makes a moral decision to progress the story. Anyway, I know we agree that new simpsons is shit, so we'll have to

[kly45]

@Mattjblythe111 I think the joke is funny but making marge say it makes it less funny because it makes Marge appear to be a total jerk. This is also common in new simpsons (ever notice how Homer is just an immoral asshole now?) The joke is simplistic and the setup is artificially placed just so it makes Marge say something that "shocking" like family guy (unfortunately simpsons can't create the same "sting" when it comes to offensive humor as family guy can). 

[armenglish]

@alessancastel13

Racism, colloquially, is often ascribed to anything involving cultural and ethnic distinctions. It's most often involved in skin color (which is the sort of subset you seem to be implying), but it's simply not that narrow. It's nice to try and draw distinctions when necessary, but now it is not.

Racism, as per the legally adopted definition of the UN: "...any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin..."

[alessancastel13]

@armenglish True, she doesn't like him because of his ethnicity (like you said); thus, she is prejudiced. Ethnicity and race aren't the same thing. If the count was a different race, then I would say she was racist.

[armenglish]

@alessancastel13

Since Marge demands that the Count go back to his own country, it's implied that she does not like him because of *drum roll* his ethnicity. Yep, it's racism.

[Mattjblythe111]

@kly45 well, i think you're disregarding a lot of throwaway moments of the earlier (pre-Y2K) seasons. marge has always been this kind of parochial, sheltered character, and she's often shown discomfort with foreign things and people.

i agree that new simpsons is crap, but not about this joke (which actually was pretty funny).