![Newest Outrage in the Diversity Wars: Cartoon Villains with Accents. [VIDEO]](https://victorygirlsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/So-long-bro.jpg)
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this latest incident of hand-wringing over diversity. It seems there’s a professor of child study and development at Tufts University who’s very concerned about cartoon villains. It’s because they speak in ‘foreign accents,’ which are ‘sending a dangerous message to kids about diversity.’
Oh, FFS.
Moreover, Calvin Gidney and a colleague have been studying this since 1998. Yes, villains with foreign accents in children’s cartoons have been a burr in his backside for 20 years. I think that’s waaaay to long to be obsessed about something so trivial, don’t you? Because they’re just freakin’ cartoons!
Gidney first became alerted to this terrible menace when he saw the film The Lion King. He noticed that the hero lion, Mufasa, spoke with an American accent. However, his rival, Scar, had a British accent. Never mind that Jeremy Irons, the legendary British actor, voiced the character of Scar. It’s a trend, says Gidney. His study finds that ‘the most wicked foreign accent of all was British English,’ followed by German and Slavic accents.
Well, this is a twist. How many times have you seen the diversity police worried about Europeans? After all, they’re white! I thought only ‘people of color’ were victims of bigotry.
Maybe not. Maybe we’re coming to a point where everyone is a victim.
Which means, of course, if everyone’s a victim, then no one is a victim, right?
But European villains in cartoons are nothing new, especially to those of us who grew up as Baby Boomers. We spent our Saturday mornings howling at the mishaps of the Russian spy couple Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Hey, the Soviets hated Americans, and we hated them right back. That was de rigueur for us Cold War Kids. We were trained from an early age just who our enemies were.
Boris and Natasha weren’t the only foreign villains on that cartoon, either, because there was also “Fearless Leader.” I don’t think he had a name, but he had a monocle, a wicked scar, and a heavy German accent. After all, many of our fathers fought the Germans in World War II, so it was natural to have an evil German in the mix, too.
And the happy-go-lucky French were mocked as well. While not a villain, Pepe Le Pew was a confused skunk who thought he was a great lover, le grand amant, as is said in French. But nowadays Gidney and Co. would call poor Pepe a ‘sexual harasser,’ or something.
So how in the world did we grow up to have any sort of respect for anyone else? Especially immersed in such a cesspool of political incorrectness?
It’s simple, really. I can’t speak for everyone of my generation, of course, but my parents raised me to have manners. My religious faith taught me that God loves all people, no matter their race or nationality. Moreover, I didn’t need some overwrought professor of child study to direct what I saw on TV — my parents did that. It was their job, and they did it well.
But back to the image of the Bad Brit as Evil Villain.
One British company relishes the image of the British Bad Guy. Jaguar Land Rover is making hay out of that reputation with this advertising campaign.
Not only does the campaign feature renowned British actors like Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong, and Tom Hiddleston, one installment uses physicist Stephen Hawking as well.
So maybe — according to Jaguar, anyway — the British do make the best villains. Frankly, I’d just like to tell professor Calvin Gidney to go pound sand. While I’m drinking a good English cuppa in fine China, my pinkie finger extended, of course.
GWB says: So how in the world did we grow up to have any sort of respect for anyone else? Especially immersed in such a cesspool of political incorrectness?
Maybe… jussssst maybe……
We knew they were friggin’ cartoons?!?
What I want to know is what this says about women, since they also tend to find British accents sexy (by recurring large margins in poll after poll). Is it a Bad Boy thing? Are women really just attracted to evil? (Would that be best supported by all the ones who voted for HRC because she has a vagina, or all the ones who refused to support her just because she has a vagina? Hmmmmm…..)
You ladies have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
Scott says: I say we take up a collection and send this clown a case of pamprin, and a case of tampax… just sayin..
Jim says: What about Siegfried in Get Smart?
I wonder if any of the modern day ‘educated’ SJWs even consider that there was a couple of generations greatly affected by WW II especially, hence German accents from actors and actresses [I believe there are some women who might be called real actresses????] dressed in SS or Gestapo style uniforms or even dark over-coats were always clearly evil personages simply because such ‘characters’ were a real memory for those whose parents fought the War or suffered in the various concentration/extermination camps or even POW camps – Schloss Colditz comes to mind. Others suffered further in the post War years at the hands of such wonderful ‘humanist’ groups such as the Stasi and the other secret police forces of the USSR and its minions who were just clones of the SS, SA and other German agencies of social repression. Frankly this is just further bigotry from the tiny minds of uneducated juveniles who avoid reading ‘real’ history about modern society. But then the ‘progressives’ probably support Antifa, but cannot see that they are just a modern-day form of the SA led by Ernst Roehm using exactly the same methods in the streets as did the National Socialists – yes Hitler was a Socialist – in 1930s Germany.
David says: As a Briton, I’m confused. You say that they object to villains with foreign accents. What has that to do with us? We don’t have foreign accents.
storkdoc says: True, but you do have an accent
Manual Paleologos says: Accents are what other people have.
richb313 says: What the intellectual lightweight fails to understand is all those cartoon villains shared one thing in common. They were inept and never succeeded. If anything these cartoons taught us not to fear our enemies. We did not have to be bigger, stronger, scarier as long as we were smarter. Didn’t you learn anything from the master Bugs Bunny?
SDN says: “But nowadays Gidney and Co. would call poor Pepe a ‘sexual harasser,’ or something.”
A serial pu$$y cat grabber, in public!!!!!
I suspect much of this is like Nazi Germany, with its demand for the Hitler salute and a “Heil Hitler” on every occasion. It’s not the particulars that matter. It’s conditioning people to obey and do as they’re told. That’s why in parts of Germany the use of “Grüß Gott” (May God bless you) became a form of resistance to the regime.
The key to not being cowed by this is to routinely rebel, openly and covertly, and to display contempt for those who want to impose their repression on others. I find the best way to do that is to ‘jump the track’ to another issue. Blast their inconsistency and hypocrisy.
Why care about words in cartoons, you can point out, while at the same time allowing massive evils to take place. The opening paragraph of Roe v. Wade, for instance, notes the “eugenic” and “racial overtones” of the decision. And the leading proponent of legalized abortion in the late 1960s was Dr. Alan Guttmacher, who was not only president of Planned Parenthood-World Population but the former vice-president of the American Eugenic Association. Want to know why liberals are eager to fund Planned Parenthood clinics next to poor black communities? That’s why.
You can to the same with those who claim to be against sexual harassment and eagerly voted for Hillary in Election 2016. Denouncing hypocrisy is a powerful tool. Jesus used it quite effectively in his public life.
Dave Olson says: Is not problem, Fearless Leader EAST German!
Manual Paleologos says: All iss fault of Moose and Skverril!
I suspect British villains are common because they’re such great actors. You need a great villain to make a great hero.
Boofus says: The child must learn
before it is eight
to love whom we love,
to hate whom we hate.
Richard says: It never occurred to me that stereotype cartoon characters should influence my attitude about real people. Why would anyone think something so silly? I grew up in a era of ethnic jokes. The Norwegians knew more terrible (and brilliant) Sven and Ole jokes than anybody. Same with the Irish, Brits, Poles, Germans, French, Jews, Japanese, Mexicans, Canadians, Swedes, Italians, and all the rest. What is the problem? BTW, there are no Scottish jokes, could it be that Scots aren’t funny?
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