I think a lot of it these days--and even in the 80s--was not so much "oh, no way in HELL are we showing a mixed race couple, no no no, we don't want to lose revenue", but more along the lines of "it didn't occur to the writers to put in mixed race couples because that wasn't their default line of thinking."

Kind of like the whole "oh, don't put gay characters in JUST TO HAVE A GAY CHARACTER" argument, as though being gay is not something that a lot of people actually are, you know what I mean? Like, it's not actually "weird" to have a gay characters because a lot of people are gay. And a lot of couples are mixed race. But if the writer is someone who automatically assumes a "normal couple" is same-race . . . Well then.

This also depends where you live, of course. Different reactions in the Deep South versus the West Coast, I'm sure.

Isn't it funny how we say "in the Deep South" but "on the West Coast"?

 

How is it that you know all that and yet the point I was trying to make seems to have flown over your head? You said it yourself he could hide behind science fiction metaphors. That's how he was able to show mixed race couples and get away with it. Sure in reality they may of been two white people but in the fiction it was always intended as a hidden metaphor.

I think you're confused. You seem to be mixing up "Showing" mixed race couples on T.V. and "accepting" mixed race couples on T.V. They've been showing it for ages, originally by hiding behind metaphors but still showing it. Now they're not hiding behind the metaphors anymore yet there are still people who are not accepting of it.

 

Your point didn't fly over my head. It underwhelmed. I clearly understood, presented, and then dismissed your point -- stepwise and repeatedly -- because they got away with it by NOT literally getting away with it. That you think I'm the one who missed something is ironic in context.

Now for another remedial lesson: Intolerance is a visceral thing literally tied to the disgust response. People are always more tolerant in the abstract than they are in real life, in their home town, and on their back porch. That's what performers in black-face were all about; the pretense sidestepped the visceral part. Pretense even worked to dodge the issue on the radio with Amos & Andy.

The less literal it is, the less visceral it is. I can refer to a rotting corpse in a show or display one visually with varying degrees of realism. Guess which one is going to get a visceral response? Keep it in the abstract, tone it down visually, leaving out the smell and the critters feasting on flesh and you won't lose your lunch. That's because the visceral works off the senses directly and not off of metaphor.

By and large people don't throw up over metaphors. Disgust is like that. So is racism. There may be intellectual rationalization of racism after the fact, but it certainly does not arise from higher thought.

You can intellectualize and desensitize an issue in metaphor forever, but until you see it to a very literal degree you haven't dealt with it. A cartoon isn't quite as literal as real actors, but throw in parents and how hysterical they can get over what their kids see and it's literal enough.

You can't argue the same side of a point from one post to the next, but I'm confused? Another irony.

How you show it, or more importantly how you have to "not" show it, to even mention the issue is an excellent measure of tolerance and acceptance.

• Do I have to use white actors in black-face or face a riot in the theater? Are you actually going to claim that limit of acceptance isn't the key factor there?
• Do I have to use aliens in latex or be censored from the air? Do you seriously claim that TV censors aren't motivated by their experience of what the audience will or will not accept?
• Do I have to hire a black actress on a per-show basis because NBC won't air a show with a full-time black cast member? Is that not a demonstrated serious lack of acceptance?
• Does the first white on black kiss have to be between "unwilling" puppets of a powerful alien? Isn't that a glaring example of just how broadly unaccepted the kiss is?

How you show and whether something is accepted is inextricably bound. If you think you can discuss one without delving into the other then you're more than just confused -- you're back in pretend-land yet again.

There are pragmatic criteria for acceptance inherent from the beginning of our discussion. The context generates those criteria. How does acceptance affect the question at hand? Here is a case study, since you seem to be unable to wrap your mind around mixed race at the moment:

• Is intolerance to homosexuals going to affect a political candidate in the primaries?

Yes.​

• Is it going to make or break the candidates chances?

1. If he's a Republican, probably not.
2. If he's a Democrat, probably yes.

​

• Will there be exceptions who vote the other way? Of course, but we're talking about winning a majority, not winning every vote because that's virtually impossible and thus a completely pointless criteria to even raise (not, apparently, that it would stop you).

Objections to mixed race couples are scarce enough now that showing them on a cartoon isn't going to be significantly problematic even for a product placement cartoon.

That was of course my initial point, somehow still lost on you.

That there will still be some who object is such an obvious given, is so wholly irrelevant to whether or not it's a good programming or business decision, that it begs credulity that you are still raising it.

So no, SabrePrime, I didn't miss your point nor am I confused. I wouldn't mind spoon feeding you all of this, but I'm getting pretty tired of you spitting it back up all over me. I'm starting to suspect you are playing dumb to allow you to do just that.

 

i'm in the deep south but there are a lot of mixed race relationships.   i'm in a lot of those  

 

Oh, I hope I didn't offend you . . . sorry if I did. I figured there would be a higher proportion of people who objected, not like "everyone is a bigot down there" or anything.

 

*Face Palm* Again, my point goes right over your head. You pretend to know what I'm talking about and yet you say this. I WAS arguing the same side of a point in every post. Just because YOU don't know the difference between SHOWING a mixed race couple and ACCEPTING a mixed race couple doesn't mean I was contradicting myself. If you actually understood what I was saying as well as you pretend to you would understand that. Your list even further demonstrates how little you understood anything I said so lets go threw that point by point.

1. Two part answer. Part one, this is the first time black-face has even been brought up in this conversation. I never brought it up, you did just now. Part two, I never made any such claim. You made a claim that an 80's cartoon couldn't get away with showing mixed race couples. I made a claim that shows even before that had gotten away with SHOWING it.

2. Again, I never made that claim and again you are clearly confusing SHOWING it and ACCEPTING it. You even just asked your question as "what the audience will or will not accept" I never made the claim that they would accept it, just that a T.V. series got away with showing it.

3. You're really on a roll here. Again you're talking about acceptance when I'm not.

4. And you're last point is again rendered pointless due to the fact that you're still arguing against a claim I never made.

Let me make this simple for you. When it comes to your argument that people are intolerant, I agree with you. I've been agreeing with you on that point the entire time. I've also made the point that even today there still exist people who will not accept a mixed race couple and it sucks.

However the point we are actually arguing about isn't about weather or not it's accepted. It's about a claim you made that an 80's cartoon could not get away with SHOWING a mixed race couple. I made a point that they have and even shows that existed before Transformers had gotten away with it.

The problem is you think showing it and accepting it are the same thing so there for you think I keep flip flopping on the issue when that isn't the case. You're trying to have a single argument about two different things.

Do I think people were intolerant back in the 80's? You seem to believe not even though I made the claim that there is still intolerance now. In reality I believe there was and probably always will be ignorant people.

My argument that they got away with showing mixed race couples on T.V. does not contradict that. Seriously in my very first post where I made that case I posted relationships between organic beings and giant freaking robots. Despite the fact that you know about the metaphors existence in media you couldn't pick up on the fact that's what I was talking about? If you understood what I was saying why am I sitting here having to explain it? Like I said in my last post, it went over your head. Why did it go over your head? Because you can't figure out the difference between showing mixed race couples and accepting mixed race couples.

Oh I'm not saying there isn't a link between the two. Just that you need to pay more attention to which one I'm actually talking about. It might be the same conversation but showing and accepting are still two different words with two entirely different meanings.

Do you even know the meaning of context? Because you've been ignoring it for this entire conversation. Acceptance doesn't affect the question at hand. The question is, could an 80's cartoon get away with showing a mixed race couple. You say it couldn't, I say it could... and proved that it did. You dismissed the proof because it's a metaphor. The question wasn't about acceptance, it was just about what a cartoon could get away with so a metaphor can not be dismissed as evidence.

Had you said that mixed race couples wouldn't be accepted from the beginning we wouldn't be having this argument. That's exactly the point I made in the last post in saying you're confused. The argument isn't about acceptance, you never made a claim to that case and I never made an argument against it. The argument is just about what they can get away with showing. That includes metaphors which is why I brought up relationships between fictional alien races.

Some how you know exactly what I'm talking about and yet fail grasp the concept of why I brought it up. In context it makes perfect sense yet you can't seem to figure it out because you're the one that doesn't know what we're actually arguing about.

Now you're talking about elections? How is this even relevant? We're talking about what they could get away with showing on T.V. in the 80's. We're not talking about about what people would accept or not accept. We're not talking about how intolerance affects political campaigns. You're over complicating a simple argument. Did they show mixed race couples in Transformers. Fact is, yes they did. Did mixed race couples face intolerance in the 80's, yes, they did but not what we're arguing about. Does intolerance affect elections, yes but so far from what we're talking about that I'm not going to discuss it any further. We're talking about A CARTOON! It's not as complicated as you're making it out to be. The fact is you made a claim that they could not get away with showing mixed race couples in an 80's cartoon. My argument was that they did get away with it and had been getting away with even before Transformers, by hiding behind metaphors. You dismissed the metaphors as evidence and started talking about tolerance even though it has nothing to do with your original statement or the argument I was making.

Either you actually don't know what we're arguing about or you're pretending not to understand so you don't have to admit that you were wrong. I'm thinking the second one because that would explain how you caught onto the metaphors so fast. See if you actually didn't know what I was talking about you wouldn't of even known there were metaphors. Yet you acknowledged them and then dismissed them as a thing. Why would you dismiss something that was actually relevant to an argument unless you either didn't understand it or didn't want to accept any evidence that made you wrong. There was still a small chance that you were just confused about what the argument actually was but at this point I've come to the conclusion that you are obviously too smart to have misunderstood me that badly. There for you are obviously dancing around the real subject and intentionally dismissing the only relevant thing to this argument because you can't admit that you were wrong.

Again I will bring up the Cheerios commercial. Oh and I believe you said you hadn't seen that commercial so here's a link Just Checking - YouTube The comments are disabled due to it being flooded with racist remarks the same day that commercial was posted. You still think objections are scarce enough that it isn't going to cause a problem? I wish that were the case. Again pointing out to the fact that showing something and accepting something are two different things. It has at least gotten to a point that they don't feel like they have to hide behind metaphors anymore but that doesn't mean it's accepted by everyone.

Your initial point was "They could not get away with showing mixed race couples on T.V. in the 80's." Nothing was lost on me in that, it's pretty straight forward... and wrong. They did get away with it. Your initial point had nothing to do with tolerance, it had nothing to do with acceptance. That wasn't at all what you said. All you said was that they couldn't get away with showing it. They did show it, and they got away with it because they were robots. Who's not getting who's point here? This would make sense if you didn't just dismiss the metaphors.

Basically what you've done is accept that they did show mix race couples on T.V. because you understand the fact that they had to hide behind metaphors to do it which is and always has been my argument. While at the same time you're arguing that they didn't show mix race couples on T.V. because they weren't accepted totally dismissing that the metaphors exist for a reason. And you accused me of flip flopping on my argument. There's irony for you.

  That's funny, that really is. Just like the flip flopping you accused me of you're self projecting. That means that these accusations against me are really just a confession of what you've been doing all this time. I've been spoon feeding you all this time, having to repeat the concept of the metaphors over and over again only to have you totally dismiss it every time or spit it back in my face as you put it. You're playing dumb just to troll me, and you just admitted it. Well guess what, you know what I do with trolls? They go on my extremely long ignore list.

 

lol not offended, just a lot people think its like that in general ^_^

 

NO. PRIMExJUNE

 

Sure. Just so I could see Jack's reaction.

 

no, I don't ship

 

So, are you a liar or are you a fool?

Here are you earlier words:

You did make a claim about acceptance.

You made the "acceptance" claim before I ever even used the word.

Not very bright to lie when your words are available just above.

I never claimed you did.

It's your logic applied to an analogous situation to see if you'd come to the same conclusion as you did with people in latex. Pretending that I'm putting words in your mouth is a good way of avoiding the question, I suppose.

A dishonest way.

Well, I've shown that to be a lie.

There's really no point in debating a liar, is there?

 

But weren't Wolverine and Jubilee just friends or did I miss something?

 

More like Father/Daughter. He's in this role to also Rogue and Shadowcat.

 

Wouldn't bother me.

 

That was weird. I don't care for my drama in my robot action show.

But if you going to do something do it all the way.

They had a single episode or interest and then dropped.

 

Oh god, no. I consider them friends. Nothing more.

 

If they'd spent more than 1 episode of season 3 focusing on the budding relationship of two humans...I'd have cried in frustration.

It was hinted that the two liked each other numerous times since season 1, so seeing it finally happen and them leaving it at that was enough for me.