The 6 Most Ridiculously Racist Old-Timey Comics
#3.
Instant Cereal vs the Japanese
Deadly chlorine gas and a promise of sexual assault by bright yellow seamen are two of the leading things that make me unhungry for Instant Ralston.
But this was the 1940s; glorious combat death was their Count Chocula. Check out the redhead when Tom says they're all about to die slowly from battery fumes:
"YEAH!" Maybe he took "dying slowly from battery fumes" to mean "we've been locked up with supergroup Bon Jovi!"
Actually, he's already realizing that death is nothing to fear as long as you know you're taking dozens of filthy Japs with you:
That's the last panel.
Hopefully the war ended before they were ever able to produce another episode of this, so for countless kids, Tom Mix's story ended with his lungs being slowly eaten by acidic battery gas. Or maybe part two is eighty half-melted corpses being picked apart by sharks: "Try new Ralston Seafood Pie! Also, unrelated to food products, here's a cat shitting in a cup of pudding! Ralston gives young America cowboy energy!"
#2.
Buzzy vs The Deaf Haters
We have here another of the well-meaning but misguided attempts at tolerance, with this powerful rebuke of those who would see the deaf hung from lamp posts.
The fact that Wolfie seems genuinely upset that a deaf person somewhere might be happy isn't quite as strange as Buzzy's response being anything other than, "Wolfie, are you reading out loud from the I'm The Devil Phrase Book?" What were people like back in the sixties that we needed ads like this? "Dizzy Duckling is here to remind you that sometimes you don't HAVE to kill one of your women to teach the others a lesson!"
It's a powerful moment when Wolfie realizes that hating someone for losing their hearing might not be the greatest party trick. "Hey everyone! Watch me get pissed off about how deaf this guy is! And I'm wearing this lampshade!!! Wait wait, I'm about to get really grumpy about how the Jewish guy likes the dip! Let's... PARTY!"
Their entire message is undermined by the ending of course. You'll notice that in the first three panels there are floating notes to indicate music is playing. Notice what's missing from Johnny's performance:
That's right. The piano doesn't work, he's sitting there quietly clicking at the dead keys but nobody tells him because they think it's fucking hilarious.
#1.
Rub the Buddha!
See? Old-timey comics were all about discovering the religions and traditions of our Asian brothers. Why, here's an ad for a little Buddha you can keep in your own home, with a concise description of the tenets of the Buddhist faith:
"When you want to pay off debts, simply rub The BUDDHA. When you want to buy a house, simply rub The BUDDHA. When you want to go on a long-overdue vacation, simply rub The BUDDHA. When you want to buy a new car, TV, boat or whatever you wish, simply rub The BUDDHA!... The BUDDHA miraculously puts fist-loads of cash right in your pocket!"
This is the greatest miracle of economics and theology that has ever been. If you're still not convinced of the sanity of the president of The BUDDHA's research and distribution departments, read this excerpt from the eighth paragraph: "First, let me assure you of this. I know exactly what I'm doing." Suck on that, naysayers.
The only thing I'm concerned about is that there's an option you can check on the mail-in coupon to get TWO of these things. Now I'm not an economist, so I can't predict the long-term economic effects of everyone having all the free money they want, AND THEN DOUBLE THAT, so to be safe, please only order one The BUDDHA.
Apparently, Buddhism is the religion of greed. lol
ReplyApparently, Buddhism is the religion of greed! LOL;)
ReplyAnyone else think that Wolfie (from the pro-Deaf comic) looks like Bob Hope?
ReplyComics - tl;dr
ReplyIt's not even Buddha. :I
ReplyRub the Buddha???? What were they thinking?
ReplyIf you could just read what the Japanese were saying about Americans and the British/Australians during the war.
ReplyWas it :"They are so awesome, I'm glad they're gonna bomb us."?
Um...deaf is a race now?
ReplyThey prefer "Handi-capable"
A bit off topic to the article; I love how there are two articles recommended for me at the bottom, with the exact same picture and title, yet two different view counts by more than one million.
ReplyYeah, I see that a lot, too.
Wow, seanbaby, usually I love your stuff but you really just pho9ned this one in. Wake up an hour before deadline with an absinthe hangover?
ReplyC'mon. Youre streeeeeeeeetching to come up with anything resembling racism here- even dumping on two lame but totally heartfelt anti-discrimination ads.
I fail to see how ANY of these constitute "racism" at all, much less, "ridiculous" racism.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesIf it's simply using the term "j*p," it should be noted that it wasn't deemed offensive AT ALL until it became associated with the people that attacked and drew us into a world war and proceeded to do things like like slaughter and rape millions of Chinese and shepherd better than 90% of Allied P.O.W.s to miserable deaths.
"j*p" didn't become derogatory because Americans were a**holes; it became so because the j*pANESE were a**holes.
As true as it is they did do those horrible things, did you ever think they might not have wanted to obey Tojo? The highest ranking Nazi generals tried to kill Hitler on several occasions. Americans did horrible things to the Vietnamese commies, and judging from all the protests I bet that you know, people who were forced into the military generally may not be the best fighters and they were probably the ones who killed the innocent Vietnamese people. We have had our fair share of wars where WE are the assholes so you can be quiet of how Japan is terrible for being forced into pillaging. SO DID WE.
Stay classy f******d
So what you're saying is you don't understand how a racial slur is offensive because you think the people it describes are terrible.
Am I reading this right, Zin?
"Japan is terrible for being forced into pillaging."
Forced????
And do you have any idea of the scale of the scale of Japanese atrocities? The Bataan death march? The Burma railroad? The rape of Nanking? The occupation of Manila? The Japanese murdered more civilians than even the Nazis; and even the goddam Germans obeyed the Geneva Convention rules for (Western) POWs, whom the Japanese treated in total Auschwitz fashion.
Don't EVEN try the relativistic bullsh!t meme that we were "just as bad."
(Back to the "forcing" thing- the only reason the oil and scrap-metal embargo put a crimp in Tokyo's style was because it slowed down their CONQUEST of (and mass murders in) China.)
"did you ever think they might not have wanted to obey Tojo? "
Certainly plenty of them were happy to engage in torture, rape and mass-murder without any orders from Tojo. And you might recall that Japanese troops almost never, ever surrendered- hardly unwilling conscripts fighting against their will, or they would have deserted in droves like Saddam's troops.
First of all, America was basically founded on genocide, rape and slavery so from the point of view of Japan it probably looked like we were preventing them from doing the things we did to expand our territory. The Japanese government also demonized Americans and it's much easier to treat people terribly when you think that they're monsters. That's also evident in the fact that we had no problem ruining the livelihoods of a very large number of American citizens because they happened to have the same heritage as the people we were fighting and we had no problem deliberately targeting and killing innocent civilians. People who try to defend what we did while painting our enemies as villains tend to subscribe to either an implausible or inconsistent theory of morality. It's also been shown that if someone in authority tells a person to do something, they will most likely listen to them even if it leads to someone's deaths (see the Milgram experiments). While this obviously can't account for the every person, it does go a long way to explain why so many people were willing to go along with these things (along with the dehumanizing propaganda I already mentioned). This also helps explain why people in Nazi Germany went along with the terrible things that were happening there. It's also hard to blame the Japanese for striking back at us to get us to back off since it's the exact same thing we would do. If a foreign power tried to stop us from killing the Native Americans when we were expanding west then we would have done everything in our power to get them to f**k off so we could continue expanding. Everyone acted like assholes and in many cases we would have acted in the exact same way if our situations were reversed. That said, trying to hold a debate in the comments section of a comedy article is the most pointless thing you can do short of posting on 4Chan so we should congratulate ourselves for wasting our time as well as the time of everyone who reads this.
Christ, it was wartime, the enemy of whoever always get dehumanized. How you go from that to national origins of genocide is fucktacular.
Chlorine gas is strongly basic, not acidic.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWay to fail basic high school chemistry.
Chlorine reacts with the hydrogen ions water to form HCL, which is a strong acid.
It was still going to kill the Japs, so the ends don't matter; this according to the comic.
Actually, according to 1940's Americans, Japanese blood is already made of Hydrochloric Acid so you couldn't be more wrong Sean.
The deaf hanging from lampposts. lol
ReplyTHe test was instrumental in the cancellation of "Catholic Alligator: The Long Hair scourge" though.
ReplyNice
actually that test wasn't that bad, it's saying like "are you the type of person to prefer spiders/cabbage/etc over a black person and if you are then you suck". it even says on the bottom when you dislike people you're hurting them and cheating yourself
ReplyOh my GOD the j*panese on the submarine are literally yellow.
Replymy biggest problem with the buddah thing....it costs $7...and the second one costs the same but at the bottom it says "Rush me two orders Here is $13" math fail..
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesMaybe a dollar off for rush delivery/ordering 2 at once? idk, but I couldn't be suprised if they only meant to double the 7
Or you know, it's a legitimate strategy for selling things.
More items at a discounted price...hmmm...
Why would they sell The BHUDDA for profit when they can merely rub The BHUDDA?
I was born and raised C*nadian, and I freak out whenever some racist calls me a c*n. C*n't we just learn to love one another?
ReplyCanadians aren't a race
GoodApprentice, I see what you did there and I approve.
I don't know about rubbing Buddha's belly for money, but I wonder what you get by rubbing Yamantaka's belly.
ReplyI don't know but I've heard somewhere that rubbing an African-American's head brings good luck. I tried it with one of my African-American friends head but it didn't bring him good luck.
Just say f**king 'black' and stop being awkward. No one in the real world gives a f**k.
If the belly gets you rich then at the bare minimum the statue should ejaculate quarters.
I've been trying to think of some non-sexual meaning to "We will amuse ourselves with the Americans later" and have not yet struck upon anything.
ReplyThink Deer Hunter, not Deliverance.
^ Missed the mark with what I thought you were talking about at first, but haha nonetheless!