The Muppet Show: Disney+ adds content warning of negative depictions of cultures

This will be a good case study to find out how real "Cancel Culture" concerns are. Because if you are looking for a reason to be offended, the Muppets will give you one. Females being portrayed as pigs, Swedish chefs with speech impediments, depiction of mental disease for laughs, etc. Article also refers to situations such as Johnny Cash singing in front of confederate flag. Yet, there is not one ounce of malice or meanness anywhere to be seen. It is one big wacky party to which everyone is invited. We'll see what happens.

Argh. My dream is that one day people will understand that a really large chunk (probably the vast majority) of piss-ripping found in humour isn&#x27;t actually racist or misogynistic but is actually the complete opposite in <i>making a statement about the stupidity</i> of the protagonists&#x27; racism or misogyny.<p>Fawlty Towers 6th episode &quot;The Germans&quot; is a classic case in point. The entire premise of the episode was not &quot;Germans are stupid&quot; but &quot;the idiot who is xenophobic who is being horrible to Germans is stupid&quot;. I don&#x27;t know anyone - least of all any Germans - who are in the slightest bit offended by this. It&#x27;s one example, but it happens time and time again. Literally the only people actually being offended are - who...?<p>Anyway. Sigh.

I adored the Muppet Show as a kid. Tried watching it with my daughters this weekend, since it just became available.<p>&quot;Dad, this is weird. This is really weird. It&#x27;s not even a show! Just weird little scenes!&quot;<p>[&quot;not even a show&quot; = no connective plot]<p>These kids have all kinds of precision-engineered laser-guided entertainment aimed squarely at their cerebral cortex. They don&#x27;t need the Muppet Show like I did, I guess.

FWIW, I&#x27;d rather see a disclaimer about the show reflecting the time it was made in, than to have the show changed to reflect our current times.

I don&#x27;t like the excesses of cancel culture or what is described (at this point mostly derisively) as the &quot;woke movement.&quot; Still, reading the descriptions of these episodes, I&#x27;m not surprised Disney added content warnings.<p>The warnings are not for us, they are for Disney. Let&#x27;s face it, a lot of Disney content has not aged well. The company has a long history of racist and sexist depictions of characters and cultures. Of course Disney wants to distance itself from that and say &quot;hey, this isn&#x27;t who we are!&quot; Honestly, I&#x27;d much rather they do than just bury or edit the content.<p>The real issue I see is that Disney has so much control over this content due to continual extension of their exclusive copyright. To crib a line from a noted (now) Disney owned character, these episodes belong in a museum! They are more valuable now as part of our history than as exclusive Disney+ content, and it shouldn&#x27;t be up to Disney whether or not anyone gets to see them.

What does it mean to have a &quot;negative depiction&quot;? Would that be a depiction that is viewed by the majority as negative, or is it assessed by some objective function?<p>Sometimes I hear people talking about &quot;negative depictions&quot; and &quot;negative stereotypes&quot; I&#x27;m either not convinced they&#x27;re negative (Apu from The Simpsons) or other times I find a stereotype being depicting as overtly negative yet seemingly it&#x27;s acceptable because (I assume) it&#x27;s a negative stereotype about some group society doesn&#x27;t care so much about (the white police officer stereotype, the useless dad stereotype, etc).

The same content warning has been added to &#x27;Aladdin&#x27; (the 1992 cartoon, not the Will Smith shameless money grab).<p>I&#x27;m wading into shark-filled waters here but could someone please explain the racist bits of Aladdin to me?

&gt;&gt; ... and singing in a heavy accent lines such as: “Once his love gave him golden earring &#x2F; And now the ears are turning green.”<p>One has to dig deep and have a basic understanding of chemistry to understand that insult. If we are digging that deep for insults there are bound to be hundreds more. The Muppets are all in primary colors. Many of them do silly things that other characters laugh at. And they each display exaggerated characteristics that never really evolve. If we draw out venn diagrams of color&#x2F;race, slapstick comedy bits and offensive historical stereotypes, surely we can find something more insulting than this. Swedish Chef would be in my crosshairs, excepting the fact that in one episode it is explained that he isn&#x27;t actually Swedish.

What they ought to do is add a second audio track that explains and talks about the issues with the film.

Concentration camps in China are apparently fine, but god forbid if someone makes an &quot;edgy&quot; joke.

Is the Swedish chef offensive?

Let&#x27;s be fair to them: their <i>first</i> musical number was a cover of a song from an Italian &quot;pornumentary&quot; movie about Sweden.<p>In a children-oriented program.<p>In the 70&#x27;s.

&quot;Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real,&quot; is one of my favourite quote fragments. (Baudrillard)<p>It should be updated to mention that content warnings are presented as meaningful to make us believe that criticism elevates us above an experience. The real point of the content warning is to indoctrinate kids into that particular critical framework.

This feels like the latest round of moral panic that we&#x27;ll look back on with bewilderment

Wouldn’t Disney (and all the other platforms) kill these disclaimer non-stories by giving subscribers the option to opt out of questionable content disclaimers?<p>It seems like a simple and effective way that would allow one to have their cake and eat it too.

At some point these cultural sensitivities will cross a line where a majority of people will go &quot;enough&quot; and create a backlash. I do believe that somewhere in the future we wont get these content warnings even when they would be appropriate.<p>Also that Disney does it rubs me the wrong way. There is so much content in that is not racist but affect attitudes and views of children in much more unfortunate ways. And I speak from experience when not keeping an eye on my child watching Disney Channel and having to undo that damage. I&#x27;m not sure that managed to undo it totally.

What happens if this kind of content ends up being popular because people want to see negative depictions of cultures? Would they add more of it?

Hey, didn&#x27;t Disney make those war-time toons where they made fun of Germans? I guess they&#x27;ll probably slap a warning on them now...