Seeeaaalaaab underneath the water
God damn that theme song is a banger
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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This is funny because the cishet white guy the meme refers to thinks it's his right to stand-your-ground a guy walking around the neighborhood.
♪If you're looking for me, You better check under the sea, 'cause that is where you'll find me, Underneath the sea, lab, Underneath the water, Sealab, at the bottom of the sea.♪
Equal rights are a threat to hegemony. Losing hegemony is scary for the privileged, as it is status quo.
As a cishet white man I can confirm that I hate every minority, especially women and blacks.
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Yes, let's fight prejudice by stereotyping a whole race, gender, and sexual orientation...
oh god this feels like Reddit all over again. they're not hunting you! i promise
I very frequently find that very few people here grasp the concept of humor in any measurable way.
It took me a second to understand "cishet" I'm not used to seeing both terms smudged together and shortened line that
I thought it was a misspelling of cishette (a short cisgendered person)... I was excited for a second as a white cishette heterosexual male that my people were finally being singled out in a meme with a cool new nickname... There are DOZENS of us!
I knew Lemmy was a good place, and then the sealab memes came.
Now it's better.
Yes Stormy, we're gonna hunt you for sport. You and the rest of the Pod 6 jerks.
I loved that show.
It's funny because extending rights to marginalized people does not by any means diminish the rights of the privileged.
Turns out, the cruelty of knowing you have more rights than others was part of the fun the whole time.
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In general white cishet westerners don't know any social dynamic beyond the "in" group oppressing the "out" group (colonialism, settler-colonialism, slavery, capitalism, imperialism), so without targeted education, their imagination of different social structures can only be a projection of this assumed default state.
Related JAQing off opinion piece in The Guardian posted today: "Where are all the films about ‘whiteness’?" .
For those unfamiliar with the acronym, JAQ = "Just asking questions," a bad faith tactic pushing an absurd narrative (e.g. "movies for white people are disappearing") by pretending to ask innocent questions.
Direct quote, emphasis mine:
That’s why the final step towards true racial equality on screen is for whiteness to be cinematically named, described and dethroned from its “just human” position of cultural power. It’s time for white people to develop a cinema culture all of their own.
It's riddled with white power talking points like this. This shit is really fucked up. It is irresponsible for a well-known major news source to publish shit like this, even with the "opinion" label attached. It's basically right wing extremist (aka Nazi) recruitment propaganda.
The real problem with that Guardian piece is the insistence on perpetuating a superficial identity marker well past its expiration date. Why do we keep breathing life into the dead horse that is racism? Let it die along with the aging population of people who grew up when it was still cool to think that race exists.
The "Carlson Gambit".
I read that as white people being perceived as the default human, which they (the writer) assert needs to change by defining white people with a distinct non-default culture. Your emphasis only serves to show me your laser-focus on one statement, disregarding the context, which I perhaps incorrectly assume you looked specifically for after the title of the article upset you.
That’s why the final step towards true racial equality on screen is for whiteness to be cinematically named, described and dethroned from its “just human” position of cultural power.
No, the way to dethrone whiteness as being "just human" is for all movies to have reasonable representation of non-white people.
I didn't read the whole thing but I made it to your quote and I think their point is intended to be anti-racist. They are saying films have a sort of universal human experience or perspective or whatever you want to call it that's been "white" by default but shouldn't be.
Yep, and the top comment showed the exact kind of thinking that led to the creation of OPs meme.
Just talking about whiteness in anything other than accusatory or self-deprecating terms is always racism by default, even if the points made are absolutely valid and not racist at all.
This in turn leads to a situation where a large chunk of the "mildly conservative" folks can only assume, that if those are the advocates of the movement, then just mentioning their own identity will get them in trouble. Demagogues of course gladly take it from there.
Once again, self-righteous zealots sabotage the very thing they claim to be fighting for, by completely not understanding what that actually means.
This is also how I read it. I actually really appreciate attacking the idea of "white as default". It's kind of like how some gamers think representing anything besides the "default" demographic is "political".
I think this is the more revealing excerpt:
This is the defining irony of white film-making. The more oblivious your film is to matters of race, the whiter it plays. Because whiteness is often exactly that: the freedom not to see race, even when it’s right there in front of you.
Basically, being aware of whiteness makes for less racist movies. There's nothing wrong with white movies, but it's wrong when white movies pretend they're not white, but universal and default. The article concludes:
Instead, our twofold expectation should be this: 1) The industry affords more film-makers of colour the same creative freedoms and commercial opportunities that are now afforded white film-makers, and 2) That the film culture – including the film-makers themselves – develop the confidence, insight and language to discuss and dethrone white cinema.
This does not sound like racist dog-whistling or white supremacy to me.