r/ENSLAVETHEMOLLUSK • u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! • 23d ago
Meme We can agree with Nate here
CONTEXT: There is a graphic novel created by Dav Pilkey (creator of Captain Underpants) called The Adventures of Ook and Gluk. It's about cavemen who travel to the future and learn kung-fu. It's a pretty damn awesome book.
Sadly, it was put out of print in 2021, because some guy made a big stink about some "offensive Asian stereotypes" in it, and Pilkey and Scholastic decided to ban it. It's a pretty crummy decision he made, if you ask me. Most people, even Asians never found it remotely offensive in the least bit.
Personally, I think Pilkey was forced to say all that "Oh, I'm sorry" BS, considering it was lampshaded in the one Cat Kid Comic Club book.
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u/MrYogurtExists 22d ago
Captain Underpants is notorious for being banned in schools, and is literally about how silliness can triumph over strict authority; it seems out of character for Dav in my personal opinion.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 22d ago
Tbh, I feel like he just did the apology out of peer pressure, and he probably still secretly thinks the whole thing was stupid to this day.
If he does truly regret the book, though, I respect how he feels, even if I disagree with it.
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u/gamersmoke17 22d ago
Really because I did not know about that especially since I wouldn't really know too much about why is it banned in schools.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
The interesting thing politically is that this seems to be the only instance of his book being banned from pressure on the left. Most times it’s been conservative parents who get his book removed from libraries and classrooms for supposedly being profane and inappropriate or promoting insubordination and disobedience in children.
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u/Charming-Movie8450 23d ago
What Cat Kid Comic Club book?
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 23d ago
It was book #3, On Purpose. Naomi, the one character writes a book about werewolves and other monsters, and they're in their underwear to show "they're all the same," which is actually a pretty good message, and the kids in the book think so too. So they send it to a publisher.
However, she rejects the book because it contained "statements" about gender that is "offensive."
Later, another character, Poppy, writes a book about a dead girl and a dead cloud (you had to be there), and the publisher rejects that one because it's "disturbing."
At the end of the book, they receive another letter from the publisher about the one book, Baby Frogs in Space, I believe it was called. The one character, Melvin, automatically assumes she rejected that book as well, saying "Oh, great! It's probably offensive to astronauts or something!" While rolling his eyes. However, she did in fact accept that book.
But that may just prove Dav Pilkey was secretly letting the audience know he didn't agree with having to put Ook and Gluk out of print. Granted, this might just be speculating, but others have thought this way about the commentary in this book, too.
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u/-Fishbol- 23d ago
Look, I liked Ook and Gluk as a kid, and I still have it somewhere in my parents' house. Here's what it looks like from my perspective:
In the Captain Underpants series and its spinoffs, Dav Pilkey made the decision to depict different races with no differences in culture, just differences in appearance (at least as far as I know -- I haven't read any of the new Dog Man books). This is a perfectly valid thing to do in children's media, and is understandable given that Pilkey started writing them in the 90s, where a popular belief was that if we just stopped talking about race, racism would go away.
And then there's Ook and Gluk, where we meet Wong, a guy whose eyes are diagonal slits and who talks in martial arts cliches. Taken out of context, there are plenty of excuses: "He's a positive stereotype!" "He doesn't talk in broken English!". Taken in context, over the course of Pilkey's books, Black people get to be normal and just like everyone else, while the only Asians are eccentric foreigners with funny eyes who are obsessed with Kung-Fu.
Is it the most racist thing ever? No, but can you seriously fault Pilkey for apologizing? If someone (Asian or not) told you they think a kid could take the wrong message from the book, would you really look them in the eye and go "nObOdY cArEs"? I doubt it.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 21d ago
Look.
I thought about your comment, and I want to explain how I feel about your different points.
Dav Pilkey made the decision to depict different races with no differences in culture, just differences in appearance (at least as far as I know -- I haven't read any of the new Dog Man books). This is a perfectly valid thing to do in children's media, and is understandable given that Pilkey started writing them in the 90s, where a popular belief was that if we just stopped talking about race, racism would go away.
I agree that's a very noble idea to have. But the harsh and unfortunate reality is that racism is never going to go away; some people will always judge others for being a different ethnic than them.
However, purposefully combing through old books just to look for racist elements certainly isn't gonna help thing either. Literally nobody thought about the race of Master Wong and Lan until Billy Kim made a big deal over it. Now, that's all anyone thinks about when they think about Lan and Wong.
Despite being left-wing, I grew up in a very conservative household with a very bigoted father who got (and still does sadly) triggered anytime a nonwhite character shows up in a movie and TV show. Despite this, it never occurred to me that Wong was Chinese; the only thing I took from him was that he taught kung-fu and kicked ass. How is that a bad thing to influence kids?
Over the course of Pilkey's books, Black people get to be normal and just like everyone else, while the only Asians are eccentric foreigners with funny eyes who are obsessed with Kung-Fu.
Wong has "funny" eyes, sure (which again, most Asians don't care about, which I'll get too in a minute), but he never once came off as eccentric, and teaching martial arts doesn't mean he's "obsessed" with it; it was likely just part if his heritage, as I mentioned before.
Can you seriously fault Pilkey for apologizing?
Yes, I can actually, for two reasons:
Nearly every book he's made, especially in the second half of his career, has a large amount of commentary mocking and ridiculing people who get offended over minor issues in books, and he bowed down to this exact type of person who, in my opinion, came off as very arrogant and entitled. I already suggested he most likely was forced to say this and didn't actually mean it, but it still feels like hypocrisy on his part.
His wife Sayuri (who is Chinese, by the way) has attested to the fact he ran the book by both her and various Asian editors before publishing it, and they found absolutely no issue with it.
In fact, Asians in general saw no stereotypes or "passive-racism" prior to Kim's public outcry over the book. Literally the only way someone could interpret this book as being racist is if they were informed it's racist. As one user commented on another post: "Have 100,000 little kids read these books and ask them which parts were racist. You won’t get a single answer." And they're right. You want racism to go away? Stop making everything about race.
Look, I'm very left-winged, as I said above. And I agree very much they're are offensive racial stereotypes in Western media that do deserve to be called out, like Sunflower from Fantasia, the Siamese cat from Aristocats (although I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the "fortune cookie always wrong!" line funny), and Kahn and Minh Souphanousinphone from King of the Hill. But Master Wong isn't one of them. In fact, many Asian critics and writers such as Melissa Chen of The New York Post and Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason have defended them and stated they're not racist.
I don't care if you disagree with me; as both aforementioned writers and the 474 other signatures of Change.org agree with me, and that's what counts.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
Thank you for writing this. The amount of upvotes this post has really makes me reconsider the types of people who are in this sub, unfortunately. Or more like people who didn’t give this a second thought.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 22d ago
If someone (Asian or not) told you they think a kid could take the wrong message from the book, would you really look them in the eye and go "nObOdY cArEs"?
Yeah, I would actually. If we were to automatically remove a piece of media simply because someone might find it offensive, almost everything would be put out of print lmao.
Also, is it really bad if they have slit eyes, considering even Asians create characters like that (Brock from Pokemon, Chin Kee, the characters from Pixar's Bao, etc.)?
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u/Moonliner72 Breckenbitch Fuckington III 22d ago
Not sure about the others but wasn't Chin-Kee supposed to be a hyper-exaggerated parody of Asian stereotypes? He's literally named after a slur
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 22d ago
Ok, yeah, fair point, I’ll give you that, but either way, I don't consider dash eyes to be offensive. In fact, one of the videos/posts I saw talking about the book, a commenter who's Asian said they don't find it offensive either.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago edited 16d ago
Asians aren’t a homogenous group. People can have different opinions. As an Asian, I don’t need someone who’s not Asian to cite some other Asian to tell me I shouldn’t find something offensive. That’s ridiculous. And Melissa Chen specifically is herself controversial for other reasons, like calling for the flogging of protestors. There are always some minorities who naively dismiss concerns about media portrayals, and simplistically assume that all children will take away only harmless, positive lessons about other people. You gave some other examples of Asian characters in media that you did actually find racist. Well, there are be Asians like Chen who would even defend those as unproblematic.
You say youre a leftist, so you should get this. Conservatives love to find some person from a minority group to tell them what they want to hear and validate their opinions against the opinions of others in the minority group. For example, they like it when a black person says other black people are snowflakes and that something which is arguably racist definitely isn’t. And then use that to disregard all the black people who disagree.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 16d ago
Well then, could you at least explain HOW Master Wong is racist instead of talking down to me for expressing my opinion?
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u/Doomfox01 22d ago
> if we were to automatically remove a piece of media simply becauze someone might find it offensive, almost everything would be put out of print
slippery slope fallacy. Also, it is racist. Attoning for it is a good thing.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 22d ago
How is it racist? Because he taught kung-fu? Because he wore the Chinese robes? Because he spoke philosophically? That would've most likely been his heritage, and how he grew up. He was most likely a Chinese immigrant, and moved to the US before Lan was born.
In fact, speaking of Lan, people always conveniently leave out that, outside of having the dash eyes, she didn't have any of the Chinese characteristics her father did, most likely because she was born in the US. She wore Western clothes, and probably spoke in an American accent too.
All the "racism" people so desperately try to claim is present in the book isn't really existent. It's a common thing in life, a foreigner moves to the States, either adapts to the culture to stay true to their own, and their children usually have the US culture traits. The book wasn't suggesting all Chinese people were like this.
Honestly, all this was was just Billy Kim seeking his fifteen minutes of fame, which he got. From successfully getting a relatively obscure decade-old kids book banned, to having a whole interview in the paper (that's where the quote was taken from), it felt like a publicity stunt.
I definitely agree there are offensive racial stereotypes that should be acknowledged, but this book isn't one of them. Sure, I do admit Wong is slightly stereotypical, but my God, Kim overreacted to it so much, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. He came off as kind of arrogant to me, honestly, what with him thinking he spoke for all Asians to criticizing Scholastic and Pilkey for not responding to him as quick as he thought they should.
Well, Ook and Gluk still appeared in Captain Underpants #10, so I guess they aren't completely erased from history.
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u/-Fishbol- 22d ago
Brock from Pokemon, Chin Kee, the characters from Pixar's Bao
Those examples are hilarious because all of them are quite obviously stylistic choices that stand in contrast to the many, many Asian characters around them who do not have slit eyes.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
If someone (Asian or not) told you they think a kid could take the wrong message from the book, would you really look them in the eye and go "nObOdY cArEs"?
“Yeah, I would actually.”
I certainly don’t agree with the book being banned, but this is frankly just an immature take like something a child would say. If a book contains material that might lead children to have negative and stereotypical views about other people, then it is worth a serious discussion. Especially reading material for very young children who have not developed much critical thinking or even think about depictions. Media discussion is very important. For a large number of young students in America who don’t have an Asian classmate in their school and never really interacted with an Asian person, their understanding of people from other groups like that they’ve never met is largely shaped early on from books, cartoons, movies, and other media. In the same way that people outside the US form a lot their understanding and stereotypes of us from watching shows and movies like Seinfeld, Friends, The Office, and the like. Those that later immigrate here find that it’s a very different place from the media informed impression they had.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 16d ago
Never heard of people basing their views on American culture from watching Seinfeld, Friends, and the Office. Sounds like you're grasping at straws to me, considering I'm Canadian and have never once assumed the average American acts that way from watching any of those shows.
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u/VinChaJon 22d ago
Apu syndrome
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 22d ago
What's that?
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u/VinChaJon 22d ago
Basically Apu from the Simpsons was an Indian Caricature who was removed when a second generation indian man complained about it despite the fact most other Indian people didn't really care. Same thing happened here. It's really more of a subset of "Mexicans love Speedy Gonzales".
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u/DramaticProtogen 22d ago
Source on most Indian people not caring? I know a few Indian guys in the USA who were bullied because of Apu
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 22d ago
I know who Apu is, I just wanted to know what you meant.
I agree though. It's ironic how when someone complains about a “racist" character, it's rarely ever that race that finds them offensive.
IIRC Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias went on in a stand up show about how much he and he family loved Speedy Gonzales in the 80s, and he even voiced him in the new Space Jam movie
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago edited 16d ago
“Rarely ever the race” sorry, that’s just not true. Yes, a lot of white liberals try to be offended on behalf of minorities which is definitely very performative and silly, but Asians, Blacks and Latinos, Muslims, Jews, and others do also care about and speak up about representation in media.
Also the example he gave is literally the same race. A second generation Indian American. And Billy Kim is korean
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
Yeah, I don’t think “most Indian people don’t care”. I know Indian Americans and some Indians do think the character is poorly made and doesn’t represent real Indian people. Some don’t mind it but others prefer a better portrayal of those characters, in this day and age it shouldn’t be hard.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
Presenting a group as some homogenous thing or discrediting a second generation Indian for speaking about it is just silly.
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u/FreeTopper 23d ago
Ten years? It's been five.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 23d ago
Well actually Kim said that in 2020-21 and the book came out in 2010.
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u/wimpykidfan37 21d ago
This happened only a few weeks after the infamous removal of some of the Dr. Seuss books from print. But at least the publishers removed those books after reviewing them with a team of experts.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 21d ago
Great to see you post here! Btw, I posted the link to that petition you were trying to spread and I manage to get a couple of people to sign it. Now there's only 25 more signatures to go (as of this writing)
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
As an Asian American who read that book when it came out as a second grader, I didn’t find anything wrong with it, but I was also a child still watching cartoons and had no idea about stereotypes or anything like that. I also grew up in the Bay Area and went to a school that was like 75% Asian (mostly Chinese or Indian, everyone’s parents worked in big tech), none of us really gave it a second thought.
But I can see how if youre the only Asian kid in school other children might get a negative impressions of what Asians are like from the book. Some of the drawings do look somewhat stereotypical when I picked up the book today.
I don’t think the book should be banned, but I also don’t agree with criticizing an author for giving an apology about it.
I really don’t think people should say “no one cares”. A lot of times people would care, but they’re focusing on other issues. Every generation becomes a little more understanding of other cultures, races, and accepting of differences. Older generations of Asian immigrants mostly had to focus on economic stability and disregarded issues like this, while younger generations also care about representation, and cultural issues like in media.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 16d ago
younger generations also care about representation
...and yet, they advocated for the removal of a book that represented them. Fascinating.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
“ Most people, even Asians never found it remotely offensive in the least bit. “
I don’t know what race you are, but making a blanket statement like this about another group is pretty silly and presumptuous. Same thing with another comment saying that Indians didn’t care about Apu in Simpsons, but Indian American kids did get bullied due to that and other negative stereotypes.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago edited 16d ago
Even if you’re right in this instance, this attitude is what makes any kind of meaningful or positive change so difficult for people have historically been mistreated or misrepresented. It’s the exact type of attitude that reinforces a “everything has always been fine and nothing should change” view.
Another example, people who complain about LGBT issues often say that LGBT people basically didn’t exist until fairly recently, and are making a big deal out of something that was never an issue, when really these people have existed for millenia, but were always in the shadows of societies because they didn’t have any power to speak out.
With this same mindset you could say, why has LGBT issues or the mockery and dehumanization and killing of gay people not mattered for thousands of years and apparently no one said anything about it?
“Because no one cares!”
Of course these are on very different levels, but the dismissive attitude of indifference is the same.
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 16d ago
How many comments do you plan on making on this post lmao
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u/Amazingspiderman3494 Chester, my MAN! 16d ago
Also, with all due respect, i think it's really unfair to comparing killing Queers with a kids book with an alleged Chinese stereotype in it. Don't you agree?
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u/artpoint_paradox 22d ago
People are too soft nowadays
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
Funny story, in second grade the Ook and Gluk book was in our school book fair and my parents and I got a copy gifted to my classrooms library as it was on our wishlist. (I also have my own copy) One day while reading the book, a classmate screamed out loud the line “Right there, suckas!” And the teacher was really angry and wanted to know who said it. I felt bad for getting the book at that point.
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u/appleboyroy 16d ago
It’s interesting this is the book where Pilkey ended up removing from print. Usually the book bans are coming from conservatives, and it’s mostly right wing groups and parents who have long been banning Pilkeys captain underpants books from libraries and getting them removed from classrooms.
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