Would this be considered racist in the contemporary USA?

[tir1944]

Would this be considered racist in the contemporary USA?

Song "Chunga Changa" from a 70s Soviet cartoon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWGovsuRWYM

Lyrics (use Google Translate):

Чунга-Чанга синий небосвод
Чунга-Чанга лето круглый год
Чунга-Чанга весело живем
Чунга-Чанга песенку поем
Чудо-остров чудо-остров
Жить на нем легко и просто
Жить на нем легко и просто
Чунга-Чанга




Yugoslav Airlines commercial (skip to 00:30) - "flights to Chicago"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38U0FyWvH-k

[Astarte]

Yes.

[tir1944]

Both videos?

[Nox]

I wouldn't say they were racist, but they are very stereotyping.

[ВАЛТЕР]

Knowing our people they probably thought this was a clever way to include all people in the commercial. I doubt there was any foul intent with making the plane a black guy.

I felt kind of sad watching the commercials, considering that at one point Yugoslavia had an airline company which spanned the globe and now JAT can barely make trips around Europe. :(

[Commissar Rykov]

The animation in the first one was pretty damn racist but I might be viewing it from a American lense where that seems to resemble blackface.

Second one is definitely racist and especially ignorant as there are a lot of people who make up Chicago especially a lot of various Slavic Immigrants.

[khad]

I'd have to view the entire cartoon to assess the context of the clip. A lot of Russian/Soviet animation used solid colors and high contrasts, so the fact that the characters are solid black says little. If you look closely, their lips are not pink but the color of the background, yellow.

Watch this Soviet cartoon (at about the 2 min mark, a similar style of abstraction is used):

bWLsQWENlDY

As for the commercial, yes, it's racist.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

Oh god...

[Rodrigo]

What's the meaning of Chunga Chunga in that cartoon?

I don't think some things considered racist are actually or necessarily racist. As Dzhugashvili said, they're stereotypes. Hmmm... But stereotypes can be considered racist, right?

Another examples, from US cartoons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXjWNgY5xDw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64AQ3BzhWKI

Wow, some stereotypes from this last video seem rude

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nWare_edit.jpg (http://www.anonym.to/?http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Minstrel_PosterBillyVanWare_edit.jpg)

O.o

http://jonathanturley.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/turkishblackface.jpg

[Zealot]

I didn't find any of them racist tbh, but then again I'm neither American nor black

[Rodrigo]

From Bamboozled, 2000 US movie:

02:02:57 Manray. You done fucked up everything!
02:03:05 -Think they're cannibals? -You see this shit?
02:03:08 They wouldn't dare do that to white people.
02:03:10 Maybe they want some dark meat.
02:03:12 What do you have to say for yourself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7-WvUfm9Ik

[Obs]

I wouldn't call the cartoon racist. Even if there is a bit of stereotyping going on, you might as well say that's stereotyping about isolated tribal peoples as you could that it's about Africans. In any case, it doesn't seem spiteful in any manner.

[tfb]

The first one isn't, unless there's something racist in the lyrics (which I don't understand).

The second one isn't supposed to be saying that everyone in Chicago is black or anything. It's about ragtime music. Chicago is where it got really big. That's why the plane is wearing an oldfashioned hat. The lips might be like that because the people who made the cartoon were trying to make the plane look like representations of black people from back when ragtime was big. This one is a "maybe", imo.

[Engel]

The first one probably isn't. Unless the lyrics mean something racist (which they didn't on google translate) then I'm pretty sure it's not. Might be a little stereotypical but compared to some Disney stuff (Song of the South, Dumbo, and The Jungle Book come to mind) it's not. Second one is plausible.