Cartoon Network recently brought back the early 2000’s Samurai Jack and gave the series a very nicely done final season. They’ve been running the new episodes on their late night Adult Swim schedule since there are a number of characters having their blood spilt.
You can watch a nicely done clip of the confrontation (with hilarious close captioning).
Full episode Here
This had me thinking about cultural appropriation.Here we have an episode of a black man who’s appropriated samurai culture and is humiliated when he comes up against the real thing. If you watch the full episode you’ll see that the black samurai is voiced in a very stereotypical way. tsk, tsk, tsk.
The show itself was the creation of Gennedy Tartkovsky, a Russian Jew. Now there’s cultural appropriation for you. What would a Russian know about Samurai culture, much less how to properly portray someone from the inner city? For shame, how dare he.
I looked up the voice actors for these two characters. The black samurai was voiced by none other than David Alan Grier, from In Living Color.
Seems legit, a black actor/comedian playing up the humor of his black character. Nothing wrong with that.
Samurai Jack is voiced by Phil Lamarr. Hey, wait a minute. That name seems familiar. Oh no.
How can a black man pass himself off as a Japanese Samurai warrior? Isn’t that…Isn’t that…appropriation?
Life gets complicated when you play the SJW game.
Didn’t people use to complain that black actors didn’t get enough work?
Both actors are what I’d call equal color offenders.
You remove cultural artifacts because someone not of that cultural has used them and you’re isolating that culture you’re trying to protect, to the point of extinction when nobody is aware of much less understands the artifact.
Is velly funny.
Hal di hal hal!
No leeglets!
We need to combat this scourge. The women are the worst. We need to start wig snatching all the straight hair wigs off these nappy haired old frauds like Maxine
Looks like a clear case of blackwashing to me!
watched the short version, mostly it was annoying and irritating. Who is the intended audience for dat crap?
Rocky and Bullwinkle has class.
Absolutely. The best way to shut up these heifers is to tell them to stop appropriating the English language. Because WHITE PRIVILEGE! And then you can tell them to sit down because as they’ve granted you your WHITE PRIVILEGE! I don’t have to listen to them or do what they say. The fact that they tell me to check my WHITE PRIVILEGE! is either proof that I have none, or a reason to ignore their unprivileged persons.
Hey, I LIKE samurai jack! :b
The SJW crowd has always been hypocritical to the point of sheer nonsense. I try not to let that effect my television watching.
I liked Lo Wang better.