Ab Fab movie accused of racism
Janette Krankie and Ab Fab movie accused of racism
Full text: Ab Fab movie accused of racism
And most unfortunate is the accusation comes from comedian Margaret Cho. Ab Fab is satire. It satirizes the fashion industry, it satirizes the excesses of a certain class and style of people (who those of us who lived through the 80’s probably remember.) Satire.
Racism, on the other hand, is the belief that one race is superior or inferior to another. I hardly think that’s the case here. What we have is a very precise caricature based on the very real Yayoi Kusama:
Similarly, Sacha Baron-Cohen’s film Bruno was neither anti-Austrian nor anti-gay.
My Mazamet 
I totally agree with you.
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If we took Cho’s reasoning to its next step it would mean no one can satirize Lagerfeld and his German accent, or Sarkozy and his ticks, or Putin, or even Obama. It’s absurd.
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It is. As a comedian, Cho should have some understanding of satire. I use it, usually, to point out the absurdity of things. I find it odd she doesn’t get that.
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Maybe she didn’t consider what she was saying, maybe she’d had a drink. You know how giddy those Japanese women get when they drink!!! HA- see. Using racism-isms to make fun of racism-isms 🙂
There’s an unfortunate and misguided school of thought in the US that believes any reference to race is automatically derision. That’s obviously not the case.
The other day I asked someone if they were from the middle-east and they turned out to be Mexican. There was no qualitative judgement on my part, I was just curious whether the person’s cultural references were Islamic or not. But it turned into a discussion on my alleged racism. I answered with a question: Am I anti-Muslim or anti-Mexican?
Obviously no answer was forthcoming because the inferiority/superiority aspect was actually in the mind of the person who accused me of racism- not in mine 😉
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I remember Ab Fab the TV show (thank you, BBC America), and it was hilarious. Sprawled out on the basement floor with my sisters, I’d laugh at the antics of Patsy and Edie. I never saw any racism (nor any other isms) in the show. It was satire, it was funny, it was good TV.
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The show is tongue in cheek. Racism exists and it’s a terrible thing, but this is so not the case here!
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Racism is when my ITALIAN-AMERICAN mother doesn’t want the black batista to make her coffee at Starbucks…it’s real and it happens. Ab Fab is satire and it’s funny and it’s not to be taken seriously.
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You’ve got one of those too? 🙂 I promise you my French grandmother beats your mother. Once she handed her bag to a random woman in the lobby of a hotel and asked her for a campari tonic. The problem was the woman was *another guest at the hotel* who just happened to be of a different racial background than us.
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I have one of those, yes. Won’t let the black bellboy carry her bags at a hotel because “he might steel from me”, so she’ll wait all day for a white guy.
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LOL of course, because there have never been any thieves AT ALL in the countries we were born in 😀
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Thieves in Italy (where my racist mother’s even more racist parents were born)…never.
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Your comment about Japanese women reminded me of a joke told by MARGARET CHO, her very ownself. (She is Korean.) A heckler called her a Chink. She said, “I’m not a Chink, I’m a Gook – get it right!”
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Precisely! Comedians play with these themes all the time. And doing that actually makes us consider these issues much more thoughtfully 🙂
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