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Professor Holly Barker penned an article that was featured in "The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs" regarding the cartoon, insisting upon its dangerousness for perpetuating a legacy of racism and violence against Pacific indigenous people.
Barker said the show is promoting violence and racism against such people through its "occupation" of native Pacific lands. Barker also points out that the show also promotes "cultural appropriation" in using an island-themed motif throughout its production design.
Abstract:
Billions of people around the globe are well-acquainted with SpongeBob Squarepants and the antics of the title character and his friends on Bikini Bottom. By the same token, there is an absence of public discourse about the whitewashing of violent American military activities through SpongeBob’s occupation and reclaiming of the bottom of Bikini Atoll’s lagoon.
SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing the settler colonial takings of Indigenous lands while erasing the ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland.
This article exposes the complicity of popular culture in maintaining American military hegemonies in Oceania while amplifying the enduring indigeneity (Kauanui 2016) of the Marshallese people, who maintain deeply spiritual and historical connections to land—even land they cannot occupy due to residual radiation contamination from US nuclear weapons testing—through a range of cultural practices, including language, song, and weaving.
This article also considers the gendered violence of nuclear colonialism and the resilience of Marshallese women.
originally posted by: Tarzan the apeman.
a reply to: IAMTAT
He never watched SpongeBob then. Mr. Crab has a daughter, one of the cops is a woman, King Neptune has a daughter. Sounds like this professor is talking like a man with a paper hind end.
originally posted by: eXia7
Geez, is this the type of intellect you need to be a professor in this day and age?
I don't have a degree, but I'm sure I could say stupid sh# without one.
originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
originally posted by: eXia7
Geez, is this the type of intellect you need to be a professor in this day and age?
I don't have a degree, but I'm sure I could say stupid sh# without one.
TAT, DB and myself are 100% living proof that you can be a stupid **** without a degree.