Peddling Chinese and political propaganda to kids is fine, according to Disney, which is why the company does exactly that (with no disclaimer). But offering The Muppet Show without an “offensive content” warning is beyond the pale to Disney — which is why it now has slapped one on the program.
This warning will be seen when streaming the show on Disney+, where it can now be found after the company released five seasons of the iconic program on Friday. As the New York Post reports:
The disclaimer shown prior to each episode warns viewers that the show features “stereotypes” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.”
“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the disclaimer states.
“Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together,” the disclaimer says.
“Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe,” the statement adds.
Actually, Disney is committed to making money. This is why it value-signals about this (in order to avoid media criticism) and baby-saving laws here in the United States, but turns a blind eye to deep-pocket China’s Uighur genocide.
The people who actually care (as much as the morally compromised can) about “harmful stereotypes” are pointy-headed academics on college campuses and certain agitating activists. But their warnings are common. When watching classic cartoons on DVD with my best friend’s kids more than a decade ago, we were accosted with an “offensive content” warning. Shockingly, his five- and six-year-olds weren’t offended.
If you’d like to be offended — or if you’re a relative whippersnapper who only knew about the muppets called your little brother and sister — view the “best of The Muppet Show” video below.
Ironic here is that when creators put stereotypical characters in kids’ shows and the purpose wasn’t just to entertain, it often was also because they wanted to introduce children to other cultures. Now they’re damned as bigoted stereotype-peddlers.
The always-amusing Kyle Smith of National Review poked fun at Disney’s phoniness. “In order to counteract the effects of noxious stereotypes, the Muppets clearly should have substituted different noxious stereotypes, the stereotypes progressives love about minorities being perpetual victims,” he wrote. “Sam the Eagle could have been shown exploiting Asian Muppets as they built a railroad or something.”
On a more serious note, Smith points out that trigger warnings have become a bit like racism accusations: “so ubiquitous that they’re now officially meaningless.”
“If you want your currency to retain its value, don’t keep running the printing presses,” he explained. “Disney+ has previously appended trigger warnings to such movies as Lady and the Tramp, Swiss Family Robinson, The Aristocats, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, and Peter Pan. Aladdin has a trigger warning, and that one’s from the Nineties.”
So put “a trigger warning on everything, idiots, if it makes you guys happy,” Smith concludes. “Trigger warnings attack a nonproblem with a meaningless blob of sensitivity signaling that in turn earns nothing but mockery from thinking people.”
While true, the problem is that those thinking people don’t have institutional power. Moreover, trigger warnings correspond to cancel culture: If you’re an ideological anachronism today (you know, a real man of the year 2008) and dare display even Muppet-like political incorrectness, the best outcome for you may be visitation with a trigger warning (a Big Tech “sensitive content” notice). At worst, you may be “canceled.”
All this said, it should be noted here that leftists don’t actually have a problem with stereotypes.
They just want you to accept their own stereotypes.
These would be ideas such as Trump supporters are white supremacists, white people are inherently racist, traditional masculinity is “toxic,” Christians are intolerant, and conservatives deny science.
It also would be comical, if not so sad, that the Hollywood sewer pipe and the Left in general would trouble over kids’ exposure to stereotypes. After all, these are the same people who’ve normalized cursing and lewd sexuality, and who tell kids they can have sex with the same sex and be the opposite one.
Also, here’s a clue for the clueless: I and my age-mates watched the “stereotypical” cartoons as children; we saw those traditional portrayals of Arabs, Japanese, Indians, and others. Yet they never inspired negative feelings toward the groups in question; if anything, they just made us more curious about their cultures.
The truth here is encapsulated in a joke a clergyman once told when talking about the difference between loving people in theory and in practice. “I love everyone in the whole world,” he said.
“Except the 16 or 17 people who happen to be around me.”
It actually can be easy liking people when they’re presented as (perhaps unrealistic) abstractions. What’s sometimes more difficult is getting along when you actually must live together in real life.
This is especially true when rabble-rousing agitators insist on stirring the racial pot. So I would say that leftist ideology should come with a content warning, but, actually, it shouldn’t come at all.
