Tag: spongebob squarepants
SpongeBob Squarepants Is A ‘Violent,’ ‘Racist’ Colonizer, College Professor Says
You know you know the answer. It’s SpongeBob SquarePants, the iconic cartoon character loved by kids and adults alike, who on Friday turned 20 years old.
The animated sponge spends his days getting into wacky adventures along with his buddies Patrick Starfish, Squidward Tentacles, and Mr. Krabs. And without speaking down to children, the lovable, absorbent square doles out some life lessons along the way.
But a University of Washington professor thinks SpongeBob is violent and racist.
Yes, seriously.
Holly M. Barker has penned a piece titled, “Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom.”
“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,” reads the abstract for Barker’s piece.
Barker’s abstract asserts that SpongeBob has colonized Bikini Bottom — the underwater home to the lovable characters — and claims the cartoon is “whitewashing” the “violent American military activities” against natives on Pacific islands, specifically the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing:
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.
The Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable, and some conspiracy theorists claim the cast of SpongeBob SquarePants were mutated by the testing.
Barker declares that as an “American character” allowed to live there, SpongeBob showed his privilege of “not caring about the detonation of nuclear bombs.”
“SpongeBob’s presence on Bikini Bottom continues the violent and racist expulsion of Indigenous peoples from their lands (and in this case their cosmos) that enables U.S. hegemonic powers to extend their military and colonial interests in the postwar era,” she wrote.
Barker even rips the theme song, saying it denounces Bikini Bottom as full of “nautical nonsense.”
“The song’s directives, ensconced in humor, provide the viewer with an active role in defining Bikini Bottom as a place of nonsense, as the audience is instructed ‘If nautical nonsense be something you wish… drop on the deck and flop like a fish,’ ” she wrote.
Barker says the children’s show is full of gender bias as well, writing, “all of the main characters on the show are male.” Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel that lives underwater with the aid of an old-fashioned diving suit, is, of course, a female, but Barker says she’s just a token.
In conclusion, Barker writes, “We should be uncomfortable with a hamburger-loving American community’s occupation of Bikini’s lagoon and the ways that it erodes every aspect of sovereignty.”
Nautical nonsense, indeed.
Article via DailyWire
‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ creator Stephen Hillenburg dies at 57
Stephen Hillenburg, creator of the megahit Nickelodeon cartoon series “SpongeBob SquarePants,” died Monday. He was 57.
The cause of death was ALS, which Hillenburg revealed he had been diagnosed with in March of last year.
“We are incredibly saddened by the news that Steve Hillenburg has passed away following a battle with ALS,” Nickelodeon said in a statement. “He was a beloved friend and long-time creative partner to everyone at Nickelodeon, and our hearts go out to his entire family. Steve imbued ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ with a unique sense of humor and innocence that has brought joy to generations of kids and families everywhere. His utterly original characters and the world of Bikini Bottom will long stand as a reminder of the value of optimism, friendship and the limitless power of imagination.”
Hillenburg graduated from Humboldt State University in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in natural resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He then became a marine biology teacher at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute) in Dana Point, California. This interest, combined with his artistic talent and love of the sea and its creatures, led him to write and illustrate stories as teaching tools with characters that would later become the denizens of SpongeBob’s home, Bikini Bottom.
He began his animation career in 1987, pursuing a degree in experimental animation at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia and earning his master of fine arts in 1992.
That same year, he won an award for Best Animated Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival for his animated short “Wormholes,” which went on to be shown at various international animation festivals. From 1993 to 1996, he would pursue work in television as a director and writer on Nickelodeon’s series “Rocko’s Modern Life.”
From there, he began to work full-time on writing, producing and directing the animated series that would eventually become “SpongeBob SquarePants.” The first episode aired on Nickelodeon on May 1, 1999, and the series commenced its full run on July 17 of that year. The series has aired nearly 250 episodes to date. It appealed not only to children but older viewers as well, with college students even organizing viewing parties for the show.
The series has won both US and British Emmy Awards, Annie Awards and ASACP Awards and has been dubbed or subtitled in more than 60 languages, including Urdu, Azerbaijani and Maori.
Hillenburg also wrote, produced and directed “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” which was released in 2004 and went on to gross over $140 million worldwide. Hillenburg then wrote the story for and was the executive producer of the sequel, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water,” in 2015.
Hillenburg — or Steve as he was known to family, friends and fans — was born Aug. 21, 1961, at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma. After leaving the military, his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg Jr., became a draftsman and designer for aerospace companies. His mother, Nancy, taught visually impaired students.
He is survived by his wife of 20 years, Karen Hillenburg, son Clay, mother Nancy Hillenburg (nee Dufour) and brother Brian Kelly Hillenburg, his wife, Isabel, and nieces Emma and Hazel.
Article via PageSix