Steve Martin’s seminal “King Tut” sketch is being blasted as cultural appropriation by a group of students at a prestigious liberal arts college in Oregon after the classic "Saturday Night Live" parody was played in a humanities course.
The sketch, created by Martin in 1978 to parody the hysteria and commercialization surrounding a traveling Tutankhamun exhibit, has outraged students who say the sketch is the cultural equivalent of blackface because one of the side actors emerged from a sarcophagus with his face painted gold.
"That’s like somebody … making a song just littered with the n-word everywhere,” a member of the group, Reedies Against Racism, told The Atlantic. “The gold face of the saxophone dancer leaving its tomb is an exhibition of blackface.”
Students first took issue with the video when it was played during a humanities course, which is designed for students to “to engage in original, open-ended, critical inquiry.” Students said they should not be forced to take the course until different coursework is given because the sketch is racist.
Martin was obviously prepared for the backlash, even back in 1978. Dressed in faux Egyptian garb, he opens the sketch by first explaining somberly that he has issues with the popular traveling exhibit for the boy king, King Tut.
“I think it is a national disgrace the way we have commercialized it with trinkets and toys, t-shirts and posters,” he says, earning laughs as most of his live audience likely knew he was kidding.
He and his band then launch into a jazzy song that includes the lyrics:
Now, if I'd known/They'd line up just to see you/I'd trade in all my money/And bought me a museum/King Tut/Buried with a donkey/Funky Tut/He's my favorite honky!
And:
Now, when I die/Don't think I'm a nut/Don't want no fancy funeral/Just one like ol' king Tut.
It's not the first time students at Reed have protested the required freshman humanities course, which Reedies Against Racism said “perpetuates white supremacy — by centering 'whiteness' as the only required class at Reed.” Students have protested the course by standing with signs that say “Fuck Hum 110” and “We demand space for students of color” inside the class.
Reed Professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who identifies herself as a gay mixed-race woman, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on her experiences with the protestors. Valdivia who has PTSD said before her lectures she suffered from a “lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite and an inability to focus.”
“The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices,” she said.
Free speech is increasingly a hot-button issue at universities around the nation, where students have led disruptions on campus in an attempt to shut down on-campus speakers. University of Wisconsin students attempted to disrupt conservative columnist Ben Shapiro when he came to speak at the campus last fall.
But students are now bringing the disruptions into the classroom. Professors say they are afraid to speak up and create conversation around controversial issues.
“The air is different now because what you do in a classroom can end up on Fox News,” Luis Fernandez, a North Arizona University professor, told The New York Times.
What do they know about anything? They are Liberal Arts Students,which means by definition they don't KNOW a damn thing,but suspect much.
If one of them were to catch fire you would probably have to explain it to him or her.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
Reed Professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who identifies herself as a gay mixed-race woman, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on her experiences with the protestors. Valdivia who has PTSD said before her lectures she suffered from a “lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite and an inability to focus.”
In other words,just more typical days at the looney bin she goes to in order to not be homeless.
BTW,you just KNOW they had someone spell-check their signs.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
Professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who identifies herself as a gay mixed-race woman, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on her experiences with the protestors. Valdivia who has PTSD said before her lectures she suffered from a “lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite and an inability to focus.”
Quack, Waddle...
psy·cho·sis
s+ÈkMsYs/
noun
a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
[The Architects of Western Decline:
A Study on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism]
"According to my opinion, and the opinions of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call eitherideological subversion,active measures, orpsychological warfare.What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.
It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages.
The first stage being "demoralization". It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of [their] enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least 3 generation of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.
Most of the activity of the department [KGB] was to compile huge amount / volume of information, on individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion. Publisher, editors, journalists, uh actors, educationalists, professors of political science. Members of parliament, representatives of business circles.
Most of these people were divided roughly into two groups: those who would tow the Soviet foreign policy, they would be promoted to positions of power through media and public manipulation; [and] those who refuse the Soviet influence in their own country would be character assassinated OR executed physically, come Revolution. "
--KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov
--Soviet Subversion of the Free Press (Ideological subversion, Destabilization, CRISIS - and the KGB)
I can't believe anybody would be offended by this song, especially 40 years after its release.
It seems to me there are many,many people today who seem to exist in order to be offended. Making them happy would piss them off.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
