He was mixed race
Here is a picture of him
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I believe his paternal grandmother was a slave
He was mixed race
Here is a picture of him
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I believe his paternal grandmother was a slave
Originally Posted by Sandstorm77
I can't tell you specifically if he was a jerkass in real life, but there was notes of him having an astounding number of affairs and at least 4 illegitimate children and rumour of several of his works just being rewrites of other people's work cause he didn't like them.
Oddly, the bit about his attempt to be the Pokemon Master of STDs was not considered abnormal for a man of his social standing at the time, but the sheer number is impressive.
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Like Asterum pointed out he was mixed, and FSF has him having tan skin so it fits
"Only in my company, will you not be a monster"
anywhere than here
Mixed heritage usually has quite a few stronger signifiers than just "tan skin", though.
This reminds me of how the Earthsea anime also portrays Ged (a man of explicitly dark sin*) as just having a tan skin.
* Well, LeGuin describes it as being of a red-brown colour. So, something like the stereotypical skin colour of a Native American, then?
Last edited by SpoonyViking; August 9th, 2018 at 03:31 PM.
.The English playwright Watts Phillips, who knew Dumas in his later life, described him as "the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth. His tongue was like a windmill – once set in motion, you never knew when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself"
Anime (with some obvious exceptions) tends to have a very racially homogenous art-style in general though, so I don't think it's fair to highlight Dumas as an egregious example.
To give a single example that comes to mind, Lelouch from Code Geass is Britannian and Suzaku is Japanese, yet you'd be damned to tell that difference in ethnicity from their character designs.
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Sounds like his SF characterization was pretty on point then.
Last edited by RoydGolden; August 9th, 2018 at 04:24 PM.
Yeah, Dumas' characterization does seem spot on now that I hear all this. Also, Lelouch's ethnic identifier is his purple eyes (jk).
Not egregious, no, but it's still an example of a terrible trend.
I don't see what's so "terrible" about an art-style that just doesn't happen to highlight certain racial differences. What counts as a representation of a given race is pretty subjective anyways. For instance, pretty much anyone would say the Simpsons family from the titular series are white, but if you take their character designs (bright yellow skin, blue hair, etc) at face value they have very little in common with RL white people.
I thought the Simpsons were all anthropomorphic lions?
Because that's not intrinsic at all to the art style? I mean, just look at one modern example:
https://japansociology.files.wordpre...0/slamdunk.jpg
Seriously, Royd, how the heck did you come up with THAT defense? Do you think Japanese artists don't have black or brown, for example, in their colour palette?
But Dumas is depicted with dark skin in SF, and when Iceblade brought that up you changed the subject to racial signifiers other than skin-color. Acting like we were just talking about skin-color the entire time (and thereby making me look like an idiot who thinks Japanese people can't draw dark skin) is completely disingenuous. I thought you were better than that Spoony.
Last edited by RoydGolden; August 9th, 2018 at 09:26 PM.
Just make Dumas look like Afro Samurai.
Keep the chessboard teeth though.
For starters, I did continue to use skin color as a signifier - hence why I used Ged as an example of how "tan skin" is not the same thing as "dark sin" (which Dumas doesn't have in "Strange Fake").
Secondly, anime / manga has no problem at all with using other signifiers (exaggerated or not) for black people, for instance:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...path-prefix=en
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20100625064456
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...de066e1765b7d6
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...zpGsXm84MDBpuJ
I'm not familiar with the character you're talking about so I can't comment on that. With Dumas though, I do think tan (rather than completely dark) skin made sense to represent his mixed-race heritage. While he does look pale a lot of times in the manga, I think that's more to do with the artist's personal style of shading than anything more sinister.
And with your examples, two of those are literal racial caricatures (presumably not your ideal example of black representation) and one is Jojo, a series that already strays significantly from the stereotypical "anime" artstyle. The last one didn't load for me, so I unfortunately can't comment on that either.
Anyhow, my point wasn't that anime never depicts certain racial characteristics, but that the traits stereotypically associated with black or mixed-race people like full lips and pronounced noses are precisely those that tend to be abstracted away in a lot of anime art. You're free to argue that in itself is a form of prejudice (though that gets into more general issue of how all representational art inevitably emphasizes certain traits and downplays others), but it's clearly distinct from anti-black racism in particular, since Japanese and Asian characters also get their ethnic signifiers abstracted away.
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Also...
If you're trying to educate me on racism, evoking the Curse of Ham seems rather counterproductive.
Last edited by RoydGolden; August 9th, 2018 at 09:49 PM.
Who cares. He's French.
Though your reply was meant to be glib, you actually do raise an interesting point that European countries tend to conceive of race differently than in the US. In America, due to the legacy of slavery black people tend to identify themselves by their African ancestry; i.e "African-American". France and other European countries- while obviously having their own problems with race- lack that history, hence why there's no equally popular analogous terms of "Afro-French" or "Afro-English". In fact, nowadays most black people in Europe would find it very racist to imply that they're anything less than 100% of their native country.
That's why Trevor Noah got in a bit of trouble over his joke about how "Africa won the World Cup". He was well-meaningly imputing America's history of racial issues onto France, without realizing how offensive it sounded...
Last edited by RoydGolden; August 9th, 2018 at 10:51 PM.
You have eyes and a fully-functioning sense of sight, presumably.
And yes, the fact that some of the characters are drawn like caricatures is the point: the anime/manga art style is perfectly capable of portraying racial signifiers in an exaggerated manner for "comedic" effect, so why are you arguing in all seriousness that it somehow can't do that very thing? Particularly when there have been plenty of regular depictions of racial signifiers, as seen with Avdol*, or Bleach's Tousen or Yoruichi.
Then again, I shouldn't expect better from someone invoking "the Curse of Ham" in such a glib manner.
* Seriously, JJBA straying from a typical anime style? Have you seen how much the art in Parts 1-3 is "inspired" by Hokuto no Ken, or how stylised it got afterwards? Regardless of what Ufotable may have taught you, the presence of noses does not make it non-standard for anime / manga.
I'll concede your point, but the Curse of Ham thing was just me poking fun at the silly typo in your post. Sorry if you found it offensive...
By Jojo straying from a typical anime style, I meant the "moe" style a lot of modern anime uses, with big eyes, small noses and the like. But I'll admit it probably came out wrong.
Last edited by RoydGolden; August 9th, 2018 at 11:35 PM.
I'm not gonna get into the whole debate with you guys, but I will say, if my options are "Choco-Love" or "Tanned Frenchman" I'll take the latter. Fate has generally been good at avoiding racist portrayals of ethnicity, even if at times going the opposite direction and damn near erasing it (The age old Gilgamesh argument), but I think the question mark of possibly racist erasure is better than the exclamation point of definitely racist cartoon.
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