35 replies to this topic

[Emily]

Today in my Writing for Interactive Media class, we talked about the offensive costumes that people wore this year - including a Boston Marathon bombing victim, Treyvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and the burning twin towers. 

 

Pictures:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

There was another picture of a guy who dressed up as Ariel Castro - orange jumpsuit with three blow up dolls chained to him - but I couldn't find it.  

 

The girl, Alicia Lynch, who dressed up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim has received death threats and was fired from her job. (article: http://www.huffingto..._n_4208720.html) She immediately went on to apologize. However, while I don't think people should be threatening her or her family's life, I don't think she should be doing something that could get that sort of reaction from people. She should have known better. It doesn't matter if the bombing occurred a few months or a few years ago - making light of a situation that killed and injured many people is wrong. 

 

As for the Treyvon Martin costume, black face seemed to be a trend this Halloween. I saw many pictures of people with their faces painted black - even celebrities. Why is this a thing?! And not even that - a family lost their child! It doesn't matter what the circumstances were. Someone lost their child.

 

My questions are:

 

Do you think America is desensitized? 

 

Do you think it was right for Alicia Lynch's job to fire her for dressing up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim? 

 

Why do you think people are becoming more and more offensive with their costumes? Shock factor or just plain stupidity?

 

What are your thoughts in general on the whole topic?

 

Discuss. 

Edited by Emily, 07 November 2013 - 06:16 PM.

[NapisaurusRex]

I was arguing about blackface on fb the other day and got called "racist" and told it was "people like you" that would prohibit equally from ever happening... because I said using blackface is offensive.

 

Do you think America is desensitized? 

Yes. I also think it's horrible. I was listening to someone the other day talking about how they know women who turn away from comedic violence and how it was a horrible thing to do and they couldn't believe that people like that were allowed to vote, because they don't know how atrocious war is. *I* turn away from comedic violence. I don't watch horror movies... and I cry over REAL LIFE things in the news like babies being eaten in North Korea and 11 year olds getting pregnant in South America and even the Holocaust. I feel like all of those things are more real to me BECAUSE I refuse to be desensitized by trivial shit like video games and dead baby jokes. The flip side of that is that if I think too hard about what could happen here I can get panic attacks.

 

 

Do you think it was right for Alicia Lynch's job to fire her for dressing up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim? 

 It wasn't right for her to dress up as a bomb victim. That really depends on what they agreed upon when she was hired. I have worked at a place that had me sign paperwork saying if I were arrested, I could be fired. I was in a right to work state though.

 

 

Why do you think people are becoming more and more offensive with their costumes? Shock factor or just plain stupidity?

Both. People are becoming more stupid and need more attention to feel special because they're incapable of finding intrinsic value and self-worth.

[Veini]

Disgusting. Why are people starting to use black face MORE now?!? They think it's suddenly okay and it's a joke now. A harmless one. The 9/11 one is definitely still sore for me especially. This is SICK, that jerk deserved to be fired from her job. Stupid, stupid people thinking that people won't be hurt, or not caring.

[KaibaSama]

Long Post Ahead!

TL:DR: Americans are desensitized, that woman should have been fired, people are getting dumber. 

 

I think people want attention, that's why the dress in costumes they know will be offensive. How could you not know that dressing as the twin towers would be offensive? 

 

We are becoming desensitized. There's so much violence on TV and in the movies, and in our country, that we are now starting to see it as an everyday thing, something that really doesn't affect us, so we can't understand how the victims and their families feel. There's news about a shooting every week now. Violence is so ingrained in our society we don't see it as "OMG this is horrible" anymore, we see it as "Ho hum. Another shooting/victim. Just a normal day" or "Not again" and we go about our normal lives.

 

Look at Germany, they hate violence in their movies, and are perfectly fine with the human body and sex being in movies because it's a natural thing, where as violence isn't. America is the complete opposite, chopping off heads is good, peoples bodies are bad. I don't recall ever hearing so much about violence in Germany as there is in America (excluding the Nazi's). To me, it seems as though it's only America that's doing this because we think violence is perfectly ok. Yes movies aren't the same as real life, but it still sends a message that violence is nothing to throw a huge fit over as it's in so many movies and so prevalent in them, so our kids learn that violence is ok, which desensitizes them. 

 

Yes, they were right to fire that woman. There's probably something in her contract about things that can be offensive to people, and that costume was extremely offensive to the victims of the bombing. They need to show an example that things like that will not be tolerated in their work place. As for the threats, I'd say they shouldn't' be sending them, but I'm not going to say she doesn't deserve it. Now, I don't like the death threats, but things telling her what a horrible person she is and such are fine with me, just not the death threats. She needs to know the consequences of her actions and the people/victims she has hurt.

 

I think people are just becoming dumber. They also don't understand how it feels to be a victim anymore, and they don't have an sympathy at all. It may be attention as well, they wan't to be in the news so they dress up as something like that.

 

'MURICA! 

Edited by Satsuki, 07 November 2013 - 06:54 PM.

[Drakonid]

Look at Germany, they hate violence in their movies, and are perfectly fine with the human body and sex being in movies because it's a natural thing, where as violence isn't. America is the complete opposite, chopping off heads is good, peoples bodies are bad. I don't recall ever hearing so much about violence in Germany as there is in America (excluding the Nazi's). To me, it seems as though it's only America that's doing this because we think violence is perfectly ok. Yes movies aren't the same as real life, but it still sends a message that violence is nothing to throw a huge fit over as it's in so many movies and so prevalent in them, so our kids learn that violence is ok, which desensitizes them.

How is violence not natural?

[KaibaSama]

How is violence not natural?

 

It's the debate of "is man inherently good or evil"? Are we naturally inclined to do good, or are we naturally declined to do evil? I mean natural in the way of it's already there. So the human body, it's natural because it's part of us and our bodies. Violence can be avoided, can be stopped, and doesn't have to be done at all. So when I say natural I mean something that can't be avoided/stopped/not done at all. You can't just stop the human body/sex, you can't really avoid it, and since it's our bodies, it's already being done.

Just my opinion that the human body is more natural that violence is. It's an odd definition, I know. 

 

I guess I'm in the camp of "man is inherently good", and as thus, is inclined to do good, causing violence to be a bit unnatural to our own inclinations/actions/ideals, as it isn't good.

The other way with man being inherently evil, does have it as violence is natural. I guess it depends on which you prefer to think of man as. 

Edited by Satsuki, 07 November 2013 - 07:01 PM.

[Drakonid]

avoidable=unnatural?

that's not odd, that's ridiculous.

Also, sex can be avoided.

Edited by Drakonid, 07 November 2013 - 07:01 PM.

[Mishelle]

Stupid crap like this has been going on for forever now except these days people are dumb enough to upload it to facebook. 

[KaibaSama]

avoidable=unnatural?

that's not odd, that's ridiculous.

Also, sex can be avoided.

Yes, it can be avoided, however it is a thing that has been here since the beginning of time, making it in my mind natural. Since I edited my post, and you might not have caught it, "man can be two things, inherently good or inherently evil".  If he's evil violence would come naturally, if he's good violence would be unnatural in the sense that man is good and violence is against his nature to do so.

Edited by Satsuki, 07 November 2013 - 07:04 PM.

[Drakonid]

Yes, it can be avoided, however it is a thing that has been here since the beginning of time, making it in my mind natural. Since I edited my post, and you might not have caught it, "man can be two things, inherently good or inherently evil".  If he's evil violence would come naturally, if he's good violence would be unnatural in the sense that man is good and violence is against his nature to do so.

violence has also been here since the beginning of time.

[KaibaSama]

violence has also been here since the beginning of time.

Let me pose a question. How exactly is killing a bunch of young elementary schoolers, flying planes into towers and killing thousands, natural? (since they're all forms of violence, and violence is natural to you).

 

I guess we differ on opinion of violence then, that's all there is to it. 

Edited by Satsuki, 07 November 2013 - 07:34 PM.

[Drakonid]

http://en.m.wikipedi...tio_ad_absurdum

[Fikri]

this news showed up in yahoo homepage and i read it already. i feel bad but when i first saw the photo i kinda laughed. wow, can't believe she got fired because of it.

 

i think someone needs to make clear guidelines what to wear and what not to wear during halloween lol.

[Drakonid]

Violence is unnatural.  Competition is natural, but when something with the balance of resources/expected vs actual quality of life/mental state/whatever gets really out of whack, that competition goes over to the dark side and you get violence.

 

If we all had to believe that man was inherently evil and violence and war is a perfectly natural state of life.... well everyone would just go kill themselves.

Read some Hobbes.

[Drakonid]

From skimming the Wikipedia article about Hobbes, it seems I mostly agree with his philosophy.  What's your point? o.o

Yeah, not really...

According to Hobbes man is inherently evil.

[Emily]

this news showed up in yahoo homepage and i read it already. i feel bad but when i first saw the photo i kinda laughed. wow, can't believe she got fired because of it.

 

i think someone needs to make clear guidelines what to wear and what not to wear during halloween lol.

 

Apparently, she wore the costume to work for costume day or something like that. When we were talking about it in class, I was saying how maybe it got to the point where it was affecting how she was working or how the company was being portrayed. Maybe the company was getting some phone calls/threats as well. Y'know, once people found out who she was, they may have found out where she worked and started harassing them. 

 

ALSO:

 

 

This is another costume that I found. Three people dressed up as injured Asiana Airlines flight attendants. I don't see why dressing up as someone from a tragedy was such a big trend this year? 

 

Something I've noticed, however, is that the more bad things happen, the more and more people seem to not care. There seems to be a shooting every week nowadays and you never hear anyone talking about it. I would think that we would pay more attention considering they seem to be happening so often, but everyone just seems be saying, "oh another one?" and moving on. Then making Halloween costumes depicting it, it seems! 

 

 

Hey, why not dress up as James Holmes for Halloween?

 

Halloween is for fun. Not for making light of a horrible tragedy. 

[jinq]

At my high school, there was a guy dressed up as a KKK and he got suspendedd for that.

 

Now I believe a suspension for that kind of stupidity is fair, but getting fired/death threats is kinda of far-stretched.

[NapisaurusRex]

Now I believe a suspension for that kind of stupidity is fair, but getting fired/death threats is kinda of far-stretched.

I think someone who wouldn't have any issues with dressing like this at work wouldn't see "getting sent home" as a punishment? WHAT? YOU'RE MAKING ME GO HOME EARLY ON A DRINKING HOLIDAY? OH BUMMER.

I don't see anything wrong with her getting fired. When she was at work, she was representing her workplace... in this case, negatively. I don't know what her job was, but if it was something where her presence were required, then she is detrimental to the workplace.

[Waser Lave]

Of course if the organisers had set clear guidelines against offensive costumes then all would be well. However distasteful you've got to admit that they're all pretty creative costumes though.

[luvsmyncis]

Of course if the organisers had set clear guidelines against offensive costumes then all would be well. However distasteful you've got to admit that they're all pretty creative costumes though.

Are they? As far as shock value goes, they're pretty obvious. They're poorly executed as well. I think that's what offends me the most. The lack of imagination and craftiness. If you're going to be vile for shits and giggles, at least put some effort into it.