Slashdot Mirror
South Korean Cartoonists Cry Foul Over Edgy Simpsons Intro
theodp writes "When asked to animate a dark commentary about labor practices in Asia's cartoon industry — the edgy title sequence for the Simpsons' episode 'MoneyBART' — staff from the South Korean production company Akom raised a rare protest. Even after being toned down, the sequence created by British graffiti artist Banksy depicted a dungeon-like complex where droning Asian animators worked in sweatshops, rats scurried around with human bones, kittens were spliced up into Bart Simpson dolls, and a gaunt unicorn punched holes into DVDs. The satire, Akom founder and president Nelson Shin argued, gave the impression that Asian artists slave away in subpar sweatshops when they actually animate much of The Simpsons every week in high-tech workshops in downtown Seoul. Still, South Korean animators make one-third the salaries of their American counterparts, and Shin declined to comment on the full extent of the work his company has outsourced to SEK, a state-run animation studio of North Korea. Some argue that the Banksy sequence's gray and forlorn atmosphere more accurately depicts the sweatshop-like conditions in North Korea."
Nobody actually thought they were using unicorns to make DVDs.
We need to take a stand and start producing cartoons in sweatshops here in America!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sounds to me less insult and more comedic hyperbole. Not an attempt to depict
Can we stop comparing wages based on actual dollar figures, and compare based on standard of living (or something else)?
I make 25% less as a System Administrator in a small remote town than were I working in downtown Toronto.
But my house costs $200,000 as opposed to $1,000,000 for a house or condo in Toronto. Do I bitch that I don't make the same wage? No, because overall I I have the same standard of living / quality of life as everyone else (even better, I have a place to park!).
Yes, food costs about the same (maybe 3% less), cars cost the same, etc, but when a good 40% of what I spent my income on (house, property taxes) is far less, it works.
Moneybart intro
I haven't seen it, but I'm curious as to why virtually all cartoons these days are colored in South Korea. Strikes me that depicting it in such an allegorical way is somewhat appropriate.
Being a colorist is not easy, but it's hardly in the same league creatively with the folks that do the writing and modeling for the series. It sounds like it's away of pointing out that it's like working in the salt mines of the cartoon industry.
The summary says that the South Korean animators are re-outsourcing an unspecified amount (could be a majority for all we know) of the workload to North Korea; for all you know it was this practise that was being commented on, not the South Korean studios themselves.
Does anyone in Korea understand what SATIRE fucking is?
Isn't that when you get screwed by a comedian?
No, its when you get screwed by a half-man half-goat. It's illegal in most countries.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Even if North Korea reunited under South Korean rule, like German reunification, it would make the economic woes of German reunification seem insignificant. We're talking about a broke country, a complete basket case of an economy, a country that has lived under six decades of centralized tyranny. I wonder how many South Koreans would want to take on that burden. I know there are lot of West Germans who were, within a few years, a lot less enthusiastic about Reunification.
But I have my doubts that we'll see the two Koreas joined any time soon. North Korea has mastered a pretty good strategy using its on-again-off-again nuclear program to extort needed aid from South Korea and other nations, and as long as everyone keeps throwing it life lines, it basically underwrites the Kim Dynasty and the Generals that support it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's the thing about the corporate system that many people fail to realize. It's very easy to get a corporation to change what they're doing if there's a coordinated effort by consumers to choose not to buy from a certain manufacturer until practices are changed.
That's the thing about the corporate system that corporate apologists people fail to realize. It's almost impossible to get a coordinated effort by consumers because the corporations have so more damn money than individuals, and can drown out any opposition to their pracices.
Apparently Americans have been liking it for the past 20+ years.
You're right. I mean they get every single detail of American society exactly right, from the fat, lazy balding guy who loses his job every week and spends every night in a bar, to the town that has the tallest mountain in the world, a gorge comparable to the grand canyon, frozen winters, a vast desert, picturesque beaches, is landlocked, and so forth. Yet somehow, they manage to get the state of Korean technology wrong. Go figure.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Many people in this thread are quick to decry the intro. But have they actually watched it? Take a look.
The conditions depicted are atrocious. Ridiculously so. It's clearly a joke. I mean, a unicorn being used to punch holes in DVDs? Kittens tossed into a wood chipper to make filler for toys? The terrible conditions are so over-the-top that it's pretty clearly not meant to represent reality. One could view it as social commentary regarding poor working conditions in Asian sweat-shots. Or, one could view it as commentary on the ridiculous notions that well-meaning, but ultimately uninformed, westerners develop in their heads about working conditions in Asian.
It seems to me that the satire is meant to insult at many levels (this is typical for The Simpsons, which tries to make fun of as many different people as possible). The intro is making fun of FOX for using cheap overseas labor. It's drawing attention to the comparatively worse working conditions in those outsourced labor markets. And it's making fun of people's erroneous/exaggerated notions of how bad those labor conditions actually are. And it's just trying to be silly with ridiculous depictions of misery. It's comedy, after all.
You may not think it's particularly funny. But after watching it, it should be pretty clear how absurd they were intentionally being.
You know what?
You wouldn't have batted an eyelash if he had used the same exact depictions but it was supposed to be taking place at a Walmart in Lubbock, not somewhere in Asia.
Why? The difference is that if placed in Walmart in Lubbock, it would have clearly been meant to have been judged as satire and not as a depiction of reality.
Whereas when placed in Asia, it is clearly meant to be judged as satire and not an actual depiction of reality - but the satire is missed by those blinded by a defensive reflex to whine about anything related to a place they have feelings of insecurity, self-consciousness, nationalism or racial pride in.
(Actually in the Lubbock example there would be a few whining idiots from TX complaining that "Lubbock isn't really like that!" but we've learned not give people like that the time of day.
This space available.
I think in the Australia episode (somewhere in the first couple of seasons?) the subject of ridicule wasn't so much Australia as it was stereotypical American views of Australia.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
WTF? Are you seriously lumping together North and South Korea in terms of living standards?
Did I miss something? When did South Korea cease to be a first-world democracy?
You don't need to be 'well-connected' to buy something in South Korea. You go to the store, and you buy it. It's a friggin market-economy.
Making 1/3 of a US wage does not mean you're a developing nation. People in Portugal make 1/3 of the average US salary,
if you make a raw dollar comparsion, and they aren't starving. They have homes, cars, computers, phones, etc. Same in South Korea.
Maybe not two cars, and maybe not the latest computer, and maybe a smaller home, etc. But they're by no means poor.
By all means, speak up on behalf of the North Koreans, who have no say in their government or situation, but talking that way about South Korea is just condescending.
They're one of the richest nations in the world, and the second-richest nation in Asia.
How would you like it if your job, country and culture was stereotyped into the guilt-ridden nonsense that The Simpsons aired?
I'm Russian. I think it would be hilarious.
if korea (et al) are successful, fine; but its not successful on honorable reasons. it has been stealing jobs and there's no way to compete when you NEED healthcare in the US and that, alone, is enough to disbalance things unfairly.
I sympathize with your frustration, but have felt this for America likely long before you. The small Kansas town in which I grew up (pop. 150) flourished in my father's lifetime with a bank, hotel, drug store, barber, etc. But by my youth in the 1960s, only two repair garages and a tavern remained; essentially it was a ghost town, and even lost its high school. Thanks to the automobile and better roads (an ICBM station nearby got us asphalt roads), almost all the jobs were "outsourced" to the big city, Tokpeka. Then in my late adolescence the same happened to Topeka, when the Goodyear tire plant (once the largest in the world) scaled back its production, putting Topeka on the skids and the economic energy went to Kansas City, Chicago, and the coasts. And this was the 1970s. This hollowing out process due to changing technology, mobility of capital and labor has continued in the U.S. for the past century and likely will continue apace globally, as borders become less relevant. Some companies, such as Apple and Catepillar have been able have been able to adapt and create products desired around the world, others such Zenith and RCA have fallen into senescence.
I'm not sure what you mean by "honorable reasons", but the meme that Asians cheat at trade hasn't really been a fair observation since even the GATT says in the 1980s and certainly not since the WTO began in 1995. Basically the reason South Koreans got ahead was because even though they have few resources they worked harder than everyone in the world, saved as much as they could, and sacrificed for higher education. Among other things they created world-class steelmaking, shipbuilding, and semiconductor industries out of nothing, using mostly Japanese capital and technology, since the U.S. viewed them as foolish to have such ambitions from the 1960s.
At present, South Korea does more trade with China than the U.S., and they are one of the few countries that manage a balance of payments surplus with China because they produce goods that the Chinese want to buy. Moreover, the largest group of foreign students in China are South Koreans and the largest group of foreign students in South Korea are Chinese. South Korea remains firmly in the U.S. camp militarily and is grateful for the troops stationed here (though they get almost no credit in the U.S. for the sizable contingent of troops they sent to Vietnam and Iraq), but over time, the U.S. is gradually becoming much less important to the nation's future, as evidenced by the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) they recently signed with the European Union, while the prospective one with the U.S. is stalled, largely due to protectionist sentiments.
South Korea is by no means perfect and they go overboard at time on anti-American issues such as fears of beef BSE contamination, but on the whole they are a hard-working, highly educated people who deserve the success they have achieved by dint of great efforts over decades.
Yes do a little research. Those cost of living indexes are garbage. I've lived in Korea for nearly 3 years now, after having spent most of my adult life paying for things in big city Canada, and Korea is ridiculously cheap compared to North American cities.
That last one of these I read claimed a dozen eggs in Seoul cost something like $4. I don't know where they found those eggs, but I can get a dozen, regular price, for about $1.45 USD with exchange at the local megamart, and I've never seen a dozen for $4 anywhere. Even at 7-11.
They also claimed a can of beer was $3, when I can walk to the 7-11 and get a can of domestic for about 90 cents.
The fact of the matter is that the cost of living in South Korea is very low compared to any major city back home.
The only thing that is truly expensive is getting into real-estate, but it works out better. Korea works on a Key money system. Want a western sized apartment,2 bedrooms? Probably cost you 100,000$ in deposit. But you'll likely pay no rent with that, and you'll get that $100,000.
This is where people get confused.
They ignore the fact that a great deal of daily living costs are tiny compared to other cities.
you want to have a quality meal at a sit down restaurant with lots of vegetables, and unlimited side dishes? about $4.50.
Prime time movies are only around $8, with assigned seating and a couple's combo that only costs $5. Internet, cheaper, faster, better.
The utilities on my 1 bedroom place are so cheap it's laughable. $6 a month in water, $8 in gas, $20 in electricity.
Transit?
$0.83 gets you on the subway/bus and unless you're going a really long distance that's it. Over something like 12-15 km, starts to add 9 cents per few kms.
Some local buses are only about 40 cents to get on.
If you buy things that aren't part of the local taste, it's expensive. A local shop might be $5 for a good meal, but you go to Outback steakhouse here, and the prices are high, but that's not a good comparison.
As for computers, since I just bought a new one here, I priced it online to compare the online retailer here and newegg in the US. on a $1600 machine, buying identical parts between the countries, the price difference was only $80.
once you started adding in neweggs high shipping prices, the price differences became almost nothing.
local shipping and even international shipping here is ridiculously cheap. I can send anything anywhere in the country for peanuts.
packages I've sent to Canada have costed like 1/3 of what my parents paid for an equal package there to send here.
inter-city transportation is very cheap here as well. Buses/trains cost 1/2 to 1/3 what you'd pay in Canada for similar distances.
These cost of living indexes are clearly made by people who don't have a clue, and once you've actually lived in some of these places you'll realize how out to lunch they are.
More than likely they're not shopping like a local. If you want to make those kinds of comparisons its 17x more expensive to live in any western city since a bottle of soju is like $17 in any bar there, but you can get it for about 90 cents here.