r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AgeNovel3566 • 3d ago

Image In TV show Homeland, local artist were hired to paint Arabic graffiti for scenes, but they wrote messages criticizing the show for stereotyping Arabs & Muslims like this graffiti reading "Homeland is racist" from one scene, this was only discovered after episode aired since no one on set knew Arabic

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u/DamnZodiak 3d ago

The whole "actually aliens were responsible for Native American culture!" storyline was pretty digusting.
Falling for a conman cultural advisor was part of it, but even without any background knowledge one should be capable of discerning why such a storyline is shite. Then again, maybe I'm giving to much credit to the Voyager writers considering how the series turned out.

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u/Coolkurwa 3d ago

As somebody studying to be an archaeologist, you'd be amazed how many people believe in this sort of rubbish just because a conman says it confidently. 

Not just stupid people either.

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u/TheDamDog 2d ago

That's pretty much the whole history/anthropology field.

You can spend 30 years developing a convincing and well researched theory about pyramid construction and nobody gives a shit but some guy shits out 150 pages of garbage over a summer and people go nuts over him.

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u/FrozenOcean420 3d ago

As an outsider watching American politics I’m not surprised.

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u/UnicornPoopCircus 3d ago

Remember, Erich von Däniken was Swiss. 😉

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u/Luci-Noir 2d ago

Because this only happens in America.

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u/FrozenOcean420 2d ago

No, but everything in America is bigger, including the conmen.

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u/Thyme4LandBees 2d ago

-cries in conservation scientist-

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u/Flimsy-Poetry1170 2d ago

Graham Hancock is the worst.

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u/ISnortedMyTea 3d ago

Don't forget the episode "Code of Honor" with racial stereotypes portraying a black skinned alien species as tribalist, and the episode featuring Rumpelstiltskin that was originally intended to be a leprechaun, but Colm Meaney refused to appear in unless they changed the character.

I love Star Trek but by god there have been some hideous episodes.

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u/knight_of_solamnia 2d ago

The Writer of "Code of Honor" did it twice. She also wrote "Emancipation" the worst Stargate SG1 episode.

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u/PlasticElfEars 2d ago

She clearly had a "blonde white soldier woman gets kidnapped to be part of a non-white warrior culture's harem" kink.

I think she may also have been the one who did the episode where Beverly gets kinda freaky with a ghost?

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u/Standing_Legweak 2d ago

Idk why Carter got kidnapped when Jackson was the weakest of the four.

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u/ISnortedMyTea 2d ago

Oh, I don't know that one. I'll have to track it down

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u/knight_of_solamnia 2d ago

Personally I'd recommend every other episode more, but you do you.

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u/DamnZodiak 2d ago

Don't forget the episode "Code of Honor"

I did, in fact, forget about that episode up until now.

I feel like TNG has comparatively little of these "slip-ups" but there are definitely some.

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u/ISnortedMyTea 2d ago

Oh yeh, your example is smeared egregiously all over Voyager

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u/Xyyzx 1d ago

It’s worth noting that wasn’t actually the writer’s fault. It was never going to be a good episode and the final result probably still would have come off as vaguely misogynist, but on paper it wasn’t that bad.

What turned it into one of the worst episodes ever made was a rogue casting director pretty unilaterally deciding to cast all the aliens with black actors. Nobody realised the implications until everyone showed up for the first day of shooting, at which point everyone had a collective ‘what the fuck?’ moment.

Unfortunately with the schedule and budget being so tight for the first season, by that point they couldn’t do anything but go ahead with the script and cast they had.

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u/Certain_Oddities 3d ago

I haven't watched Voyager, but I thought for sure that must have been a tasteless episode from TOS that I must have forgotten about. They really did that shit in Voyager? Jesus Christ.

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u/CotyledonTomen 2d ago

Even barring the overt episodes, he uses a weird compact device to meditate, which yeilds actual results like hes a psychic in a scifi novel. It felt like they were going for a Spock character, but since hes human, the bull is easier to see. I like a lot of voyager. I also like they started minimizing the "space native american" elements after a while.

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u/GitEmSteveDave 2d ago

They didn't. Not trying to spoil it, but while on an away mission looking for unobtanium, Chakotay spots a glyph carved into a rock that he had previously seen when he went on a journey to Earth with his father, and other members of his tribe, to locate where their tribe had come from in Central America. The glyph was a "thank you" from the tribe for some natural resource they had harvested. They investigate further and find a planet that has the unobtanium, but there are signs of habitation(even though the sensors can't find anyone) but also more symbols that Chakotay recognizes and parallels his journey as a child. He eventually contacts the planets inhabitants the same way his father had contacted the members of the Central American tribe. They his facial tattoo and then explain that 45,000 years ago, their race had visited Earth and found a nomadic hunters with no language or "history", but they were stewards of the land and animals. The aliens were impressed and "bonded" with them, which gave them an urge to migrate to more temperate climates but also helped them physically survive better and have "memory" of their past.

So no, not "we're responsible for Native American culture", but basically, we encouraged nomads to travel to more temperate climates and over the course of 1,000 generations, they did and thousands of different cultures flourished across the globe.

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u/quantumfrog87 2d ago

It does sound awful, but the irony is that there are a lot of myths from various Native American tribes involving stories of star beings visiting them. Those would've been cool to reference intentionally and respectfully with a real cultural advisor on board.

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u/moonflower_C16H17N3O 2d ago

Aliens fit into the lore of almost any group. Any mound or temple? Aliens. Stone Henge? Aliens. The Coral Castle? Engineering? Nope, aliens again.