A.V. Club: Adult Swim "retires" episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Boondocks due to "cultural sensitivities"

[Cicada 5]

Very little gets past Redittors. A recent example of this happened recently when a few users shared that they were having trouble finding season six episode of Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force from 2009, “Shake Like Me.” Others noted that they couldn’t locate season three episode of The Boondocks, “The Story Of Jimmy Rebel.” But don’t worry. According to The Daily Beast, reps from Adult Swim want to assure everyone that these episodes are “permanently retired” on a nice farm with a big, grassy lawn, where they can frolic with the other episodes of television that have been deemed culturally insensitive.

The two missing episodes in question share a common thread: They both relied on anti-Black ideology for chuckles, as is the case with a lot of past comedy (sometimes for satirical purposes, sometimes due to a lack of creativity and just being good old fashion racists). In “Shake Like Me”—a title that signals John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, Shake is bitten by a radioactive Black man and turns “stereotypically” Black, complete with darkened skin, big lips, a chain, and an afro. Aaron Mc Gruder’s The Boondocks featured the character Uncle Ruckus, a self-hating Black man who proudly spewed gross, racist rhetoric throughout the entirety of the series. But in “The Story Of Jimmy Rebel,” he links with an equally proud racist country star who sets his overt anti-Blackness to music, which goes a smidge too far, apparently.

Both were considered perfectly acceptable when they originally aired, but now that the entertainment industry is continuing to (kind of) contend with its racist roots, they’re being quietly removed in between platform onboarding with no plans to return to the masses. “When Adult Swim transitions series to a new platform, we determine what episodes are selected through creative and cultural filters and our standards and practices policies,” an Adult Swim rep told The Daily Beast. “Oftentimes these decisions are made in collaboration with the show’s creators.”

https://news.avclub.com/adult-swim-retires-episodes-of-aqua-teen-hunger-force-1845228180

 

[Ezekiel]

Lol, streaming.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I don't know much about the Boondocks, but from what I've seen of it, I don't get why they would ban a few episodes and not the whole damn show.

They gonna start banning Black comedian stand up specials now too? (they might not have them on Adult Swim, but you get my point).

 

[BrawlMan]

Since when did adult_swim start becoming pussies? You might as well start banning your precious Rick & Morty episodes while you are at it. It's a good thing you can still buy the DVDs. Also, banning episodes is not foreign to Boondocks. The Tyler Perry episode got banned later in future airings (though it and the BET episode are on Netflix and DVD), because it told the truth and the biatche could not handle it. The same for the BET episode, though I find that one way more interesting.