I'm afraid you've misread the "narrative" of my argument, though to be fair that's concievably just as much my fault.Semitendon said:I suppose the point of the episode was pretty good overall, but the example was terrible.
You said " Lost City- what do you think of?"
You said my answer was: "Africa- Because of Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, and Tarzan among others, all take place in either Africa, or places like Africa, and that's racist because way back in the day people were surprised and mystified to find ruins of cities in Africa" Paraphrased of course.
The reality is, I immediately thought of South America, Asia, and the Middle East. In fact, Africa is pretty far down on the list. The argument would then be, "Why didn't I think of Africa, isn't that racist?" And the whole damn thing just gets worse after that.
But, before jumping into that, I'd like to address a couple of things first. For the most part Indiana Jones doesn't take place in Africa, I realize that the Lost Ark was found in Egypt, but aside from that he doesn't spend much time there. Tomb Raider is the same, there is a map on wikipedia that shows places where Lara Croft has been in the games, most of them outside of Africa. You used Tarzan as an example of the Africa lost city concept, congrats that's valid. . . and very old. Counterpoint: The Jungle Book- Lost City, not in Africa, very old.
Obviously, there are more "lost city"-type ruins to be found in South America and Asia, and clearly that's why modern variations on the theme like Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider generally place their locales there - because they have the benefit of modern knowledge to know that it makes more sense that way. HOWEVER, the reason "Lost City"/"Lost Civilization" stuff pops up in Indy and Tomb Raider is because those are both modernizations inspired by classical Adventure Fiction, which in turn were inspired by King Solomon's Mines, which took place in Africa and was DIRECTLY inspired by the then-recent discoveries of real-life African ruins.