Saturday, March 5, 2011

Rastamouse

One of my friends pointed me to this episode of Rastamouse.  From my sense of watching this show, the idea is that the mice are meant to be Jamaican. 
The question I'm struggling with is if this is offensive.  On one hand, Rastamouse is produced by the BBC, and England has a large, often ignored, community of people with Jamaican ancestry.  Most of the children's shows out there are geared towards white Brits, so it is possible that someone is trying to represent that community and write a show for them.
At the same time, depicting a minority as an animal is inherently problematic.  And then for it to be an animal that is associated with being feeble, weak, scared and a scanvanger?  Not good.

No comments:

Post a Comment