No, I’m not talking about that starfish guy.
For those who don’t know him, this is Spongebob.
He’s got a cartoon that’s pretty popular with the kids these days. He’s also got a bit of an image problem right now:
That’s how he appeared on a set of Valentine’s Day cards sold at Wal-Mart.
OOPS!
Not going to be winning a lot of hearts and minds with a picture like that, is he?
How’d he end up going from his regular yellow to minstrel show black? Globalizatioin.
Yes, that’s right. Darkie Spongebob is the result of American Greetings sending work overseas. I first heard about this from a newspost over at Penny Arcade that linked to this Detroit Free Press story. It seems that American Greetings gets a lot of printing done in China these days.
From the article:
David Blinderman, director of global product development for the company, said the printing facility is one of the company’s most reliable.
“Culturally, the guys on press in China wouldn’t have the faintest idea of who a SpongeBob was or who a black SpongeBob was,” Blinderman said.
You know what? I can buy that. I doubt Spongebob’s making the rounds in China. Even if he is, he’s probably not what press operators want to watch on TV, so how would they know what color he’s supposed to be. That said, after working in a printing company, there should’ve been proofs or artwork samples for those guys to match their finished product to. Their quality of their printing seems to be okay. The colors trap well and there are no bad bleeds. My best guess is that the error happened when they were burning the plates they used for the printing. Overexpose a plate and things will come out too dark when you print them. I notice there’s no detail in the hand holding the toothbrush, which tells me that whatever detail was supposed to be there got blasted out when the plate was exposed. Sounds reasonable to me, but of course, there’s an upset parent:
Jemeka Garcia of Flint Township was skeptical of a mistake, in part because the cards appear to be well made. Garcia and her husband, Scott, complained to the Free Press earlier this week after their 6-year-old daughter discovered the different SpongeBob. The family purchased the cards at a Wal-Mart near their home so the girl could hand them out to her first-grade classmates.
“I want to know why the person did it,” Jemeka Garcia said Thursday. “That’s kind of a horrible prank. And what if some kid gets it” as a valentine?
Yes, the card is well-made. Welcome to the world of printing errors. Just because a color is wrong doesn’t mean the overall quality goes down. I’ve been responsible for a few printing errors myself, and i can tell you that there are few things worth to a typesetter or designer than to have somebody tell you, “hey, this came out really great – except for this mistake! Thanks for getting the client a discount!” Oops.
And what if some kid did get the card as a valentine? He’s probably going to laugh his ass off. Not because Spongebob looks like a minstrel show caricature, but because he’s the wrong damned color! That’s it! You see, Ms. Garcia, kids laugh at crap like that. Don’t go projecting racism onto them. If the cards had been printed in America, her “horrible prank” line may have some merit. But they weren’t, so it doesn’t. She wants to know “why the person did it?” Hey lady, it’s because he’s most likely making less in a day than you make in an hour. And if he doesn’t keep his impression count (number of pieces printed) above a certain level, somebody else will have his job. So when the guy who makes the plates gives them to him, he slaps those things on the press and cranks out the job. So she, and any other offended parties, need to take their bitching up with American Greetings. Why not ask them to bring some jobs back to America where people know what color Spongebob and his pals are supposed to be? I’m sure they’ll take that into consideration.
Oh, and the starfish guy? Like I said, he’s not a racist stereotype. He’s a gay one.
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