The Big [Censored] Theory

We have this kind of censorship in India as well, even the in weirdly innocous places. In James Bond movies, and I think Gone Girl as well, scenes were by zooming into character's faces or just straight cuts.

This is probably the only reason I maintain a US iTunes accounts (used to have to buy gift cards from sketchy sites online to keep this going, but I recently discovered that my Indian Amex card works fine with a US address).

Also trivia for those who are wondering how cuts are made, at least for cinema content: all video and audio assets are usually sent to theatres in full, but there's an XML file called the CPL (composition playlist) that specifies which file is played from which to which frame / timestamp in what sequence. Pure cuts or audio censorship can be handled by just adding an entry to skip the relevant frames or timestamp, or by specifying a censor beep as the audio track for a particular time range.

https://cinepedia.com/packaging/composition/

Given the racist protrayal of Indian American Raj Kuthrapalli, I am of the opinion Indians are magnanimous in allowing this show to be aired there.

What in particular is racist about it?

If you have watched the show and failed see why it is racist, then we need to give some anti-racist education.

It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack confidence with women. Raj can’t speak with women without the use of alcohol, the show constantly mocks his accent, worshipping of cows etc.

So what? It's a comedy tv series.

I'm a slav and from the balkans, we're either portrayed as tracksuit wearing thugs, drunks or in some relation to the balkan wars. So what?

We even have our own comedy tv series playing with the stereotypes (eg. Kursadzije), where all the stereotypes are used all the time (serbs and croats have historic "issues", montenegrins are lazy, bosnians are stupid and slovenians are femboys)... people like this, they laugh at this, and watch it, in all of the mentioned countries and wider.

Somehow it's always "someone else" that gets offended... same for 2balkan2you subreddit, where a (probably american) admin doesn't get the difference between romanians and roma/gypsy people.

Even with games... stuff like gta 4 just makes people trying to guess what Niko tried to say, because his serbian/serbocroatian accent/pronounciation is horrible in the game.

Another stereotype that exists is that all balkans are raging racists and will start war with anyone close by because they deem them subhuman. This is just a stereotype, so "so what?" right? And when you are waving off "laughing at stupid bosnians" as "so what?" this doesn't contradict that stereotype but rather reinforces it. So do you think it's fair that I assume you are indeed racist and treat you as such? You won't get angry or upset?

If you do it in a comedy way, sure, why not?

If we can joke about cops (reno 911), bar owners (it's always sunny in philadelphia), rural americans (king of the hill and many, many other), canadians (south park), italians (euro trip), gingers (south park), nerds (pretty much every college movie), french girls (malcolm in the middle), middle managers (basically, every office-based movie), bodybuilders (brooklyn 99), "aspiring actresses" (working as baristas), student cooks (usually by gordon ramsey), .... why not us? Oh and let's not forget blondes.

Do you assume all italians wear stockings and molest other guys on trains if you've seen Eurotrip (movie)? Nope. Do you assume all french girls don't shave? Nope. So if the whole of the balkans, including bosnia has many many jokes with "Mujo and Haso" (they represent a "stupid" couple of guys, where the pun is in their stupidity, why do you (I assume you're not from the balkans) get to be offended for other people? There's even a movie just with jokes about them... made by bosnians of course - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5085118/

We also have regional jokes, where in slovenia, people assume that people from gorenjska region are stingy (in serbia, it's people from pirot).

A joke is a joke, you don't have to get offended for other people.

edit: also, we don't start wars because we thing the others are subhuman, we just stereotipically hate eachother (as groups, not as individuals), due to historic reasons, mostly war-related.

ps: What you americans would call racism could only be mentioned maybe against gypsies here (eve though they're techncally the same race). And even that is mostly by assuming, that if someone stole your gutters around the house (or basically anything metal), that it was the gypsies. Usually it's even true.

The thing about stereotypes is that they are not just harmless props only to be used in comedy. They are common simplifications that we all use to some extent whether we like it or not. But some stereotypes are more harmful than others because they are used in very non-funny contexts to justify violence and oppression. And when you use those stereotypes in a funny-ha-ha way, you get some cheap laughs but at the same time you reproduce the stereotype and make it stronger. So a harmless "all jews are greedy and therefore it's funny that the jewish main character loses track of a conversation and starts to chase a dollar bill blowing down the street" gag [canned laughter] is the fertile ground where you plant plain antisemitic "jews are to greedy we need them out of our society" seeds.

But what do I know I'm just a PC SJW you know how we are, constantly bitching about "no more violence", incredibly naive because of course there will always be pogroms, "it's just human nature". [canned laughter]

So, are we not allowed to joke anymore?

Or if you're going the SJW way, are we only alowed to joke about american white men?

There are jokes that aren't at anyone's expense, but they're mostly puns, and not every pun is safe.