University of Washington Professor: Spongebob Squarepants Is a "Racist" "Colonizing" "Whitewashing" the Atomic-Bomb Oppression of The Bikini Atoll

There is a silly fan theory -- not part of the actual show-- that Spongebob Squarepants is from the Bikini Atoll, which was the site of many atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the fifties and sixties. The theory suggests that this explains the strange creatures on the show -- mutants from decades of radiation.

It's all silly.

But a University of Washington professor decides an internet fan theory/joke is real, and that the show is therefore about the White Colonization of the Marshall Islands via nuclear testing.

“Billions of people around the globe are well-acquainted with SpongeBob Squarepants and the antics of the title character and his friends on Bikini Bottom. By the same token, there is an absence of public discourse about the whitewashing of violent American military activities through SpongeBob’s occupation and reclaiming of the bottom of Bikini Atoll's lagoon. SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing the settler colonial takings of Indigenous lands while erasing the ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland,” reads the abstract for Barker’s piece.

Barker’s abstract asserts that SpongeBob has colonized Bikini Bottom -- the underwater home to the lovable characters -- and claims the cartoon is "whitewashing" the "violent American military activities" against natives on Pacific islands, specifically the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing:

This article exposes the complicity of popular culture in maintaining American military hegemonies in Oceania while amplifying the enduring indigeneity (Kauanui 2016) of the Marshallese people, who maintain deeply spiritual and historical connections to land -- even land they cannot occupy due to residual radiation contamination from US nuclear weapons testing -- through a range of cultural practices, including language, song, and weaving. This article also considers the gendered violence of nuclear colonialism and the resilience of Marshallese women.

This ignorant, drug-addled Cluster B twat then turns to "the gendered violence of nuclear colonialism."

Via Tim Pool.

Tim Pool rebuts that the starfishes, sponges, and animals that make up the Spongebob Squarepants cast were "indigenous" to the Marshall Islands long before the Marshall people -- the racist, speciesist colonizers -- colonized the indigenous sponge-lands.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:23 PM

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