Support NeoGAF

[Darklord]

but in Australia, it's still actually pretty common to see these dolls in tourist strips outside the major cities

lol what? I've lived and traveled around Australia all my life and I think I've seen one shop that sold them.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

Living in Australia, something I've felt uncomfortable about is the golliwog doll. For those who've never heard of it, it's a doll originating in the 19th century (from a book by Florence Upton) that had a lot of popularity in Europe and Australia. It is based on the blackface minstrel shows - from the Wikipedia page explaining its origin:

relics of a different time.
What's strange is that I saw these in NZ recently as well when I went back for vacation. I seem to remember them being banned when I was younger and now they are again not banned. I'm not sure of the ban reversal logic.

 

[Blood Red Sky]

I used to think a Golliwog was just a character from Noddy (British children's stories). So I thought they were ok. Just like any other character in any other stories.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the one in Noddy.

I used to actually have quite a lot of the Golly pins that you could get by saving tokens from Robertson's jam labels when I was a little kid. I had no idea it was a racist caricature, but looking back it was a really weird and inappropriate mascot to use - and I think it was used well into the 90s.

People still collect them, apparently.

 

[Yrael]

lol what? I've lived and traveled around Australia all my life and I think I've seen one shop that sold them.

I've seen quite a few stores selling them. Here's an example I saw just recently - the dolls were out on display on a rack in front of the window (which is what prompted me to make this topic):

 

[Hurley]

I think I only ever saw one of those dolls when I was a kid but I do remember eating a shit load of those biscuits.

 

[Shandy]

My sister had one when we were kids and we didn't know what it was about. Really, it just looked like a goofy doll.

But now that I'm an adult and know about the racist imagery (indeed, "goofy" is probably very intentional, but in a very, very bad way), I realise that they should be left in the past where they belong.

 

[Jedeye Sniv]

Moore?

Was going to say, I loooove how Moore depicts the Galley Wag. The text pieces in Century especially are so cool, him and the wooden girls. He's made out of super dense dark matter, that's so cool.

 

[HolyCheck]

I've seen quite a few stores selling them. Here's an example I saw just recently - the dolls were out on display on a rack in front of the window (which is what prompted me to make this topic):

I've seen them on sale at dodgy asian tourist stores / nik nak stores.

blame the asians!

 

[Adam Scott Aukerman]

My first ever toy as a baby was a Golliwog doll. Bought for me through the hospital shop, no less. The 1980s were weird.

Hear that, Australia? I'm indirectly calling you weird. Have some of that!

 

[Dougald]

My mum had one when she was growing up. In the 50s. She feels very embarrassed about it now, why on earth do they still sell these in Oz?

 

[More Fun To Compute]

They are not really acceptable in England but UKIP types don't really see how something that they only think of as a symbol of childhood affection can be a symbol of hate.

 

[Marky Mark]

I'll be honest, I'm aboriginal on my mum's side and in our family we get a bit of a laugh about these dolls. It's more of a laugh of 'haha, look at these things, don't they know?'. I only ever see them at little country shops, second-hand shops and (oddly enough) hospital gift shops where the old ladies hand knit toys for sale.

I think I have one somewhere for the irony and my mum might have one or two as well. Maybe it's not terribly offensive to me because casual and actual racism has been a part of my growing up so that I am used to it, but I also think blackface in this form is not as cutting in Australia as it seems in America.

Being called "one of the good ones" is worse racism than a silly little golliwog doll and that's something to be dealt with on a much more regular basis.

EDIT:

My first ever toy as a baby was a Golliwog doll. Bought for me through the hospital shop, no less. The 1980s were weird.

Hear that, Australia? I'm indirectly calling you weird. Have some of that!

Haha, see? Hospital shops!

 

[Neo Child]

can somebody explain how these are racist ?

i realise OT gaf is offended by everything, such as not being tipped or having a foam penis in their coffee but when i was growing up i read noddy books and they had golliwogs in them, never thought anything of it.

 

[Log4Girlz]

can somebody explain how these are racist ?

i realise OT gaf is offended by everything, such as not being tipped or having a foam penis in their coffee but when i was growing up i read noddy books and they had golliwogs in them, never thought anything of it.

Does it really need to be explained?

 

[Neo Child]

Does it really need to explained?

uh, this is why i almost didnt post because i knew id get an onslaught of answers like this.

nevermind. ill go back to the gaming bit.

 

[Log4Girlz]

uh, this is why i almost didnt post because i knew id get an onslaught of answers like this.

nevermind. ill go back to the gaming bit.

Just think carefully about it. Think about the history of racial caricatures.

 

[Peagles]

relics of a different time.
What's strange is that I saw these in NZ recently as well when I went back for vacation. I seem to remember them being banned when I was younger and now they are again not banned. I'm not sure of the ban reversal logic.

I remember seeing them resurface a few years back and wondered about that. It's like they're kitsch now or something, bleh.

 

[Striek]

I didn't know they were racist until I got older and learned more of the civil rights movement in the USA. As far as I knew they were just characters from Roald Dahl books.

 

[Neo Child]

Just think carefully about it. Think about the history of racial caricatures.

okay so i read up about minstrel shows and stuff.

isn't it just ripping on someones race though for entertainment?

much like saying gingers have no souls?

or jews love money? (kinda butchered that one)

that sort of thing?

i mean im english, i see people ripping on english people all the time, TV, in-person etc. not gunna go about banning people with huge ass teeth

 

[krYlon]

I didn't know they were racist until I got older and learned more of the civil rights movement in the USA. As far as I knew they were just characters from Roald Dahl books.

Eh? Which Roald Dahl books?

 

[kurisu_1974]

Eh? Which Roald Dahl books?

“‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ was scandalous from the start. Already when it was first published in the United States in 1964 it drew harsh criticism because the workers in the chocolate factory, the Oompa Loompa, are Pygmies from Africa, slaves. As a result of the criticism, Dahl changed them and their origin and they became whites, natives of an imaginary country.”

 

[SomedayTheFire]

okay so i read up about minstrel shows and stuff.

isn't it just ripping on someones race though for entertainment?

much like saying gingers have no souls?

or jews love money? (kinda butchered that one)

that sort of thing?

i mean im english, i see people ripping on english people all the time, TV, in-person etc. not gunna go about banning people with huge ass teeth

That is part of racism. They are racial stereotypes used to belittle people because of their race among other things.


Edit: others below explained it better.

 

[DeSo]

I had a golliwog doll when I was a kid and they were in "Noddy" which I read. Never knew they were offensive back then. Now that I'm older I'm more aware, they should be done away with.

 

[Log4Girlz]

okay so i read up about minstrel shows and stuff.

isn't it just ripping on someones race though for entertainment?

much like saying gingers have no souls?

or jews love money? (kinda butchered that one)

that sort of thing?

i mean im english, i see people ripping on english people all the time, TV, in-person etc. not gunna go about banning people with huge ass teeth

Ripping on people who have had a history of being oppressed and making them feel sub-human and caricaturing their racial traits is racist and insensitive. Gollywogs are from a bygone era and is every bit as bad as old minstrel shows and blackfarce.

 

[Blood Red Sky]

okay so i read up about minstrel shows and stuff.

isn't it just ripping on someones race though for entertainment?

much like saying gingers have no souls?

or jews love money? (kinda butchered that one)

that sort of thing?

i mean im english, i see people ripping on english people all the time, TV, in-person etc. not gunna go about banning people with huge ass teeth

'English' and 'ginger' aren't races though, and even if they were, we've never been subject to the kind of persecution black and Jewish people have faced. They really aren't comparable.

 

[krYlon]

“‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ was scandalous from the start. Already when it was first published in the United States in 1964 it drew harsh criticism because the workers in the chocolate factory, the Oompa Loompa, are Pygmies from Africa, slaves. As a result of the criticism, Dahl changed them and their origin and they became whites, natives of an imaginary country.”

For sure. But they weren't golliwogs.

Not that it really matters. I just thought I'd missed/forgotten appearances of golliwogs in Dahl books.

 

[Tristam]

okay so i read up about minstrel shows and stuff.

isn't it just ripping on someones race though for entertainment?

much like saying gingers have no souls?

or jews love money? (kinda butchered that one)

that sort of thing?

i mean im english, i see people ripping on english people all the time, TV, in-person etc. not gunna go about banning people with huge ass teeth

Centuries of presenting a continent of peoples as subhuman -- and the golliwog/minstrel is indeed one facet of this presentation -- can't really be equated to mere joshing. English people haven't been brutally massacred, subjugated, and dehumanized for alleged poor standards of dentistry.

 

[Neo Child]

Centuries of presenting a continent of peoples as subhuman -- and the golliwog/minstrel is indeed one facet of this presentation -- can't really be equated to mere joshing. English people haven't been brutally massacred, subjugated, and dehumanized for alleged poor standards of dentistry.

fair enough. yeah thats true, i just didnt really link the golliwog/minstrel thing to be in favour of the awful treatment of blacks. i just thought it was a stereotype look.

hmm.

 

[Striek]

For sure. But they weren't golliwogs.

Not that it really matters. I just thought I'd missed/forgotten appearances of golliwogs in Dahl books.

I think I was mistaking Roald Dahl for Enid Blyton.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

fair enough. yeah thats true, i just didnt really link the golliwog/minstrel thing to be in favour of the awful treatment of blacks. i just thought it was a stereotype look.

hmm.

Stereotypes are still awful and offensive.

 

[freddy]

lol what? I've lived and traveled around Australia all my life and I think I've seen one shop that sold them.

Same and I've been going to toy shops and the like for the last 11 or so years for my kids. The last time I saw one was about 15 years ago in an OP shop.

 

[krYlon]

Only a few years back I saw golliwog dolls in antique toy/souvenir stores in York, England. So it's not just an Aussie thing. Though they are generally frowned upon in England.

I think I was mistaking Roald Dahl for Enid Blyton.

Oh, that makes sense lol

 

[Cindres]

In the UK I remember these being a common mascot on marmalade jars for a while. Like I just knew "golliwog" as the thing from marmalade, obviously you then grow up and learn it's horrendously bloody racist.

Jesus, just searching for this made me feel uncomfortable

Holy fuck they only retired this in 2002.

 

[Noaloha]

Moore?

Was going to say, I loooove how Moore depicts the Galley Wag. The text pieces in Century especially are so cool, him and the wooden girls. He's made out of super dense dark matter, that's so cool.

Here's a fascinating (lengthy!) interview with Alan Moore, the beginning of which has him taking to task various accusations of racist caricaturing and related ugliness.

A small (!) excerpt quoted below:

PÓM: The golliwogg is generally seen these days as being a racist character. Why did you decide that you wanted to use a character with a problematic history like that in your work?

AM: Without wishing to appear pedantic, I think that the Golliwog these days is seen as an insulting racial stereotype rather than a racist character. A racist character, i.e. a character perceived to be racist, would be The Black Dossier’s Bulldog Drummond or even Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain. But if you’re asking why I wanted to use a character largely perceived as a grotesque racial caricature, I would say that the answer is because Kevin and myself felt that we had identified a considerable gulf between how the character was originally presented and intended, and how the character had come to be viewed. Yes, I am of course aware that among nostalgic right-wingers such as Carol Thatcher there is the often-expressed sentiment that the later Minstrel-attired racist-slur toy should be returned to our toyshops and marmalade labels, and that it’s exclusion is a sign of political correctness gone mad. I would have hoped that it might be fairly obvious, with a little thought, that neither I nor Kevin are likely to be of that persuasion, but it appears not. What we perceived in Upton’s original was a strong, likeable and positive figure, presumably some manner of animated toy (although this would presumably have been one reasonably unique and personal to Upton herself, since the mass-production of subtly but crucially altered Golliwog toys only followed the publication of her stories), black-identified if only by virtue of his skin colour, during a period when the only other supposedly sympathetic black figures in fiction would be Nigger Jim or Uncle Tom.

I presume, for want of any earlier sources, that Upton had given her character the name ‘Golliwog’ purely because she liked the slightly nonsensical way that the word sounded, its most probable derivation being a word such as pollywog (which, lest there be any misunderstanding, is a word which has only ever meant ‘tadpole’ since its Medieval English origins as ‘polwygle’, and which has apparently never been used, either in the U.K. or the U.S., as a slang expression of any sort, let alone one with racial connotations). The later English 20th century usage of the word ‘wog’ as a derogatory term for almost any non-white person, while often glossed by apologists as an acronym for ‘Western Oriental Gentleman’ or the like, is clearly an appropriation of the name of Upton’s character but now given negative racial connotations that the author never intended, and now clad in minstrel attire to make racial mockery the only point of a figure that, up until then, had seemingly been intended to express the exact opposite. Upton dressed her creation in the black suit that was the standard formal attire of her day. One might suppose this to be a shorthand suggesting that he was a dignified and respectable figure. His courage and strength of character were ably demonstrated in his picaresque adventures, as was his intellectual acumen. My own thinking, and I would imagine Kevin’s thinking on the character, was that here we had a character which in its day was positive, bold, innovative, and the creation of a typically overlooked woman creator who had quite possibly wished to situate an admirable and loveable black figure in the imaginations of the white Victorian children who comprised her readership. It was our belief that the character could be handled in such a way as to return to him the sterling qualities of Upton’s creation, while stripping him of the racial connotations than had been grafted onto the Golliwog figure by those who had misappropriated and wilfully misinterpreted her work. While we felt that we had succeeded in what were well-intentioned aims, such an interpretation can only ever be subjective. It may have been the several years that have elapsed between our initial introduction of the character and this present round of debate, during which the Galley-Wag appeared to have elicited little or no controversy, which have led us to believe that our intentions had been largely understood by our generally insightful readership.

The interview itself as a whole is probably threadworthy, filled as it is with long, considered, deliciously scathing refutations toward his detractors, but I never came to get around to it.

 

[Yrael]

I think I was mistaking Roald Dahl for Enid Blyton.

I just looked for examples of golliwogs in the original versions of Blyton's books and was greeted with these:

...oh my. They weren't subtle. :x

 

[Earthpainting]

I visit Australia every now and then since that's where my pops resides, and I must admit I have seen those things there in shop windows.

can somebody explain how these are racist ?

i realise OT gaf is offended by everything, such as not being tipped or having a foam penis in their coffee but when i was growing up i read noddy books and they had golliwogs in them, never thought anything of it.

These debates usually boil down to some people saying these things are supposed to be a mocking depiction of black people and some people saying that they aren't. Historically speaking the former group is unquestionably correct. Gollywog is a character that is a caricature of the minstrel show outfit, which was a caricature of a black person. Considering where the creator is from, the ties between blackface and Golliwog are pretty clear.

Of course, Australians and Brits are not going make the connection to the baggage they aren't familiar with, which is what makes these things tricky. If you have fond memories of these things because you and your family grew up with them, then people bringing up indirect cultural associations is going to feel unfair.

Ultimately the pragmatic thing to do is to ask the following question: Can something with a negative history start living a life of its own and shed its negative baggage over time if the harmful elements are losing its meaning? Personally I think these dolls could be fine once we're in a better place from a racial perspective, though that's a pretty big qualifier. With so much injustice still in place, keeping these dolls around is just going to remind people of the inequalities and prejudice they themselves, their friends or family experienced. This may take many more generations to even start thinking about reclaiming it as is.

Imagery like this is usually not worth bumming people out over, so getting rid of it or changing it seems like the best course of action. Being offended by it might feel like an emotional response, but resisting these things usually is as well.

 

[krYlon]

Here's a fascinating (lengthy!) interview with Alan Moore, the beginning of which has him taking to task various accusations of racist caricaturing and related ugliness.

A small (!) excerpt quoted below:




The interview itself as a whole is probably threadworthy, filled as it is with long, considered, deliciously scathing refutations toward his detractors, but I never came to get around to it.

He makes some interesting points. As always in these matters, context makes a world of difference.
Moore is such an intelligent, articulate guy. I need to set aside some time to read the whole interview.

 

[Marky Mark]

I just looked for examples of golliwogs in the original versions of Blyton's books and was greeted with these:

...oh my. They weren't subtle. :x

The white guy on the cover looks like Nicolas Cage.

 

[i_am_ben]

The reason is very simple: Australia doesn't have many black people so there haven't many people to raise it as an issue.

 

[Witchfinder General]

These are not popular anymore in Australia, at least not in the more cultured areas. I haven't seen one in nearly 30 years.

 

[grimmiq]

The only one I've ever seen in person here in AUS was owned by my grandparents (English,moved to AUS when my mum was 5ish). So that's 1 in 28 years.

 

[zorlaczerohero]

lol what? I've lived and traveled around Australia all my life and I think I've seen one shop that sold them.

Lived in Australia for 3 years and never seen one. Now inappropriate brands of Cheese on the other hand....

 

[Currygan]

Moore?

"he has a big penis!"

 

[Neo Child]

I visit Australia every now and then since that's where my pops resides, and I must admit I have seen those things there in shop windows.

These debates usually boil down to some people saying these things are supposed to be a mocking depiction of black people and some people saying that they aren't. Historically speaking the former group is unquestionably correct. Gollywog is a character that is a caricature of the minstrel show outfit, which was a caricature of a black person. Considering where the creator is from, the ties between blackface and Golliwog are pretty clear.

Of course, Australians and Brits are not going make the connection to the baggage they aren't familiar with, which is what makes these things tricky. If you have fond memories of these things because you and your family grew up with them, then people bringing up indirect cultural associations is going to feel unfair.

Ultimately the pragmatic thing to do is to ask the following question: Can something with a negative history start living a life of its own and shed its negative baggage over time if the harmful elements are losing its meaning? Personally I think these dolls could be fine once we're in a better place from a racial perspective, though that's a pretty big qualifier. With so much injustice still in place, keeping these dolls around is just going to remind people of the inequalities and prejudice they themselves, their friends or family experienced. This may take many more generations to even start thinking about reclaiming it as is.

Imagery like this is usually not worth bumming people out over, so getting rid of it or changing it seems like the best course of action. Being offended by it might feel like an emotional response, but resisting these things usually is as well.

thanks for the post. i guess im a bit uneducated on this as my only memories of these guys are from the Noddy books, and kids dolls and gnomes in peoples gardens. just thought it was a heavy stereotype, big eyes, huge red lips etc.

guess i never experienced any black/white segregation growing up in real life outside of TV and the internet and such.

Stereotypes are still awful and offensive.

of course. being english growing up in scotland is hard. especially during my school years - would get kicked, punch, spat on daily just for being english and having a different accent. sometimes had metal bats used against me. this was on top of verbally bullying with english stereotypes

since i left school i take stuff like this in jest, people are just as racist towards me but its never physical. so i can make a joke of it now.

 

[Komo]

Isn't that true of casual racists everywhere?

Yeah, pretty much

 

[m3k]

NZ in on this too

Sorry NZ bros

 

[Neo Child]

oh man i had this noddy book

the 4 gollywogs stole noddys car and clothes, leaving him naked.

 

[Nebula]

oh man i had this noddy book

the 4 gollywogs stole noddys car and clothes, leaving him naked.

What the fuck?

 

[suedester]

My mum bought my daughter a golliwog doll 2-3 years ago. I've no idea what she was thinking. It's at the bottom of a toy box now. I'm not in the least bit PC and you could say its just a cute black doll, but a golliwog does have clear racial undertones.

 

[krYlon]

of course. being english growing up in scotland is hard. especially during my school years - would get kicked, punch, spat on daily just for being english and having a different accent. sometimes had metal bats used against me. this was on top of verbally bullying with english stereotypes

since i left school i take stuff like this in jest, people are just as racist towards me but its never physical. so i can make a joke of it now.

That sounds horrendous. And it sounds like you've been conditioned to accept it as "jest" after years of bullying. It may not be like that at all, but that's the way it comes across.