I agree, with caveats.
Harold's first lines about Leshawna: "I've never seen a girl like you in real life before. --- you're real big and loud."
Makes me laugh, everytime, precisely because it's stupid, inappropriate. She didn't swoon or made to look like a wild animal for reacting how she did, the scene only works because she almost flattened him for it & it took one girl and guy bigger than her to hold her back.
And yet, I give OP points for theorizing that Harold likely never saw a sistah before or one like Leshawna, because he word for word stated he did NOT. ✅ That is bar for bar the gag.
✅OPs best case being the fetishization & stereotypes, agreed.
✅How hyper-sexualized Leshawna is/ adultified despite how young she actually is, agreed, however--- I've went to academia with ladies like her, they weren't all built like tanks, they weren't all that exaggerated (hence caricature), but they do exist, relatively. Most of them got on my last nerves and nowhere near as likeable as Leshawna.
And yet that doesn't excuse TDI sexualizing her like that.
But taking this that far to the point of Baartman's testimony just to draw a parallel which is hyperbole at best, is doing too much, if we really think things are "kinda worse than ever" nowadays? That's just showing the privilege we have.
📌Picture it: We have it good enough to pull up Sarah's horror story on demand, talk about it, use it strategically to vindicate our feelings & opinions, feel like a hero, put her history away; and then (this is the best part) 👉move on to live a life she couldn't even dream was possible and think things are kinda 'worse' because fetishization still happens.
Without getting beside the valid points OP is actually making, still, just really think about that for a second.
Some of the most worst modern examples I've ever seen of hyper-sexualized BW anything have been from African-Americans themselves, in media and IRL. Ironically.
Unlike Saartjie, Leshawna commands every room she's in because of her confidence, which is why I fancy her the most, her attitude & presence. And in terms of power dynamics, she has every advantage on Harold, including physical. He's not even a rich kid, she's out of his league in every way. The similarities of fetishization are there, & yet in practice, it's more of a subversion than a traditional parallel because of the era gap, ironically.
🚨TL;DR we need to keep things in proportion. You can see slavery where you perceive it if that helps you get to the next 24 hour cycle of our lives, societal echoes of bondage still ring even in Asia's in-fighting or the Arabics' 1000+ year long slave game to America's relatively shorter one in comparison. Everyone's got a rap-sheet.
🚨That's not to trivialize Saartjie, not to dismiss USA's mistakes, but simply: Perspective
📌OP is not wrong for noticing: when you're right, you're right, but it's best to keep things in proportion.
✅OP is rightfully uncomfortable with a caricature being exactly that: and just because satire is "the point" doesn't mean "the point" always work in execution, it doesn't, not always.
And yet, in this case, they used one of the most hideous historical examples that far exceeds what the show actually did, in poor taste, for a show where the entire cast are caricatures. Not. Just. Leshawna.
The issue is, the parallel is loose, but an overshot proportionately.
On fetishization, OP isn't saying they're the exact same, got it. So it's valid as strictly a fetishization continuity example.
Otherwise the invocation in itself? for this? Total Drama Island? Lol. The proportion of scale of the usage of Saatjie's example, at all, specifically for this caricature in a satire show where everyone was a punchline, is an overreaction.
We can recognize that a character trope is insensitive, poorly written, or uncomfortable aka a caricature by design: without needing to equate a cartoon gag, an intentional caricature to human trafficking or invoking 19th-century human zoos. Seeing & noticing is different from using it for emotional currency in a video to criticize a cartoon show where, I repeat, everyone was a caricature.
If 99% of the cast were written like ATLA characters, Team Ehasz level 3-dimensional and then Leshawna was the odd one out? Then this comment would be 98% shorter.
Otherwise, it's agreed that satire doesn't have to be badly written like hyper-sexualizing a teen (agreed), but ignoring the reality that caricatures, satire, parody is inherently risque because it steps out of line to be exactly that it is. That is literally what a caricature is, a dramatic misrepresentation.
Keyword: dramatic MIS-representation = Caricature
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