(CAMPUS REFORM) -- A university professor deemed the beloved cartoon "SpongeBob Squarepants" "violent," "racist," and "insidious" in a scholarly article.
University of Washington professor Holly Barker published her musings on the yellow sponge cartoon character and his deep-sea pals in an academic journal called The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs, which features "readable" articles focused on "social, economic, political, ecological, and cultural topics."
"SpongeBob’s presence on Bikini Bottom continues the violent and racist expulsion of Indigenous peoples from their lands" Tweet This
In her article titled "Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom," Barker's chief complaint hinges on her perception that the show's fictional setting of the town of Bikini Bottom is based on the nonfictional Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing during the Cold War.
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