(NewsChannel 9) – A professor from the University of Washington has written an article claiming the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” shows racism and violence. In the article “Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom,” professor Holly Barker says the residents of Bikini Bottom, which is the town where SpongeBob lives, colonized the area by taking the land from native Bikinian people. “The cartoon desensitizes viewers to the violence of settler colonialism, normalizes and erases the
displacement of the Bikinian people from their ancestral land, and whitewashes US military rampages on the islands in the history and narratives of Bikini,” Barker says in the article. Barker goes on to state that SpongeBob and other residents destroy Bikini Bottom and exploit the Bikinian and Marshallese people of their resources. The article was published in “The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs,” which publishes political, economic and social articles as well as reviews for books and other media. Nickelodeon has not issued a press release or statement about the article. READ MORE
