History Main / MajoredInWesternHypocrisy

* In ''IndianaJones and the Temple of Doom''. Chattar Lal, prime minister to the Maharaja of Pankot, attended Oxford.

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[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* In one episode of ''TheWildThornberries'', the Thornberries encounter a tribe of natives who were planning on cooking and eating a runaway Darwin. When Nigel tried to apologize and explain that Darwin was their pet, the chieftain revealed that he knew how to speak English thanks to language tapes. The chief then picks up a call from his friends on his cellphone and tells them that they won't be eating Darwin, so they'll just drive into town for steak.

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[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Invoked in [[{{Ptitlewo6dni8e}} Dorothy L. Sayers]]' ''Have His Carcase''. When LordPeterWimsey, Harriet Vane, and the local policeman all hear a story revolving about an Indian rajah who allegedly did not know about banknotes, the policeman objects: what sort of Indian rajah would not know about banknotes? Why, many of them had been educated at Oxford.

Named for a line said by a North Korean villain (Colonel Moon to be precise) in the JamesBond movie ''DieAnotherDay'', this refers to Western (often {{Oxbridge}} or IvyLeague) educated foreign characters who are encountered by Westerners. Whether heroic or evil, a typical plot is for them to either be assumed to be an "ignorant native" or else use ObfuscatingStupidity as a {{Fauxreigner}} before revealing their education to Western characters. Also frequent is a comment to the effect that while they learned skills from this education, something they experienced added to their revulsion for the West.

'''Examples:'''

* An episode of ''JeevesAndWooster'' where Bertie blacks up and attempts [[YouNoTakeCandle caveman-speak]] to impersonate a visiting African chief is [[YourMileageMayVary arguably]] [[SubvertedTrope saved from cringeworthiness]] when the real chief shows up and turns out to have been educated in England and be better-spoken than Bertie. I say, not that being better spoken than Bertie Wooster is much of a feat, mind you.

* The leaders of the Negritude movement in France's colonies, the London-educated barrister Gandhi, the genocidal Cambodian leader and Sorbonne alumnus Pol Pot, the Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist and U. of Northern Colorado alum Sayyid Qutb...
* Ho Chi Minh, too. Though the guy that takes the cake may be Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, whose education was so Western he described himself as "The last Englishman to rule India."
* Sun Yat-Sen, founder of both Modern Chinas, went to school in Hawaii.

* In the LordDarcy novel ''A Study In Sorcery'', some Native American warriors deliver a note to the Angevin camp tied to an arrow fired into the officers' tent. The attached message ends with the signature of a tribal leader, Laughs-Last, complete with the initials for his Oxford-awarded graduate degree.

* Lawrence in the [[TheFlash Rogues']] "New Year's Evil" story is the son of a modern-day Asian warlord and has an Oxford education.

* ''TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea by JulesVerne: Captain Nemo; whether a Pole or Indian Prince, he is definitely steeped in Western culture, ironically enough, the same culture he is at war with.

->''From the number of cannibal village chiefs with Oxford or Harvard degrees, I'd say someone better investigate what they teach in law school''.\\
--'''Recon5'''

[[AC:ComicBooks]]
* Subverted in the Keith Giffen era of the Justice League. The noble savages of KooeyKooeyKooey send a promising son to the mainland to learn at Oxford...because they want to modernize the island. They embrace Western Culture as soon as possible.

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* In ''IndianaJones and the Temple of Doom''. Chattar Lal, prime minister to the Maharaja of Pankot, attended Oxford.
* The {{Mummy}} from ''Night at the Museum'' is played like this (though, of course, he couldn't have actually studied there - instead, his knowledge comes from being kept at the Cambridge Egyptology department).

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* Another James Bond example is arguably Julius Gorner from ''Literature/DevilMayCare''.
** Let's not forget Kamran Shah from ''TheLivingDaylights'' and Tiger Tanaka from ''YouOnlyLiveTwice''.

* The CompleteMonster, Hideki, of the AxisOfTime series.
* In {{Discworld}}, the character 71-Hour Ahmed [[{{Fauxreigner}} plays up his foreignness]], but was educated at the Assassin's Guild, the closest thing to a posh British public school on the Disc.
** He plays up his education in Klatch, for pretty much the same reason he plays up the Klatchian stereoptype in A-M.
* One of the {{Flashman}} novellas in ''Flashman and the Tiger'' has him encountering the son of a [[ThePrisonerOfZenda Rupert of Hentzau]] {{Expy}} who describes public schools as having conditions worse than Siberia but helping to toughen him up to take on Englishmen; also, there is a character in Flashman's Lady who is an English-educated Barbary pirate.
* For a heroic example, a popular EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory understanding of ''Babar'' is that it is a pro-colonial allegory with the Elephant King representing Western-educated leaders who were looked upon favorably by European powers (in this case France). A real-life example would be the current and previous kings of Jordan, both of whom were educated in and very popular in the West.

* Arguably {{Jules Verne}}'s Captain Nemo would count, as whether a Pole or Indian Prince, he is definitely steeped in Western culture, ironically enough, the same culture he is at war with.

* Crown Prince Bumpoo of the African nation of Jolliginki in the DoctorDolittle stories. Of course, while he likes studying at Oxford (except for [[EverybodyHatesMathematics math, which he hates]], and the silly European habit of wearing those ghastly shoes all the time) it has mostly succeeded in turning him into an UpperClassTwit ''and'' an EthnicScrappy.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* A humorous version was used in one episode of ''YesMinister'' where Hacker sees a news story on the new dictator of an African country and immediately recognizes him as a schoolfriend who also attended the London School of Economics- prestigious but not quite {{Oxbridge}}. Given that the show is on the cynical side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism, the (admittedly amusing) casual racism of the British characters is complemented by the obvious corruption of the African character.
* An episode of ''JeevesAndWooster'' where Bertie blacks up and attempts [[YouNoTakeCandle caveman-speak]] to impersonate a visiting African chief is [[YourMileageMayVary arguably]] [[SubvertedTrope saved from cringeworthiness]] when the real chief shows up and turns out to have been educated in England and be better-spoken than Bertie.
** Not that being better spoken than Bertie Wooster is much of a feat, mind you.
* This happened a few times on [[{{MASH}} M*A*S*H]], generally with the Korean/Chinese/whichever doctor getting the better of obnoxious racist Frank Burns. One of them had even gone to Colonel Blake's alma mater.

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[[AC:RealLife]]
* As noted above, there are a number of TruthInTelevision examples- the leaders of the Negritude movement in France's colonies, the London-educated barrister Gandhi, the genocidal Cambodian leader and Sorbonne alumnus Pol Pot, the Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist and U. of Northern Colorado alum Sayyid Qutb...
** Ho Chi Minh, too. Though the guy that takes the cake may be Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, whose education was so Western he described himself as "The last Englishman to rule India."
** Sun Yat-Sen, founder of both Modern Chinas, went to school in Hawaii.
** Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Bosnian Serb Army and on trial for War Crimes, went to Columbia. Charles Taylor, genocidal leader of Liberia went to Bentley University.

<<|CharactersAsDevice|>>

* As an OlderThanFeudalism example, at least from the perspective of the Romans, could be considered Arminius, the chieftain of the "barbarian" Germanic tribe of the Cherusci. Young Arminius served in the Roman army, and got as reward Roman citizenship and the rank of an ''eques'' (a specific aristocratic class). And he gained Roman military training, which later back home did come in handy, when he and his Cherusci [[CurbStompBattle crushingly defeated]] the Romans in the historic Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

** Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Bosnian Serb Army and on trial for War Crimes, went to Columbia. Charles Taylor, genocidal leader of Sierra Lionne went to Bentley University.

-->''From the number of cannibal village chiefs with Oxford or Harvard degrees, I'd say someone better investigate what they teach in law school''.\\
- '''Recon5'''

May employ a CompletelyUnnecesacaryTranslator.

Named for a line said by a North Korean villain (Colonel Moon to be precise) in the JamesBond movie ''DieAnotherDay'', this refers to Western (often {{Oxbridge}} or IvyLeague) educated foreign characters who are encountered by Westerners. Whether heroic or evil, a typical plot is for them to either be assumed to be a "ignorant native" or else use ObfuscatingStupidity as a {{Fauxreigner}} before revealing their education to Western characters. Also frequent is a comment to the effect that while they learned skills from this education, something they experienced added to their revulsion for the West.

Named for a line said by a North Korean villain (Colonel Moon to be precise) in the JamesBond movie ''DieAnotherDay'', this refers to Western (often {{Oxbridge}} or IvyLeague) educated foreign characters who are encountered by Westerners. Whether heroic or evil, a typical plot is for them to either be assumed to be a "ignorant native" or else use ObfuscatingStupidity as a {{Fauxreigner}} before revealing their education to Western characters. Also frequent is a comment to the effect that while they learned skills from this education, something they experienced added to their revulsion for the West. Sometimes, regardless of whether the character is good or evil, there are also some definite UnfortunateImplications involved, presenting such a character as very much superior to pretty much everyone else of his race/tribe, making them something like a non-white version of the MightyWhitey. (Though one could say that getting yourself an education in a foreign country does imply a fair amount of ability.)

Of course, there's also the cultural discrimination inherent in presuming that the only way to elevate such a character to the position he/she presumably has was a Western education. While the West certainly has excellent universities in the liberal arts, excellent scientific and technical schools can also be found spread across the four corners of the Earth, and of course many of the greatest people to ever live never stepped inside the doors of a school.

** Sun Yat-Sen, founder of both Modern Chinas went to school in Hawaii.