Talk:Merle Dixon

Wikipedia articles are not reliable sources
Per WP:WPNOTRS, Wikipedia articles are user-generated content and are not considered to be reliable sources for other Wikipedia articles. Therefore, I have removed all Wikipedia articles cited as sources in the article. If these are relevant to the information being discussed, then they should added as simple Wikilinks and not inline citations. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:00, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Centric episode(s)
A discussion regarding the meaning and value of listing "Centric episode(s)" in the character infobox has been started at Talk:The Walking Dead (TV series). Please feel free to join discussion if interested. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:54, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Semi protection
Briefly semi-protected to facilitate discussion of the personality descriptors, as mentioned here. -- Euryalus (talk) 12:04, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, so Merle appeared in two episodes of season one, one episode of season two, and 11 episodes of season three and was killed in his last appearance of that season. His negative portrayal was lightened significantly in the middle of the third season as he joined the "good guy" side out of necessity and started to see that maybe their ways weren't such a bad idea. But anyway, as Euryalus pointed out here, "Descriptors of this fictional character should be drawn from reliable secondary sources, not from personal observation in watching he show. I note the article does contain an external reference for the "racist" descriptor; there seems no justification for removing it from the text but the question is really whether also including it in the lead gives it undue weight." So as I said at that discussion, there are reviews for all of the episodes the character appeared in, so I will see what the reviewers had to say about him specifically and try to focus on that. I am starting that now, beginning with his first three appearances that set the tone for the character. 73.168.15.161 (talk) 14:36, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

The second episode of the series, and the first appearance of the character, was titled "Guts". Comments from the reviews listed in the episode's article regarding Merle Dixon are as follows:

NY Daily News says: "Dixon, the Kid Rock-style psychopath ("Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" star Michael Rooker) kicks off a tremendously ill-timed (well, more than usual) racist rant at T-Dog, which Rick has to bust up."

Entertainment Weekly says: "The second episode also introduced a number of characters including the racist Merle Dixon, played by Michael Rooker of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer infamy."

The A.V. Club says: "It doesn't help matters any that part of his group is the hot-headed, aggressive racist Merle Dixon. Merle is a huge sore thumb in the middle of the episode: behaving like no one in his situation ever would, his character seems to exist for no other reason than to cause dramatically convenient trouble. He attracts the attention of zombies by randomly blasting them, he treats the women of the group like his harem, and he insults the non-white characters, especially T-Dog (a wildly overacting Robert 'IronE' Singleton)."

IGN says: "Michael Rooker is a great actor, but he couldn't help elevate how ridiculous Merle felt. A horrible racist, with no qualms about showing that fact, this was a guy openly calling the other survivors "taco vendor," not to mention the particularly repellent N word."

In the following episode, "Tell It to the Frogs", we have the following:

The A.V. Club says: "Even though Merle is a racist asshole who might have gotten everyone killed, in a world where the only real distinction is between the living and the dead, leaving him to be torn apart leaves a bit of a bad taste in everyone's mouth."

IGN says: "I saw some people in the comments of last week's review scoff at what they perceived was me saying that I didn't believe that guys like Merle Dixon existed. That's not what I meant though – of course there are blatantly racist, ignorant a-holes like that."

So, just with that alone, we have several descriptions of him consistently identifying him as racist. So, arguably, the term "redneck" may not be necessary, but I think it is absolutely necessary to identify him as racist based on the available sources. I'm not even sure at this point that I need to continue going through the other episodes, so I am going to stop here for now. Any further input on this? 73.168.15.161 (talk) 15:00, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Rv, why
Slate is a perfectly fine source per our sourcing guidelines. Darkness Shines (talk) 21:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

That's absolutely absurd. This is an encyclopedia, so stick to something more justifiable. RevertSJW (talk) 00:00, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Removing references is absurd, one is McFarland, an academic publisher. Darkness Shines (talk) 00:01, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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