Oh, I don’t mean talking about David Mamet in a bar. I mean actually acting out a David Mamet play in a bar, or trying to provoke discussion in a bar the way Mamet tries to provoke discussion in his plays. I wouldn’t necessarily walk into a bar shouting “Fuckin’ Ruthie Fuckin’ Ruthie Fuckin’ Ruthie,” which is the Mamet line that springs to mind for some reason, and expect not to be kicked out. (I should maybe also mention that I think when Mamet is being most deliberately provocative he descends into hamfisted agitprop, as far as what I’ve seen, so maybe that’s not the best example anyway.)
Yeah, I guess there are two things; talking about provocative topics and talking about them in a way that’s likely to start a needless flame war. To some extent I think introducing some provocative topics out of the blue is going to be inflammatory–I’m remembering when I was doing some physical therapy and one of the other therapists was loudly offering his opinions on something which I don’t even want to bring up here and I was like, “Man, I don’t even want to talk about this, let alone hear your stupid opinions” (though I did not say this). And it’s not that the conversation was off-topic, it’s just that it was the sort of thing that was likely to get heated, and there was no reason to bring it up.
I think it’s common sense, really; if there’s something that is likely to raise heated feelings, do you really need to bring it up? Sometimes yes. (But the new moderation policy means that a lot of this stuff can be taken to the moderators instead of aired out on the board.) But often no.
I suppose I just don’t think it’s possible to introduce a topic, heated or otherwise, out of the blue. Not in a place intended for social gathering and conversation. If you’re introducing a topic on a forum, this means that the topic is on your mind, and you have enough to say or are inquisitive enough about it to type a message and ask for input from others.
I have been on forums where people make controversial posts on purpose to stir up ire amongst the community. But those are usually easy to spot, and even such antisocial posts won’t start flame wars if the community is mature. This community does seem to be mature.
Maybe I should put where I’m coming from into a little perspective, though. I only started really diving into IF a few months ago. It was basically a new art form for me, and it broadened my perspective. I played games like Howling Dogs and The Baron and was really impacted. But I never expected to be able to personally interact with people like Porpentine and Victor Gijsbers because, with most art forms, you simply can’t interact with the artists. They’re too far removed. But then as I kept exploring the IF landscape, I discovered that you could interact with the artists on forums like this! They’re very down to earth and plugged into the community. Victor Gijsbers has even participated in this thread! It’s not really like any other community I’ve encountered, where you’ve got intelligent, creative people making great art, and they’re open to their audience, willing to discuss things.
Basically, even though I’m new around here, this community seems to me like it would be one of the most valuable places to have conversations about societal and philosophical issues. The reason I have that opinion is because of what I’ve experienced through the games that this community has produced. I wouldn’t want to see that potential for conversation removed because people are frightened to speak about loaded subjects.
Quoted for truth. When I first came here and saw zarf posting around, and Emily Short, et al… I mean, as of very recently Bob Bates has posted here and on RAIF! Bob Imp Bates! Bob Legend Entertainment Bates! Bob Eric the Unready Bates! How COOL is that!
I’m now being accused that the person whose signature sparked the thread is, in fact, me also. (I can’t find this discussion so it must be occurring privately somewhere) Imagine how crazy I must be to make a separate account in order for me to construct a signature for me to be offended about. Equally insane would be me reporting my own post a week later from the other account. Someone clearly hasn’t been taking their medicine here but I can assure you all it isn’t me.
Years ago Conrad thought Pudlo was Adam Thornton, as I recall.
Rather than re-hash that whole sorry mess it’s probably best not to start accusing people of being someone else. Unless there’s evidence, it gets really ugly really soon.
It’s even uglier if it goes on behind closed doors, IMO.
Sorry, I think it’s just one person’s suspicion. It’s the second time it’s happened though. I’m not bothered particularly except having a sock puppet account is probably a banable offence.
I’m pretty sure having multiple accounts isn’t bannable–sometimes people need them to preserve the pseudonymity of their contest entries. In any case, the behavior you have apparently been accused of is by no means unprecedented on this board!
In mathematics, you can prove that any number equals any other number if you allow your proof to divide by zero. This isn’t a statement about the fundamental equivalency of all numbers; it’s a statement about division by zero. When students ask why zero has to be handled specially, one way to explain it is that if it weren’t, these absurd proofs would appear to be valid.
In literary criticism, you can deconstruct almost anything to find any message you care to look for, as long as you only have to meet a fairly low standard of intellectual rigor. You can find racism in a Lorde song, misogyny in gay porn, and imperialism in a take-out menu. I don’t think this is a statement about the larger culture, because with a little effort, the same sort of analysis can be applied to anything, regardless of origin. I think it’s more of a statement about the quality of analysis that develops from a tradition of prizing subjective reception over content and authorial intent, especially in communities where disagreement with such analysis is regarded as complicity in the oppression it appears to find.
Given how little deconstruction and the Sokal affair have to do with someone saying “Hey this song is full of racial stereotypes,” this is a very effectively self-verifying statement.
No, seriously, you have to lower your standards of rigor a lot more to find deconstruction or literary theory in that criticism of Lorde than you have to do to find racism in the Lorde song. I confess I didn’t read the entire first link, because I got to a part where the author was clearly bullshitting about something I know very well* and I ceased to trust him as a source on things I don’t know well. But I read enough to see that he, like Sokal, was aiming at insular academic literary theory, specifically criticizing it for habits developed because it’s closed off from the world, which does not apply to a jargon-free post on a public blog, which by its nature is open to the world at large. (Yeah, it moderates comments. Doesn’t mean the author isn’t aware of the larger discussion or pitching things to the general public.)
You say that pointing out the way that a song contains stereotypes of black rappers is a less-rigorous version of academic literary theory, but how is this true? That seems like a fairly unrigorous critique.
(Citing The Onion is also a bit unrigorous; at least, it should be clear that the sort of criticism we’re discussing–which, to go back to the original quote, was the contention that the Mammy character in Tom and Jerry was a racial stereotype–is far afield from that. To begin with, as Carolyn pointed out it was a criticism made by the NAACP back in 1949, before deconstruction was a gleam in Derrida’s eye. And are we going to argue that American society in 1949 was not full of racism?)
*This part:
Gödel’s results were not a “cheap trick,” but a definitive mathematical solution to problems that had concerned mathematicians for a while. The metaphor comparing deconstruction to it also seems pretty fanciful in exactly the way that Sokal and others criticize; if deconstruction is in fact the literary version of Gödel’s analysis you better pay attention to it).
I think the contention was whether the show was racist. That the Mammy character is a racial stereotype is beyond question. That the Mammy character is racist is… something I’m less comfortable with, because it’s a stereotype that seems to me to have a number positive qualities for me, and that’s not what I typically associate with racism. But that’s a different kettle of fish, and nothing I will strenuously argue one way or another, it’s too subjective and I can’t back any of it up with proper data or information.
And then, that the whole show was racist is what I can’t quite wrap around my head. Violent, yes, and if you wanted to go that way you could really nail T&J to the wall. Racist… bah, despite whatever was said in 1949 (when the topic was too hot for anyone to be lenient on T&J)), I still think it’s a bit of a leap from racial stereotype → racist depiction of a minor character → racist show. Next stop would be that the creators of T&J are racist, I suppose, and after that the whole country is racist. [/sarcasm].
(please note the /sarcasm tag. Very important)
That said - I still wouldn’t be comfortable with black children learning about their heritage from characters like the Mammy in T&J. I wouldn’t say the show was completely, 100% safe and innocent. Just that “racist”, as a label for the show, is a deliberate notch-up I can’t agree with. FWIW.
(apparently the Mammy was replaced in later shows with a white character. That could also be construed as racist, replacing the black character with a white character. But it did leave us with a much safer T&J to watch. Maybe we could just all watch that T&J together instead of bemoaning the T&J that used to exist and seems to have been disowned to an extent that there’s little that we can constructively condemn anymore?)
(If you read this just after I posted, yeah, I edited a lot)
To be clear I (and I think, other people on this thread) wasn’t arguing it should be. The original post bringing up Tom and Jerry talked about airing the cartoons with a disclaimer saying basically what you said. As I udnerstand it we were talking about criticizing the cartoons.
As for airing the edited versions of the cartoons with the black stereotype replaced with a white character–eh, given that the original versions are available for study I don’t think it’s bad to have another version available for people who don’t want to deal with the stereotype at that moment.
You’re conflating a lot of different things here. First of all, the Sokal affair is not about mainstream literary criticism. It’s specifically about postmodernism and deconstructionism, how that subfield loves obscurantism and specific lingo, and the lack of standards in getting published. This is not literary criticism as a whole.
Now, anyone can attempt to make any argument. That does not mean that the entire mechanism for debate cannot be trusted. The same for the scientific method, the same for statistics. All of these ways of knowing can be misapplied, and the proper way to refute it is simply a more rigorous application of the same technique.
You attempted to cherry pick absurd arguments to illustrate your point, but didn’t quite pull it off:
As the article about the Lorde song you linked states, the song indicts crass consumerism and conspicuous consumption, but chooses stereotypical examples from black culture and hip-hop rather than wealthy white culture. It is worth thinking about why this is. It is possible you believe this is coincidence.
It is worth thinking about why in a sexual act between two men, why words that have historically been used as slurs against women are spoken. It says things about the power dynamics in that act, and the power dynamics in society between men and women that led to those words being invoked in this context. It is possible you also believe this is coincidence.
You linked an Onion article. I hope you realize it is a joke website full of made up stories. To be quite honest, I’m not a huge fan of postmodern critical theory. But I see that as worlds apart from the sort of basic literary and cultural crit we’re talking about here.
