If you decide that it is a bad idea for children to have head-lice, then one of the things you might do is introduce a programme of checking children’s hair and giving them anti-bacterial shampoo if they need it. They used to do that when we were at school. We were always told beforehand that nits actually preferred clean hair. It is perfectly possible, governments being what they are, that the programme got a bit too complicated, with too many forms to fill in and too many quotas to hit. Everyone has heard a story of an organisation that has done something stupid to fulfill a target. There was the war story about the regiment that was instructed to reduce the vermin infestation in the barracks, and found out that the only thing they could do to comply was to introduce some mice themselves and then obtain a regimental cat. Or the one about the remote Scottish island that was reprimanded for not having a programme in place to reduce traffic fatalities and had to point out that, er, they didn’t actually have any roads. So it might perfectly well be that someone says “This whole nit nurse thing has got too silly and expensive; we’re getting rid of it.” And it might turn out that once you have fired all the nit nurses there is no outbreak of head-lice, because the programme was trying to solve a problem that didn’t exist. And it might turn out that there are still just the same number of head-lice, because the problem was real but the programme was doing nothing to solve it. But if it turned out that the kids were no longer learning their twice-times tables because they were too busy scratching their itchy heads, you might well conclude that the programme, despite all the form filling and box ticking, had been a pretty good idea. Some people might think that metal combs were a gross invasion of personal liberty and that if a man can’t infest his own family’s hair with parasites in his own house then whose hair is he supposed to infest; or that head-lice are an invention by Big Shampoo; or that brushing children’s hair is a form of grooming and the next move will be to check them for pubic lice; or, at the other extreme, that this light-touch nit-nurse system is pandering to the head-lice brigade and the common sense approach would be shave the heads of everyone between the age of five and eighteen but the barbers’ shop lobby won’t let you say that sort of thing. I think that if the first thing you do when you get into power is abolish all the Anti Head-Lice policies, then one of three things is probably true.
1: You are very sure indeed that the Anti Head-Lice policies aren’t doing any good.
2: You are very sure indeed that Head-Lice don’t exist
3: You are positively in favour of Head-Lice and want children’s heads to be as full of them as possible.
I can’t see into the Dear Leader’s head, obviously. But I have noticed that the International Head-Lice Fan Club; the Royal Society for the Protection of Scalp Insects and the Pediculosis Capitis Breeders Association have all welcomed his anti Nit Nurse policies with open arms.
When John Lennon exposed himself on the cover of an album, his straight laced Auntie Mimi said, oh dear, that’s what he used to do on the beach to draw attention to himself when he was five years old.
I am not sure that this is the last word on artistic nudity, the Two Virgins album, or indeed aunties. But I agree with the implication. When a little child is deliberately silly, sometimes the best thing to do is to ignore them. And sometimes it is best to treat an over-indulged adult as if they were a silly child.
Also: I don’t think Yoko broke up the Beatles.
Cults and conspiracy theories, lacking actual evidence, look for hidden symbols and patterns. This could stand as the definition of a conspiracy theorist: “One who looks for hidden symbols and patterns and believes he has found them.” Your bus is late; you get the wrong sort of coffee in the cafe; private schools lose their charitable status; a Black man appears in Captain America: and you stare and stare and a pattern forms before your eyes and you say “That proves it! The illuminati!” Or, more likely, “the Jews”. [1] So I am very reluctant to make too much of symbols.
The Boys is a superhero story written by someone who doesn’t like superheroes. If you haven’t seen it, then it basically asks “What if Superman were Donald Trump”? Or possibly vice versa. It’s very gory and moderately indecent. The fourth season goes completely overboard in satirising Far Right conspiracy theorists. Going completely overboard is very much Garth Ennis’s stock in trade. I never quite got over the massively overweight pope accidentally crushing the mentally retarded Jesus to death in Preacher and I mean that in a very caring way. The fictional super-powered Christo-fascists in The Boys are perpetually pointing to absurd hidden messaging as if it was the purest common sense. “It’s a Pizza Parlour! And they serve Pepperoni! PPP! Pedophile! How more obvious can it be?”
Folk festivals often give out wrist bands rather than tickets, and ushers often want to see your wrist band before you enter a venue, so I have taken to raising my arm and saying “Hail, Caesar!” at these events. My, how everyone laughs! But we should take care. Is a raised open-handed salute necessarily a fascist signal? And does making a fascist signal necessarily mean that you are a fascist?
There were fourteen colonies in America. Ncuti Gatwa is the fourteenth Doctor Who. The French revolution is celebrated on the fourteenth of July. The Jewish Passover is celebrated on the fourteenth day of Nisan. The belief that Easter should be celebrated on that day has an official Latin name, quatrodecimism. The number fourteen scans really well, so in dirty folk songs gentlemen are inclined to hunt the Bonny Black Hare on the fourteenth of May rather than the seventeenth or the twenty second. The Titanic sank on the fourteenth day of April, and that was also the date of the Grapes of Wrath dust-storm. There are lots of reasons why someone might use the number fourteen symbolically. And it might just be an accident. There might just happen to have been fourteen green bottles on that particular wall. But when someone who has been (possibly) making Nazi salutes (apparently) waits until 14:14 to disseminate a message consisting of nothing but fourteen American flags. Well. You do start to wonder. [2]
If I was definitely not a duck, and if people kept accusing me of being a duck, and if I was very, very offended by the suggestion that I might be a duck, then I might try very hard, in public, not to do anything which someone else could possibly misconstrue as quacking.
Auntie Mimi could be right, after all. They may just be getting their political dicks out because it amuses them to cause the grown-ups consternation. Or because they are too innocent to know that what they are doing is something that you just don’t do in public. A child shouting “fuck” or calling the Black teacher “p*ki” may honestly not know why those words are prohibited, or mean anything by them. He may just be being naughty.
I was at college in the 1980s; during the whole Clause 29 thing and the whole miners’ strike thing and a huge schism about whether the Student Union ought to have an independent nuclear deterrent. You probably think that Ultra Vires is one of the less famous Transformers, but it was a really, really big deal at the time. There was a factional struggle between the Socialist Workers, the Official Student Socialist Party and the Student Socialist Movement for control of the Students Union and yes we had heard all the Life of Brian jokes.
But there were also some Conservative Students, although it is frankly hard to know why ex-Public School boys who had failed to get into Cambridge would have opted for Sussex as a second choice. I suppose there was no such thing as Clearing in those days; maybe we just had a really good Classics department. I’d rather Keir Starmer and Tony Blair stopped using the expression “Student Politics” to refer to anyone with socialist principles, but there is no question that the politics of students could get very silly indeed. If my parents had sent me to a fee-paying school, and if my accent were three notches posher than anyone else’s, then listening to earnest young purely theoretical Marxists in berets saying that people like me ought to be sent to the salt mines would have pissed me off as well. But I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of Campus Tories were trolls. They called for the re-criminalisation of homosexuality and the re-introduction of corporal punishment for the same reason they turned up to discos in three piece suits and attempted to order champagne from the bar. It was a form of retaliatory off-pissing; they were marking out their territory. If you had pressed them, they might have claimed that they were being ironic. You can hear the exact same tone of voice every time Boris Johnson opened his mouth to talk about pickaninnies and watermelons. David Cameron denied ever wearing a Hang Nelson Mandela t-shirt, but many of the Campus Tories did. Someone was certainly doing the fly-posting. I suppose they might have claimed that it was really a false flag operation by one of the lefty groups. The Socialist Workers denied having anything to do with the “Vote Thatcher to keep Kinnock out” leaflets that went out in their name.
[1] The Great Illuminatus Trilogy used to sit alongside the Great Dune Trilogy in Wood Green W.H Smiths. I suppose I should read it one day. I never could get my head around the card game.
[2] The 14 words are a pair of neo-Nazi slogans: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and “because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth”.
You're a brilliant writer, still, but there's nothing now to write about but culture wars and politics and your framing is so wrong. You keep bringing up Nucti. You can't advocate for more roles/higher profiles for black people, get just that, but cry when the 'other side' (mostly 90s colour-blind/free-speech Libs, still) point out that that's what's happened. ''No Nazis'' Are there REALLY Nazis posting here, Mr. Rilstone? REALLY?
ReplyDeleteBut Andrew's point is that racists chant "Box-ticking! Box-ticking!" whenever they see a non-white person in any media whatsoever. A serious, earnest colour-blindness advocate would have no reason to assume that Ncuti Gatwa, or a spear-carrier in a car insurance commercial, got the job solely due to the colour of their skin; as opposed to getting it because they were the best person for the job thanks to policies ensuring that they wouldn't be unjustly passed over. I am not sure there are any earnest, non-racist colour-blindness advocates left in the public sphere. There are certainly none in run-of-the-mill Nazi-infested Internet comment sections.
DeleteTo be sure, an earnest colour-blindness advocate could take issue with some positive-discrimination policies which explicitly recommend bringing other considerations than race-blind merit. But all else being equal, they have no reason to assume that any case of a visible black person, anywhere, is the effect of such a policy. Even if some amount of positive discrimatinion exists in a given industry, it would still be racist at its root to assume that they couldn't possibly have gotten the job any other way. As far as we know, Ncuti Gatwa auditioned for the part of Dr. Who, and there were other people at the audition — of various backgrounds (and indeed genders, which shows that other concerns than "box-ticking" prevailed — otherwise we'd have gotten a black woman, surely! Double the imaginary points in the imaginary form, don't you know.).
As for “Are there REALLY Nazis posting here, Mr. Rilstone? REALLY?”: Andrew moderates this comment section, which means we never see whatever truly egregious messages he gets. If he has bothered to put in "No Nazis", I suspect this is because he had a persistent enough Nazi problem to give an explicit ban a shot; and that suggests desperation born of a truly endemic problem, because the average Nazi troll will interpret it as an invitation.
(Of course, the trolls may not be real ducks. They might have a variety of other disreputable reasons for filling Andrew's inbox with endless variations on the words "Quackety quackety quack". Who knows? Does it matter?)
POINT OF INFORMATION
ReplyDeleteJuly 30 : I don't know what is going on in the head of someone whose reaction to Ncuti Gatwa or Paapa Essiedu or Chadwick Brosnan or Kamala Harris is to talk about "box ticking" and "DEI appointments".
March 21 : And some Star Wars fans objected to the Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew because they had black people in them. …Ncuti Gatwa is, incidentally, a black man.
May 3 Ncuti Gatwa, Kamala Harris, Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch and Michelle Obama have all been described as “DEI hires”.
May 5 : Ncuti Gatwa is the fourteenth Doctor Who
I put the slightly frivolous "no Nazis" comment up after the fall of Twitter and the subsequent fall of America. Star Wars, Doctor Who and Marvel Comics fandom seemed to me to have been infiltrated by conspiracy theorists who, as you say, responded to every appearance of a non-white, non-male or non-hetero character with references to box ticking, and worse. (The conflation of "not of the extreme right" and "paediphile" seems to be particularly egregious, so anyone who doesn't hate Walt Disney and the BBC on general principles is by definition of a "nonce" and a "groomer".) I have not, in fact, been inundated with Nazi posts and (if you don't count the ones about cheating in exams and increasing the dimensions of your genitalia) I have almost never blocked or deleted a post. Perhaps I could have phrased it better than "no Nazis", I admit.
ReplyDeleteThat SK character's, too, surely? At any rate, happy for you that my assumption was incorrect.
DeleteI take the point that there is such a thing as "blaxsploitation" and "queer washing", and some people who object to Ncuti Gatwa are liberals complaining about tokenism. But literally this morning I came across this on Facebook:
ReplyDelete"but we all know who the Doctor is - he's a boffin, an English eccentric, a gentleman explorer, an amateur scientist - an autistic - a Dr Livingston - a man of depth - a British archetype. He's not a flighty African queen"
which the guy then doubled down on
""No they're lying to us - to fit their woke globalist DEI agenda. He was very much a recognisable British archetype. A Victorian one actually - like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were one man.This idea that he can be a mincing African Queen is rubbish, like saying Snow White isn't white…t's what you woke fascists do to close down debate - slander to intimidate. One does not have to be a racist or a homophobe to say established character are not infinitely malleable - that cultural icons should be protected. That Robin Hood (say) was not a Chinese woman, or King Arthur was not an Italian. Or some such nonsense. You probably think a woman can have a penis a balls? What you vandals want to do is take a club hammer to the Western canon, to the Pieta, if you could. You are beasts - savages - vandals - creeps. And, obviously liars, slanders, and would be bullies - well you cant bully me you absolute c*** of a human being.”
We can discuss definitions, if you want to. But this doesn't sound like a colour blind 1990s liberal talking, to me. But that's not the sort of thing I would want on my blog, thank you very much.
(In other news, someone elsewhere on Facebook described a 1966 black and white TV comedy show about two working class lads in the North of England as "the beginning of woke TV". WOKE = That quality which National Trust Cream Teas have in common with The Likely Lads.)
.
There are things I can answer for and things I can't. A few years ago thought we could possibly correspond. ''A Letter from Andrew Rilstone's Far-Right Fan'' I'm not sure you'd take that as a tongue-in-cheek comment anymore. And I'm not the writer you are, its been too eventful of a decade to easily unpack, and the possibly of both sides of this stuff understanding each other's positions lessens all the time. (I'm going to mention the Supreme Court Ruling) In answer to Achille Talon. Yes, it IS unfair that every actor of colour faces this accusation, but its an environment that Progressives created. There's been a weird kind of media activism since 2016, which stepped up a gear in 2020 in response to BLM. That's not a secret. The TV channels pledged to put more black people on the screen and the have. 'Box ticking' isn't a nice way to put it, neither is it untrue. The Doctor Who before Nucti WAS a woman of colour, yes? Jodie's first Doctor Who promo featured a glass celing shattered. Its not for story reasons, its activisim. The Nazi question was facetious. The people you gents consider to be Nazis really, really are not. Do you understand what happened with the recent ruling? (Theories on 'distraction' aside, even though we share them at both ends of the horseshoe) It wasn't a decision based on hate or to make some people's lives harder. It had to be done for practical reasons. All the right-wing hypotheticals had already happened. Cis women were being preyed upon by predators. (Cis men PRETENDING to be trans, if you like) But also, why the hate for Rowling? Yes, she has become spiteful with time, but the inciting incident... This woman was a Liberal figurehead. I'm sure she'd never been anything other than polite to trans people up until that point, she just couldn't be made to tow a shifting line and say that 'Trans women are women' because she's old enough, and I guess distanced enough from media types, to know its not true. That's not hate? What she got in return is.
ReplyDeleteI can correspond with anyone. (I don't know if I know you in the real world, or whether you have used different aliases on this forum; I don't recognise your current handle.) There would come a point -- if someone were using de-humanising language or seemed very wedded to conspiracy theory -- where I wouldn't think it worthwhile.
DeleteThe question of what is far-right and what is Nazi is perhaps not very profitable. (I think that there should be strong trades unions; student grants and state funded tuition fees; and that the top paid CEO shouldn't earn more than, say, ten times what his cleaner does. Does that make me Old Labour, or Liberal, or Far Left, or Trotskyite, or Radical Left WIng Lunatic? It depends a bit on where you are standing.)
What word would you like me to apply to, for example, the people who participated in and encouraged last summer's attempted anti-Muslim pogrom?
'Box ticking' isn't a nice way to put it, neither is it untrue. The Doctor Who before Nucti WAS a woman of colour, yes? Jodie's first Doctor Who promo featured a glass ceiling shattered. Its not for story reasons, its activisim.
DeleteYou seem to have missed the point of that promo to a startling extent. The glass ceiling is, precisely, a classic metaphor for the idea that women were historically kept out of jobs which they were no less able to do than men because of sexist prejudice. The same concept applies to race. In both cases, the point of "pledging to put more black people — or women — on TV" is first and foremost that there were currently fewer of them on the air than a race- and gender-blind assessment of candidates' acting ability would have yielded; thus, this negative bias needed to be corrected for.
(Yes, it's more complicated than that. It's always more complicated than that. Jodie Whittaker wasn't simply portraying a male character in the way that actresses have been crossdressing to play Hamlet for over a century. Some have advocated for, and implemented, diversity quotas that go beyond correcting for bias, and consider a more-than-randomly ethnically-diverse cast a positive good due to the claimed virtues of representation. Et cetera, et cetera. Even so: that is not what the glass ceiling was about. The glass ceiling is specifically about the exact liberal objectively-judging-people-by-their-ability-while-ignoring-bias thing we were talking about.)
I don't think Andrew would like us to turn his comment section into the latest battlefield of the Great Gendered Bathroom Wars, at least not when that wasn't remotely the topic of the original article. I will say that, in the same spirit as "quacking should be avoided even if you're not technically a duck", I'm less interested in probing the truth of Rowling's heart than asking what policies she advocates, and what people she allies herself with. Maybe she honestly doesn't hate trans people, in the emotional sense of the word "hate". How should I know? I'm not telepathic.
"Hate" is shorthand for "persistently advocates policies and spreads slander to harm a certain group", and Rowling certainly did that from the start. Nor is she simply a free speech fundamentalist who wants to preserve her individual right to say "trans woman aren't women". Reading her actual writing on the topic makes it abundantly clear that she doesn't think trans people should exist. She thinks girls who seek to become boys are harming themselves; that boys who seek to become girls are liable to harm "real" girls; she thinks that both groups should be discouraged from transitioning, and have hurdles thrown in their path if they try. I think those views are morally wrong and socially damaging. She is therefore my bitter political enemy. Whether I think she's "hateful" or "spiteful", and indeed, whether I'd be willing to have a pleasant conversation about something else with her over tea and crumpets if the occasion arose — that is simply not the point.
I don't know if you saw JKR's comments on asexual folk; but the framing of it ("happy international fake oppression day") makes me suspect that the hatred is the point.
DeleteOh, I agree wholeheartedly. But I was engaged in a perhaps-doomed effort to get through to Chinhead in some useful way — so the broader philosophical point felt worth hammering home. It doesn't matter whether Rowling "actually" hates trans people, or is acting out of sincere but catastrophically-misjudged concern for the interests of cis women in a manner that is outwardly indistinguishable from hating trans people. "I don't care if they're hateful Daleks or tragic, dispassionate Cybermen. THEY ARE SHOOTING LASERS AT LITTLE CHILDREN."
Delete(In the case of Rowling it is fairly clear that she is, actually, personally, that hateful. But in person, you'll often run into garden-variety TERFs who clutch their pearls and cry ad hominem when accused of hating trans people. "I don't, I honestly don't! I'm just sincerely concerned about women and I sincerely don't think they match the definition! How can we have this conversation if you won't believe me when I promise you that I'm describing my feelings honestly?" I think some of them are earnest. I also think such a digression is a waste of time and they know it, even when they are sincere. Therefore I prefer to stress that we still have a heck of a problem even if they *are* telling the truth about not technically "hating" trans people, than let the conversation shift to the topic of who really hates who.)
I think there is a valid distinction between "good faith" and "not good faith" arguments. If someone has an honest issue with bathroom arrangements, then you can have a conversation about privacy and signage and maybe even come to a compromise. If toilets are a proxy issue for a wider prejudice against a minority, then there is no point in talking about them.
ReplyDeleteThere are things I can answer for and things I can't. And I probably won't bother you chaps further after this, so thanks for your time. I had no involvement with the Southport riots whatsoever. (No endorsement either. Truly) This might even be the first online comment I've made about it. Those riots followed yet another terror attack (Terror-IST? Debateable) in the UK which took the lives of children. Not the first. Some people (Gammons? I myself have recently shaved all my thinned hair off, so I can be an even greater stereotype) feel the Government (either, any) has not done enough to negate this or even, in some ways, enables it, so there was an angry violent protest. Yes, very likely in the wrong direction. ''Riots are the language of the unheard'' is a quote that came up a lot in 2020, and that some offer as explanation of Southport. And that's really all I have on that.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone did miss the point on the glass ceiling promo. There's been an effort to 'educate' in more recent media that makes people just bristle instinctually. I'm not sure we need to debate whether or not 'everything is political' or 'this was ALWAYS Doctor Who/Star Trek/Superheroes', (although I'm curious how much credence Mr. Rilstone has for the social media era belief that X-Men was Stan Lee's Civil Rights commentary) I will just call it a balance issue. The messaging is overpowering the entertainment in recent years, and these tentpole franchises are losing SOME support because of that. On the question of representation, I really think people have been conflating 'white supremacy' with 'white majority'. I don't know what the 'correct' number of black people on the TV is, I only know this pushback (resentment?) didn't exist in the time that Blade and Rush Hour were blockbuster movies, (And funnily enough, I do believe that if Doctor Who had rebooted with a black lead in 2005 there'd have been LESS noise about it than now. But that's just, like, my opinion, Man) and I understand Richard Dreyfuss' anger at the Oscars new diversity requirements, because I got the same flush many years back when the 'white people shouldn't have dreadlocks' (probably true, but not for the reasons stated) meme turned up on my timeline. It represents a very condescending and paternalistic attitude, even before you get into 'cultural appropriation' thing. (My position being crossover art - good btw)
We won't go on about Rowling then. I think the opinions you describe (and I have to take your word on "persistently advocates policies and spreads slander to harm a certain group") have evolved from someone who has been QUITE embattled, but she does (did?) represent a lot of the Liberal middle-ground. No hate, just practical difficulties.
Thank you. I hope there's a time we can just talk about fiction again.
No-one remotely suggested that you were involved with, or supported, the Southport riots. You had suggested that I used the term "Nazi" too freely; a point I partly conceded. I asked what term you would like me to use for the rioters.
ReplyDeleteI will ask the question again. In the fictional land of Utopia, a truly horrible murder is committed. A rumour goes round that the murder was a Ruritanian. And mobs form, and start throwing bricks and even fire bombs at hotels where they think Ruritanians are staying; and stand outside Ruritanian places of worship chanting blasphemous slogans; and demand that all the Ruritanians be sent back to Ruritania. What should I call those people. Not Nazis -- but a racist mob? Fascists? My preferred term at the time was "pogrom".
Of course the next morning it turned out that the murderer was not a Ruritanian at all, but a Syldavian, and one of the instigators of what I am calling a pogrom said that this proves his point, and that the rioters ought to be dealt with leniently by the law. What word should I use to describe him?
I am also very happy to talk about fiction. I can't seem to find your comments on my essays on Doctor Who, or the Rings of Power, or Hugh Walters, or the Micronauts.
This morning on Threads I saw a 1980s colour blind liberal who is definitely not a Nazi post:
ReplyDelete"Islam is a cancer that should be whipped of the face of the earth."
Blimey, I didn't expect the Spanish inquistion.
I didn't come to pick a fight and I'm sorry to have irritated you. I did comment here a few times in the past, as Chinhead, yes, but you'd have to go back quite a bit. Bought The Viewer's Tale as a PDF. You still write about fiction, but its always culture war tinged, mostly you're writing about fandoms. Maybe you can see why I don't pop in to say hello more often? It has been a long, long decade. There is a Guardian article from June of 2023. The headline starts ''Liberal Dismay''. The ideals I do still do hold in my heart have led to an environment where those ideals are much harder to hold on to. Give the article a look. And that's all I've got. As I said before, its not really possible for us to understand each other now. Thank you for your past great writings.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIt is interesting that you would conceptualise it as a fight, and see me as irritated. You made some strident criticisms of my writing, to which I have attempted to reply. I am happy to do this. I am also happy not to do it. But if you choose not to respond, don’t make it my fault.
DeleteLooking at my writing about fiction and pop culture over the last twelve months, I see I have published.
Long series on Season 16 of Doctor Who, with very personal digression about the New Age movement
Chatty diary about a folk festival
Series of mini-essays on Rings of Power
Extended essay on Conceptual Art
Essay on 1960s children’s science fiction story.
Extended reviews of The Penguin.
Extended review of War of the Rohirrim
Essay on the separation of art from artist, with reference to Neil Gaiman.
Extended review of Bob Dylan movie
Extended essay on Captain America: Brave New World (intended to form a diptych with the present political pice.)
Extended essay on allegory and theories of the Atonement, with reference to C.S Lewis
On the arts diary I have published 17 movie reviews, six theatre reviews, and a chatty diary about folk ggs.
As Patreon exclusives, I have published an eight part commentary on C.S Lewis’s Abolition of Man, and a twelve part commentary on the Rings of Power.
I also published a lot of essays specifically on politics, but then I always have. If I were still middle-aged and living in a bedsit in Tooting Bec I might decide to write only about one subject, or come up with a a series of pseudonyms, but that not how I decided to to roll.
I submit that the Captain America essay is partly a response to the Nazis who objected to Sam Wilson becoming Captain America (partly from a political, but mostly from a fan historical point of view); although it is also about the difficult in keeping track of very complicated meta-fictions. The Narnia piece takes the Nazi response to a rumour that Aslan will be voiced by a woman in the new film as a jumping off point, although it is substantially about allegory and different ways in which Christians have understood the death of Jesus. The Rohirrim piece talks a lot about feminist re-readings of old texts because, er, that’s what the film is about.
Culture wars is one of those elastic terms, like PC and woke. But I cannot recall that during my very in depth discussion of the Key to Time, I at any point said “Black people are just as good as white people”, :”Some blokes fancy other blokes and that’s fine”, “If you tell me your name is Mary and use ‘she’ and ‘her’ pronouns, then you are a woman so far as I am concerned.” I specifically didn’t talk about the Black Elves thing in the long Rings of Power commentary, because there isn’t anything to say about it.
And I think this is quite interesting. I have three times in twelve months mentioned Ncuit Gatwa as an example of a person who the Uniformity, Exclusivity and Inequality Brigade see as a “diversity hire”; and you say that I keep bringing him up. I have in one or two articles, responded to Nazi criticisms of particular movies; and you say this is now the only thing I talk about. Which, I have to say, puts me in mind of one of those people who sees a curry house and says that there are now no fish and chip shops in England; or who notices that a TV weatherman has a prosthetic limb and writes to the Daily Telegraph about how there are no able-bodied people on TV nowadays. I wonder if that would be a useful way of conceptualising the difference between us ‘radical left wing lunatics” and you on the “far right”? That the right think in generalisations and the left think in specific instances.
Chinhead is welcome to refute it, but the remark Its not for story reasons, its activisim [sic] about the casting of Jodie Whittaker strikes me as very revealing. I think that in Daily Telegraph terms, any Normal Person™ with Common Sense™ would see that Rings of Power is first and foremost a pro-inclusivity psy-op, whose actual narrative content is a formality at best. Therefore, anyone trying to talk about its worth, or indeed lack thereof, as a piece of televised Tolkien apocrypha is deliberately ignoring the elephant in the room, probably to distract and confuse Normal People. Hence the perception that, whether you accept it or not, you are actively fighting the Culture War in — er — more or less every post about current media.
DeleteExcuse me. I thought I detected a creeping passive-aggressive tone. Mind you, I'll be guilty of that myself in a minute. I actually was not criticising (nor asking you to change) your writing, which I said was as solid as it had always been. I was lamenting your world view and the current environment where apolitical/centrist readings of fiction can no longer exist. (The Arts Diaries do swerve this mostly) I said: '''A Letter from Andrew Rilstone's Far-Right Fan'' I'm not sure you'd take that as a tongue-in-cheek comment anymore.'' in one of your subsequent posts you mention Anne Frank believing people are fundamentally good, while you yourself are no longer convinced. I think we can both agree this is a problem. So, yes, I am talking in generalisations. But you're telling me that while you think the world is falling to fascism, while you no longer believe in human kindness, this has in no way colored your more recent writing on fiction. Nor has it changed the fiction, for that matter. That's a conspiracy theory. Achille Talon, I don't know what to say. The progressive goals of TV and Hollywood executives, no matter how sincere or for what purpose you think they are, are IN NO WAY a secret. You yourself say this push was necessary. Lenny Henry of RoP agrees with you, but I much prefer his blunt honesty. ('Its OUR time now') So what have I revealed exactly? Not that the culture war is in my imagination, surely. Hopefully not my innermost bigotries? How boring. I wish I was just a bigot. The position of the 'anti-wokes' was ALWAYS that these weird new forms of activism and thinking ('people can't help their skin colour' being the appeal of equal right campaigners for decades, but a line that makes you the most hated man in Britain by the time Laurence Fox says it on Question Time) were going to backfire on all of us. 10 years in, how ARE race-relations going? Not that everybody getting along is in any way a requirement for Equity, of course.
DeleteThe claim is that when I write about fiction, it is "Always culture wars tinged" .
DeleteI would ask that you look at my series of essays on "The Armageddon Factor" and point out some specific instances that you have a problem with.
The kind of thing I am looking for is "See, Andrew, when you say that there is a glitch in the final episode when the White Guardian appears, I don't think you'd have said that if you didn't think that trans women are really women, and that spoils the essay for, me."
Achille Talon, I don't know what to say.
ReplyDeleteI think I would want a non-racist, race-blind liberal centrist to stick to their guns and say they don't care. Perhaps the casting director of Doctor Who was unduly influenced by Ncuti Gatwa's race when they chose him to play the Doctor; perhaps not. But unless you are personally invested in the fairness of the British acting job-market, it should make no difference to you that he has been cast in the end.
Sometimes actors are cast partly because they are black. Sometimes actors are cast partly because they're the director's current bedroom-friend. Interesting gossip, though it gets old. But if the actors can act, who cares? If you genuinely don't see the fuss about race, and you don't think casting directors should either, then you have no reason to go on about his presence on teevee, or Jodie Whittaker's, or anybody's. They're all just people to you. Aren't they?
(So long as the specific actor under discussion can act, of course. But I don't think it's possible to argue that Ncuti Gatwa can't act. Overall I don't think skilled black or female actors are in such short supply that, even if Hollywood and the BBC stopped casting any white actors at all, they would then have to start hiring talentless hacks. The supply of good-to-great actors, of any ethnicity, far exceeds professional demand.)
The other thing I would like you to acknowledge is that Andrew's media criticism is not, in fact, particularly politically-tinged; or else explain, in specific terms, why you believe it is. Certainly I have never seen him write anything which should especially offend a race-blind liberal's sensibilities. A racist's, yes. An ethno-nationalist's, yes. But an earnest race-blindness advocate who thinks outright affirmative-action/positive-discrimination is a bridge too far? No.
Its not a gotcha, Achillie Talon. The hiring is NOT colour-blind, so Its not against my principles to call it out. Race quotas are gross. Am I still a colour-blind, free-speech 90s Lib? Its been a long and eventful decade. I certainly think that was the best way forward. ''The other thing I would like you to acknowledge is that Andrew's media criticism is not, in fact, particularly politically-tinged; or else explain, in specific terms, why you believe it is'' Are you Mr. Rilstone's Lawyer? Whether you agree or disagree, I already covered that. Should I start copying and pasting from previous messages? I was considering answering this challenge: ''I would ask that you look at my series of essays on "The Armageddon Factor" and point out some specific instances that you have a problem with'' but to what end? I was considering, now we're all friends, providing proof for all the far-right conspiricies mentioned in the latest chapter of America, but which sources would be accepted? If it isn't mentioned in The Guardian does it even really exist? I'm glad we all got to chat finally. It went much better than I thought it would, maybe we should just say goodbye?
DeleteChinhead. You use the words ‘call it out’. What mischief are you specifically calling out?
Delete1) Casting black people at all?
2) casting black people for parts that should be played by white people?
3) casting black people when there are more talented white people?
Please do tell
The hiring is NOT colour-blind, so Its not against my principles to call it out.
DeleteCertainly. My point, however, is that if we all agree that an actor (say, Ncuti Gatwa) has in practice proven perfectly worthy of the part, then whether or not the actor happened to be cast over an equally-able white actor due to positive discrimination simply isn't a relevant fact about the work of fiction. It's a fact about employment statistics at the BBC. Unless you also care whether the BBC hire more black typists and gaffers and directors and fact-checkers than mere fairness would dictate, it is somewhat hard to see why you would care that much about it, even if you disagree when push comes to shove. And above all else, there is no reason — none — why it should cause you to look unkindly upon the finished product. Because, again, that same finished product could have been achieved via race-blind casting.
(And, as a matter of fact, was. I still dislike using Ncuti Gatwa as the focus of our thought-experiment, because the fact is that he did get the job on merit, through an audition that wasn't "POCs preferred". There are BBC diversity quotas, to be sure, and I am happy to have a debate about whether they are a good idea or not; but Ncuti's casting simply wasn't related to them, even if it was celebrated by people who also celebrate the quotas. Still, I don't want to stress the point overmuch, because diversity quotas exist elsewhere as a matter of public record, so it looks like special pleading.)
Hence, bringing us full circle to the start of this thread: making a fuss about it gives the impression that the fuss-maker believes Ncuti Gatwa couldn't possibly have been hired for any other reason than a diversity quota causing better white actors to be passed over. It gives the impression, in fact, that the fuss-maker is opposed to a black lead in Doctor Who in principle, as an end result; as opposed to being concerned about the fairness of the casting process as a procedural matter.
In fairness, I understand the claim to be "Andrew only writes about politics" as opposed to "Andrew sometimes writes about politics" or even "Andrew writes about politics more than he used to." My essays on the first season of Rings of Power certainly did discuss ethnicity in Tolkien, and pushed back against the people who said that introducing dark skinned elves into an intrinsically white Anglo Saxon setting was the moral equivalent of going to the bathroom in Wolvercote cemetery; and my essay on the last Captain America certainly was, in part, a response to the theory that Walt Disney were radical left wing lunatic pedophiles because Cap's best friend Sam gets a turn carrying the shield. Which was I was interested in examples of political bias creeping into my commentary on the 1976 Doctor Who stories.
DeleteThe idea that you can tell what someone's politics are even when they aren't writing about politics is quite an interesting one. C.S Lewis talked about the need for books about science and maths and motor mechanics by writers who happened to be Christians -- but who wouldn't particularly try to bring religious ideas into their books. (He also asks us to contemplate what a Christian cook-book would look like.) It is very possible that when I write about, say, Peter Parker's age, or why the Doctor's birthday was cut from the Stones of Blood, or why the last Bridget Jones movie worked so well even if you haven't seen the others, a skilled critic could say "The way he writes about this reveals that he is a former Corbynite who pragmatically supports Kier Starmer" or "This is obviously the work of someone who was raised Methodist, went through an Evangelical stage and is now very interesting in historical Jesus scholarship".
Of course, the accusation wasn't "politics", it was "culture wars". The game of asking people to define "woke" has lost its appeal: it is both true that most of us can broadly work out what the word is doing in a sentence from context; and that when we ask someone "what do you mean by that?" they can't give a coherent answer.
I think it is okay to use the "pornography" to mean "indecent" or "sexy" or "the sort of magazine that Mr Mckinnon use to put on a top shelf. I think that if someone is proposing a law against, or even a war on, "pornography" they need to be able to provide a definition.
"Culture wars" clearly means something other than "politics": If I said "The idea of a universal basic income is worth exploring" or "I think local councils should collect the bins every two weeks to encourage recycling" you wouldn't, I suspect, call me a culture warrior. "Culture wars" seems to involve a few narrow propositions "You can be both Black and British", "Some guys fancy other guys, and that's fine", "There is such a thing as gender."
And so far as I can see, only one side of the argument is culture warfare. "I just watched some old Carry On... films, and I thought they were really funny and completely harmless" is neutral. "I just watched some of Carry On... films and I thought they were sexist and homophobic" is Culture Wars.
Chinhead is, of course, free to adopt any tactics they want to. But I do find it interesting that they choose to make quite broad, dramatic political statements, and when those statements are challenged, to say "It is clearly not worth me responding; we are obviously too far apart; more in sorrow than in anger; good bye."
DeleteAll Laurence Fox said was that you can't choose the colour of your skin.
ReplyDeleteLaurence Fox "This government has waged war on its own people. To protect the feelings of the invaders. Islam needs to be removed from Britain. Completely and entirely. Britiain is a Christian nation. If you don't like it leave."
Did that quote directly follow the other one? I don't remember that. I expect better from you Andrew. As I said about Rowling, she's more spiteful NOW, yes.
Delete''And so far as I can see, only one side of the argument is culture warfare. "I just watched some old Carry On... films, and I thought they were really funny and completely harmless" is neutral. "I just watched some of Carry On... films and I thought they were sexist and homophobic" is Culture Wars'' And this is why I chose to duck out. I can explain and explain, but if it doesn't correspond to your preconceptions and framing, its just not going to penetrate. You can say Carry On films are sexist and homophophic. That would be an opinion. People like me get our knickers in a twist when someone goes in there to edit out what is PRESUMED to be the sexist and homophobic elements (Twitter has previously been the guiding light for this kind of exercise) and sell that version from there on out. This has not happened with Carry On as far as I know, it has with Crocodile Dundee and the works of Roald Dahl. Content warnings while preferable to altering the art, have in some examples become apologies for the past.
DeleteNick M, 3 options that lead to the same diagnosis. Very generous. I'd say that the 2nd is the most notable when it comes to the historical dramas (the Anne Boleyn thing) and some documentaries that propose to reveal the true race of a historical figure for the 1st time (the Cleopatra thing) but its still not close to what my actual issue is. Just scan though my previous comments again and see if you can come up with a 4th possibility?
DeleteWhy do so many British people have an issue with Islam do you think, Andrew? Is it because most of its followers are perceived to be brown people? I can have THAT row on Facebook. If you can't even BEGIN TO TRY and understand the ''far-right''.. well again, I expect better from you. You write very well, but your shallow analysis can be found on any other comment section on the internet, so that's where I'm headed back to.
DeleteI didn't say that I thought the Carry On... films were sexist and homophobic. And I certainly didn't say that I thought that sexist and homophobic things should be censored. My point was that "These films contain jokes about cross-dressing, voyeurism, and negative gay stereotypes, and I'm fine with that" is a culture wars stance. "These films contain jokes about cross-dressing, voyeurism and negative gay stereotypes, and I am not okay with that" is also a culture wars stance.
Delete(There may be questions about the actual content of a particular movie. When Charles Hawtrey says "Don't be such a silly Constable" it may have been a very dirty joke indeed, or it may in fact of been a purely unintentional double entendre. In my opinion, the earlier, more socially realistic Carry On films are more interesting than the later historical burlesques, and you certainly have to take into account the cultural climate they were written in. Have you seen Carry On Teacher recently?)
I remember the first time you brought up Comicsgate. You said it was a movement to keep black people out of comics, right? Something along those lines? It didn't bother me that it was a ''broad, dramatic political statement'' Andrew, it bothered me because HOW LIKELY IS THAT? Really? And I should have stepped in then because now you think Nazis visit andrewbloodyrilstone.com for SOME reason. ''And so far as I can see, only one side of the argument is culture warfare'' Andrew, HOW? What IS the distinction between 90s colour-blind Lib and Twitter-era Progressive? No one gives a toss if Roy Chubby Brown finally fades from memory, he was already on the scrapheap of culture. A LOT of people take an interest when a letter-writing campaign gets a theatre to cancel one of his gigs.
ReplyDeleteWhy do so many British people have an issue with Islam? Well, why did so many people in Weimar Germany have an issue with Jews? And why did people in Springfield Ohio have an issue with Haitians? And why did people in twelfth century Lincoln have an issue with, again, Jews?
ReplyDeleteOne can clearly think yourself into a state of mind where "One Haitian ate a cat" equates to "Haitians in general eat cats in general, and therefore we must deport all the Haitians." Or where you say "One Jew threw a child down a well, and therefore we Jews in general kill children in general and we most therefore kill or export all the Jews." Or where you say "A Muslim committed a horrible murder, therefore Muslims in general are murderers in general and we must eradicate Islam."
It very much helps if the group you want to scapegoat are easily identifiable, say by skin colour or distinctive dress, of course.
(A sensible person can "have an issue with Islam", because, like Jehovah's Witnesses, they deny the doctrine of the holy and undivided trinity; or because, like Pentecostalists, they require women to wear distinctive headwear in the name of modesty; or because, like Christian Fundamentalists, some of their preachers use incendiary rhetoric.
It depends on what you mean by "Have an issue" of course.
You could have an issue with Catholics by saying "I don't see how a sensible person can think that Jesus literally walked on water; I don't think you have done nearly enough to address the clerical child abuse scandal; and I think your views on gay people are incredibly regressive and not well founded even in terms of your own scripture".
Or you could have an issue with Catholics by standing outside a Church chanting "Who the f*ck is Mary", throwing bricks at the stained glass, and posting that we need to erradicate Catholicism because England is a protestant country.
I don't think the difference is a very fine one.
"
No. In 2020, Fox, on a talk show, asserted that there was no such thing as white privilege, and it was racist to suggest that there was. The conversation went roughly,
ReplyDelete-- The press backlash against Meghan Markle is because she is Black.
-- No, that is impossible, because Britain is a lovely tolerant country where there is no racism at all
-- It is wrong for you, a white person, to say that there is no racism, because you are not Black and have not experienced it.
-- I did not choose the colour of my skin, so it is racist to suggest that it effects my views on race.
That's a paraphrase.
Four years later, he is referring to Muslim Britons as "invaders", accusing the government of "waging war" on "its own" (white Christian?) people and calling for Islam to be removed. (How would that work, by the way? Forced conversions? Deportations? Internment? Concentration camps? B-Arks?)
Now, it is indeed possible that four years ago, he was a race blind liberal, and it had honestly never occurred to him that Megan had a different skin colour and that some people might have a problem with that and he was genuinely surprised that anyone could think that a light skinned person experienced racism differently from a dark skinned person; and that in four years something radicalised him to the point where he want an entire ethno-religious group removed. But I tend to the opinion that hte later, ethno-nationalist language was pretty much what he always believed; and pretty much implicit in the original quote.
At any rate, when someone is saying "Wipe out all the ducks! Not one single web footed fascist should be allowed in our parks!" it is not very helpful to say "They simply complained when they stood in some duck-doo-doo, and now everyone is claiming they are some sort of fanatic."
1: I've just done a search and can't find any mentions of Comicsgate. Gamergate was a misogynist campaign against perceived feminism in computer games. I think I wrote about the Sad Puppies (and indeed read one of their books) who were certainly engaged in a campaign to prevent black and female authors winning Hugo Awards. They used language about black people being less evolved and argued that science fiction was by definition a male genre (competent men solving problems) and that human interest and romance was being introduced into the stories as part of a concerted attack on America by a group they called the SJWs. I read one of their books and you can read my review.
ReplyDelete2 "HOW? What IS the distinction between 90s colour-blind Lib and Twitter-era Progressive? No one gives a toss if Roy Chubby Brown finally fades from memory, he was already on the scrapheap of culture. A LOT of people take an interest when a letter-writing campaign gets a theatre to cancel one of his gigs"
I can see that you are angry, but I can't work out what you are saying. Is your point some kind of free-speech absolutism : that it is always worse to campaign to censor an artist than to let the artist continue to perform, however unpleasant the art is. (So that campaigning again, say, The Satantic Verses, Lady Chaterly's Lover and the 120 Night of Sodom are all equally wrong?) Or merely that Roy Chubby Brown is not as offensive as the Marquis De Sade?
Are theatre not allowed to choose to stage shows which align with their values, incidentally? How will that work? (How will we find out if the Palladium turned down my one-man show because they a: didn't like my shocking left wing views b: didn't think it was very good or c: a bit of both?)
I am still awaiting feedback on how I bring culture wars issue into my general essays on fiction and literature. I don't think that "look, over there!" or "and another thing" is a good response.
ReplyDelete''I can't work out what you are saying'' I know, Andrew. Different circles. ''Is your point some kind of free-speech absolutism : that it is always worse to campaign to censor an artist than to let the artist continue to perform, however unpleasant the art is'' More or less. ''Are theatre not allowed to choose to stage shows which align with their values'' Yes they are. If an advertised show is cancelled after a pressure campaign, that's where an issue arises. I'm actually not sure you know these pressure campaigns exist though. I'd prefer ignorance to obfuscation. ''I am still awaiting feedback on how I bring culture wars issue into my general essays on fiction and literature'' ''The great stories, the ones which really matter: Winnie the Pooh, Doctor Who, Spider-Man, Captain America, Star Wars. They have one thing in common. They are all owned by Walt Disney. And Walt Disney is one of the companies that has pre-emptively complied with Donald Trumps’ anti-diversity, anti-equality and anti-inclusivity legislation. So I could foresee a time when I could not, in good conscience, read them any more. And I don’t know quite how I would cope with that'' Why? Honestly, why? We didn't boycott (which you are ALLOWED to do of course) Marvel for their treatment of Jack Kirby. Why would you drop them for dropping race quotas? Do you think the end of DEI is also the end of black people getting hired? TALENTED black people would no longer be hired at Disney? That was a charitable reading of what that woman said on Question Time, I think she was saying there are things that white males do not get to have an opinion on because without lived experience its worthless. Also, would you believe I didn't know MM was a person of colour until the papers told me she was?
ReplyDeleteWe didn't boycott Marvel for their treatment of Jack Kirby.
DeletePoint of information: Yes we did.
'I can't work out what you are saying'' I know, Andrew. Different circles.
DeleteNo; it is that your posts are increasingly scatter-gun, raising different talking points with no clear thread and no clear intersection with the last thing I said.
''Is your point some kind of free-speech absolutism : that it is always worse to campaign to censor an artist than to let the artist continue to perform, however unpleasant the art is'' More or less. ''Are theatre not allowed to choose to stage shows which align with their values'' Yes they are. If an advertised show is cancelled after a pressure campaign, that's where an issue arises. I'm actually not sure you know these pressure campaigns exist though. I'd prefer ignorance to obfuscation.
Okay: so the proposition is
A: De-platforming is worse than hate speech or blasphemy or obscenity or racism or homophobia
B: De-platforming as a result of a public campaign is worse than de-platforming as a result of a moral or political decision by an outlet.
For example:
BAD: Writing a book saying that Hitler was a great guy and the holocaust never happened.
WORSE: A book seller refusing to stock the book.
WORST: A book seller refusing to stock the book after receiving lots of letters asking him not to.
To take a concrete example which really happened.
In 2022, a fringe theatre in Bristol was going to stage a children’s Sex Education show. The content was made very clear in the flyers; children were not going to be admitted without parents and (more importantly, perhaps) adults were not going to be admitted without children; and it was made in conjunction with a charity that provides schools with Sex Ed material. It was apparently going to include pictures of naked adults, and possibly (like that Channel 4 show) adults actually taking their clothes off. I am not interested in whether you think this is a good approach to sex education.The company received several thousand complaints and the show was pulled. By your arguments, yes, the Tobacco Factory should have made its own judgement about whether the show was a good idea or not, but having done so, not paid attention to public backlash; and even if the show was too purient for kids the people who wrote the letters were worse than the people who produced the play and the theatre company which put it on because free speech uber allies
I mention this example only because at the forefront of the successful campaign was free speech campaignerLaurence Fox.
I am still awaiting feedback on how I bring culture wars issue into my general essays on fiction and literature'' The great stories, the ones which really matter: Winnie the'' Pooh, Doctor Who, Spider-Man, Captain America, Star Wars. They have one thing in common. They are all owned by Walt Disney. And Walt Disney is one of the companies that has pre-emptively complied with Donald Trumps’ anti-diversity, anti-equality and anti-inclusivity legislation. So I could foresee a time when I could not, in good conscience, read them any more. And I don’t know quite how I would cope with that’'
DeleteSee, either you are not following my argument, or not paying attention, or deliberately trying to wind me up, or not arguing in good faith. The very first thing I said was that some of my article, including the Captain America one and the first Rings of Power one, had indeed addressed what-you-call-culture-wars issues; because the backlash against the casting choices was something which interested me. I have absolutely no intention of seeing the live action Snow White, but I could hardly have avoided talking about the accusations that it was what-the-Daily-Mail-call-woke. If you were paying attention, I acknowledge that I sometimes bring politics into pop culture discussions and even that I bring politics into pop culture discussions more often than I used to: I was pushing back against the claim that only and always talk about movies and comics from what-you-call a culture was perspective. Hence my suggestion that you look at my substantial Doctor Who essays and point out the hidden agenda. The Hugh Walters ones, or the older Micronauts ones, would do just as well. I am interested in this kind of criticism and pay attention to it. (Cf The observation that I was using ableist language around mental health: I will try to do better in future.)
QUERY: Is not saying psychopath (or OCD, or autistic) when you have been asked not to an example of The Culture Wars
That was a charitable reading of what that woman said on Question Time, I think she was saying there are things that white males do not get to have an opinion on because without lived experience its worthless.
“Lets call it by it’s name. It’s racism. She a black woman and she’s been torn to piece.”
“It’s not racism.”
“It absolutely is.”
“No it isn’t. We’re the most tolerant lovely country in Europe. Let’s celebrate our…”
“Says a white privileged man”
“It’s so easy to throw the charge of racism at everybody and its really starting to get boring now.”
“What worries me about your comments is that you are a white privileged male who has no experience in this…”
“I can’t help what I am. I was born like this. It’s an immutable characteristic. So to call me white privileged male is to be racist. You’re being racist.”
Also, would you believe I didn't know MM was a person of colour until the papers told me she was?
I would not disbelieve, in the same way that I do not disbelieve people who claim to have read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and not spotted that Aslan was a Bit Like Jesus, and that I did not disbelief a twenty-something person who told me that they had never seen a Carry On… film. I would, however, be quite surprised
TALENTED black people would no longer be hired at Disney?
DeleteCorollary: some of the Black people currently being hired at Disney are not talented.
Which as much as to say, being interpreted, Oscar Isaacs (for example) was a Diversity Hire.
Let's call it by it's name...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWhy? Honestly, why? We didn't boycott Marvel for their treatment of Jack Kirby.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a clear difference between a company having at one point mistreated a particular man; and a company aligning itself with a ruthless would-be-dictator whose policies have deleterious worldwide repercussions. It isn't about the race-quotas qua race-quotas. It is about cozying up to Trump qua cozying up to Trump, because, per the thrust of Andrew's essay, Trump has deliberately made himself the embodiment of ~everything wrong with the world.
You boycotted Marvel for Jack Kirby? I won't ask for details on how you managed this in practice, but I must say I admire your principles. It did trouble me to support a company that had abused probably its most significant founder so badly. Achille Talon, again, principles are good, but to oppose Trump in EVERYTHING he does... Yeah, that's fine. I have no counter. What did you guys think of Starmer's 'Island of Strangers' speech by the way? Don't worry, they have no intention of reducing immigration, its just funny when Starmer flipflops. ''No; it is that your posts are increasingly scatter-gun, raising different talking points with no clear thread and no clear intersection with the last thing I said'' I DID say there was too much to unpack, to be fair. The topic of De-platforming is an essay on its own. Yes, freedom of speech and expression is better or some things fester. I do believe the best ideas win out in the marketplace of ideas. Your example is excellent for giving a Gammon like myself pause. I DID say more or less. The Roy Chubby Brown show would have been only for people 15 or older, I imagine. ''If you were paying attention, I acknowledge that I sometimes bring politics into pop culture discussions and even that I bring politics into pop culture discussions more often than I used to: I was pushing back against the claim that only and always talk about movies and comics from what-you-call a culture was perspective'' I was paying attention, thank you for the lifeline, my observation/assertion being that it is not currently possible to write about pop culture WITHOUT it being politics tinged. I do not fancy trawling through old articles for examples, I actually did not imagine you'd disagree. ''QUERY: Is not saying psychopath (or OCD, or autistic) when you have been asked not to an example of The Culture Wars'' Probably, yes. It was a real-time example of Leftists tone-policing each other, which was interesting to see. I guess we can ALL do better, huh? The Question Time script there, the dictation, I forget the word but thank you for doing it. I don't know what I'm supposed to get from it. Fox comes off as the most reasonable to me. The woman could have been less blunt in making him understand his privilage possibly? I take it you find her just as reasonable if not more, but she could perhaps have been less blunt. ''Corollary: some of the Black people currently being hired at Disney are not talented. Which as much as to say, being interpreted, Oscar Isaacs (for example) was a Diversity Hire. Let's call it by it's name...'' Racism, yes! The DEI practices are condescending and paternalistic, and need to be done away with. Its racist. Oh, wait, you meant me. Well, that's a bigger conversation and how long do we want to drag this out.
ReplyDeleteYou're not arguing with me. You're not even contradicting me. It;s more like you're doing a freeform jazz improvisation around some of my points.
DeleteWell, can I get my name down by SK's then? I've been a fan for a very long time
DeleteWe have no secrets from our readers. Mr Thatcher is one of our most devoted readers. He knows what's wrong with every edition of the Chronicle since I took charge.
DeleteThere was a widespread boycott of Marvel Comics in the middle 80s to campaign for the return of Jack's original artwork. There were calls (from Steve Bisette, among others) to boycott the MCU in 2011 in support of Kirby's family's copyright claims.
DeleteThe topic of De-platforming is an essay on its own. Yes, freedom of speech and expression is better or some things fester. I do believe the best ideas win out in the marketplace of ideas. Your example is excellent for giving a Gammon like myself pause. I DID say more or less. The Roy Chubby Brown show would have been only for people 15 or older, I imagine.
DeleteSee, you raised the issue of Roy Chubby Brown. I asked what you meant. My suggestion that you meant that de-platforming objectionable content was worse than the objectionable content; and that campaigning to deplatform it, or responding to such a campaign, was even worse. So I would expect your response to the example of free speech advocate Laurence Fox successfully campaigning to de-platform a show he considered to be objectionable to be either
a: Yes: I object to all deplatforming campaigns equally, whether from the left or the right
b: No: I object to deplatforming a comedian who tells racist jokes; but I do not object to deplatforming a show which tells young children about sex.
Or, of course, there could be some third possibility that I haven't thought of. What is not very helpful is to raise the subject, state your point of view, and when I respond, to say that it would take too long to respond.
So which is it? And if deplatforming is only sometimes wrong, how do the two cases differ?
Similarly: if Person A says "Andrew only writes about pop culture from what-they-call a Culture Wars perspective" and Person B says "Here is an example of Andrew writing about pop culture without mentioning what-they-call Culture Wars" then the responses I might expect would be
Deletea: It's a fair cop, when I said "only" I really meant "sometimes".
b :On the contrary, the example you point to is full of what-you-call culture wars, for example
Which is it?
Oh, the MM thing. ''I would not disbelieve, in the same way that I do not disbelieve people who claim to have read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and not spotted that Aslan was a Bit Like Jesus'' Its not REALLY like that, is it? I looked at a woman so pale I couldn't tell she was 'black'. Should I have concentrated on the nose? Am I at fault for not knowing? That's LITERAL colour-blindness.
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