On Television, Cinema and Race

KingGorilla wrote:

I should start up a 501C3 to be a watchdog and become needlessly offended, like some girl on her period.

Really?

IMAGE(http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1/15659/2042327-ms.pms_issue_0_large.jpg)

Like I've said before. The world we live in today is extremely sensitive. People are constantly looking for a reason to be offended and will even look in places where it's not even there.

The Conformist wrote:

Like I've said before. The world we live in today is extremely sensitive. People are constantly looking for a reason to be offended and will even look in places where it's not even there.

Hey, I live in the world. Where do you get off making fun of it?

KingGorilla wrote:
The Conformist wrote:

Like I've said before. The world we live in today is extremely sensitive. People are constantly looking for a reason to be offended and will even look in places where it's not even there.

Hey, I live in the world. Where do you get off making fun of it?

Psh. This coming from a person who has a "King Gorilla" as an avatar picture. The very thought of a gorilla being able to wear a crown and hold monarchy-like rule is not only offensive, but problematic at best! Think of the nations banana shortage!

Policing the sensitivity police? Great. March on, o ye heroes.

Nah, just certain types of equality have with them a downard trend. In a world where everyone's speech can be heard and should be treated equally, quickly everyone's speech is cheap, disposable, and pointless. A necessary reflection, analysis, and making of a point is lost in bold faced writing to be summed up in 140 characters or less. It has reached such a head of stupidity, that consistence in message and of character is completely gone if one looks at how Fox News or MSNBC might contradict something from even a few months ago.

The Conformist wrote:

Like I've said before. The world we live in today is extremely sensitive. People are constantly looking for a reason to be offended and will even look in places where it's not even there.

All but one of the thirteen words of the first sentence are true. The second sentence..... let's explore that.

Yes, we certainly do live in a more sensitive world. It's more sensitive in that much more often, people are held accountable for the words that come out of their mouths, and that the kind of.... well, let's not call it "bigotry" since that often leads to a derail about exactly what qualifies as "bigotry", how about "grating insensitivity and prejudice"? ...that has been getting a pass for decades isn't anymore, and can no longer hide behind a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card generally known as "I didn't mean it that way!" or "It was just a joke!"

I've always found this "searching for a reason to be offended" thing spurious, because it's almost always coming from a member of a majority, when talking about how a minority has the temerity and gall to point out that something someone said might just be a little screwed-up. Moreover, there is the spectacular level of "I know what's best or you" condescension that comes with someone who isn't a member of a particular minority or group informing them, with apparent certainty what they can and cannot be offended by, and explaining when they're just being hysterical (and if they're offended, they're being hysterical). I've never personally understood this.

I'm a African-American man. And one of my best friends is Jewish. Once, when we were younger, as a joke, I told him a old, tired and frankly, anti-Semitic joke. And he informed me that it was anti-Semitic, and offensive.

I didn't accuse him of being a hysterical outrage-monger desperately seeking some kind of feigned injustice to provide him sustenance through the winter months, or seizing on a mind-frame of perpetual victim-hood, nor did I accuse him of unfairly oppressing me or my right to free speech (and if I was into Louis Farrakhan, I probably would've).

I listened to him and tried to show some basic compassion. He made his point, and I apologized, because "it's just a joke" doesn't wipe the slate clean, nor does it mean whatever opprobrium comes flying out of your mouth you no longer have to take responsibility for.

I intensely doubt most people (outside of certain sections of Tumblr) are desperately "searching for a reason to be offended", although it certainly must seem that way to people who are finding what has been their 'normal' challenged at every turn. But, as Jay Smoove so eloquently explained (even though he has talked about his problems with that oft-cited video since), what you are or what you meant aren't the point. It's what you said. Just because you didn't mean it to come out that way is not immediate, total absolution. You still said it. People aren't "searching for something" when they point out that what you said may be kinda f*cked up. They're pointing out what you said.... may be kinda f*cked up.

A lot of people seem to have this Disney movie standard for -isms. That it's only "-ist" if it's some over-the-top caricature of villainy, with gnashing teeth and pitch-black eyes full of hate. Anything less is harmless, and can be dismissed. Which is ignoring the fact that it's so many of the little things that make -isms what they are.

As I said, old ways that have been largely unchallenged culturally for decades are being repeatedly challenged. And people really don't like that. It was hard enough just cajoling people into recycling, much less taking the time to consider what they say (which somehow, in some discussions, is equated to "THOUGHT POLICE" , which I find baffling).

Anyway, TL;DR version. I find the claim of "searching for something to be offended by" a frankly hysterical (Hey! There's that word again!) attempt to deflect any/all responsibility for what comes out of one's own mouth. I don't think that there aren't athletes in the oppression olympics out there (again, I have been on Tumblr. I have read YouTube comments), however from my viewpoint, those cases are outliers.

Now, as far as the two ads? I shrugged. The Jamaican one is a bit ham-fisted but I'm willing to give it a pass, if only because commercials are largely only capable of being ham-fisted and I still couldn't get that horrendous, terrifying GoDaddy ad out of my head. I'd skip a HuffPo write-up on it largely because HuffPo is basically People Magazine for liberals.

The other I didn't even consider since my immediate assumption was (and still is, even with the vote) that the guy with the camel would win on some Aesop-level "Slow and Steady Wins the Race" stuff.

I grade the former as "Eyeroll and Sigh" and the latter as "Incomplete".

I decided not to comment earlier because I would probably have said something mean spirited and nasty to previous commenters. Thankfully Pred stepped up with a thoughtful and measured response.

+1

MrDeVil909 wrote:

I decided not to comment earlier because I would probably have said something mean spirited and nasty to previous commenters. Thankfully Pred stepped up with a thoughtful and measured response.

+1

Can I +1 your post? I can and I will.

dejanzie wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

I decided not to comment earlier because I would probably have said something mean spirited and nasty to previous commenters. Thankfully Pred stepped up with a thoughtful and measured response.

+1

Can I +1 your post? I can and I will.

I concur. +1

Good post Prederick. The one thing I'll say about GWJ is it has challenged some of my pre-conceived notions about things. I've come to realize that I grew up in a bit of a rough and tumble blue collar environment where political correctness or even basic courtesy were not really valued. Your measure as a man was how well you let things roll off your back. That's not the healthiest way to live, especially in today's world where the wrong comment can end up with the other guy putting a gun in your face.

That being said, I do think there are organizations and media outlets that sometimes blow really small stuff out of proportion. This is as true of the Huffington Post as it of the Blaze, where the 24/7 news cycle demands that there has to always be some new shocking thing to write about.

jdzappa wrote:

That being said, I do think there are organizations and media outlets that sometimes blow really small stuff out of proportion. This is as true of the Huffington Post as it of the Blaze, where the 24/7 news cycle demands that there has to always be some new shocking thing to write about.

True, the 24/7 news cycle has helped absolutely no-one when it comes to sanity or being reasonable.

It's also worth noting that there are different scales of "let things roll off your back". I'm a big fan of "giving as good as you get" and good-natured ribbing of the like. It's a bit of a cultural thing—I've met people who don't understand it at all—but I like it.

But these things take on a completely different character when the same attitudes become a constant stream of little insults, poor treatment, and the like. Poking at someone about their personal foibles is not the same as poking at an entire class of people for their assumed foibles. Poking at someone about their assumed foibles because they belong to that class, etc.

And this all gets back to that concept of "privilege". If you're privileged, that means that when people make disparaging comments you get to make the default assumption that they're joking around, and if something hits a sensitive spot you maybe mention it and no hard feelings they know not to go there again. You don't have to worry about what people mean, because you know they couldn't possibly mean it seriously.

Without that privilege, you [em]don't[/em] feel free make that default assumption, because in your day-to-day life it's at least as common that the disparagement is meant seriously as that it's joking. So every comment, whether it was meant to be serious or not, hits that much harder—because you have to figure out what the intention was. And the fact that a lot of it [em]is[/em] meant seriously? That just corrodes your soul. Especially because you just plain have to let a good amount of it roll off, even the stuff that is totally inappropriate—because otherwise you'd spend all of your time doing nothing but dealing with that. So you let the more minor things pass so that you can get on with life, hating every minute of it because you know that it's just going to happen again, maybe to you, maybe to somebody else, and that by not making a fuss about it you're now to a certain degree complicit in it.

And I think that's the reason that sometimes people go down and "blow really small stuff out of proportion". Because it's not nearly as small as you think it is—it's just the stuff that people feel forced to endure if they want to have a life. But every so often, people need to be reminded that it's still sh*tty, even if people don't have the time and energy to respond to it every time it happens.

The VW add seemed to be poking fun of the stereotype itself, along with those who hold it, as opposed to perpetuation the stereotype.

absurddoctor wrote:

The VW add seemed to be poking fun of the stereotype itself, along with those who hold it, as opposed to perpetuation the stereotype.

A stereotype that the Jamaican government has perpetuated with travel films and ads themselves.

Hypatian wrote:

It's also worth noting that there are different scales of "let things roll off your back". I'm a big fan of "giving as good as you get" and good-natured ribbing of the like. It's a bit of a cultural thing—I've met people who don't understand it at all—but I like it.

I know a lot of people like this, I and my friends engage in good-natured ribbing that occasionally straddles the line of good taste. I've always said I have no interest in policing people's interpersonal relationships. If your Mexican friend is 100% okay with you calling him "Senor Beaner" or something, that's between you two. When you incomprehensibly decide that your repartee can be extrapolated to society at large.... iffy. If I have a explicit pet name for my wife, and I call my BOSS that... well, then I shouldn't be surprised if it blows up in my face.

And the fact that a lot of it is meant seriously? That just corrodes your soul. Especially because you just plain have to let a good amount of it roll off, even the stuff that is totally inappropriate—because otherwise you'd spend all of your time doing nothing but dealing with that. So you let the more minor things pass so that you can get on with life, hating every minute of it because you know that it's just going to happen again, maybe to you, maybe to somebody else, and that by not making a fuss about it you're now to a certain degree complicit in it.

This. I hate to use the "P"-word in these discussions, since it always derails the conversation into "I WASN'T BORN WITH A PLATINUM PLATED SPOON IN MY MOUTH AND DIAPERS MADE OF THE FINEST DIAMONDS", but I have been there. I grew up as one of a few minorities in an overwhelmingly white town, and got a rep as "the nice, approachable black kid". So I'd hear a LOT of jokes, and it's functionally impossible to exactly spot when someone crosses the line between "just trying to be edgy" and "seeing exactly what I can get away with saying" in the moment, but there's absolutely a feeling to it.

You can end up in this weird situation of being the canary in the coalmine. You're at a party, someone tells a joke that is, frankly, something -ist, and there's a beat, because everyone's waiting to see if you laugh. And it's a party, so you let it slide, and fake laugh because you don't want to cause a scene and everybody else laughs and you quietly wonder if you should've said something because that sh*t was kinda f*cked up and you just let it go.

But like I said, relationships are a big part of it. What goes on between you and 2-3 of your closest friends /= what goes on between you and society at large.

There's absolutely value to letting things roll off your back, but there's letting things roll off your back and staying silent when someone oughtta go "Uhh...."

KingGorilla wrote:
absurddoctor wrote:

The VW add seemed to be poking fun of the stereotype itself, along with those who hold it, as opposed to perpetuation the stereotype.

A stereotype that the Jamaican government has perpetuated with travel films and ads themselves.

So all you Americans must be young to middle aged fat dudes or skinny ladies married to those fat dudes and you all have a racial predisposition to smarmy conversation and cheap humor. It must be true, because all your broadcast TV I see says that!

I don't have anything against the commercial since I barely understand the humor, but justifying a stereotype based on TV and ads is just all kinds of messed up. But this is what comes of presuming that "race" is anything like a just or sensible way to generalize anything other than resistance to sunburns (and even that's not all that sensible, either).

Ok, need to clarify that I'm not saying the "a real man lets things roll of his back" attitude is good or healthy. In many ways it's not. I was just trying to explain that I'm pretty inured to f'ed up stuff and therefore sometimes have to step back and take a second look at whether something is truly offensive or not. BTW I also wasnt talking about good natured ball busting.

Has the nation of Jamaica said anything in response? Just all of this devils advocate stuff gets dull, unless someone is actually offended.

LarryC wrote:

So all you Americans must be young to middle aged fat dudes or skinny ladies married to those fat dudes and you all have a racial predisposition to smarmy conversation and cheap humor. It must be true, because all your broadcast TV I see says that!

Well that is actually almost true! Except for the fact that the ladies mostly tend to be fat, too.:P

I agree with the kernel of truth in Larry's post, which is that we tend to pick and choose what we get offended about, and there doesn't seem to be much consistency in how we choose those things.

Being offended by a commercial which insinuates that all Jamaicans are happy - a stereotype that is perpetuated by Jamaica's own tourism department - does make sense considering the poverty that country faces.

But there's no consistency. Not all white Americans raise Clydesdales. Not all white American females are attracted to obese males with rosacea. So why pick vw?

Personally, while I do not miss the loss of blackface in today's entertainment medium, I would very much miss the use of accents.

jdzappa wrote:

Ok, need to clarify that I'm not saying the "a real man lets things roll of his back" attitude is good or healthy. In many ways it's not. I was just trying to explain that I'm pretty inured to f'ed up stuff and therefore sometimes have to step back and take a second look at whether something is truly offensive or not. BTW I also wasnt talking about good natured ball busting.

Don't worry, I think you came across okay. I'm sure responses to you have been intended as discussion rather than confrontation.

Your experiences mirror mine in many ways, the last year in P&C and on twitter have opened my eyes about issues like this.

KingGorilla wrote:

Has the nation of Jamaica said anything in response? Just all of this devils advocate stuff gets dull, unless someone is actually offended.

The Jamaican government has endorsed it.

I first saw it a day or two before the Super Bowl, when my Jamaican mother-in-law couldn't stop laughing and had me watch it. All of the Jamaicans I know have found it amusing. Looking around online, I did manage to find one Jamaican who was upset by the add, who wrote a long and thoughtful post about what that was the case.

KingGorilla wrote:

Has the nation of Jamaica said anything in response? Just all of this devils advocate stuff gets dull, unless someone is actually offended.

You don't actually have to be of the race or group to be offended.

Honestly, after Prederick's amazing post to come back calling it dull devil's advocate stuff is kind of mind blowing.

I was offended by that commercial as a Minnesotan.

Sorry for the necro—this is the most recent thread broadly about race I could find. (Which, honestly, is kind of dismaying.)

Anyway:

Christie’s tea-party problem (Richard Cohen, Washington Post) wrote:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

Emphasis mine.

And in reaction: f*cking seriously? How can anyone imagine that the above sentence is appropriate to write as an [em]argument that the GOP isn't racist[/em]? If true, it suggests that "people with conventional views" are f*cking racist. If these people are supposed to be the majority of people who make up the GOP? They're still f*cking racist. And if someone thinks that this is a majority viewpoint in America and that that it's [em]acceptable[/em] that people continue to believe that? That person is a f*cking racist.

I just... Arrrgh.

Racism is a traditional, formerly conventional view. It's also abhorrent. I think Richard Cohen believes that the first clause makes the second not count.

Wow.

On a related note, via Wikipedia:

Cohen wrote a column in 1986 which argued owners of jewelry stores were right to refuse to allow entry to young black men because of a fear of crime. This column led to the Washington Post having to apologize
Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin in July 2013, Cohen wrote "a controversial column in which he defends George Zimmerman's suspicion of Travyon Martin and calls on politicians to acknowledge that a disproportionate amount of crimes are committed by black males".[12] The column went on to say that Cohen "can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize;" in any case, he also points out that "What I'm trying to deal with is, I'm trying to remove this fear from racism. I don't think it's racism to say, 'this person looks like a menace,'" he explained. "Now, a menace in another part of the country could be a white guy wearing a wife-beater under-shirt. Or, if you're a black guy in the South and you come around the corner and you see a member of the Ku Klux Klan".[12] Towards the end of the column, Cohen calls Trayvon Martin "a young man understandably suspected because he was black"