Santa and Moral Judgment

Never mind liberal democracy; “I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In” isn’t even consistent with the rest of Christian myth.

magic negreindeer?

Newitz’s piece makes a perfectly reasonable (if obvious) point, but including Dune was a mistake. Can’t say I ever read the books, but the movie was what Newitz referenced, and Max von Sydow is about as white as you can get. Don’t recall that the Fremen were of any particular hue at all, other than ‘grimy’. (Because they lived in underground caves where there wasn’t much water, you see.) The idea that David Lynch made a movie (or Frank Herbert wrote a book) that was about ‘white guilt’ in the manner of Dances with Wolves is just silly.

The comparison between Avatar and Dances With Wolves seems to be the popular one, but it’s pretty superficial. In DWW, John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) doesn’t become the leader of the Sioux and certainly doesn’t lead them on to victory. In fact, it’s pretty clear from some of Kicking Bird’s dialogue with his wife that, while they like him and consider him a friend, Dunbar is still just a white guy and not really a member of the tribe.

Children who manage to be both naughty and nice at the same time should get a special present.

As for Rudolph, we can do something about rosacea now.

I think the above observation about Dances With Wolves and other white-guy-centric movies that address the Other is pretty much spot on. It may reflect a lingering colonial arrogance; but it’s hard to see how else you make the Other sell in Capitalist America. Even movies that go out of their way to hit you over the head with their high-minded seriousness typically fall into this trope. I’m reminded of The Constant Gardener, which (uncontroversially, I should hope) wanted us to abhore the use of Africans as lab animals by Western pharmaceutical companies, but in which Africans were principally there to be (in addition to victims) exotic and decorative.

I should add that I was pleasantly surprised by the TV series, The Ladies’ No. 1 Detective Agency (based, I know, on characters created by a white author), which seems to me to present Africans on their terms, rather than as picturesque mobile scenery. Or am I wrong here? Some of the humor of the series could be construed as patronizing. Would it strike someone far more knowledgeable than I about Africa as such?

Pondering the underlying question in light of its reiteration at 11: In the absence of extrinsic evidence, I see no reason to believe the anti-racist message was intended. (Compare and contrast Star-Bellied Sneetches/Sneeches with none upon thars.) Racism, in those segregated days, was something from which a lot of white kids were insulated. Whereas pretty much every schoolyard had its scapegoat, which is why the story resonates.

“The idea that David Lynch made a movie (or Frank Herbert wrote a book) that was about ‘white guilt’ in the manner of Dances with Wolves is just silly.”

I don’t think it’s so silly for the book. White guilt might not be quite the right tone, but there are a lot of parallels. The Fremen are archetypal noble savages, in touch with the land and living in harmony with its creatures all that. They are deeply spiritual warrior types. The Atreides and other Houses have been pillaging the natural resources using their ostensibly superior technology, but are confined to outposts by the hostility of the environment. Indeed, there’s a blatant environmentalist streak running through all of Dune (the book), in the best “white guilt” tradition. Paul Atreides forsakes his imperial heritage, leads the Fremen to victory and even assumes a native name.

It’s hardly a stretch.

“The Sneetches” is indeed a pretty obvious anti-racist parable, but it manages to pack a lot of layers into a remarkably short story. He gets in digs at fashion, the cycle of pop-cultural backlash, the way that bigotry makes you a sucker for various forms of hucksterism, and the futility of trying to fix bigotry by getting rid of the underlying differences people are bigoted about.

I’ve always admired what Dr. Seuss did with didacticism: many of his stories were fables as blatant as Aesop’s, but they didn’t come across as patronizing to kids, in part because he was usually criticizing adult failings rather than telling kids to obey their elders.

May I suggest that Prof. Holbo, having posted about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, turn his attention now to that imperishable holiday-season classic, the 1986 (made-for-TV) version of Babes in Toyland, starring Drew Barrymore and with a supporting cast which includes — drumroll, please — Keanu Reeves. Here the standard moral about the reality and goodness of Santa is replaced by the injunction to believe in the reality of toys. I would be surprised if some nuggets of philosophical or political significance could not be found in this work of cinematic genius and unsurpassed showcase for the art of acting.

It’s been too long (or not long enough?) since I saw Dune for me to be running my mouth about it

Which raises the deep and interesting question as to whether a visual adaptation of a widely-known book can displace the book as the Primary Text. A decade ago, I and my fellow Tolkienists spilled uncounted bazillions of electrons over this issue in (prospectively) debating the legitimacy of the Lord of the Rings movies online. The fundamental cleavage was between “Purists” and “Revisionists”; as a leading revisionist, I took the negative in the debate, but I am no longer utterly sold on that position.

The practical argument for it is that a book is presumptively the work of a single individual with more-or-less complete control over the product, whereas a movie, or at least a “commercial” one, is inevitably a collaboration between a number of people who may be fundamentally at odds with one another, so that the final product will likely be more contingent than coherent, making the question of “intent” unanswerable.

In this instance, I guess we started out talking about the visual medium, so fair enough. (As for myself, I read Dune, once and long ago, but never saw the movie.)

Rudolph dates to 1939.

Watched the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer X-Mas special with the kids last night. I wonder: was such a message of tolerance, across color lines, considered faintly radical in 1964?”

I doubt if racists perceived Rudolf the Red Nose reindeer as having some sort of anti-racism message. Racists don’t generally think of themselves as racists (or if they explicitly adopt that label, then they don’t see it in pejorative terms) and that’s why they are pretty much immune to either perceiving or taking to heart stories with anti-racist messages. They see themselves as people who just see things the way they are and everybody else refuses to admit to reality becuase of “political correctness”. What normal people view as stereotypes, they view as just an accurate description of reality.

Basically, racism belongs more in the psychological category of delusion, not run of the mill error. If someone makes an error, I might be able to just demonstrate where they are wrong and bring them about to the correct view by demonstrating where they went wrong. The delusional are much more difficult to persuade. There is a certain willfulness involved (see also global warming deniers who recoil from the label of denier). Or if I were to put it in religious terms, convincing a racist almost takes a conversion experience in which they see things in a completely different light. Not “Oh, I see I was wrong, that sociological study shows that X belief is wrong, I’ll abandon that belief”.