thread: 2007-03-19 : Tonight we dine
On 2007-04-01, Rev. Raven Daegmorgan wrote:
This is true. However, what I have seen lately, and increasingly over the past ten years, is a disturbing trend where such is inserted (ie: cramming, jamming, dry humping, twisting and forcing) in a most uncritical fashion for reasons that seem transparently political and social.
And further, that these interpretations..."what I saw, what I see, what I get out of that"...are touted as not simply personalized perception, nor as a venue to create discourse about a subject, but as the-absolute-goddamned-truth-wahoo.
As an example, see Marco's wording in his reply: "Seeing it any other way is interesting but isn't in context with the message itself." (I'm ignoring the IMO at the end for the mmoment)
Or go out into the wider self-described tolerant/inclusive/progressive culture, express disagreement that a film/book/show/play/phrase is not inherently racist or oppressive, or that a view of it as such is wrong-headed or in error and watch how quickly you are blasted as a closet racist, a confused ignoramous, or (if you are very lucky) just an insensitive ass.
This is a huge cultural hole we've stuck one leg down, forgetting the idea you learn in first-year College English: "Just because you interpret the story the way you did does not mean that is what the story is saying or means. The story says a lot, but you say more through its lips."
"I see racism" is not "It is racist." "I see misogyny" is not "It is misogynistic." It may be, but then again, it may not.
So why is our culture so desperate for certainity? Didn't we historically reject Western religion's polarizing, singular view of morality precisely because that way led to stagnantion and oppression in the name of nobility, justice, truth and good?
Further, there's the problem of there existing a point at which decontextulization to make something fit a particular issue becomes absurd. Once you're that far into reinterpreting the symbolism of something, you're way outside normal contextual understanding. There is such a thing as overthinking something that intellectuals are often prone to.
Hence my criticism of the idea of pool being racist just because we can (rather tortuously) map the idea onto it.
To paraphrase a friend, why do we hold to the belief that racism (or whatever) is so unconciously ingrained that it gets expressed through things like how we construct a game? Why do we behave as though we must be hyper-vigilant, wipe out all traces of these unconcious manifestations of our unacknowledged and unthinking racism (or etc.)?
Or more simply: when did hyper-sensitivity become a virtue? And why is "Decry this as unholy or burn, heretic!" so often the attitude of the day?
