Moved to GD by request!

Nova wrote:

What, you mean like Orson Scott Card?

I'd be comfortable calling Card talented and a bigot, yeah, though apparently his recent work is less worth the time. I just picked Crichton as the first example because it's easy for me to forget, reading his work, how misanthropic the man behind the words can be, and sometimes less easy. But there are less grotesque examples, for me, as well - I still listen to Amanda Palmer songs, the Motor City Madman, Prince... but I tend not to bother with specific pieces that I believe to be expressing ugliness I don't have time for.

dirufacade wrote:

What bigotries does Palmer have? I assumed Neil Gaiman had good taste in women and I've generally liked the Dresden Dolls, but I haven't followed her much specifically.

Palmer's hipsterism gets the best of her, I think, sometimes. "Proceeds donated to the KKK" (because there's no such thing anymore and it's iiiiiiironic),  and the whole siamese twin discovered by normal human and put on an album (gee whiz gollickers!) schtick come to mind. Gaiman's had a few flubs, but he usually cops to pretty quickly, and most revolve around him forgetting people-not-like-him have histories/present, too.

Having a savvy SO doesn't save anyone, though. I mean, Frank Miller's dating a very smart woman who's written essays on islamophobia and how it effects entertainment.

Frosty wrote:

And the Siamese twin fiasco, (Palmer had to publish under another name to break from her record company and invented the twins to do so, part business part artistic decision) I still do not understand why that offended a small but vocal group of people. The complaint seemed to be, “Since she is able-bodied, how dare she write about, and capitalize off of, a very real disability that she has no real personal experience with?” But that’s fiction/art/imagination.

It's not a huge hurdle for me, but it's more how she approached that material/concept, not that she approached it.

Frosty wrote:

How dare the Memoirs of a Geisha (male, omg!) write what it was like to be a Japanese woman?

Well, he did break his contract with his source, by outing her, and she was so annoyed with his complete and thorough inaccuracies and fictionalized salacious elements, she published her own book... again, after he broke contract and outed her.

Frosty wrote:

When it is just the artist who has done something awful, like the many directors who molested/raped children (Woody Allen, Roman Polanski), since their actual art isn’t about kid-fucking, I still enjoy their movies and books. But I really hate child abusers, people on the street who had committed such crimes, I would shun them, avoid their business, and so I guess it is hypocritical…..and I’m not sure what the best course of action would be. One the one hand, I really enjoy the art of some of those people. On the other, I really don’t want to line the pockets of people who commit unforgiveable crimes.

I’m undecided. Maybe someone else has a better answer!

I think you nailed it well. I can, somehow, still watch a ton of Polanski, but I can't touch Victor Salva (Powder; Jeepers Creepers 2) movies anymore, since looking at them, you do see where youth are overtly sexualized in a leering fashion.

Ashnod wrote:

Whereas, I still think Tori Amos sounds flaky and pretentious, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying her music.

I think both Amanda and Tori try too hard to sound weird or deep at times and that tends to keep me away from their music on a consistent basis.

Both of them are at their best when they are writing honestly, and to an extent, writing about their own experiences. Which is why Little Earthquakes and Dresden Dolls are, in my opinion, much stronger works than Scarlet's Walk and Who Killed Amanda Palmer?, respectively.

At least as far as Dresden Dolls vs Who Killed Amanda Palmer? I'm going to have to agree with you 100%. I wasn't very taken in with WKAP? personally. I mean there are songs that I do enjoy on it but from a completely personal stand point, Dresden Dolls has a lot more meaning to me. You may be happy to know (if you don't already have it) that her newest album, Theatre is Evil, feels a lot more like both Dresden Dolls and Yes Virginia to me.

Many of Osamu Tezuka's works have racism/sexism. He was insanely progressive for his time, though, and seemed not to realize that portraying somebody as a positive stereotype was still employing a stereotype. Given that he is from Japan, which is inundated with xenophobia and racism, and worked in the 60's and 70's, any of these assertions are quite radical.

Still irritated me no end when in Black Jack it is postulated that a hysterectomy makes a woman "not a woman", and, therefore, she starts living as and being considered a man afterward. Even to the point that still being in love with her after her surgery would suddenly be gay. There are several problematic assumptions inherent in this--that "male" is default and "female" is something added, a subset; that gender and reproduction are linked, etc. And many of the female doctors he encounters, while quite progressive for their time, are still proven to fall to feminine weaknesses.

Thankfully most of this was nixed in the 2004 and 2006 anime adaptations. I can't believe a modern Black Jack would have the same prejudices. The modern BJ reminds me of Dr. House, in that way-- something of a misanthrope, but not particularly sexist or racist.

I angsted way more than I should have over Cannon God Exaxxion, and whether it was satire or on the level. I mean, there's mass-muder-for-good, sexy robot servants, the whole show her parents our sextape bit, and the horny old scientist makes a rape-repair machine to "fix" a woman that's been, well, raped. Final tally: satire and grandpa/uncle/dad is teh evilz, but it's a sometimes simplified, sometimes appealing, sometimes conservative evilz.

(Semi-connected: I still have no clue how to read Goldie being a shining beacon into the future, at the end of Gunsmith Cats, though. Not a lot of pro-mafia stories out there, even when organized crime is glammed up.)

Trench Kamen wrote:

Still irritated me no end when in Black Jack it is postulated that a hysterectomy makes a woman "not a woman", and, therefore, she starts living as and being considered a man afterward. Even to the point that still being in love with her after her surgery would suddenly be gay. There are several problematic assumptions inherent in this--that "male" is default and "female" is something added, a subset; that gender and reproduction are linked, etc. And many of the female doctors he encounters, while quite progressive for their time, are still proven to fall to feminine weaknesses.

The pat answers, here, are that those are Black Jack's and his lover's hang ups (making Piccolo the voice of reason for the first time, ever), and the female doctors, like all non-BJ doctors are fuck ups in some way, which is why he's necessary. But... that's a bullshit answer, so I won't do it.

Reminds me of something I was reading, the other day, though, that mentioned "golem" was still used in some non-intense/strict Jewish writings as late as the early to mid 20th Century, to refer to women who hadn't given birth, because they were "unformed." Yeah, the sentiment wasn't uncommon, in many cultures, but that one just hit me, I guess.

Last edited by Decrescent Daytripper (09-11-2012 03:45:44 AM)

Daytripper, does the central question you mean to raise in this thread have to do with separating an artist's bigotry from their work, or separating one's distaste for an artist from their work?  Or are you interested in discussing both?

I'm terrible at these sort of in-depth discussions, but I'm just going to toss this thought out there and see what happens.

\What about when a writer's bigotry is a byproduct of their environment, like Osamu Tezuka in 1950s Japan? Or HP Lovecraft in the 1920s? Is it fair to criticize a work from a time and/or place where some flavor of bigotry is the norm?

I've long since come to terms with the fact that Japan's attitude toward women, non-Japanese folk, homosexuality, and transpeople are still back in the Western equivalent of the early 1970s because they as a people are entrenched in a heavily conformist culture that's slowly starting to open up. I get that when I watch anime or the occasional J-horror that this is the world that they live in, and that's the lens I have to watch it through. That's fine.

I have trouble doing that with 20th century Western material because I feel like "we" should know better by then. I've never read anything by Lovecraft because I've been told that he's incredibly racist and that it's a hard thing to separate his racism from his use of the n-word in his writings. Does he use that word because he's racist or is the word in the story because that's the sociopolitical climate of early 20th century America? How do I separate a racist writer from climatic racism?

I have a hard time with certain things. I enjoy Dashboard Confessional, but I don't seek out Further is Forever (Carrabba's  first project) due to their Christian categorization. Dashboard has a few songs that also deal with his beliefs on a more personal level (some that can be interpreted as questioning his faith), but those don't bother me as much as some of the thing's I've heard in my almost mother in law's car -very THE POWER OF GOD IS IN ALL THINGS BOW DOWN AND LOVE GOD CAUSE HE LOVES YOU EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE FLAWED AND TERRIBLE sort of music.

Is it bigotry in their art? No, probably not. But it's a belief system that I find disturbing (apologies to any religious folk on the board, but in all honesty, I find nearly all religion disturbing), and so I avoid it. Which makes me question if that means that I'm in some way an intolerant bigot. They're not expressing a specifically negative thought, like "BLACK PEOPLE HAVE THE MARK OF CAIN" or something, so do they count as something that should be avoided? Do they count if I were to make a list of 'BAD PEOPLE?" I don't know, and in that doubt, I find a place to question my own tolerance. It's something that upsets me a little, and so I try not to think of it.  :/

Indian cinema can be very racist and is definitely more than a little sexist -but I still unabashedly love Bollywood productions. The very superficiality of them makes me expect the views that they express. It's a little like watching movies from the 40's and 50's. I love Sabrina; truly, it's one of my favorite movies, but the portrayal of the female characters is extremely typical of the time. So in that regard, it's very easy for me to separate -isms from the material, and enjoy that material. But are older movies intentionally bigoted/sexist? Is it a more casual thing, born of then current social mores? And further, most modern music can trace it's roots to the works of Buddy Holly, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, etc... artists whose own inspiration were black musicians who received no wide exposure. Micah can tell you about the evolution of mainstream music in terms of "what white people stole from blacks." (The joys of loving a man who studied music in college.) So is there a statue of limitations on that? They stole techniques and styles from artist who received no recognition on basis of their skin tone. Can we appreciate a modern artist who lists those artists as inspiration? It's a second or third hand theft. Does the fact that modern artists didn't steal directly from those originators make it better, or more socially acceptable?

Or in more modern terms, does Gwen Stefani's love of all things Japanese and Harajuku make her a bigot? If that's so, what is the difference between her work and the Gorillaz, who also mass appropriate from African American and Japanese cultures? And you often see in African American culture, a veneration of marital arts movies. Is it cultural appropriation or bigotry when an African American absorbs aspects of that culture? The Boondocks is an excellent work, both the animated one and the strip series. Aaron McGruder is a genius. But his work as a commentary on African American society in particular, and American as a larger whole, has been attacked as being bigoted -against both white and black communities. Is McGruder a bigot when his characters refer to people as crackers or use the n-word? Or mulatto? Those words are pejoratives, so it can be seen that way. But how is it intended, and does intention override social implications?


I never have answers which is why I don't really participate in these discussions. :/ I think I try to appreciate what I can and learn where I can, and try to avoid doing things that I've learned are hurtful. It's the best I've got.