June 13, 2008

• Wow, just... WTF?
• A Quick Remedial Course In Racist Iconography
• That has to be the cutest, most cuddliest racist creation since Prussian Blue!
• Stay classy, America.
• Vile and obnoxious? Yes. Free speech? Also yes. I strongly advise those of you who are not racists to move on with your lives.

  "We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence."

  -DANIEL GILBERT Psychologist, Harvard University
• Wouldn't free speech also include people expressing dismay over the blitherings of racist idiots?
• Touché
• Can I order a McCain Cabbage Patch Senior®?
• I like this t-shirt.
• That is an important point, Fifty. I wonder, though, whether we can't draw a distinction which might be relevant here between speech which expresses a serious thesis, however repugnant, and speech which is in effect mere abuse or insult.
• This could have a paradoxical effect since we're all monkeys here, right?
• The doll really looks more like W than Obama.
• OMG racism.
• If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times -- if you're going to be racist, at least be clever about it.
• I sometimes wonder about why that film is considered racist. Is it because a white chap is portraying a non-white person, complete with darkish makeup and accent? 'cause probably they would've been hard pressed to find an Indian actor who would sell as well as Sellars, and a non-white protaganist was sort of crucial to the story as far as demonstrating xenophobia, and later acceptance. So: to make it non-racist, they should have made the lead character white, or should have used an Indian actor, then? And is it also somehow offensive when Peter Sellars dresses as a Little Person, because, you know, he wasn't? Or (good lord, the horror!) when he pretends to be French? I mean, I get the whole Thou Shalt Not Do Blackface thing, but at the same time, it's acting! Where is the line drawn?
• I think in most cases (The Party, Dr. Strangelove, and the Clouseau movies), Sellers does caricatures. This isn't necessarily racist, but it is stereotyping. He gets away with it because he's very funny, but in a less skillful comedian this sort of thing quickly becomes ugly. There was a tradition in British comedy, especially stand-up, to rely on racial/ethnic/national stereotypes for cheap laughs. Part of the impetus for alternative comedy in the 70s and 80s was to move away from this (and from crass jokes about the wife/the mother-in-law etc.).
• The moral high ground might be a turd sometimes. For example, I was at a conference sponsored by the Children's Tumor Foundation on neurofibromatosis, which my daughter got a brain tumor from, and the PR person for the foundation got up and stated that they were going to 'take the moral high ground' and not show disfigured people at all, just happy smiling, healthy ones, maybe with a few cafe au lait marks. I felt very badly for the people in the audience who were more obviously afflicted. Why were they somehow not good examples for moral reasons? To bring this back to the thread about monkey dolls, I think we have a level playing field. Thanks to fish tick.
• Tangentially: Obama's car commercial
• Pleg, you might as well be discussing the topic: is it Art?
• (Actually, I think it's kind of cute. But then, I lubs me some sock monkeys.)
• Hope the progeny's doing OK now, Dan.
• To get back to the derail, if I may, I think The Party is indeed racist. Funny as hell, yes, but at its core, much of it is laughing at the brown guy, just because he's different. The blackface element is one thing, as are cheap stereotypes like the elephant-painting or laughing at the accent, but the core of the movie is about how out-of-his-element Seller's character is. This is not in itself racist, but he is consistently excluded on the basis of his being different. That shows racism on the part of the party goers, sure, but it's far more important that Sellers completely buys in to that exclusion. He doesn't make a sympathetic character -- in fact, he's pointing and laughing just like everybody else, if not more. The only one to go outside of that exclusion is the French girl, who treats him like an actual person, but again, Sellers in his portrayal, refuses to cooperate with that. Those 'love scenes' don't work, precisely because Sellers is too busy making fun of the brown guy. And what roryk said. I have to see what Mike Meyers does with that Love Guru movie -- he has to walk a very fine line. When I first saw the trailer, it was a big 'uh oh'. Then again, I think inappropriate or borderline portrayals of Indians, Pakistanis and other South Asians are probably more acceptable in North America (to wit: Apu) than in Britain or other places with a larger South Asian immigrant base. IMHO, anyway. Whatever's going on, as funny as The Party is, there's something about it that makes me very uncomfortable, even if I can't properly explain why.
• Never liked The Party.
• I really like The Party. I take Seller's character as a caricature, take away the ethnicity and it would have been just another of his bumbling caricatures. There's been some controversy about another recent film with racistovertones, Lost in Translation. Laughing at the different customs and language mixups, visual gags about height at the elevator, etc. Mh. Sometimes the cigar is just a cigar.
• TUM, thanks for caring. After specially targeted radiation on the inoperable tumor, and a year of chemo, it is in remission for her. It's the existentialist in me that made me mention our background, as to why I jump to be tolerant, even and especially if something is either odd or cute!
• Sellers and Milligan both spent time in India as kids. Milligan always claimed his piss-takery was not racist, since he lived there... which is kind of a stretch. But humour in those days wasn't as PC as it is now. Watching old Q series (Milligan's shows which I revere) some of it is a bit cringe inducing. But fucking hilarious. A classic is Pakistani Daleks. (there actually isn't really much point to making the Daleks pakistani, but.. uh.. you had to be there. Dig the late 70s BBC pyro FX)
• God I love Milligan.
• ...Big "Goon Show" fan here. Ying tong iddle I po.
• "Stay classy, America." That's my new bumper sticker, Hank.
• But is it Art?
• Creators of ‘The Sock Obama’ toy plan to move forward with production.
• Seems to me that these "blogging dens of resistance” (of which we're one, I suppose) are responsible for a lot of free publicity, which resulted in those "new opportunities [which] have been presented.” Isaac: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Y'know, I read this in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, y'know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them. Guest: There is this devastating satirical piece on that on the Op Ed page of the Times, it is devastating. Isaac: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point.
• Pin at the GOP state convention in Texas: "If Obama is President... will we still call it the White House?"
• I'm going to hate the next five months, amn't I?
• I suggest you start drinking now.
• Now there's an idea.
• MonkeyFilter: I suggest you start drinking now.