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sqbr: A cartoon cat saying Ham! (ham!)
Monday, November 30th, 2009 07:57 am
EDIT: I seem to have expressed this really badly. I'm not against ALL satire involving stuff like racism. I'm not even against all satire which offends (some) people from marginalised groups. I'm against a very particular brand of "satire", as described below. See the comments for further clarification.

A lot of the time I'll find something angry-makingly Xist etc and when I complain people say "But it's satire". And I'll admit, sometimes I really am being obtuse, but a lot of the time I think this is crap, because it hurts the people it's supposedly helping and is amusing to those it's supposedly challenging. I've been trying to articulate this for ages, there's probably holes in my argument.

I'm going to talk about racism since this seems to be where it comes up the most and I want to cut down on my "etc"s, but it comes up with disability, sexuality etc all the time too.

So. An action is racist or not based on it's effect, not your intention.

If your satire:
-makes POC feel attacked
-makes very racist white people think you agree with them
-makes less racist white people laugh at the more racist white people and thus feel good about themselves

How is it in any way anti-racist? Or even racism neutral? (since not all art needs to have a positive social effect) How is it less racist in effect than a deliberately racist action intended to make POC feel attacked and agree with very racist white people?
Read more... )
sqbr: "Creative genius" with an arrow pointing to a sketch of me (genius!)
Monday, January 19th, 2009 10:04 am
I've decided to do a bit of a summary to get my thoughts re the last couple of posts in order since I was confusing myself in the comments.

In summary, I think my argument boils down to the answers to these questions:

  • Q: Does art sometimes have a negative social effect?
    A: Yes. Certainly I don't think anyone would disagree that it can sometimes have a negative effect on an individual person.
  • Q: Can the artist predict this effect in advance?
    A: Not perfectly, but to some extent.
  • Can the artist fix this by just working on making the piece better?
    A: No. At least not unless they make the piece perfect, which they never will. So this approach isn't very effective. Also not all artists hold themselves to very high standards, which is fine as an artistic choice, but that doesn't let them off the hook consequences wise. (That argument comes up a lot with fanfic. It's just a hobby!)
  • Q: Should the artist worry about these consequences if it means the art will suffer?
    A: Worry? Yes, at least a little bit. It's part of every person's responsibility to worry about the consequences of any of their actions. Let it stop them making or sharing that piece of art? That depends, and is a personal decision. Be censored by outside forces beyond negative peer pressure? No.

Some more thinky thoughts )A note about the context )