site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's because Disney had much, much worse racial stereotypes in some of their earlier cartoons and comics, so when the 90s PC wave rolled around they went on a panicked spree to remove anything that could be deemed remotely offensive. It was probably a good idea for them: you see how much overexaggerated criticism Disney got for the Song of the South, and that was about in the bottom tenth of Disney racism.

Yeah, I've never seen Song of the South, but this is making me wonder if it deserves the criticism it gets. I know little about it, but is the problem once again mostly that it depicts black people acting like black people of the time?

For example, you'll never see certain episodes of the original broadcast of Tom and Jerry because many of those episodes feature a sassy black maid who doesn't take any shit from Tom. Why was that deemed worthy to never be broadcast again? I don't know. I guess because we are not allowed to ever see a black maid on TV. In certain broadcasts, the black maid was even replaced with a white teenage girl. That's representation for you!

I've seen it. Saw it as a kid, once in the theater I think. I remember a character named Tar Baby, a pretty pejorative term to the modern ear. "Bear Necessities" was a memorable song. (edit: a memorable song that had nothing to do with that film, thanks for the corrections, I got it. Please insert Zip a dee doo dah)

Isn't Song of the South a Brer Rabbit retelling?

I'm not sure how you tell Brer Rabbit without the story with the tar baby. It's the most famous Brer Rabbit story by a wide margin, isn't it? When I read Brer Rabbit when I was a small child, I genuinely didn't realise it had any connection to African-Americans at all. It wasn't until I was in my 20s, in an unrelated context, that I discovered the stories that had delighted young-Olive came out of an African-American folk tradition. At the time, then, I took the story about the tar baby entirely at face value - it was an effigy made of tar and dressed up that Brer Rabbit genuinely mistook for a child, hit, got stuck on the tar, and thereby was trapped for Brer Fox.

Wiki tells me that the story predates any use of 'tar baby' as a slur, so... I don't know, it seems silly, to me. It is actually a story about a baby made of tar, and nothing in the story has anything to do with race.

Maybe I'm naive here, but... there is just genuinely nothing in the story of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby that involves race. It's a pretty classic trickster archetype story - the fox traps the rabbit, and the rabbit cleverly tricks his way out of it.

'Bear Necessities', incidentally, is from The Jungle Book. Nothing to do with Song of the South. I thought the famous ear worm from Song of the South was 'Zip-a-dee-doo-da'?

I'm not sure how you tell Brer Rabbit without the story with the tar baby. It's the most famous Brer Rabbit story by a wide margin, isn't it?

I would guess it's similar in familiarity to the briar patch story.

It is the briar patch story. The tar baby is how Brer Rabbit was captured - "please don't throw me in the briar patch!" was the trick he used to escape.

Enough B'rer Rabbit stories start with him escaping capture that you sometimes see it separated from the Tar Baby story, and it's probably a little more famous because it's been transposed to so many other settings and works where the tar-mix wouldn't. But at least in the Uncle Remus stories version, yeah, it's very explicitly two separate halves of the same incident (cw: it's... a 1880s Southern work).

Correct on the song. My mistake.

As for Tar baby, I haven't checked the etymology of when it came to be considered a (rather dated now) slur, but as early as the 70s.

(edit: spelling)

Bear Necessities is Jungle Book not Song of the South.

You're right! I hang my head in shame.

There was some stereotyping, but the primary complaint was that it depicted a black sharecropper in the post-reconstruction era who seemed basically content with his lot in life. In my mind that's not that bad. There are plenty of people who live in unjust and meager circumstances who still manage to find happiness, and it doesn't imply an endorsement of the whole social system. That said I haven't actually seen it, I'm mostly going off the many many critical articles from the early 2010s.

There was some stereotyping, but the primary complaint was that it depicted a black sharecropper in the post-reconstruction era who seemed basically content with his lot in life.

In my experience, this is the complaint in the motte, and the complaint in the bailey is that it depicts a black slave in the antebellum era who seemed basically content with his lot in life. (The people complaining are historically illiterate and do not understand what the film is about.)

To be fair, Song of the South is really vague about its time; the Hays Code reviewers supposedly asked for explicit statement in-film that it was set post-Civil War, but in the released work you end up having to read tea leaves and styles of clothing to nail it down. Yes, Remus's family are clearly sharecroppers rather than slaves, but Georgia did have a (tiny, heavily exploited) number of free African-Americans pre-Civil War (though almost all closer to cities); Johnny's family's behavior toward the African-Americans is way too familiar to have been acceptable in antebellum Georgia, but sanitizing treatment of 'the help' in media was absolutely common to antebellum writing and post-Reconstruction writing about pre-war behaviors.

Supposedly one of the scriptwriters wanted to make it more explicit, and there's probably something interesting to say about what a film closer to his version would have looked like, but given that one of the other guys wrote stuff such that the Hayes Code thought it was too racist for the time, and he's the one with more obvious fingerprints on the final work, I don't think it's an unreasonable complaint.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats