Rewriting, Washing, Scrubbing American Culture

The beefing aside, there’s a good discussion to be had here.

I’m pretty squarely against altering any past art/entertainment. It’s a capsule of a time and era. Some of it will hold up. Some of it will be ghastly and a reminder of how culture is constantly changing. Also, no one is forced to watch.

I think there’s a parallel with the confederate statutes coming down. I was all for removing them from public spaces. People who have no choice shouldn’t be forced to see them. But don’t destroy them. Put them in a museum so people can choose to see them or not. Tell why they were put up. And why they were taken down.

Our art/entertainment is part of our history, for better or worse. And you can’t change history. Unless you’re teaching the “benefits for enslaved people” in Florida I guess.

 

No one said that. The thread is a continuation of yesterday's conversation.

Your biggest love is books which are being rewritten to remove any semblance of harm. Should they be? Should they not be?

Should movies? TV shows?

 

I am reminded of a few years ago, when “Mein Kampf” was republished in Germany.

Is it an important enough historical work to be republished without any changes, or do the literal millions of deaths that happened afterward mean it should be banned and/or altered?

I believe it was released with extensive notes and explanations about Hitler’s rise to power and how his reign of terror led to the murder of millions of Jews and others. That seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

 

Your opening post on this thread is a pretty broad indictment of the current moment, in service of defending a poorly chosen line from a 35-year-old movie.

Times change.

I'm no fan of revising "art" to suit current sensibilities, but I'm also not sure how much of that "art" deserves my vigorous defense.

I'll defend Huckleberry Finn to the death as the greatest work of art in American history.

An offensive episode of a sitcom? A racial stereotype from Hollywood?

Not so much.

 

I'm not defending the line. I used it blindly yesterday, people got pissed.

Interesting premise for a thread on the cleansing of Americana, or so I thought.

I posted the DTRT clip. Is Spike Lee an asshole for writing that scene?

Or is someone an asshole for reciting that scene 30 years later? 6 of one, half dozen of the other?

How so? Twain used the word 214 times.

I'm sure you'll have an articulate response but defending that word 214 times seems about the same as my using a line in Kubrick's racist script.

Is there ANY nuance or is everything zero-sum?

 

But the greatness of "art" is subjective. I don't think you can pick and choose what you defend. It's all or nothing.
Even though many people regard Huckleberry Finn in the same way you do, I'm sure there are some who think of it differently. In the same way, there are some who would regard an offensive sitcom episode as smart and edgy, or recognize that an old racial stereotype is offensive today but still has worth as a reminder of the cultural progress we've made.
Our current societal dilemma on this topic is based on the misguided notion that we can — and should — censor certain things because a small fraction of the population cannot process their meaning, or comprehend that cultural norms in 2023 are not the same as in 1923 or 1823.

 

I wrote a magazine story about Alan Gribbens’ change of Huck Finn from n_____ to slave. Reported the shit out of that one, going to Hannibal’s Twain museum and talking to the director. I also called the Hannibal superintendent, sat in on a class about it and talked to Gribbens.

There is no consensus on Twain’s use of the word, but Black students in the class were more than uncomfortable with it.

The museum and school district were not about to censor the book.

 

I honestly don’t know if the Charlestown Chiefs coming to terms with the sexual escapades of Hanarahan’s wife should still be on Netflix.

Is more harm than good coming from this? It is the way many people thought in the 70s, and that is very powerful and needs discussed. But, it could also justify that behavior to some.. faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

I mean, do I need to see that again?

But every human in America should read about why, when he was 13, Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

 

There are lots of depictions of awful language and occurrences in film, books, teevee, and other media that are fine in those contexts, yet probably shouldn’t be recreated in real life in a polite society.

 

I think the use of offensive language in a work of art is a completely defensible argument.

But it's also an argument I might lose.

Huck Finn and Do the Right Thing both use offensive language as an integral part of their artistry. That seems fair to me.

But to lift that language out of that artistic context makes the language problematic again. (Which is why the quote from Full Metal Jacket landed wrong.)

And as Batman points out, who gets to decide what is art and what isn't? High art? Low art? Street art? Popular art? It's subjective.

But like obscenity, we all know it when we see it.

 

Surely we can make the distinction between the use of the n-word in 12 Years a Slave as opposed to, say, the superfluous “dead n——- storage” scene in Pulp Fiction.

 

Eric Cartman could never spend extended time in this place.