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  #31  
Unread 08-18-2018, 06:42 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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"Being homeless isn't a 'black stereotype', it's a terrible reality. See statistics above. For that analogy to work Carlson-Wees poem would have to have his speaker talking about how much he loved watermelon."

It's not the person or persona it's the language. Again, all the critiques that matter focused on the language. In that sense my analogy is right: misusing or misappropriating AAVE to denigrate black people is still a thing. That's the problem people pointed out. Even McWhorter's piece focuses on the language.

Again, we're talking across each other because of a few things. You're standing up for freedom of expression; I think people should be allowed to do whatever they want. You think the issue is solely about writing from another person's perspective; I don't think that's what's happening here, at least not in the interesting crits. I think if you're going to talk about a great tragedy that you're really not a part of, you are treading on difficult and dangerous artistic grounds, and it's more difficult for someone who is white to avoid appearing exploitative than it is for a black person or a jewish person, to keep our analogy going.

I can only surmise this ties into some New Critical idea of poetic quality standing alone, divorced from the author and its historical context that I can't fully get behind, and which itself was only the vogue in the mid-20th century.

Most of your last paragraph I agree with, but of course I run into trouble here: "but unless their motives were to deliberately cause harm they SHOULDN'T BE MADE TO FUCKING APOLOGISE for it."

I don't buy this. One, we run into issues of discerning intention. It's nearly impossible. Second, it's not how this works in any other realm. Pick the law: I may cause harm to others and have to spend time in jail or pay a fine if the harm I cause stems from, say, ignorance or negligence, right? If a white American (and let's keep it as American, since this is unique to America) imagines himself a black man, and in doing so just plays up a shitton of stereotypes, he actually can cause harm, and probably should apologize, even though it stemmed from ignorance rather than malice. (cf. Gob Bluth in the link.)
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  #32  
Unread 08-18-2018, 06:43 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Michael: "I think the strict group identity argument finally rests on the denial that there is such a thing as human nature. I affirm that there is such a thing, and that we all partake of it, even if I can’t define it with mathematical rigor."

Humanus sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum puto; I am human, and I think nothing human alien to me. Terence.

Cheers,
John
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  #33  
Unread 08-18-2018, 06:56 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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John: While those are really interesting, I don't think they are analogous to the situation at hand.

Michael: yes, to be clear I'm not advocating for such a rigid system at all. To be fair, I think some of the most ardent people who called for Carlson-Wee to apologize would either, though they probably would go there with slavery, which I think they're wrong on but can intellectually understand.

Simply, there is something common to us all, but there are things that divide us, too, and when you try to understand someone else's experience you want to 1) embody it fully, cliche-free, and accurately; 2) avoid engaging in it in ways that might exacerbate stereotypes that have been used in fundamentally harmful ways.

Since mostly I brainspill here and don't treat my posts like formal essays, I'm all over the road, I'm sure, though hopefully I've said some useful things. I'm also trying to merely channel the opposing viewpoint: some of which I agree with. That's in part because the easy answer is "The human imagination can do anything! Nothing should limit us!" and as true as that may or may not be, such a position ignores reality and history. Universals are good in theory, in the real world nothing is universal.

So this isn't really about "can a white person write from the perspective of a black person." That was really never the question at hand. It becomes a question on the limits of human imagination (not placing limits); it becomes a question of what happens when you try and fail to engage artistically in something, and your failure engages in harmful stereotypes; it's a question of when using an historically downtrodden group's experience as a vehicle for your art crosses over from being empathetic to exploitative; etc. I think those questions are important, and waving a hand and saying "I can do anything and no one can tell me otherwise" minimizes real challenges.
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  #34  
Unread 08-18-2018, 07:02 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Isbell View Post
Humanus sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum puto; I am human, and I think nothing human alien to me. Terence.
Yeah, in theory this is true, John.

In reality, unless you do a ton of actual research, and maybe live somewhere for a while, you're not going to be able to accurately reproduce the experience of the Kalahari Bushmen, for instance. That experience IS alien to us. Not permanently, but it is. As is the experience of poor African Americans to wealthy white men.

Terence's line is a nice feel-good thing, but the reality is that empathy takes a lot of hard work, and the critique of Carlson-Wee is that it was lazy, and that lazy writing of another's experience is problematic in a host of ways. Were they right in that critique? I don't know, but I keep seeing it be essentially straw-manned.
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  #35  
Unread 08-18-2018, 07:14 AM
Andrew Frisardi Andrew Frisardi is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Szilvasy View Post
. . . it's a question of when using an historically downtrodden group's experience as a vehicle for your art crosses over from being empathetic to exploitative; etc.
Andrew, many people, like me and maybe you, enjoy the Rolling Stones. Yet Mick Jagger, a white middle-class English fellow, learned to sound (ok, used to sound) like a black Delta blues man. And he made millions to their pennies while he was at it.

And yet we enjoy the Rolling Stones because it's only rock 'n roll but we like it.

Would that be a harmful appropriation? I dunno, but their music seems to have done a lot of people good.

In short, what Michael Ferris said.
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  #36  
Unread 08-18-2018, 07:15 AM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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I think I understand you, Andrew S. There is definitely a place for discussions like this. We need critics. We also need artists who try, and fail, and try again. For us there is only the trying, as Possum said...

(edited in -- thank you, Andrew F.)

Last edited by Michael F; 08-18-2018 at 07:17 AM. Reason: Andrews
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  #37  
Unread 08-18-2018, 07:23 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Andrew,

Quote:
It's not the person or persona it's the language. Again, all the critiques that matter focused on the language. In that sense my analogy is right: misusing or misappropriating AAVE to denigrate black people is still a thing. That's the problem people pointed out. Even McWhorter's piece focuses on the language
You keep telling me that all the intelligent critiques of the poem focussed on the use of language and not merely the fact that the poet was attempting the persona at all, but where are these crits? I've asked you to point out to me specifically where you think Carlson-Wee gets AAVE so wrong or point me to the links to these 'critiques that matter' but you haven't. McWhorter's essay is about the history of AAVE and its appropriation generally, and when he does discuss Carlson-Wee's poem he says it gets it right!

'But more to the point, the Black English Carlson-Wee uses is not exaggerated: It is true and ordinary black speech. …

Now, however, educated whites are quite often aware that black people can talk in two ways depending on circumstance. Carlson-Wee, for example, is certainly aware of this: “If you a girl, say you’re pregnant,” the protagonist says, alternating between leaving out the be verb (a process actually subject to complex constraints in black speech—you don’t just leave it out willy-nilly) and using it (you’re). This is a spot-on depiction of the dialect in use, as something dipped in and out of gracefully.'

This is nothing to do with New Criticism. I'm not an academic. It's just what I think.

Edit: Cross-posted with half a dozen people

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 08-19-2018 at 07:16 AM.
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  #38  
Unread 08-18-2018, 07:27 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Hi Michael,

"Since mostly I brainspill here and don't treat my posts like formal essays, I'm all over the road, I'm sure, though hopefully I've said some useful things."
My position exactly. And to answer you, I think a variety of things. First, Terence's line is not a feel-good thing for me; it is the position of Susan Sarandon's Sister Mary Prejean at the end of Dead Man Walking, saying "I love you" to Sean Penn's rapist and killer as he prepares to die. It is an ideal to be aspired to as best we can.
Second, plenty of appropriation makes me uncomfortable, and as you note, it presses a whole set of different buttons when, say, Lenny Henry does Michael Crawford, or Dave Chappelle a blind black KKK member. I just like adding data points for context. I mentioned in another thread how I have personal qualms about art's easy appropriation of forms developed by other cultures within specific contexts: for instance, haikus and ghazals, though I also spent a while ten years ago trying to write the blues and deleted almost all those efforts. Somehow this appropriation seems to get a free pass in today's USA - but look, say, at the Boston MFA kimono business. I think borrowings should respect what they've borrowed more for instance than the faux punk velveteen studded wristbands you could see in the UK in the early 80s.
Third, as for my opinion, I come back, as an old ACLU member, to the view that an open society at its best will err on the side of free speech. As Voltaire put it, "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." That's why the ACLU defended the neonazi march in Skokie, way back when. Let the marchers' words shrivel in the light of day.

Cheers,
John
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  #39  
Unread 08-18-2018, 07:42 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Andrew F: "Andrew, many people, like me and maybe you, enjoy the Rolling Stones."
I think it's more than coincidence that almost all the great blues bands of the 1960s were British. They had distance and leverage. For instance, the Stones could write (and sing) "Brown Sugar," they had in a way stepped through the mirror. These artists also worshiped the old blues artists, toured and dueted with them over time and brought them crossover sales that would have been otherwise impossible, in the US to begin with.
I don't believe the Rolling Stones are nice people. But they loved and could play the blues. Here they are in 1969 playing Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao9Rbr7uybQ

Cheers,
John

Last edited by John Isbell; 08-18-2018 at 08:03 AM.
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  #40  
Unread 08-18-2018, 08:38 AM
Andrew Frisardi Andrew Frisardi is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Isbell View Post
. . . almost all the great blues bands of the 1960s were British. They had distance and leverage.
Whoa!

Bob Dylan (did some mean blues)
Paul Butterfield
Allman Brothers
Mike Bloomfield
Janis Joplin
Johnny Winters . . .

??????

White Americans were doing pretty good too, no?
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