I just had a lengthy and fruitful conversation with my friend Sean over political correctness and the expectation of being held accountable to all of cultural history in the creation of art. The endless self-conscious and cultural reference has created a climate in which the individuals experience and expression is too often generalized into an object of criticism for the politically correct predisposed intellectual. This often, in my own experience, blinds us from the more significant markings of our shared humanity. Two examples in popular culture came to mind. My friend Nicholas once sent me a critique of Beast of the Southern Wild in which the film is criticized as perpetuating the objectification of black women. At no point while watching this film did race play so much a part of the little girls situation as immediate poverty, and in spite of that poverty she had an awareness of herself and place in the universe that dignified her as a human being. Admittedly I was one of many who expected race to be significant to the story, given the fact that she was black and in the south. What does that say about our expectations of the poor and the southern? Are the citizens of our southern states only culturally significant in so far as they provide commentary on race relations to be picked apart by academics? The other was a list I saw online of roles which should have belonged to a minority, which were taken by a white actor/actress. They included Cloud Atlas completely ignoring the fact that the diverse cast all take part in playing various races, implying through the various thematically overlapping narratives that in the grand scheme of human struggle racism is one of many forms of oppression. There is ultimately one issue, those who have, and those who do not. What both these films are about is the perseverance of those at a social disadvantage. They are about survival. And I find it so disheartening for people, given the current distribution of wealth, to be unable to look at economic problems without obscuring them with forced arguments concerning race. This is not to say race isnt an issue. As a mixed race individual from Richmond Virginia I am well aware of it, but as a mixed race individual from Richmond Virginia I have also seen the ways in which race conflict has been perpetuated and used to distract people from other pressing issues. So to all my friends in the arts and academia, please avoid letting the impulse to satisfy ones need for discourse on a particular subject be to the detriment of intercultural empathy. Trust your own experience, dont be afraid of being historically and intellectually irresponsible as I have been called by those who uphold outdated post-modern faithlessness in the commonality of human experience, and live and work in the now.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 18:22:11 +0000
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