Left a comment on a friends page, where people are talking about the Je Suis Charlie thing, and most seem to be down on anyone who criticises the magazine in the wake of the shootings, the Je Suis Charlie movement, or the entire situation. Heres what I wrote: Interesting. Im a little troubled by the repeated assertion that people who dont feel as if they personally resonate with Charlie Hebdos use of imagery, for example, are also somehow blaming the victims. Those two things are not the same. I have not seen one person say that those cartoonists deserved to die. If there are people out there saying things like that, those people are probably indeed too ignorant to understand a lot of things, but I dont think that everyone who doesnt feel comfortable with personally identifying themselves with the messages in all of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is therefore advocative of violence/murder or too ignorant to understand satire. Im fairly certain Im mentally capable of understanding satire and I also read French (though not as well as I should, but thats what dictionaries are for). Im not entirely ignorant when it comes to broader cultural contexts, so I feel personally confident in saying that not every single person who sees some troubling racist tropes in Charlie Hebdo cartoons is incapable of perceiving satirical intent or broader contextual relationships that might be involved. Some of their other cartoons may make a point of being anti-racist, but some really do seem to involve racist caricatures as part of their humour, whether the intended end point is flat-out racism or not. One can indeed be unintentionally racist, or selectively racist against certain groups, or even racist when trying to demonstrate that one isnt. Ive seen a number of articles lately that have espoused this baffling assumption that every single person who might offer any critical perspective on the Charlie Hebdo cartoons or who finds them somewhat problematic must therefore be some sort of uneducated, uninformed simpleton with no sense of satire or context, and yet the people Ive encountered who offer alternate critical perspectives of the situation (and not even necessarily of the magazine itself) are some of the most articulate, thoughtful, informed people that I know. Most of the Charlie Hebdo bits that Ive come across dont actually seem to be particularly subtle, and though there might be specific contextual relationships which are lost in translation, its a bit condescending to assume that every single aspect of these relationships is utterly inaccessible to everyone who doesnt applaud them. Its also a fallacy, where anyone who doesnt feel comfortable about jumping on the Je Suis Charlie facebook bandwagon is being told that the only reason they dont agree with everyones take on it is that theyre too ignorant to understand it. As for the Salon piece, I dont see anyone standing up with signs that say Je Suis Inspire or Je Suis ISIS, so an analogous relationship between those entities and Charlie Hebdo only seems to serve as a reminder that Al-Quaida is bad and its okay to hate them but not anybody else, because nobody else is quite as bad. That seems like propaganda to me, but I could be wrong. I am, after all, very suspicious of media messages (and McLuhanesque massages), and I am firmly committed to dissecting them whenever they come my way. I hope nobody takes that personally, because its not about anyone else, but I did feel the need to speak up on behalf of all of us ignorant types who cant figure satire out. :P
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 09:13:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015