fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #500 ]

⌈ Secret Post #500 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 15 pages, 356 secrets from Secret Submission Post #072.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 4 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 4 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But don't you think that, as an artist, you have a responsibility to recognise the political and/or cultural messages in your art, even if they're there inadvertently?

No.

That's surprising, for such an intensely political person. Hmmm... I'll bet you can't sit through crappy old TV shows without noticing how they condone and promote racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, etc etc etc. Or do you consider it all harmless fun which has no bearing on how people think and act IRL?

Actually some of my favourite shows are from the 1960s, but I'm capable of seeing them within the context of their time. For instance a lot of people look at the original ST and all they see is racism and sexism, but I was a child then and that show was pretty amazing.

But Roddenberry specifically set out to do social engineering through fiction and to deliberately send messages. I don't, actually. I'm a political person in RL; I don't tend to create political art. And I resent it intensely when people try to put their own ideas about the "obligations" of artists on me and tell me I should have to.

You asked me if I thought artists were obligated to be aware of the messages. I don't. In fact I personally find it impossible to consciously construct things in that fashion. I don't sit down and say, "I'm going to create a character who is X, so they can't have any of these traits because I need to create a positive image of Xs." My characters come to life inside my head and they are what they are. If someone doesn't like them, too bad. I create things from inside them and present things as I see them. If other people want to make moral or political judgements they're free to do so.

I'm also in the "I may not agree with what you're saying and I may not personally want to hear it, but I'll defend your right to say it" camp. Firmly. Talk of artists' obligations invariably seems to lead to censorship. I don't approve of say, Canadian censorship of porn that they consider "degrading to women" any more than I approve of the Religious Right's censorship of porn that it considers "tempting to sinful thought." In general I believe in the suppression of only one kind of pornography and that's porn that is really not porn at all, but rather evidence: the filming of actual real assaults on people (or animals) who are not volunteers and do not want this done to them.

Actually, I asked whether artists had a responsibility to be aware of the messages in their work - even when those messages were not intentional. Without that level of awareness, wouldn't it be harder to create real art?

Hmmm. Went away and had a bit of think about this. Rather than continuing to argue point by point, let me just throw out a few thoughts.

It's a nonsense to say that, if a story presents rape as harmless or beneficial, it is not condoning rape. That is the meaning of condone - "to accept or forgive", "to regard or treat (something bad or blameworthy) as acceptable, forgivable, or harmless".

Now there's an assumption that many people have that, if a story (show, movie, etc etc) contains racism, misogyny, or other bigotry, it must be utterly condemned and/or all the copies ought to be burned. This leads to various silly behaviour. At one end of the spectrum, there are fans bashing other fans for liking such texts despite their flaws. At the other end, there are fans tying themselves into intellectual knots trying to pretend those flaws don't exist: the author didn't mean it, and anyway it's their right to say such things, and we shouldn't take it seriously anyway, and it's not like anybody ever learned an idea or an attitude or a rape myth or whatever from art.

I think there's a tension, even a confusion, in your comments here between all these different positions. IMHO, a free speech absolutist must defend happy rape fics even if they condone rape. In fact, they must defend such fics precisely because they contain a political statement.

The problem is, a free speech absolutist also cannot criticise criticism of such fics without seriously contradicting themselves.

tl;dr You ought not to say "You ought not to say 'You ought not to say that!'".

Do you have to be a free speech absolutist in order to defend rape fics?

Do you have to be a free speech absolutist at *all* if you're not a strict censorship promoter? Isn't there some room, I dunno, in *between* those two ends of the spectrum?

Plus, there's a difference between saying "You ought not to say that" and "I disagree".

The comment you're replying to specifically and directly addressed one person and their comments. I'm afraid you're preaching to the choir. :-)

[ SECRET POST #500 ]

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