“ That would, I think, start to lend credence to those who suggest that this is retributive rather than constructive.”
It’s entirely predictable that groups who traditionally have not had power would use it, once obtained, to smite one’s enemies. Rub their nose in it, if you will. Being able to cloak oneself with Being On the Right Side of History doesn’t hurt either.
I think seeing different racial groups as “one’s enemies” is a problem. Certainly, “rubbing people’s noses” is not great if they’re still in the majority of the populace. Although, “living well is the best revenge” is a time honored mantra.
Acknowledging tradeoffs & being grateful for the tradeoffs (along with one’s own talent, drive & luck) & sacrifices seems like the best response to the shifts we’re seeing.
heh as a UK, Suffolk writer I thought the same... but I know Verso is a left-wing publisher so I assumed the loft was where they have pretentious sex parties or somesuch!
I guess it's similar growing up in the countryside here (and living in a town not a city near the villge where I grew up) and always hearing about London constantly!
100%. My little town has a university and a university press and an entire library devoted to rare books, but New York recognition seems all encompassing among writers in this big country. The 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒀𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒓 magazine is full of sumptuous ads targeted at the richest people who want to feel smart.
The once-cool home of Verso books, the lefty publishing house where they used to have some pretty cool parties. Very nice view of the Manhattan bridge.
I wouldn't worry too much... most people don't read books! :D
"Of course this representation is as shallow and commercially-motivated as anything else in our creative industries, truly radical queer perspectives are as unwelcome on television as they are anywhere else, the tendency is always to prize “normalcy” among such characters in a way that neuters them and affirms conventional social norms."
This certainly came home to me when I was still a film lecturer, trying to get students to engage with Todd Haynes' 'Poison' when they wanted to write about 'Love, Simon' and the like!
Activists - whether in the racial or LGBTQ space - will NEVER be satisfied and will NEVER recognize progress, because they are incentivized not to. The 100+ or so DEI employees at the University of Michigan would be out of jobs if they admitted racial animosity no longer is an all encompassing problem. So instead you get increasingly absurd policing of everyday interactions. This is also why the trans rights movement has become so aggressive, oppressive and counter-productive. The LGBTQ advocacy groups won across the board - it was a wipeout. Gay marriage everywhere. So on to the next cause - trans rights - even though trans issues are quite distinct from and often at odds with gay rights.
Well, go talk about it on his substack then. None of the points raised by Osuva are original or particularly insightful. Just the same divisive, anti-trans commentary to be found elsewhere on substack.
But of course it gets massively liked here because certain people are obsessed about this issue. Please just leave it alone, at least here.
There's nothing anti-trans about what I wrote. The fact of the matter is that many children who are being transitioned would grow up to be gay adults if left alone, and many regret that they weren't allowed to do so. Just because that's an uncomfortable fact doesn't make it untrue or in any way anti-trans.
I'm glad to leave it alone. It WAS left alone, until you made an issue of it by mischaracterizing a nothing comment about the trans movement as "anti-trans."
It's the negative side of intersectionality. Since problems are linked, and people can suffer along multiple axes, then you can't say you're REALLY for gay rights unless you're ALSO for trans rights, and Palestine, and anti-capitalism, and...hey, why's everyone leaving the tent?
Re: refusing to take a W. It's real. I remember when the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once won a bunch of Oscars. I know a very woke person who seemed to loved that movie more than life itself. Wrote multiple entries about it on Letterboxd.
His response after Michelle Yeoh's win? "Michelle Yeoh has always been incredible.... it's just taken the short-sighted (and honestly pretty racist) Western film industries a while to notice."
I wanted to grab him by the collar. Dude! YOU WON! Your favorite movie won EVERYTHING last night! Take the goddamn win!
I also have to wonder if "Parasite" won merely because it was from an "underrepresented" part of the world given that the Western film critics who reviewed the movie clearly had no idea what they were talking about.
Maybe. We'll never know. But i can say this; I loved and still love that movie. I saw it early in its run before the hype train went into overdrive.
But why did I love it? Because it was GOOD, damn it. Compelling story and characters, twists I didn't see coming, expertly blending different genres together.
Representation was never on my mind, nor was "late capitalism" or whatever the fuck. But that movie's fans too, man. Jesus Christ they were vicious. They're the type to yell at you for not enjoying the movie in the correct way.
We saw so much of this in the 2010s and early 2020s. I'm still not over it. Don't know when I'll ever be.
Yeah, but what is the "correct" way? There is a lot in "Parasite" that I believe wouldn't be apparent to Western audiences (certainly it was missed by Western critics). That's the complication of foreign movies made for foreign audiences with a different culture than the US.
For instance, I am pretty sure that the central conceit of Western fans of the film is completely incorrect. If the film was misunderstood by the Academy then was it really a valid winner in its category?
But isn’t art often interpreted/misinterpreted in a variety of ways? When I think of all the ways Lord of the Rings has been interpreted—which is the “right way”?
French audiences that first saw The Rules of the Game trashed the movie theater when they saw it. When I saw it in a different culture in a different time, there was nothing in this amazing tragic comic farce that would move me to violence but I can still recognize the mastery of form and the power of a story well told. It remains powerful to me but it is certainly not speaking to me in the same way it did to people who trashed the theater. Which is the “correct” response?
I’m sure there is a ton of things I don’t “get” in Parasite. However, the beautifully fluid and surprisingly composed cinematography, I get. The surprising plot twists, the mix of horror, comedy and drama made it an original & memorable film that is near to masterpiece level in its ability to entertain & provoke thought.
That Korean and American audiences experience this movie in different ways is undoubtedly true but it doesn’t invalidate the praise it’s received anywhere. Parasite has universal qualities that transcend its local cultural value that speak to people all over the world.
I think one issue your comment touches on is this sort of "when you do a thing well, people hardly notice you did the thing at all", and I think that applies to identity representation as well. There's some meat to the complaint that alot of internet talk produces about "we don't hate representation, we hate performative and poorly done representation for representations sake". The kind of PR-produced, boardroom conceived representation that tries to identity-soup itself into a representation free-for-all. Not just tokenizing, but multi-variate tokenization.
So, the really good examples, that just did one thing and did it REALLY FREAKING WELL. Absolutely serve as foils to that schlocky, ultra-performative, formulaic representation. When something is truly good (EEAAO, Moonlight, Parasite, Get Out, etc) and also affords some representation, I think most people will largely welcome it. With the amount of resources and clout Hollywood has, people are right to bag on the garbage performativity as a cash-grab, because they have options, and could have produced something that was actually good as well as being representative.
"Underrepresented" seems like a bad way to describe my impression, which is that the Academy wanted to recognize a burgeoning (and highly lucrative!) film industry. Sort of like Slumdog Millionaire (which, okay, was British), and Parasite happened to be good enough to get the nod. It's probably an okay gloss of the idea, though
I would quibble and say that Hollywood doesn't recognize anything on the way up, only after it's been established. HK and Korean cinema broke onto the world scene decades ago.
The reason they can't admit victory is simple, because politics functions like a social club and admitting they won would take away its raison d'être. It's like that old line from Volatire about God, if white male dominance in publishing and academia did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. I agree that the liberal perception of their control, influence, and goal achievement in spaces where they wield outsize influence doesn't correspond to reality, so just use it like a Rorschach test.
Like, hypothetically, lets say we'd reached a worldly state of perfection in regards to gender, LGBTQ, and racial representation in Academia and the media. This would render their entire politics superfluous and this cannot be allowed under any circumstances. So you get what you have now, tilting at windmills. Quixotic is the best adjective, like reading too many books about chivalry and trying to warp reality into it.
I think this comment gets to a point that the right does this too. After all, one can no longer present yourself as a sort of edgy counterculture saying forbidden things once you control all three branches of the federal government.
Still, ultimately the problem is (as Freddie pointed out many times in the past) these sort of political signals are not meant for "enemies" but "allies." People outside the circle are beyond engaging with, but you must signal to fellow travelers that you're still committed to "the cause" regardless of the external state of reality.
Oh, they 100% do it too. Don Quixote is a classic for a reason. The story is virtually universal. The whole anti-woke grift is cut from the exact same cloth.
Also: it's warfare. "Progress" is a fig leaf for the desire to smite ones' enemies. Progressivism broke through enemy lines in the late 2010s/early 2020s; it was a rout. You don't pull back and think about what's fair at that stage, you press the advantage and utterly destroy the opposition.
You answered your own question in the first sentence: "I spend a lot of time arguing that the American left is too concerned with symbolic and artistic victories and insufficiently devoted to basic material needs."
But WHY, you might ask, is the left obsessed with symbolic victories over material needs? Because for many of them THE WHOLE POINT of their politics is to provide personal validation and status rather than to materially change the world. If you gain status by claiming victimhood (or being the ally of the victims), any claim that things are getting better for you only undermine your oh-so-precious victim identity. Pointing out actual progress is ruining the game.
I am reminded of the scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian" in which a leper is healed by Jesus, and the ex-leper is pissed off because he's been deprived of his livelihood as a beggar. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74s8nFE7No)
Yeah, victimhood is unpleasant, but all you have to do is sit there and suffer photogenically. When you lose that status, then the uncomfortable work starts.
And so, once again, we are confronted with the reality that there is no such thing as 'the Left', or 'Leftism'. It's all just euphemistic bullshit. As further evidence of this, just examine how when 'the left' does take a W, whatever ideology that is instantly becomes 'right wing, iow 'fascist', 'authoritarian', blahblahblah.
"Truly radical queer perspectives are as unwelcome on television as they are anywhere else".
I am begging someone to explain what "queer perspectives" *haven't* been wildly overrepresented by the tv and film industries.
If there is anything more "radical" than our current state of uncritically accepting (and "celebrating") every single fringe activist position on gay and trans rights, I struggle to imagine what "truly radical" could even possibly mean.
Thanks for pointing this out. Frankly, I’m at a loss for what more can be expressed as radically queer perspective outside of advocating for cannibalism as marginalized sexual orientation/gender expression that will challenge the existing power structures and save Gaia in the process for a greener future that will ALSO solve the housing crisis and promote animal welfare. Shit, did I just stumble upon the solution to the omnicause? Freddie kinda pulls the exact strategy that he laments on the whole here.
Mixed race cannibalism road trip. As finger waggingly awful as you can imagine.
"Love blossoms between a young woman on the margins of society and a disenfranchised drifter as they embark on a 3,000-mile odyssey through the backroads of America. However, despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their differences."
"I’m at a loss for what more can be expressed as radically queer perspective outside of advocating for cannibalism as marginalized sexual orientation/gender expression"
That's one way to normalize Armie Hammer!/sarc, if not obvious.
If you're interested in a queer perspective that advocates for cannibalism, challenging existing power structures, saving the planet, and promoting animal welfare, well, have i got a movie for you.
Sorry, the housing crisis doesn't really come up.
It seems to be de facto banned from the festival circuit and the established arts world more generally, so it'll probably end up getting released here on substack in the coming months.
I'm not going to put words in Freddie's mouth here, but I will say in my perusal of queer media criticism, there's been a lot of debate about the value of "good representation" over the last few years.
The point made is, particularly in movies/TV (which are often collaborative) there has been a desire to move away from earlier, negative portrayals of queer characters, or from tropes like "bury your gays" where they tend to have tragic endings. So instead mainstream media has reacted by making inoffensive characters who nothing much bad happens to. Which is quite boring, from a narrative perspective, for obvious reasons. So there's been a push to make queer characters not only exist, but be flawed, and even dislikable in many cases.
I mean, I do think it touches on it. A gay male couple in a stable, boring monogamous relationship which barely includes PDAs is still more salable as part of a mainstream broadcast TV show than a messy poly guy into cock and ball torture.
The former is trying to use "good representation" to sell the normalcy of queer people to the straights. The latter would be alienating to the vast majority of people.
I'd agree, though without any sense of moral judgement. It's alienating the same way that a Jackson Pollock painting would never have the same appeal as a Thomas Kinkade. Or how far more people are always going to want to listen to Taylor Swift than Merzbow. Transgressive art - or even just challenging art - is always going to be a hard sell to anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated into criticism and/or elitist creative circles, because it fights against basic human nature.
For most people, perhaps (or it would have no attraction for the rest)- it violates aesthetic sense - nostalgie de la boue doesn’t generally operate. (Hope I spelled that right; thanks Patrick Leigh Fermor for teaching me 11 new things per page.)
But as far as transgressiveness goes, I think I referenced Gertrude Himmelfarb earlier because knocking around in my head was an old essay of hers ridiculing the obliviously earnest teaching of - Notes From Underground, I think it was - to high school students. Thus sanitizing it, putting the cart before the horse.
Why are such things so easily and readily neutered is perhaps the more interesting question.
What is really edgy - I mean, in terms of thought, not smut - in a given age will probably escape notice, or be suppressed.
Edgy is not an absolute; it's a relative distinction. And yes, I think truly edgy things are always the things which are suppressed in commercial projects, despite virtually every commercial project coveting a label like "edgy."
Stop thinking of using this is a way to "sell" a particular culture at all. That would be my preference. Sell engaging stories, interesting characters. I don't care who plays those characters! Sure, there will be times I'll bitch about it (Wheel of Time adaptation where a rural backwater with strong common bloodlines hundreds of years old separated pretty strongly from the surrounding areas somehow has the same racial diversity as a metropolitan trade city; I don't care if you make them white or black or Asian or whatever; just don't mix them together with no rhyme or reason), but largely, if you tell compelling stories, with compelling characters, I won't really care who the actors are.
Yeah, the Wheel of Time casting really stuck in my craw as well, though I've gotten used to it over time.
I understand why all these productions are using "theater-style" casting, but I feel like if you're going to do this, go the whole nine yards and have a black character have white and Asian biological parents, with no explanation given.
I have seen a couple things were they were historically accurate, at least costume and set wise, but there was a random black person walking around in the background. I would take me right out of whatever story they were trying to tell. I mean, reset the tale in a modern world, or go full whatever with the scenery and cast. But pick one or the other.
I don't think there's much of a push taking place for the representation of flawed, dislikeable queer characters. Quite the contrary, in my experience.
All radical queer perspectives I have seen are primarily negative. That is, they critique the status quo but offer nothing to replace it. There is no positive content or usually even direction. This of course is odd because if you think something is wrong with the status quo then you should have some idea of what would be right.
This is a general problem with any sort of critical theory. That is critique is valuable, but insofar as it tells you what to tear down, but not what to build in the now cleared space.
I am not surprised there isn't more radical queer content because content needs to portray something.
And this gets to my point: that the queer "tear it all down" perspective of "radical" queer activists is quite well represented. It's difficult to imagine a perspective more represented. Since gays are a marginalized group, and because left wing institutions (like the TV and film industry) absolutely love "radicals" in any left space, the only way this comment makes sense is redefining "radical" in some other way than it is popularly understood by, like, anyone.
A truly *radical* show would be right wing coded, and as such, would be untouchable by the entertainment industry.
Thus the paradox, the entire project is to dismantle normative structures and center the abnormal, when that message is ubiquitous it has become normal and again we have to find more radical queerness to center which at this point would be headed to Leave It To Beaver.
Fair enough, we only ever get part one of the story - the complaint to be addressed. This provides no real conflict as there is not a positive vision with which to contest the status quo. This is unlike the "we want acceptance" narrative that can end with the integration of the gay character into the status quo. This, that has been the dominant story to tell.
For conservative fare, we could have a commune of Christians separating themselves from normal society (played as comedy or drama) a la Rod Dreher s Benedictine Option.
Anti-capitalist. "Queer as in fuck the system." Which is never gonna happen because Hollywood won't interrupt its money spigot. And because, for the rich 99%-assimilated queers, they just want to be accepted as they are, not kick over the whole system. So the world loves queer people, as long as they act acceptably mainstream in public.
The term "queer" doesn't really mean anything anymore, but I guess technically speaking the documentary film I made about a crossdressing musician who started a fake suicide cult back in the 90s involves "radical queer perspectives," and it's seemingly been de facto banned from the film festival circuit (which likely has to do with how "problematic" and flawed the protagonist is, the way his perspective on being transgender doesn't align with contemporary left-of-center norms, the fact that the movie also features a woman who was denounced as a TERF a few years ago who used to have connections in the festival world, the fact that the story features plenty of ethical ambiguity and doesn't wrap up into a neat little bow at the end, and the fact that I'm a straight white guy who's told a story that's "not his own").
A lot of the problem with this issue is that (as with efforts to diversify the arts and academia in general) we have generally eliminated the idea of artistic and intellectual merit as something distinct from identity. We assume that artists and intellectuals are people of a particular race and gender first and foremost, and that their work principally expresses that particular position regardless of the ostensible subject matter. We assume, basically, that all white men are alike just as all Black women are alike, and that since Black women have been underrepresented in the past, their perspective is inherently new and therefore desirable in a way no white man's can ever be. (The Skopic piece has some blatant examples of such thought.). It's no use to say that a sufficiently talented while male novelist will rise to the top anyway, because in such a system the idea of inherent talent is something apart from identity has been generally discredited as a self-serving white male myth. Basically, white men are expected to just shut the hell up and confine themselves to sniping at their fellow white men for not being sufficiently woke.
Arnold Kling, in his discussion on the language of the three political tribes, notes that liberals talk in terms of "oppressed versus oppressor". Somewhat definitionally, it follows that the Hegemonic Left (which is not all the Left, of course) can never acknowledge that their efforts have succeeded and that certain groups no longer are "the oppressed" because it's key to their ideology*. Cf with IIRC how Freddie has talked about how no one is willing to admit they are in power.
Re: readership and the problem of book readership. I, as a straight white man, won a gift basket from my local library for a winter reading contest. This basket contained various arts and crafts supplies, (including an adult color book, a crochet-like kit, and a Bob Ross paint by numbers kit), and...a copy of Kristen Hannah's "The Women" (I actually went and got the audiobook to listen to at this year, to say I did). It was very obvious who they envisioned as their modal reader was, and it was also clear that it was not me (I actually sent them an email gently suggesting that maybe an alternate option be available for winners, like One Free Bag of Books from the next Friends of the Library sale-that would almost certainly be much cheaper!). I wasn't offended, mostly amused at the inability to model someone else's mindset.
*although interestingly, this has been complicated recently, because especially if you look at how The Hegemonic Left talks about say, the Far Right or variants like "Christian Nationalism", they're framing it very much in the sense of "civilization vs barbarianism", which is the language of...conservatives (in case you were curious, the last tribe is libertarians, their language is specifically "government oppression vs oppressed").
I don't think it would raise an eyebrow now but in the early aughts there was some amusement in our school district - which was much like a small town - over the choice of the "incoming 9th grade summer read". I should explain that this district was full of successful people, most able to read, many of them in tech, and the rest super into sports. This hybrid was by no means intellectual, and would not have known what to do with a summer list of suggested but unrequired reading of classics - as even my wretched public school furnished 40 years ago - but as there were 2 middle schools feeding into the one Friday Night Lights high school, I guess it was thought by administrators that it would give the kids something in common, to discuss a book they had read over the summer, in the first week of English class that first month in high school.
In a similar spirit, all the 8th graders went away for a couple nights at a camp, with their opposite numbers, to give them an opportunity to meet one another.
Not unexpectedly the book choice generally reflected the comfortable reading level of female school district personnel, in the Oprah-book-club vein.
For many kids it would be the only book they read over the summer, if they in fact read it.
And apparently they tried, because for years after there were surplus copies of "The Secret Life of Bees" piled up in the used book room at the local library. That was the book that was a shade too mockable by the boys - and this was before anyone had heard the term "woke".
Kids, if you read one book this year, make sure it is something that will stand the test of time! Read "The Secret Life of Bees" which came out 2 years ago and will be the subject of a major motion picture as per the cover!
After that, the district offered a choice of two books.
Fiction is a really interesting genre to track as someone into acquiring books; you can count on a massive glut of whatever the best seller currently is to hit the FoL and LL stacks. There's very much a recency bias in that people want to talk about The Current Big thing and what's in fades out pretty quickly (far more so than non-fiction, with the notable exception of biographies and hot political books).
My old library used to have a cart with free books from their discard section that I became a frequent visitor/peruser of, to the point where the staff recognized me. One of the staff once thanked me for salvaging what I could, but she also admitted that she just throws the old fiction away because no one ever bothers with it.
Watched From Dusk til Dawn for the first time this weekend and got this gem: "Are you such a loser, that you don't know when you've won?"
I think many activists are such basketcases - that get together and reinforce their perspectives - that they can't possibly imagine that a great many people are motivated by hope and success.
I think getting laid is a primary motivation for much of activism, and that this results in seemingly irrational behavior on the part of many activists.
You want a resentful society cause this is how you get a resentful society. Not just for “whites” or men who have been, as you note, explicitly mothballed, but for all the “diversity” hires who now have to content with the albatross of always being potentially viewed as a diversity hire, something you’ve also touched on previously.
Few things get people more hot under the collar than being told not to believe their lying eyes.
One, what is representation even _for_? Asians lag behind in movie and television roles as well as professional sports and yet have the highest average income for any racial group in the United States. Blacks fare far better in the arts and sports and also have the lowest income for any racial classification.
Two, I wonder if all those young white men who are being told that it's okay if reverse racism is used to discriminate against them in hiring would want to vote for somebody like Trump.
Three, the Guardian published an article a while back about how the number of individuals in the arts from a lower class background has plummeted over the last decade or so. It's not just writing but also dance, music, theatre, etc. but the example I always come back to are the great newspaper writers of the past. Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin--how many of them had college degrees? Hamill was a high school drop out.
Who does representation actually help? Quotas in the film industry have done zero to help poor blacks living in inner city ghettoes. On the other hand it's money in the pocket for those in the middle class and higher who can afford to go to film school and have the connections or are lucky enough to actually work in the industry. Given the context of declining numbers of working class or poor creatives and artists it's hard not to wonder if this isn't just a scam, blatant economic favoritism/protectionism, being perpetrated by a bunch of theater graduates who don't want to work as waiters or salespeople.
And that of course is why they haven't "won" and can never stop campaigning--because that job waiting tables is always right around the corner. "Winning" for the individual means personal economic security and in a country where half of all college grads are working at Starbucks a decade after graduating that's not possible for the activist class.
I think this is worth highlighting – there's undoubtedly been a huge rise in representation of all minorities in the arts, but crucially it's only the members of those minorities who believe what white liberals believe. Any black people with illiberal Christian views on homosexuality, any South Asians with anti-Semitic tendencies, any TERF lesbians will find the bar on their participation to be total. If they say the wrong thing after being allowed in, they'll be thrown out. Look at the treatment meted out to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
So while there's certainly more diversity in the arts, there's also a homogeneity in the arts; you can be any race or gender or sexuality you want, as long as you say the instructed sentiments.
The unexamined assumption is that these values are simply right and represent the marginalised, so naturally anyone who is from a marginalised group will agree with them. Inconvenient contradictions are brushed away.
Well, depends on the field. Increasing ethnic diversity in engineering doesn't mean any specific commitment to the values so is a good. Same in all kinds of STEM fields, same in business. It's only in the arts that you're called upon to represent your particular diversity while espousing a set range of values.
I don't think "diversity in thought and values", which in practice nowadays means giving equal time to conservative political ideology, really addresses the problem at hand. Hollywood will not be improved by producing right-wing propaganda to counter its left-wing propaganda; nor will academia be improved by affirmative action for conservatives regardless of the field. The problem is that we nowadays have rejected the very idea of aesthetic experience as an elitist scam, and regard art as simply gussied-up punditry. This comes also from our current bad habit, on right and left alike, of regarding political ideology and values as the sole basis of identity and the source of all moral behavior, so that you are automatically a good person if you hold the right set of values; art is simply an epiphenomenon of political values, like everything else. (This is the sole officially recognized opposition to the reduction of everything to race and gender we've complained about.)
The diversity a field needs to flourish is governed by the questions unique to the field. Thus, the diversity needed in the arts is aesthetic diversity, which has nothing to do and never had to do with diversity of political "thoughts and values" any more than it had to do with ethnic or gender diversity. (For instance, C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot were both conservatives, at least with respect to all the ideological issues that preoccupy modern conservatives; but Lewis despised Eliot's poetry, as contrary to what he held as the time-honored purpose of literature.). Likewise, I find the call of Christopher Rufo and others for more conservatives in academia completely out of touch with academic realities; anybody who knows anything about any academic field soon finds out that there are major controversies within any field that break up friendships and institute enmities that don't map out to any convenient right-vs-left spectrum. I'd go so far to say that the notorious liberalism of college professors is practically all that keep them from tearing at each other's throats!
If the thesis is that college is supposed to widen the minds of students by exposing them to a diversity of viewpoints then it appears to me that they have failed. Will fostering ideological diversity among the faculty make a difference? I think it's a reasonable hypothesis.
Why should ideological diversity make a difference if it has nothing to do with the principles on which a field is based and the arguments that define it? You're just insisting that ideological diversity trumps everything, which makes you as bad as those leftists who insist that race and gender trump everything, in the exact same way.
`Look at the treatment meted out to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.'
Adichie was certainly received criticisms over some of her statements but that doesn't seem to have had much influence on her career. Latest novel reviewed very favorably in The NYT and The Guardian. Personally (trans), I have been looking forward to it and will be reading it!
The anti-DEI/trans contingent championing her doesn't seem to have read much of her work, given that Americanah is something of an urtext for good, white, liberal thinking on race and society.
I don't think JK Rowling is some kind of arch conservative either. Isn't the point that two short decades ago she and Elon Musk would just be perfectly normal, run of the mill liberals?
Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin who every day people read every day. Now there is little for every day people. I never even heard of the New Yorker until I was 20 but read Royko and Terkel every day.
When MLK shifted his focus more to class than just race, he started losing internal support. Some even saw it as a betrayal to the cause, despite general economic justice overwhelmingly helping more blacks than whites...for obvious reasons.
The difference now seems to be: a) criticizing any non-white-male group is simply viewed as unforgivable and even inhuman, no matter how solid the argument is; and b) people have figured out they can perpetually ride that "oppression" wave in order to secure themselves that economic stability everyone wants.
What's really stupid is that under the old color blind approach everyone understood that you were supposed to criticize individuals and not racial groups.
Under the new woke racialized regime racial groups have made a comeback. And trying to censor the obvious (black homicide rates for example) isn't fooling anyone.
A thing largely unspoken is how much the "increased diversity efforts" are manifested in beneficiaries for upper-class people and ignore the lower-class where the problems that the effort purports to solve actually exist. For example, once you notice how much the problems of the black underclass are used to sell programs that mostly benefit Nigerian/Ghanaians (arguably the two most successful immigrant groups *in US history*), most of whom themselves are elites or at least upper-middle class-you can't unsee it.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine Dare Obasanjo-child of a literal former African strongman and multibillionaire-lecturing you about inclusivity— forever.
Yeah, although these efforts have notably gotten more muted recently. In no small part because let's be honest, the average middle-aged UMC white female is not going to like hanging out with them or their close and far stupider cousins, the FBA world (although the idea of a BookTok earnestly poring over The Art of Gold-Digging or The Mack Within' feels like a Key and Peele skit).
Personally I'm going to be voting right-wing for the foreseeable future because of this. Why would I ever vote for somebody whose explicit goal is to make me less employable?
Ever since Trump's approval rating started dropping I've been hoping that it's time to party like it's 2007, with the whole country getting so pissed off at a Republican president that the Democrats become the big tent party by default. Then I read an article like this and am reminded just how disingenuous and hypocritical and arrogant and just *slimy* these Professional Progressives are, and in more practical terms, how kicking out apostates is more important to them than building coalitions.
Yes, yes, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" but when even "The Good" involves the triumphant return of people who think yoga is cultural appropriation and that every office needs a $90/hr microaggression consultant, it's hard to be optimistic. Oh, and you thought they were self-righteous the *first* time around?
Harvard Harris has Trump at 47-48. What Democrats can't admit to themselves is that nobody cares about "Democracy in danger" or whatever their latest slogan is.
What will make a difference in Trump's numbers? The economy, and let's face it the economy is going to do what the economy is going to do largely independent of government input.
In other words, the Democrats are helpless. The one factor that could make a dent in Trump's approval ratings is largely out of their (and everyone else's) control. That's why they're engaging in assassination fantasies.
My point with the polling is that the economy got "better" and Trump's numbers went up. Gee, how surprising. Of course the real tragedy is that it was genuinely surprising to a certain segment of the population.
What possible impact could polling have on Trump at this time? I'm eager to hear. The next election isn't for more than a year and Trump isn't even running.
The truth of the matter is that the left is desperately casting about for something, anything, regardless of whether that something even makes sense. Hence we are in an underpants gnome scenario of "1. Trump's numbers go down. 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!" A deeply unserious view held by deeply unserious people.
Yes, Midterm elections are never seen as a referendum on the incumbent president's actions. Good call. I'm showing you an aggregate popularity decline over four months, you counter with an upward tick from a single poll over the past few weeks, and I'm the desperate, flopsweaty one? Okay. If (note how I'm saying 'if' before you start bloviating) the Republicans have a bad midterm in 2026, it historically means a bad election year two years later. And given how ever since Trump arrived on the scene, all of the GOP's internal attempts to oust him have run up against voters who will banish anyone who doesn't kiss the ring (yes, part of this is 'just politics' but part of it is Trump's distinct cult of personality). So yes, elections in which an incumbent isn't running can still be a referendum on that incumbent.
I don't know what the situation's going to look like 18 months from now. Compare the Republicans' performance in 2008 vs. 2010, or the Democrats' a few years before that, and it's clear that things can change quickly. A solid economy does help any incumbent, but Bush's popularity tanked before the market did (and in the poll you referenced, the economy and tariffs are what respondents trust Trump on the least), so it's not impossible for the economy to be strong but an incumbent president still suffer a popularity decline due to, e.g. foreign policy, social issues, or general corruption/incompetence.
Does that fill in 'step 2' enough, you condescending asshole?
"If (note how I'm saying 'if' before you start bloviating) the Republicans have a bad midterm in 2026, it historically means a bad election year two years later."
Sigh.
So Obama gets a shellacking in 2010. Doesn't matter, he wins in 2012.
Clinton sees a historic reversal in Congress in 1994. Doesn't matter, he still wins in 1996.
In 1982 the Republicans lost 26 seats in the House. Guess who won in 1984?
Even with Trump you could make the argument that the only reason he lost his first re-election bid in 2020 was because of Covid. Certainly he came back to win by an even bigger margin in 2024 than in 2016--and that makes sense because Presidents who win re-election historically do so by larger margins than in their original campaign (with the sole exception being Obama IIRC).
The party out of power always does well in the first midterm after a presidential election. Americans just don't trust giving total power to one party. Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Yes, I'm condescending. Because you deserve to be condescended to. If you want to pretend that you know what you're talking about then I suggest actually saying something intelligent, or if you can't even manage that then trying for the lower bar of not being factually wrong.
Well, there have been times when the out-of-power party doesn't have a successful midterm, often because things are going too well to rock the boat (1998) or times are such that people want to support and unite behind the incumbent (2002), which is why I used 'historically' instead of 'absolutely' in the first place. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me at all of the GOP had a good 2026 given how incompetent the opposition is.
And the other part of my whole point, which I was apparently too subtle in making, is that you seem very confident that the improving economy is not just a blip, and voters will credit Trump for it, and this status quo will maintain itself until election day '26, and the economy is the only thing that matters re: popularity, and I bet a lot of Democrats in 1982 and Republicans in 1994 felt very confident in their chances for beating Reagan and Clinton for similar reasons, if you replace 'improving' with declining'.
In addition if you weren't historically illiterate you could turn around and ask yourself "Since the first midterm always produces reversals for the party in the White House what was the historical response been?"
Did Obama reverse his governing style because of the bad beat the Democrats took in 2010? Did Reagan?
More to the point did Trump? All you have to do to see how Trump reacted to losing the House is go back and look at 2018/2019, a short 7 years ago. Did he turn around and back off the border wall?
>Did Obama reverse his governing style because of the bad beat the Democrats took in 2010?
I would argue that yes, he did. Once he realized he'd spent all his political capital on the ACA his positions and rhetoric became less grandiose and more conservative, and that the wellspring of SJ as we know it in 2013-15 was in part a response to this: a growing sentiment that the Obama of 2014 had betrayed the Obama of 2008 and his movement. Clinton there was a similar dynamic, if less obvious because the average citizen was less politically engaged, but the bulk of the tough-on-crime, clean-up-society stuff, welfare reform, DOMA, all happened after 1994.
Also, I hate to tell you this but 1) Harvard is commonly viewed as a liberal institution by the right and 2) it may have some beef with Trump right now. If my actual concern was with the political alignment of pollsters I could have easily gone with somebody else.
I hope the whole county gets pissed enough at the Democrats and Republicans for something new to emerge. The Dems are just looking too Whiggy to survive at this point.
Did you ever write about Musa al-Gharbi's "We have never been woke?" I saw that a commenter recommended it back in 2021 but an admittedly brief google search did not yield further results. Would love to hear your thoughts on that one (I'm still reading it but think about your work quite a bit as I do so).
“ That would, I think, start to lend credence to those who suggest that this is retributive rather than constructive.”
It’s entirely predictable that groups who traditionally have not had power would use it, once obtained, to smite one’s enemies. Rub their nose in it, if you will. Being able to cloak oneself with Being On the Right Side of History doesn’t hurt either.
I think seeing different racial groups as “one’s enemies” is a problem. Certainly, “rubbing people’s noses” is not great if they’re still in the majority of the populace. Although, “living well is the best revenge” is a time honored mantra.
Acknowledging tradeoffs & being grateful for the tradeoffs (along with one’s own talent, drive & luck) & sacrifices seems like the best response to the shifts we’re seeing.
What is the Verso Loft? (writing from Georgia, USA).
heh as a UK, Suffolk writer I thought the same... but I know Verso is a left-wing publisher so I assumed the loft was where they have pretentious sex parties or somesuch!
I'm in flyover country in the southern U.S. so it's not a marker for me of anything.
I guess it's similar growing up in the countryside here (and living in a town not a city near the villge where I grew up) and always hearing about London constantly!
100%. My little town has a university and a university press and an entire library devoted to rare books, but New York recognition seems all encompassing among writers in this big country. The 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒀𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒓 magazine is full of sumptuous ads targeted at the richest people who want to feel smart.
The once-cool home of Verso books, the lefty publishing house where they used to have some pretty cool parties. Very nice view of the Manhattan bridge.
I wouldn't worry too much... most people don't read books! :D
"Of course this representation is as shallow and commercially-motivated as anything else in our creative industries, truly radical queer perspectives are as unwelcome on television as they are anywhere else, the tendency is always to prize “normalcy” among such characters in a way that neuters them and affirms conventional social norms."
This certainly came home to me when I was still a film lecturer, trying to get students to engage with Todd Haynes' 'Poison' when they wanted to write about 'Love, Simon' and the like!
Activists - whether in the racial or LGBTQ space - will NEVER be satisfied and will NEVER recognize progress, because they are incentivized not to. The 100+ or so DEI employees at the University of Michigan would be out of jobs if they admitted racial animosity no longer is an all encompassing problem. So instead you get increasingly absurd policing of everyday interactions. This is also why the trans rights movement has become so aggressive, oppressive and counter-productive. The LGBTQ advocacy groups won across the board - it was a wipeout. Gay marriage everywhere. So on to the next cause - trans rights - even though trans issues are quite distinct from and often at odds with gay rights.
"So on to the next cause - trans rights - even though trans issues are quite distinct from and often at odds with gay rights."
This is something that Andrew Sullivan writes about frequently.
Well, go talk about it on his substack then. None of the points raised by Osuva are original or particularly insightful. Just the same divisive, anti-trans commentary to be found elsewhere on substack.
But of course it gets massively liked here because certain people are obsessed about this issue. Please just leave it alone, at least here.
There's nothing anti-trans about what I wrote. The fact of the matter is that many children who are being transitioned would grow up to be gay adults if left alone, and many regret that they weren't allowed to do so. Just because that's an uncomfortable fact doesn't make it untrue or in any way anti-trans.
Please just leave it alone, at least here.
I'm glad to leave it alone. It WAS left alone, until you made an issue of it by mischaracterizing a nothing comment about the trans movement as "anti-trans."
You're under no obligation to say anything in the first place.
Yes, and Sullivan writes well about this. Ignore your critic here, you aren't going to please him (her?).
Certain people like Sullivan and Rowling?
It's the negative side of intersectionality. Since problems are linked, and people can suffer along multiple axes, then you can't say you're REALLY for gay rights unless you're ALSO for trans rights, and Palestine, and anti-capitalism, and...hey, why's everyone leaving the tent?
The only book review source I rely on is 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒕𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 (part of The Literary Salon) published free online by M. A. Orthofer.
He links to other reviews but his own are the most thoughtful.
https://www.complete-review.com/main/main.html
Re: refusing to take a W. It's real. I remember when the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once won a bunch of Oscars. I know a very woke person who seemed to loved that movie more than life itself. Wrote multiple entries about it on Letterboxd.
His response after Michelle Yeoh's win? "Michelle Yeoh has always been incredible.... it's just taken the short-sighted (and honestly pretty racist) Western film industries a while to notice."
I wanted to grab him by the collar. Dude! YOU WON! Your favorite movie won EVERYTHING last night! Take the goddamn win!
It won everything, everywhere, all at once!
It sure did. And I think it's a great movie. But holy shit was its Tumblr-esque fanbase insufferable.
Man, you're not kidding
There is an undeniable element of fetishism here as well.
I also have to wonder if "Parasite" won merely because it was from an "underrepresented" part of the world given that the Western film critics who reviewed the movie clearly had no idea what they were talking about.
Maybe. We'll never know. But i can say this; I loved and still love that movie. I saw it early in its run before the hype train went into overdrive.
But why did I love it? Because it was GOOD, damn it. Compelling story and characters, twists I didn't see coming, expertly blending different genres together.
Representation was never on my mind, nor was "late capitalism" or whatever the fuck. But that movie's fans too, man. Jesus Christ they were vicious. They're the type to yell at you for not enjoying the movie in the correct way.
We saw so much of this in the 2010s and early 2020s. I'm still not over it. Don't know when I'll ever be.
Yeah, but what is the "correct" way? There is a lot in "Parasite" that I believe wouldn't be apparent to Western audiences (certainly it was missed by Western critics). That's the complication of foreign movies made for foreign audiences with a different culture than the US.
For instance, I am pretty sure that the central conceit of Western fans of the film is completely incorrect. If the film was misunderstood by the Academy then was it really a valid winner in its category?
It's still a valid winner. If it wins, it wins.
The acting and direction are good no matter what, but if the voters misinterpreted the "message" of the movie I think that complicates things.
But isn’t art often interpreted/misinterpreted in a variety of ways? When I think of all the ways Lord of the Rings has been interpreted—which is the “right way”?
French audiences that first saw The Rules of the Game trashed the movie theater when they saw it. When I saw it in a different culture in a different time, there was nothing in this amazing tragic comic farce that would move me to violence but I can still recognize the mastery of form and the power of a story well told. It remains powerful to me but it is certainly not speaking to me in the same way it did to people who trashed the theater. Which is the “correct” response?
I’m sure there is a ton of things I don’t “get” in Parasite. However, the beautifully fluid and surprisingly composed cinematography, I get. The surprising plot twists, the mix of horror, comedy and drama made it an original & memorable film that is near to masterpiece level in its ability to entertain & provoke thought.
That Korean and American audiences experience this movie in different ways is undoubtedly true but it doesn’t invalidate the praise it’s received anywhere. Parasite has universal qualities that transcend its local cultural value that speak to people all over the world.
I think one issue your comment touches on is this sort of "when you do a thing well, people hardly notice you did the thing at all", and I think that applies to identity representation as well. There's some meat to the complaint that alot of internet talk produces about "we don't hate representation, we hate performative and poorly done representation for representations sake". The kind of PR-produced, boardroom conceived representation that tries to identity-soup itself into a representation free-for-all. Not just tokenizing, but multi-variate tokenization.
So, the really good examples, that just did one thing and did it REALLY FREAKING WELL. Absolutely serve as foils to that schlocky, ultra-performative, formulaic representation. When something is truly good (EEAAO, Moonlight, Parasite, Get Out, etc) and also affords some representation, I think most people will largely welcome it. With the amount of resources and clout Hollywood has, people are right to bag on the garbage performativity as a cash-grab, because they have options, and could have produced something that was actually good as well as being representative.
"Underrepresented" seems like a bad way to describe my impression, which is that the Academy wanted to recognize a burgeoning (and highly lucrative!) film industry. Sort of like Slumdog Millionaire (which, okay, was British), and Parasite happened to be good enough to get the nod. It's probably an okay gloss of the idea, though
I would quibble and say that Hollywood doesn't recognize anything on the way up, only after it's been established. HK and Korean cinema broke onto the world scene decades ago.
The reason they can't admit victory is simple, because politics functions like a social club and admitting they won would take away its raison d'être. It's like that old line from Volatire about God, if white male dominance in publishing and academia did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. I agree that the liberal perception of their control, influence, and goal achievement in spaces where they wield outsize influence doesn't correspond to reality, so just use it like a Rorschach test.
Like, hypothetically, lets say we'd reached a worldly state of perfection in regards to gender, LGBTQ, and racial representation in Academia and the media. This would render their entire politics superfluous and this cannot be allowed under any circumstances. So you get what you have now, tilting at windmills. Quixotic is the best adjective, like reading too many books about chivalry and trying to warp reality into it.
I think this comment gets to a point that the right does this too. After all, one can no longer present yourself as a sort of edgy counterculture saying forbidden things once you control all three branches of the federal government.
Still, ultimately the problem is (as Freddie pointed out many times in the past) these sort of political signals are not meant for "enemies" but "allies." People outside the circle are beyond engaging with, but you must signal to fellow travelers that you're still committed to "the cause" regardless of the external state of reality.
Oh, they 100% do it too. Don Quixote is a classic for a reason. The story is virtually universal. The whole anti-woke grift is cut from the exact same cloth.
Also: it's warfare. "Progress" is a fig leaf for the desire to smite ones' enemies. Progressivism broke through enemy lines in the late 2010s/early 2020s; it was a rout. You don't pull back and think about what's fair at that stage, you press the advantage and utterly destroy the opposition.
Which is why we now have the new Ye track, Heil Hitler.
Backlashes are very intense.
You answered your own question in the first sentence: "I spend a lot of time arguing that the American left is too concerned with symbolic and artistic victories and insufficiently devoted to basic material needs."
But WHY, you might ask, is the left obsessed with symbolic victories over material needs? Because for many of them THE WHOLE POINT of their politics is to provide personal validation and status rather than to materially change the world. If you gain status by claiming victimhood (or being the ally of the victims), any claim that things are getting better for you only undermine your oh-so-precious victim identity. Pointing out actual progress is ruining the game.
I am reminded of the scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian" in which a leper is healed by Jesus, and the ex-leper is pissed off because he's been deprived of his livelihood as a beggar. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74s8nFE7No)
Yeah, victimhood is unpleasant, but all you have to do is sit there and suffer photogenically. When you lose that status, then the uncomfortable work starts.
And so, once again, we are confronted with the reality that there is no such thing as 'the Left', or 'Leftism'. It's all just euphemistic bullshit. As further evidence of this, just examine how when 'the left' does take a W, whatever ideology that is instantly becomes 'right wing, iow 'fascist', 'authoritarian', blahblahblah.
"Truly radical queer perspectives are as unwelcome on television as they are anywhere else".
I am begging someone to explain what "queer perspectives" *haven't* been wildly overrepresented by the tv and film industries.
If there is anything more "radical" than our current state of uncritically accepting (and "celebrating") every single fringe activist position on gay and trans rights, I struggle to imagine what "truly radical" could even possibly mean.
Thanks for pointing this out. Frankly, I’m at a loss for what more can be expressed as radically queer perspective outside of advocating for cannibalism as marginalized sexual orientation/gender expression that will challenge the existing power structures and save Gaia in the process for a greener future that will ALSO solve the housing crisis and promote animal welfare. Shit, did I just stumble upon the solution to the omnicause? Freddie kinda pulls the exact strategy that he laments on the whole here.
Bones and All.
Mixed race cannibalism road trip. As finger waggingly awful as you can imagine.
"Love blossoms between a young woman on the margins of society and a disenfranchised drifter as they embark on a 3,000-mile odyssey through the backroads of America. However, despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their differences."
I can't be alone in having mistaken this for a satirical pastiche.
“Don’t put that in your mouth”, has blossomed into the most socially devastating scold imaginable in this context. Good chuckle.
"I’m at a loss for what more can be expressed as radically queer perspective outside of advocating for cannibalism as marginalized sexual orientation/gender expression"
That's one way to normalize Armie Hammer!/sarc, if not obvious.
Ha!
If you're interested in a queer perspective that advocates for cannibalism, challenging existing power structures, saving the planet, and promoting animal welfare, well, have i got a movie for you.
Sorry, the housing crisis doesn't really come up.
It seems to be de facto banned from the festival circuit and the established arts world more generally, so it'll probably end up getting released here on substack in the coming months.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cinematimshel/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
My hero!
I'm not going to put words in Freddie's mouth here, but I will say in my perusal of queer media criticism, there's been a lot of debate about the value of "good representation" over the last few years.
The point made is, particularly in movies/TV (which are often collaborative) there has been a desire to move away from earlier, negative portrayals of queer characters, or from tropes like "bury your gays" where they tend to have tragic endings. So instead mainstream media has reacted by making inoffensive characters who nothing much bad happens to. Which is quite boring, from a narrative perspective, for obvious reasons. So there's been a push to make queer characters not only exist, but be flawed, and even dislikable in many cases.
That isn't the point being made, nor does it answer my question, I'm afraid.
I mean, I do think it touches on it. A gay male couple in a stable, boring monogamous relationship which barely includes PDAs is still more salable as part of a mainstream broadcast TV show than a messy poly guy into cock and ball torture.
The former is trying to use "good representation" to sell the normalcy of queer people to the straights. The latter would be alienating to the vast majority of people.
And it should be alienating, frankly. Some things should stay on the fringes.
I'd agree, though without any sense of moral judgement. It's alienating the same way that a Jackson Pollock painting would never have the same appeal as a Thomas Kinkade. Or how far more people are always going to want to listen to Taylor Swift than Merzbow. Transgressive art - or even just challenging art - is always going to be a hard sell to anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated into criticism and/or elitist creative circles, because it fights against basic human nature.
For most people, perhaps (or it would have no attraction for the rest)- it violates aesthetic sense - nostalgie de la boue doesn’t generally operate. (Hope I spelled that right; thanks Patrick Leigh Fermor for teaching me 11 new things per page.)
But as far as transgressiveness goes, I think I referenced Gertrude Himmelfarb earlier because knocking around in my head was an old essay of hers ridiculing the obliviously earnest teaching of - Notes From Underground, I think it was - to high school students. Thus sanitizing it, putting the cart before the horse.
Why are such things so easily and readily neutered is perhaps the more interesting question.
What is really edgy - I mean, in terms of thought, not smut - in a given age will probably escape notice, or be suppressed.
Edgy is not an absolute; it's a relative distinction. And yes, I think truly edgy things are always the things which are suppressed in commercial projects, despite virtually every commercial project coveting a label like "edgy."
"What is really edgy - I mean, in terms of thought, not smut - in a given age will probably escape notice, or be suppressed."
Case in point:
https://open.substack.com/pub/cinematimshel/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Stop thinking of using this is a way to "sell" a particular culture at all. That would be my preference. Sell engaging stories, interesting characters. I don't care who plays those characters! Sure, there will be times I'll bitch about it (Wheel of Time adaptation where a rural backwater with strong common bloodlines hundreds of years old separated pretty strongly from the surrounding areas somehow has the same racial diversity as a metropolitan trade city; I don't care if you make them white or black or Asian or whatever; just don't mix them together with no rhyme or reason), but largely, if you tell compelling stories, with compelling characters, I won't really care who the actors are.
Yeah, the Wheel of Time casting really stuck in my craw as well, though I've gotten used to it over time.
I understand why all these productions are using "theater-style" casting, but I feel like if you're going to do this, go the whole nine yards and have a black character have white and Asian biological parents, with no explanation given.
I have seen a couple things were they were historically accurate, at least costume and set wise, but there was a random black person walking around in the background. I would take me right out of whatever story they were trying to tell. I mean, reset the tale in a modern world, or go full whatever with the scenery and cast. But pick one or the other.
I don't think there's much of a push taking place for the representation of flawed, dislikeable queer characters. Quite the contrary, in my experience.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cinematimshel/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
All radical queer perspectives I have seen are primarily negative. That is, they critique the status quo but offer nothing to replace it. There is no positive content or usually even direction. This of course is odd because if you think something is wrong with the status quo then you should have some idea of what would be right.
This is a general problem with any sort of critical theory. That is critique is valuable, but insofar as it tells you what to tear down, but not what to build in the now cleared space.
I am not surprised there isn't more radical queer content because content needs to portray something.
And this gets to my point: that the queer "tear it all down" perspective of "radical" queer activists is quite well represented. It's difficult to imagine a perspective more represented. Since gays are a marginalized group, and because left wing institutions (like the TV and film industry) absolutely love "radicals" in any left space, the only way this comment makes sense is redefining "radical" in some other way than it is popularly understood by, like, anyone.
A truly *radical* show would be right wing coded, and as such, would be untouchable by the entertainment industry.
Thus the paradox, the entire project is to dismantle normative structures and center the abnormal, when that message is ubiquitous it has become normal and again we have to find more radical queerness to center which at this point would be headed to Leave It To Beaver.
Fair enough, we only ever get part one of the story - the complaint to be addressed. This provides no real conflict as there is not a positive vision with which to contest the status quo. This is unlike the "we want acceptance" narrative that can end with the integration of the gay character into the status quo. This, that has been the dominant story to tell.
For conservative fare, we could have a commune of Christians separating themselves from normal society (played as comedy or drama) a la Rod Dreher s Benedictine Option.
Anti-capitalist. "Queer as in fuck the system." Which is never gonna happen because Hollywood won't interrupt its money spigot. And because, for the rich 99%-assimilated queers, they just want to be accepted as they are, not kick over the whole system. So the world loves queer people, as long as they act acceptably mainstream in public.
The term "queer" doesn't really mean anything anymore, but I guess technically speaking the documentary film I made about a crossdressing musician who started a fake suicide cult back in the 90s involves "radical queer perspectives," and it's seemingly been de facto banned from the film festival circuit (which likely has to do with how "problematic" and flawed the protagonist is, the way his perspective on being transgender doesn't align with contemporary left-of-center norms, the fact that the movie also features a woman who was denounced as a TERF a few years ago who used to have connections in the festival world, the fact that the story features plenty of ethical ambiguity and doesn't wrap up into a neat little bow at the end, and the fact that I'm a straight white guy who's told a story that's "not his own").
https://open.substack.com/pub/cinematimshel/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A lot of the problem with this issue is that (as with efforts to diversify the arts and academia in general) we have generally eliminated the idea of artistic and intellectual merit as something distinct from identity. We assume that artists and intellectuals are people of a particular race and gender first and foremost, and that their work principally expresses that particular position regardless of the ostensible subject matter. We assume, basically, that all white men are alike just as all Black women are alike, and that since Black women have been underrepresented in the past, their perspective is inherently new and therefore desirable in a way no white man's can ever be. (The Skopic piece has some blatant examples of such thought.). It's no use to say that a sufficiently talented while male novelist will rise to the top anyway, because in such a system the idea of inherent talent is something apart from identity has been generally discredited as a self-serving white male myth. Basically, white men are expected to just shut the hell up and confine themselves to sniping at their fellow white men for not being sufficiently woke.
Identity as merit.
Arnold Kling, in his discussion on the language of the three political tribes, notes that liberals talk in terms of "oppressed versus oppressor". Somewhat definitionally, it follows that the Hegemonic Left (which is not all the Left, of course) can never acknowledge that their efforts have succeeded and that certain groups no longer are "the oppressed" because it's key to their ideology*. Cf with IIRC how Freddie has talked about how no one is willing to admit they are in power.
Re: readership and the problem of book readership. I, as a straight white man, won a gift basket from my local library for a winter reading contest. This basket contained various arts and crafts supplies, (including an adult color book, a crochet-like kit, and a Bob Ross paint by numbers kit), and...a copy of Kristen Hannah's "The Women" (I actually went and got the audiobook to listen to at this year, to say I did). It was very obvious who they envisioned as their modal reader was, and it was also clear that it was not me (I actually sent them an email gently suggesting that maybe an alternate option be available for winners, like One Free Bag of Books from the next Friends of the Library sale-that would almost certainly be much cheaper!). I wasn't offended, mostly amused at the inability to model someone else's mindset.
*although interestingly, this has been complicated recently, because especially if you look at how The Hegemonic Left talks about say, the Far Right or variants like "Christian Nationalism", they're framing it very much in the sense of "civilization vs barbarianism", which is the language of...conservatives (in case you were curious, the last tribe is libertarians, their language is specifically "government oppression vs oppressed").
I don't think it would raise an eyebrow now but in the early aughts there was some amusement in our school district - which was much like a small town - over the choice of the "incoming 9th grade summer read". I should explain that this district was full of successful people, most able to read, many of them in tech, and the rest super into sports. This hybrid was by no means intellectual, and would not have known what to do with a summer list of suggested but unrequired reading of classics - as even my wretched public school furnished 40 years ago - but as there were 2 middle schools feeding into the one Friday Night Lights high school, I guess it was thought by administrators that it would give the kids something in common, to discuss a book they had read over the summer, in the first week of English class that first month in high school.
In a similar spirit, all the 8th graders went away for a couple nights at a camp, with their opposite numbers, to give them an opportunity to meet one another.
Not unexpectedly the book choice generally reflected the comfortable reading level of female school district personnel, in the Oprah-book-club vein.
For many kids it would be the only book they read over the summer, if they in fact read it.
And apparently they tried, because for years after there were surplus copies of "The Secret Life of Bees" piled up in the used book room at the local library. That was the book that was a shade too mockable by the boys - and this was before anyone had heard the term "woke".
Kids, if you read one book this year, make sure it is something that will stand the test of time! Read "The Secret Life of Bees" which came out 2 years ago and will be the subject of a major motion picture as per the cover!
After that, the district offered a choice of two books.
Hopefully they've given up on this exercise.
Fiction is a really interesting genre to track as someone into acquiring books; you can count on a massive glut of whatever the best seller currently is to hit the FoL and LL stacks. There's very much a recency bias in that people want to talk about The Current Big thing and what's in fades out pretty quickly (far more so than non-fiction, with the notable exception of biographies and hot political books).
My old library used to have a cart with free books from their discard section that I became a frequent visitor/peruser of, to the point where the staff recognized me. One of the staff once thanked me for salvaging what I could, but she also admitted that she just throws the old fiction away because no one ever bothers with it.
Watched From Dusk til Dawn for the first time this weekend and got this gem: "Are you such a loser, that you don't know when you've won?"
I think many activists are such basketcases - that get together and reinforce their perspectives - that they can't possibly imagine that a great many people are motivated by hope and success.
I think getting laid is a primary motivation for much of activism, and that this results in seemingly irrational behavior on the part of many activists.
You want a resentful society cause this is how you get a resentful society. Not just for “whites” or men who have been, as you note, explicitly mothballed, but for all the “diversity” hires who now have to content with the albatross of always being potentially viewed as a diversity hire, something you’ve also touched on previously.
Few things get people more hot under the collar than being told not to believe their lying eyes.
One, what is representation even _for_? Asians lag behind in movie and television roles as well as professional sports and yet have the highest average income for any racial group in the United States. Blacks fare far better in the arts and sports and also have the lowest income for any racial classification.
Two, I wonder if all those young white men who are being told that it's okay if reverse racism is used to discriminate against them in hiring would want to vote for somebody like Trump.
Three, the Guardian published an article a while back about how the number of individuals in the arts from a lower class background has plummeted over the last decade or so. It's not just writing but also dance, music, theatre, etc. but the example I always come back to are the great newspaper writers of the past. Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin--how many of them had college degrees? Hamill was a high school drop out.
Who does representation actually help? Quotas in the film industry have done zero to help poor blacks living in inner city ghettoes. On the other hand it's money in the pocket for those in the middle class and higher who can afford to go to film school and have the connections or are lucky enough to actually work in the industry. Given the context of declining numbers of working class or poor creatives and artists it's hard not to wonder if this isn't just a scam, blatant economic favoritism/protectionism, being perpetrated by a bunch of theater graduates who don't want to work as waiters or salespeople.
And that of course is why they haven't "won" and can never stop campaigning--because that job waiting tables is always right around the corner. "Winning" for the individual means personal economic security and in a country where half of all college grads are working at Starbucks a decade after graduating that's not possible for the activist class.
I think this is worth highlighting – there's undoubtedly been a huge rise in representation of all minorities in the arts, but crucially it's only the members of those minorities who believe what white liberals believe. Any black people with illiberal Christian views on homosexuality, any South Asians with anti-Semitic tendencies, any TERF lesbians will find the bar on their participation to be total. If they say the wrong thing after being allowed in, they'll be thrown out. Look at the treatment meted out to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
So while there's certainly more diversity in the arts, there's also a homogeneity in the arts; you can be any race or gender or sexuality you want, as long as you say the instructed sentiments.
"...you can be any race or gender or sexuality you want, as long as you say the instructed sentiments."
1) Yikes
2) They probably think that's completely normal and right and good, and call that 'progress'.
The unexamined assumption is that these values are simply right and represent the marginalised, so naturally anyone who is from a marginalised group will agree with them. Inconvenient contradictions are brushed away.
The curse of moral certitude. People with moral certitude are dangerous to have in power.
Diversity in everything but thought and values. It's why DEI is such a joke.
Well, depends on the field. Increasing ethnic diversity in engineering doesn't mean any specific commitment to the values so is a good. Same in all kinds of STEM fields, same in business. It's only in the arts that you're called upon to represent your particular diversity while espousing a set range of values.
I don't think "diversity in thought and values", which in practice nowadays means giving equal time to conservative political ideology, really addresses the problem at hand. Hollywood will not be improved by producing right-wing propaganda to counter its left-wing propaganda; nor will academia be improved by affirmative action for conservatives regardless of the field. The problem is that we nowadays have rejected the very idea of aesthetic experience as an elitist scam, and regard art as simply gussied-up punditry. This comes also from our current bad habit, on right and left alike, of regarding political ideology and values as the sole basis of identity and the source of all moral behavior, so that you are automatically a good person if you hold the right set of values; art is simply an epiphenomenon of political values, like everything else. (This is the sole officially recognized opposition to the reduction of everything to race and gender we've complained about.)
The diversity a field needs to flourish is governed by the questions unique to the field. Thus, the diversity needed in the arts is aesthetic diversity, which has nothing to do and never had to do with diversity of political "thoughts and values" any more than it had to do with ethnic or gender diversity. (For instance, C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot were both conservatives, at least with respect to all the ideological issues that preoccupy modern conservatives; but Lewis despised Eliot's poetry, as contrary to what he held as the time-honored purpose of literature.). Likewise, I find the call of Christopher Rufo and others for more conservatives in academia completely out of touch with academic realities; anybody who knows anything about any academic field soon finds out that there are major controversies within any field that break up friendships and institute enmities that don't map out to any convenient right-vs-left spectrum. I'd go so far to say that the notorious liberalism of college professors is practically all that keep them from tearing at each other's throats!
If the thesis is that college is supposed to widen the minds of students by exposing them to a diversity of viewpoints then it appears to me that they have failed. Will fostering ideological diversity among the faculty make a difference? I think it's a reasonable hypothesis.
Why should ideological diversity make a difference if it has nothing to do with the principles on which a field is based and the arguments that define it? You're just insisting that ideological diversity trumps everything, which makes you as bad as those leftists who insist that race and gender trump everything, in the exact same way.
`Look at the treatment meted out to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.'
Adichie was certainly received criticisms over some of her statements but that doesn't seem to have had much influence on her career. Latest novel reviewed very favorably in The NYT and The Guardian. Personally (trans), I have been looking forward to it and will be reading it!
The anti-DEI/trans contingent championing her doesn't seem to have read much of her work, given that Americanah is something of an urtext for good, white, liberal thinking on race and society.
I don't think JK Rowling is some kind of arch conservative either. Isn't the point that two short decades ago she and Elon Musk would just be perfectly normal, run of the mill liberals?
Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin who every day people read every day. Now there is little for every day people. I never even heard of the New Yorker until I was 20 but read Royko and Terkel every day.
Yeup.
When MLK shifted his focus more to class than just race, he started losing internal support. Some even saw it as a betrayal to the cause, despite general economic justice overwhelmingly helping more blacks than whites...for obvious reasons.
The difference now seems to be: a) criticizing any non-white-male group is simply viewed as unforgivable and even inhuman, no matter how solid the argument is; and b) people have figured out they can perpetually ride that "oppression" wave in order to secure themselves that economic stability everyone wants.
What's really stupid is that under the old color blind approach everyone understood that you were supposed to criticize individuals and not racial groups.
Under the new woke racialized regime racial groups have made a comeback. And trying to censor the obvious (black homicide rates for example) isn't fooling anyone.
A thing largely unspoken is how much the "increased diversity efforts" are manifested in beneficiaries for upper-class people and ignore the lower-class where the problems that the effort purports to solve actually exist. For example, once you notice how much the problems of the black underclass are used to sell programs that mostly benefit Nigerian/Ghanaians (arguably the two most successful immigrant groups *in US history*), most of whom themselves are elites or at least upper-middle class-you can't unsee it.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine Dare Obasanjo-child of a literal former African strongman and multibillionaire-lecturing you about inclusivity— forever.
See also Gay, Claudine.
Wasn't this the impetus for the creation of the ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) classification?
Yeah, although these efforts have notably gotten more muted recently. In no small part because let's be honest, the average middle-aged UMC white female is not going to like hanging out with them or their close and far stupider cousins, the FBA world (although the idea of a BookTok earnestly poring over The Art of Gold-Digging or The Mack Within' feels like a Key and Peele skit).
Personally I'm going to be voting right-wing for the foreseeable future because of this. Why would I ever vote for somebody whose explicit goal is to make me less employable?
Ever since Trump's approval rating started dropping I've been hoping that it's time to party like it's 2007, with the whole country getting so pissed off at a Republican president that the Democrats become the big tent party by default. Then I read an article like this and am reminded just how disingenuous and hypocritical and arrogant and just *slimy* these Professional Progressives are, and in more practical terms, how kicking out apostates is more important to them than building coalitions.
Yes, yes, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" but when even "The Good" involves the triumphant return of people who think yoga is cultural appropriation and that every office needs a $90/hr microaggression consultant, it's hard to be optimistic. Oh, and you thought they were self-righteous the *first* time around?
Harvard Harris has Trump at 47-48. What Democrats can't admit to themselves is that nobody cares about "Democracy in danger" or whatever their latest slogan is.
What will make a difference in Trump's numbers? The economy, and let's face it the economy is going to do what the economy is going to do largely independent of government input.
In other words, the Democrats are helpless. The one factor that could make a dent in Trump's approval ratings is largely out of their (and everyone else's) control. That's why they're engaging in assassination fantasies.
That 47-48 split is on the high end of the aggregate data (https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin) and there has been a steep decline since inauguration day (https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker) but knowing how you comment, you'll say that we can't trust those numbers in the first place because they're from the liberal media. Oh well. My point is even if I'm right it doesn't matter because we're in a 'second time as farce' historical moment.
My point with the polling is that the economy got "better" and Trump's numbers went up. Gee, how surprising. Of course the real tragedy is that it was genuinely surprising to a certain segment of the population.
What possible impact could polling have on Trump at this time? I'm eager to hear. The next election isn't for more than a year and Trump isn't even running.
The truth of the matter is that the left is desperately casting about for something, anything, regardless of whether that something even makes sense. Hence we are in an underpants gnome scenario of "1. Trump's numbers go down. 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!" A deeply unserious view held by deeply unserious people.
Yes, Midterm elections are never seen as a referendum on the incumbent president's actions. Good call. I'm showing you an aggregate popularity decline over four months, you counter with an upward tick from a single poll over the past few weeks, and I'm the desperate, flopsweaty one? Okay. If (note how I'm saying 'if' before you start bloviating) the Republicans have a bad midterm in 2026, it historically means a bad election year two years later. And given how ever since Trump arrived on the scene, all of the GOP's internal attempts to oust him have run up against voters who will banish anyone who doesn't kiss the ring (yes, part of this is 'just politics' but part of it is Trump's distinct cult of personality). So yes, elections in which an incumbent isn't running can still be a referendum on that incumbent.
I don't know what the situation's going to look like 18 months from now. Compare the Republicans' performance in 2008 vs. 2010, or the Democrats' a few years before that, and it's clear that things can change quickly. A solid economy does help any incumbent, but Bush's popularity tanked before the market did (and in the poll you referenced, the economy and tariffs are what respondents trust Trump on the least), so it's not impossible for the economy to be strong but an incumbent president still suffer a popularity decline due to, e.g. foreign policy, social issues, or general corruption/incompetence.
Does that fill in 'step 2' enough, you condescending asshole?
"If (note how I'm saying 'if' before you start bloviating) the Republicans have a bad midterm in 2026, it historically means a bad election year two years later."
Sigh.
So Obama gets a shellacking in 2010. Doesn't matter, he wins in 2012.
Clinton sees a historic reversal in Congress in 1994. Doesn't matter, he still wins in 1996.
In 1982 the Republicans lost 26 seats in the House. Guess who won in 1984?
Even with Trump you could make the argument that the only reason he lost his first re-election bid in 2020 was because of Covid. Certainly he came back to win by an even bigger margin in 2024 than in 2016--and that makes sense because Presidents who win re-election historically do so by larger margins than in their original campaign (with the sole exception being Obama IIRC).
The party out of power always does well in the first midterm after a presidential election. Americans just don't trust giving total power to one party. Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Yes, I'm condescending. Because you deserve to be condescended to. If you want to pretend that you know what you're talking about then I suggest actually saying something intelligent, or if you can't even manage that then trying for the lower bar of not being factually wrong.
Well, there have been times when the out-of-power party doesn't have a successful midterm, often because things are going too well to rock the boat (1998) or times are such that people want to support and unite behind the incumbent (2002), which is why I used 'historically' instead of 'absolutely' in the first place. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me at all of the GOP had a good 2026 given how incompetent the opposition is.
And the other part of my whole point, which I was apparently too subtle in making, is that you seem very confident that the improving economy is not just a blip, and voters will credit Trump for it, and this status quo will maintain itself until election day '26, and the economy is the only thing that matters re: popularity, and I bet a lot of Democrats in 1982 and Republicans in 1994 felt very confident in their chances for beating Reagan and Clinton for similar reasons, if you replace 'improving' with declining'.
In addition if you weren't historically illiterate you could turn around and ask yourself "Since the first midterm always produces reversals for the party in the White House what was the historical response been?"
Did Obama reverse his governing style because of the bad beat the Democrats took in 2010? Did Reagan?
More to the point did Trump? All you have to do to see how Trump reacted to losing the House is go back and look at 2018/2019, a short 7 years ago. Did he turn around and back off the border wall?
>Did Obama reverse his governing style because of the bad beat the Democrats took in 2010?
I would argue that yes, he did. Once he realized he'd spent all his political capital on the ACA his positions and rhetoric became less grandiose and more conservative, and that the wellspring of SJ as we know it in 2013-15 was in part a response to this: a growing sentiment that the Obama of 2014 had betrayed the Obama of 2008 and his movement. Clinton there was a similar dynamic, if less obvious because the average citizen was less politically engaged, but the bulk of the tough-on-crime, clean-up-society stuff, welfare reform, DOMA, all happened after 1994.
Also, I hate to tell you this but 1) Harvard is commonly viewed as a liberal institution by the right and 2) it may have some beef with Trump right now. If my actual concern was with the political alignment of pollsters I could have easily gone with somebody else.
"I hate to tell you this but" "If you weren't historically illiterate" "you deserve to be condescended to"
Are you this much of a giant leaking hemorrhoid to everyone, or am I just special?
You have no idea what you're talking about. You deserve zero respect.
I hope the whole county gets pissed enough at the Democrats and Republicans for something new to emerge. The Dems are just looking too Whiggy to survive at this point.
Did you ever write about Musa al-Gharbi's "We have never been woke?" I saw that a commenter recommended it back in 2021 but an admittedly brief google search did not yield further results. Would love to hear your thoughts on that one (I'm still reading it but think about your work quite a bit as I do so).