Jim Carrey, Guns, and Kick-Ass 2 (Late Thoughts)
I said I would throw in my two-cents on this Jim Carrey story. I realize I’m late to the party on this one, but I feel compelled to talk about the entire issue. Instead of trying to summarize the whole damn situation, I’ll just block quote something from the Guardian: Carrey, who has been an outspoken proponent of increased gun control in the wake of the shootings by gunman Adam Lanza in December, tweeted on Sunday that he could no longer support the film. He wrote: “I did Kick-Ass 2 a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involve[d] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.” Scottish comic-book writer and Kick-Ass 2 executive producer Mark Millar, whose original work forms the basis of the sequel, today responded on his own blog, pointing out that Carrey, who plays a character named Colonel Stars and Stripes, knew exactly what he was letting himself in for. “Like Jim, I’m horrified by real-life violence (even though I’m Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn’t a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production! This is fiction and like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorsese and Eastwood, John Boorman, Oliver Stone and Chan-wook Park, Kick-Ass avoids the usual bloodless bodycount of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence … Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can’t be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action movie.” While I understand Millar’s frustration with Carrey, I do think he misses the point here. From Carrey’s perspective, film violence leads, at least in part, to real world violence. I don’t know how recent of a development these thoughts are for him, but it is quite clear that recent events (Newtown, etc.) have “inspired” him to take a more aggressive approach to the gun rights issue (see his comedy music video, “Cold Dead Hand“). The position is guided by a particular set of principles, which suggests that supporting gun violence in media begets violence in the real world. Within that perspective, life is viewed a sacred, and any action which might lead to the death of others (at the hand of a gun) must be opposed. I understand this position and even agree with Carrey on many counts. The notion that guns are, on their own, innocuous entities is specious at best and a downright lie at worst. There are cultures attached to them, and some of those cultures support or foment violence, whether directly or indirectly. Some of those cultures, of course, do nothing of the sort. Millar, however, takes the position that the film is pure fiction, and that nobody was actually hurt. That information is a given. You can’t intentionally kill people on film without violating the law, so the issue isn’t whether people are actually hurt, but what impact the violence might have on the general public. Carrey seems to believe that film violence — at least, in some forms — contributes to the problem of violence in our culture. Considering how fervently he has supported the gun-restriction side of the debate in the last year, it shouldn’t surprise us that he might have problems with anything perceived as connected to that very issue. Carrey had a change of heart. So sue him. That doesn’t make Carrey correct, of course. There are two positions he has taken: Guns and gun culture contributes to violence in the country Violent media contributes to violence in the country (already mentioned) These are relatively extreme positions, of course, and ones that are not necessarily supported by reality. While there are some studies that suggest violent media increases aggression and violence, there is no scientific consensus about the issue. Likewise, while gun culture, in my opinion, does little to curb gun-related violence, and may actually contribute to it (however unintentionally), the argument that guns themselves, or the people who use them, are directly responsible for violence is specious. The gun rights issue is about as grey as you can get. Any time someone tosses out European statistics to support their position, they tend to ignore the different cultural conditions and all of the examples in Europe that contradict the argument in question. The U.S. has a different culture, geography, and history from everyone else. Carrey doesn’t acknowledge that as often as he should, which makes it easy for people to look at him as a left-leaning soundbite machine. However, despite how much I understand Carrey’s position — let alone agree with it — I do think he has shot himself in the foot here. His career likely won’t suffer much, but he will piss off a lot of fans — and for good reason. He chose to take a role in Kick-Ass 2. While I won’t say he must support the film no matter what, I do think he should take into account that everyone else involved in the production, whether actors, directors, gaffers, or what have you, may actually suffer based on his actions. If people do refuse to see the movie, that could affect other people’s careers. I understand the importance of one’s principles; I have principles too, and I try to stick by them as often as possible. But you also have to think about those around you.* Carrey may not have anticipated his change of heart — how could he? — but he can anticipate how his actions will affect others. In fact, since his argument against guns is largely a causal one, he should understand causality quite well. Personally, I think he should shut up and donate his Kick-Ass 2 salary to an organization that represents his interests. He can take a step back from publicity for the time being, too (if you’re heart isn’t in it, then there’s no point trying to promote something anyway — that would
Postcolonialism 101: Misery Tourism (or, How the Genre Community Still Essentializes Africa)
“What is misery tourism?” you might ask. At its most basic, “misery tourism” refers to the ways peoples from wealthy, usually Western nations “tour” the “developing” or “undeveloped” world in order to “learn” something. The process is almost always attached to an assumption of superiority, whether directly acknowledged or buried in the subconscious. To partake in misery tourism is to justify the superior position of your culture by intentionally subjecting yourself to “lesser” cultures (as a means of justifying the bias embedded in the notion of “lesser” cultures). To put it another way, misery tourism is what (mostly white) Westerners do to make themselves feel better about their own circumstances. I bring this up because of the following, which is taken from Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s blog post entitled “Broadening the Toolbox Through Cross-Cultural Encounters: On Resnick, Africa, and Opportunity“: When I spent time volunteering in prisons, I came away telling people that everyone should go and experience that for themselves because “the inmates are a lot more like us than you’d imagine.” For me, it was a scary and yet sobering reminder that human beings no matter their backgrounds, etc. have more in common than different. The same held true of my experiences in other cultures. I tell everyone to visit a developing world country at least once. See for yourselves what you’ve only imagined from the pages of National Geographic or TV specials about starvation, etc. Go there and experience it and be forever changed. If you’re not changed, you’re doing something wrong. I don’t see how you couldn’t be. Don’t fear this kind of change. It’s the good kind–the kind that makes you smarter, wiser, more aware and more appreciative. It’s the kind that makes you a better person and inspires you to write better stories and live better lives. That kind of change can’t be a bad thing, can it? This appears after Schmidt reminds us how important it is not to fall into the trap of stereotyping other peoples and cultures (by way of getting into their heads to push our boundaries). Schmidt, unfortunately, falls prey to a number of common intellectual traps when it comes to the subject of the African continent. For example, rather than trying to explore a particular African culture, he reduces them all to “Africans,” as if talking about “Africans” actually means something. He might have identified specific nations (Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Mali, Chad, Sudan, etc.) or specific peoples (Igbo, Sua, Kikuyu, Tutsi, Oromo, Afrikaner, Egyptian, Bemba, Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Fulani, Yoruba, etc.), having spent so much time in Africa (says he). But instead, he makes them all one. They are Africans — not in the sense that they are all “from Africa,” but in the sense that they are all more or less the same, like Americans (except we’re not all the same either). Doing so allows him to make grand assumptions about what they are all like (they are communal and find joy in little things). There are other traps, too, but this is, I think, the most obvious and most damaging. What shocks me most about these statements is that Schmidt wants us to believe he has learned something both from his experiences as a traveler and from reading genre fiction written by people who are non-white, mostly non-Christian, and mostly non-American. Yet in essentializing the plethora of African cultures, as so many people do, he exposes his own narrow view of the continent. I suspect he does not believe this of himself, but most Westerners don’t want to believe that their privilege blinds them to the narratives of neo-imperialism which control the discourse surrounding the African continent. In fact, Schmidt obviously means well, and makes many valid points. But this doesn’t excuse the central problem, which Binyavanga Wainaina perhaps best explores in “How to Write About Africa.” His humorous-but-not-really “story” exposes many of the myths peddled about the African continent. Two quotes of relevance here include: In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular. And: Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. That pretty much sums it up. Becoming better writers is simply a justification for misery tourism. Its only purpose is to validate ethnocentric views of the world and the perpetuation of stereotypes and myths still held by so many Westerners today. I’m not sure there’s a way to combat this behavior, as we’re all guilty of it to a certain degree. One would think education about the history of the various now-countries of the African continent would do it, but that requires people to take the wax out of their ears and actually listen. In other words, so long as you see the African continent as little more than a monolithic culture of inferior peoples, you cannot possibly challenge the ethnocentric assumptions that pepper our cultural perceptions of the world. That’s not to say genre fiction is hopeless. Far from it. But it’s not enough to say “look, there are some brown people
The Weird Tales / Save the Pearls Fiasco: Preliminary Reactions
(Disclaimer: This post is a preliminary reaction. I have not read the novel in question and can only respond to what others have said about it. As such, what follows will not be based on what I know about the book itself, but rather a series of curiosities and questions that I suspect will be answered later this week. An educated reaction will follow. Note: I am collecting links to other responses at the bottom. Note 2: The original Weird Tales post has been taken down. An apology has been put in its place. Note 3: Some new details have surfaced. You can find my update here.) Twitter was in a rage this morning about this Weird Tales announcement involving the publication of the first chapter of Victoria Foyt’s Saving the Pearls: Revealing Eden. Authors/bloggers N. K. Jemisin, Celine Kiernan, Martha Wells, Nick Mamatas were among the most vocal hitters, decrying the selection as, at best, a phenomenally stupid choice of publication and, at worst, a throwback to the racism that might have made Lovecraft proud. If you’re not familiar with Saving the Pearls, then you’re not alone. I am writing this post from a position of profound ignorance, having only read reviews of Foyt’s novel, and not the novel itself (such as this review or the numerous reviews on the Amazon page). What many seem most bothered by is Foyt’s portrayal of a reverse-racist society which uses blackface to make its supposedly anti-racist point (a historically derogatory practice originally used by whites to stereotype and denigrate blacks — the white-race-glorification film, Birth of a Nation, for example, used blackface in order to portray black males as sexual “beasts,” which, as it turns out, is another stereotype that Foyt, according to reviews, unsuccessfully “turns on its head”). Coming from the outside, my first reactions were along these lines: Is it possible to reverse blackface without running into the problem of racist history? In other words, can one take the history of making blacks feel inferior because they are “too dark” and reverse it so whites must now darken in order to “fit in”? I’m thinking of a reversal of George Schuyler’s Black No More (a novel I am teaching this semester). What is the narrative context for the use of “pearls” to refer to whites and “coals” to refer to blacks? Since the novel is a dystopia, is it possible these terms actually mean something very different in that world? I wonder if (one, again, coming from not having read the book) perhaps coal has become a scarce, important resource, thus providing an added value to something we traditionally think of as prevalent and cheap (dirty, etc.). Why is it that whenever we have discussions about these very issues, there are a sea of loud-mouthed people proclaiming that there is no such thing as racism against whites, followed by condescending ad hominem attacks against anyone who suggests otherwise? (I’m not referring to anyone named in this post.) Racism is not colorblind. Some white people are targets of racism. The difference, as I see it, is a matter of degree and a matter of institution. That is that whites are rarely targeted by the institutions around them, and only uncommonly the target of racist ideas from other “racial” groups. Perhaps it’s a question of power dynamics? How many people coming into this discussion are screaming because they’ve already been tainted by other reactions? Some folks who have chimed in seem to have read the book after reading or agreeing with people who hate it. Is it possible that some of us are so emotionally driven against racism that we get trapped into knee-jerk-ism whenever something that appears to be racist shows its face? Now, I could be wrong about all of these reactions. We’ll see. I’ve said on Twitter that I will try to read the book, in part because I don’t want to offer a proper opinion on all this without knowing what I’m talking about (something some people will do in typical knee-jerk fashion). That doesn’t mean, however, that the Weird Tales post deserves to be ignored. The book in question… I say all of this knowing that there are all kinds of red flags in the Weird Tales post. Take, for example, the title: “A Thoroughly Non-Racist Book.” If it’s a thoroughly non-racist book, then why the insane overcompensation in the title? Even my hackles were raised when I saw that title. Or even Kaye’s need to reject the negative reviews on Amazon by saying “this is America and they have the right to express their opinion(s)” makes you wonder at which point he would acknowledge a negative review as intellectually valid. Or if you disagree with a review, does that immediately mean it is only valid as “free speech”? But perhaps what most concerns me is the level of condescension Kaye lobs at detractors of Foyt’s story. Kaye says that it will be “very clear to anyone with an appreciation for irony” that the book is not racist, but an attack on racism itself. Typically, one means satire, not irony; likewise, when one says “folks who are X will get it,” you’re essentially discounting the validity of contrary opinions. The clincher, though, is this: The blessing is to wish they acquire sufficient wit, wisdom and depth of literary analysis to understand what they read, and also the compassion not to attack others merely because they hold a different opinion. The curse is an integral part of the blessing…for if they do acquire those virtues, they will then necessarily look at their own behaviour, and be thoroughly ashamed. You’re right. Because only people with insufficient wit, wisdom, and depth of literary analysis will not like Save the Pearls. Only people without compassion could find something wrong with Foyt’s novel. Because only becoming “like you,” oh Mr. Compassionate, Witty, Wisdom-filled, Literary Analysis Guru, can we fully comprehend the great wonders of the universe contained within Foyt’s novel. And
SF/F Rant of the Day: Privilege is Not Equal
You’re probably already familiar with the shitstorm that erupted on Peter Watts’ blog over acrackedmoon’s “review” of R. Scott Bakker’s novels. If not, then you should glance through to see what has been going on (this is not the same as the other shitstorm which also involved acrackedmoon’s comments, though certainly the issues are related). Here, I am interested in one particular issue: the question of privilege. But before I do that, I want to say a few quick things: I harbor no ill will towards Peter Watts, acrackedmoon, R. Scott Bakker, or any of the people involved in the comments. I may not like some of the commentators, but that’s a separate issue. I think Watts makes some valid points. I think acrackedmoon makes some valid points. I think they both occasionally put their feet in their mouths and say things that are counterproductive to discussion and debate. They are both human beings. I understand why acrackedmoon takes the approach that she does, and while I do not always agree with that approach (sometimes I think she shuts off debate by being overly aggressive when taking a step back might be more productive), I think many of the issues she attacks are ones we should be concerned about anyway. I think it’s more pathetic that we don’t think about the problems she raises (such as the treatment of women in literature, racism, etc.) except when someone throws “a fit” and uses “bad words.” For the record: from what I know of Mr. Watts, he is concerned with many of the same issues and reflects that in his writing (this based on my friend’s obsession with him as a writer). I do not agree that the “tone argument” is invalid in all instances, as I’ve said before. But I do not agree that responding to another’s “tone” with a similar “tone” makes you look any more “civilized” than the person you’re attempting to delegitimize. Now that all of that is out of the way, I’d like to draw your attention to one problematic comment left on Peter Watts’ blog by someone calling himself Giorgio. Who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do _she_ think she is? What makes you think that she can arrogate herself any kind of representative role? Who the hell gave _you_ the right to decide who someone can or cannot represent? I’m _sure_ all those tormented people feel better now that someone finally can be obnoxious on the Internet in their place. Get down off your high horse, ACM is a privileged woman from a privileged background (a Thai Chinese!) who speaks a very good English and is completely steeped in North American culture in a country where only 10% of the population speaks any English at all, who has access to Internet in a country where only a quarter of the population has any kind of connection and apparently has a lot of free time she can spend reading fantasy books and maintaining a constant Internet presence. If _she_ can represent someone, I surely can decide that I’m the voice of billions of farmers and factory workers and as such I’m happy to tell her that she’s an obnoxious bourgeois and should start thinking about doing something productive and useful to make up for the history of prevarication and oppression who gave her her role in society. There is one fundamental problem here: the assumption that “shared privileges” are equal. Let’s take as true that acrackedmoon is an upper class Thai woman and that a marker of that is the fact that she has apparently unfettered access to the Internet (the commenter’s statistic is wrong, by the way: 25.5% of Thais have Internet access, but another 66+ million and change use mobile phones – that’s practically the entire population of Thailand; determining how many of those mobile users also use their phones to access the Internet is a little difficult, but if Africa is any indication, phone-to-Internet access is likely more common than standard Internet in countries previously dubbed as “third world.” You also have to take into account other forms of Internet access, such as cafes, etc. – basically, we need to seriously get beyond this “she’s got the Internet, so she must be totally privileged because Thailand is a backward bumfuck country where everyone lives in rice patties and huts” bullshit. Backwards my ass.). What do these assumptions tell us about acrackedmoon? That she has privilege within her country of residence. One way to think of this is to use the Internet as an analogy: if I have access to the Internet through broadband, but acrackedmoon only has dialup, could we reasonably suggest that our access is the same? Are the privileges equal? The answer: no. While we both benefit from having access, that does not mean we benefit in the same way, or that we have the same level of access. The same is true if we think only in terms of nations. A privileged woman in Thailand is certainly better off than lower class Thais, but is she better off than an American woman (or, as the comments seem to suggest, a white American male)? If you think the answer to that question is “yes,” then you are naïve as best, or an utter idiot at worst. Yes, acrackedmoon has privilege, but only within the context of her country of residence. Compared to myself, a white, straight male living in Florida on a University stipend? We might be more equal, but there are still things that I have which are not as easily accessible to her, and our relationships to our countries of residence are not the same. I am not as privileged in America as acrackedmoon supposedly is privileged in Thailand, and yet in relating our positions it becomes clear that we are not equal from a socio-economic perspective. I’m not saying this in order to speak down to acrackedmoon or Thais; rather, I’m bringing this up because it
Duke and Zink Do America — Where My Politics Go to Live
If you’ve been a reader of this blog for at least a year, you’ll have noticed that I’m rather political. I’m also hesitant to post about politics on this blog, in part because this is supposed to be a space about genre fiction, writing, and so on. That doesn’t mean I don’t talk about things that are political, but it does mean that I try not to talk about things to do with actual politics (Presidential races, etc.). And that’s how it’s going to be from now on, because I just started a political podcast/blog with my co-host at The Skiffy and Fanty Show. What is this new show called? We describe it as follows: Duke and Zink Do America is a 3/5ths serious political commentary podcast from a progressive perspective. We cover news, relevant events, and whatever else comes our way, always on the lookout for the stupid arguments and the stupid people who make them. If you need a fix of progressive politics with a moderate dose of humor, then this is the show for you. Our first episode recently went live. The show will be bimonthly, but we expect to post a few columns a month alongside. Essentially, this is where my political rants and nonsense will go to live, fulfilling my desire to keep my writing and political worlds separate. Feel free to head on over there and subscribe if you are politically inclined. There will be a post over there soon enough explaining our mission, history, and so on. For now, you’ve got over an hour of political deliciousness to enjoy. Go listen and leave a comment! Anywho!
An Addendum to “The West’s Third World Others (or, Hey, Thailand Has Prostitutions, What’s the Big Deal?)
The following video might be of interest to anyone who read my previous post. It’s also a video I’m teaching my students this semester in my “Writing About Postcolonialism and Genre Fiction” class. Anywho!