Well, when they stop shoving straightness down our throats…
(And seriously? They’re talking about characters who are only even hinted at being gay. That’s not “shoving down throats”. I wonder how they’d react at seeing some of the games on here… ;P)
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Well, to be fair it was mostly a couple of guys rather than the whole group. And even when the conversation started with those two examples it evolved to talk about the lgbt representation in general. And hey, at least they listened to me a little at the end, so it was not too bad.
I don’t know but recently I found out that bringing up Frozen into a conversation somehow brings out the worst in people.
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(Attempt at humor):
I think people are tired of talking about Frozen.
They just want everyone else to let it go already.
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I know that there’s a tendency for people to hate popular things simply because they’re popular, and I know bigots will use the merest whiff of “SJW-ness” or “PC-ness” (by which they mean respectful inclusivity [or even just inclusivity], or having a strong female lead, or passing the Bechdel test…) to decide that they hate something even if they’ve never read or watched it.
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No, it isn’t. It was fine to cancel the funding of the statue because the artist was specifically commissioned to do a work based on an actual photograph. Or the one who donated it would be fine to find an artist who would fulfill the commission as required.
However? The emotion to try to make it more inclusive, to show that New York City was a city built up with many nationalities, etc…that isn’t disgusting.
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So, that article linked above is dated Friday, January 18, 2002, 12:00 AM
The first responders who risked their lives in the smoke and fire of the attack to save as many survivors as possible would disagree.
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The notion of disgust is the spin you put onto it. The first responders are fine to be displeased by the changes the artist made. It is fine for them to want it based on the picture for accuracy sake.
That doesn’t make the attempt to be inclusive disgusting. And if it wasn’t based on that one specific picture, the fire department would probably not care what it was made out of.
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Look, as @Lys said it’s wrong to not fulfill the requirements of a commission when they asked him to be accurate to the actual photograph. That’s the real problem.
But that is not the same as demonize the artist choice as if it was just a disgusting attempt to try to alternate with history for the sake of “political correctness” or whatever you want to call it.
I’ve seen things like this done before, when an artist chooses to represent an historical event this way it’s ment to be a metaphor that entails with it the idea of universality. In the picture, you might see those three specific firefighters, but the theme of grief that surrounds the incident speaks to every American, and that universality is emphasized by the representation of minorities.
The artist probably didn’t want to tell the story of those firefighters, but rather a story that happened to a whole nation. The people who hired him asked for a different thing, so what the artis did was wrong, but that isn’t the same as claiming that it’s disgusting.
And you can claim that conservatives despise “political correctness” all you want, but that’s simply not true. You conservatives, have your own form of political correctness where several social justice issues are discredited as being against “traditional values”.
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By all means… continue.
I am prepared to read more!
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@Vac did not say inclusivity is disgusting, I’d disagree with him if he had. He said political correctness is disgusting, something I agree with entirely. And I don’t see what the artist did as inclusive.
Now this is interesting as I believe it speaks to one important divide. Universality is something I value deeply as do most conservatives I know (I’m not one, btw). I can understand what you mean and ask that you do try to understand my view too, even if you won’t agree with it.
To me, three firefighters is the universal “version”, the moment the artist distorts the real picture in that way they are breaking universality, The moment you imply that the original one don’t speak to every American or don’t tell the story of the whole nation because they happen to all be white, you’re making it about race. This race obsession is one of the reasons I despise PC culture and why I rather not conflate it with simple, natural inclusivity even if they sometimes overlap.
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Inclusivity is political correctness. It just depends on who’s talking about it.
Over three hundred firefighters died in the World Trade Centre, and I sincerely doubt that they were all white. That the artist wanted to celebrate all of them, rather than three men who I understand survived (none of their names appear on Wikipedia’s list of casualties) is commendable, in my mind.
EDIT: To clarify, I am not claiming that surviving made these men any less heroic, but rather that it seems odd to commemorate the hundreds who died by using three survivors as models, rather than generic firefighters.
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In my opinion those who funded the project probably gave poor instructions to the artist. Still if the order did specify he had to depict those three specific firemen in their idiosyncratic detail then what he did, however noble the impulse to do so, would have been in violation of his commission and certainly a valid (legal) reason to cancel or rescind it.
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I think about how I would feel if the Marine Corps or worse someone else in the government decided the Marine Corps War Memorial needed to represent the Marine Corps’ diversity and not depict the actual the flag raisers on Iwo Jima. There is a lot about the history of that moment that calls into question it’s overall symbolism and utility to the Marines, but it is a touchstone of our history that has resonated through the generations. I would be pissed basically if they did that.
I also think “disgusting” is a bit strong. Misguided more like, but in general I agree with the feeling that every historical moment/monument that is not representatively diverse is in need of correction is not a healthy sentiment.
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I didn’t said that.
I said that he probably did it that way because he wanted symbolize or emphasize a certain theme.
That it’s not the same to claim that that would be the only valid way to do so.
It is interesting you bring this up because there have been recent discoveries that put that whole event to question as to being depicted as it truly happened historically. Is it upsetting that the photographer and hence sculptor may have changed the reality to fit a narrative that we both embrace wholeheartedly?
Edit - After fact checking myself I found the “controversy” over the photo to be a result of an error in later identification and not an error of depiction - yet the point still stands here.
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The controversy was/is over the people in the photo and how “staged” it was. This was what I was alluding to when I mentioned its effect on future generations of Marines. I expect the moment depicted with the firefighters in NYC will be of a similar importance to posterity. I am also sure that it will enjoy similar levels of controversy when one of the men depicted is considered some future version of a child abuser or something.
Ultimately, my conclusions are the same regarding the Marine Corps War Memorial. It commemorates a seminal moment in Marine Corps history and one incidentally that helped preserve the Marine Corps in 1947 when it was seriously considered by Congress whether it should be kept at all. Obviously each generation must decide if the monument in question is a Saint or Saddam or something in between, but I would caution as strongly against diversewashing history as I would whitewashing it.
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But then again, it could be argued that by only celebrating three white firefighters, you are whitewashing history, by not acknowledging all of the non-white firefighters who served (and died) that day. The monument wouldn’t have been claiming that two of the men who raised the flag were non-white, but rather that many of the men who risked and sacrificed everything that day were non-white, since it would have represented all of them.
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You can argue that I suppose but the moment they chose to depict has three actual people who where actually there. Saying they weren’t in fact there is the kind of historical revisionism that places like North Korea are fond of. I would offer that communities like NYC firefighters and Marines are similar in that they would want the people who were actually there to be honored. If you are doing something more abstract that doesn’t call upon a real historical moment then ensuring you reflect the diversity of the organization is a damn near requirement now days.
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This is a bit troubling to me - the Navy person helping the Marines was misidentified for 50 some-odd years and it took a full Marine investigation to rectify this fact in the record. The Marine monument, the picture and the story of the flag raising for the second time didn’t change how it honored those that were there. Yet, according to what you just said, because it was wrong for those 50 something years that somehow changes it.
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