The Regurgitation Of Slogans
Lifted from the comments, where Mr Muldoon directs us to,
There is a dull mediocrity, a predictable trajectory:
I think it’s fair to say that, whatever her creative limitations, Liberal Jane, aka Ms Caitlin Blunnie, does like her slogans. One might say incantations. Almost all of which have an air of self-satisfaction, as if some previously unregistered profundity had been heroically unearthed.
One creation extols the radical virtues of skiving in the workplace and not doing the work one is being paid to do. “Craft is resistance in a late-stage capitalist society,” reads another. Also, “Self-love is self-care.” “Riots, not diets.” “Hex the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.” “Fantasy is for everyone.” “Abortion builds new futures.” Oh, and “Smash the state and masturbate,” and “Stretch marks are ubiquitous to the human experience.”
And if even more excitement is called for:
The item below is a recent and fairly topical example of Ms Blunnie’s morally corrective offerings to the world:
Happy #InternationalWomensDay! 💜 pic.twitter.com/8LEdvZDeSj
— Liberal Jane (@liberaljanee) March 8, 2024
At which point, readers may note just how often progressive posturing seems to require a fairly high tolerance of contrivance and short-cuts, internal contradiction, and the kind of begged-question soundbites that are all but designed to shut down thought. A kind of pre-emptive short circuit.
For instance, in Ms Blunnie’s X feed, a professed concern for “bodily autonomy” appears alongside the slogans “Abortion builds new futures,” and “Funding abortion is an act of radical empathy,” along with a jolly pink poster for “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day,” which suggests that the bodily autonomy of some people, very small ones, doesn’t count.
And even if “bodily autonomy” applies only, and rather conveniently, to women, or a subset of women, one might have thought that it could extend to concerns regarding creepy, mentally ill men barging into women’s intimate spaces for a furtive wank.
But apparently not. Because “a woman is anyone who identifies as one.”
Update, via the comments:
Stephanie adds,
Ms Blunnie’s output does, I think, lend itself to parody.
It’s basically mediocre illustration, of the kind one might expect from a b-stream teenage girl, hiding behind modish but stupefying slogans. (There’s also the assumption, very much in fashion, that indifferent art somehow becomes better, and indeed profound, if you stick a black woman in it. A pattern seen practically every week at sites like This Is Colossal.)
And again, the thoughts expressed as slogans are implausibly unfinished and riddled with lurking contradictions. Ms Blunnie extols the importance of “bodily autonomy” – but only for women, it seems – while simultaneously championing abortion, the utter rejection of someone else’s bodily autonomy. (The topic of abortion crops up many times, almost as a kind of leisure activity or some personal affirmation.)
And then we get “No Pride for some without Pride for all.” But what if championing gender woo – that “Pride for all” – is at odds with the interests of gay people, and especially lesbians, who may prefer not to be accosted by bewigged men? What if the social contagion of gender fabulism results in gay youngsters being drugged and mutilated? What if the very premise of gender woo, or Gender Scientology, is regarded by many gay people as homophobic?
Oh, and “Protect people, not borders.” As if a lack of border enforcement – and the lawlessness and social alienation that follows – couldn’t possibly degrade the lives of many people. But what if a society’s borders should prove to be rather important to the protection of its inhabitants? What if a society without borders is unsustainable and destined for disaster?
These are hardly esoteric questions, and yet they don’t appear to figure in the radical education on offer. Instead, we get the posturing of an adolescent. And we’re expected to applaud it. And to propagate it, in schools, as some New Woke Testament: “Free digital downloads for educators.”
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
“Thought-terminating cliché.” Robert Jay Lifton, 1961.
Heh. Yes, that.
Right, I’m being taken to the local IMAX to see Dune, Part Two.
While I’m out, play nicely. Use coasters.
One creation extols the radical virtues of skiving in the workplace and not doing the work one is being paid to do.
You know, it occurs to me that it would be quite easy to use her art as an example for Midjourney to emulate in style and create new slogans that directly oppose her messages. Start an Instagram account (might even call it “Conservative Jane”), open a shop with a print on demand outlet like Cafe Press for merch, and make passive income.
I might be on to something here …
You picked some prime examples of the scribblings there, David, and despite “illustrating” every leftist cliche, original thoughts can be found at the blog.
Meanwhile in Blighty over in the Midlands a, “…passionate advocate for veganism….” (aren’t they all) has some related Deep Thoughts™.
One can also see that there is any no evidence in the real world of those, but go on.
Yet neither group gets any better, curious that.
RTWT.
Seattle: Naked man draped in a trans BLM LGBTQ+ flag shuts down the road and spreads his legs wide for drivers.
Bring back asylums…and whippings.
…shuts down the road…
Meh, the drivers shut down the road, there is only one of him, start to drive around, he can only block one lane at a time, and just shove the wheelie bins out of the way – not going to hurt your car.
spreads his legs wide for drivers
Drivers as in golf clubs?
Source: Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton, 1961, Norton. And it’s still in print!
I could imagine a use for golf clubs in that situation.
And it’s still in print!
OTOH, you can read it for free…
Nye kulturny.
Steamrollers are underutilised.
Was noted in the previous thread. But worth repeating.
I’ll go beyond “uncultured” to “inhuman monster”.
Every time I see crap like this, every damn time, I am reminded that the people who tolerate and even approve of this idiocy told us that other countries were laughing at us because of Donald Trump. I used to be able to laugh at other countries for their stupidity. We have overtaken them in that department in just three years.
At least there’s still the one country you can always laugh at!
Heh. Canada has become the new France. Funny how that happened. Just not John-Candy-funny…the other kind.
Seems seriously overclubbed. Surely no more than a sand wedge.
If she smashes the state, who’s going to pay for all the freebies she wants?
Well, quite. And madam’s list of Things That Some Other Sucker Should Be Made To Pay For is quite extensive. But then, I tend to think of progressive thinking – or rather, progressive attitudinising – as an unattractive patchwork of dissonant slogans and implausibly unfinished thoughts.
By the way, and before you ask, I found the film both intermittently intense – or at least loud – and a bit of a slog. It looks great, and the sound design is suitably thunderous, but overall I didn’t find the experience particularly gripping. Much like the first film, in fact.
I’m fairly glad I saw it – it is a very handsome film – but I can’t imagine wanting to watch it again.
Kind of describes the book it was based on.
Well, I’m not a huge fan of the book. As many others have noted, Dune might conceivably work as a lavishly produced ten-part mini-series costing an unviable amount of money. But the saga doesn’t seem to lend itself to the cinema experience.
The film’s redeeming feature is that it looked nothing like the preceding, exhausting, utterly generic trailers for upcoming action films.
What? Are they composting dead babies there?
True of so many science fiction novels, and especially ones like Dune in which so much of the book is meditations on ecology, religion, government. If you like that sort of thing, rereading the book can be enjoyable.
There is, it has to be said, a certain moral tin-earedness.
I liked the book well enough (its successors less so) but haven’t felt the need to revisit it for quite some time.
That does provide an incentive to see it.
I guess it comes down to a matter of taste. I thoroughly enjoyed the original book — I thought the world building was first rate and I’ve reread it several times over the years. Every one of his sequel books afterwards were hacktastic bores. Of all of Herbert’s works, Dune proved he had only one good book in him.
Absent children the question arises as to whom these ‘new futures’ are for.
At risk of being ungentlemanly, it’s hard to miss just how often the issue of mental health crops up.
Also, as virtues, entitlement and self-preoccupation.
I wouldn’t call them all hackwork–he wrote parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune before Dune was finished–so a better word than “hackwork” would be “inferior” or anything that conveys the idea that Herbert had limited storytelling skills regardless of how much he cared about story. But I agree that all the sequels are inferior to one degree or another. And I believe it is true that the subsequent sequels existed chiefly because there was a market, not because Herbert had much more to say. (Side note: Every sequel was praised in the SF press, which is a clue as to how incestuous the SF industry is.)
One of Herbert’s failings was a fondness for intricate plots within plots–something which marred both the Dune sequels and some other novels and which I found boring. I found several of his novels so bad that I stopped partway through, thinking “why am I reading this boring crap?” And yet some fans liked his books. But then, some fans think your typical pulp magazine cover is fine art.
Pizza orders up 1000%. Stores cleaned out of snack food.
That’s one of the problems with the two recent Dune films, I think. Even though both are quite hefty in terms of runtime – close to six hours combined – a lot of material still has to be excluded to make a watchable (and commercially viable) film. As a result, the generational scheming of the Bene Gesserit, for instance, doesn’t have time to linger in the mind and any subsequent events that confirm or confound their prophesies don’t have the dramatic weight that they’re presumably supposed to have.
See also, Feyd-Rautha, the Baron’s sociopathic nephew and ostensibly Paul’s opposite number, a supposed antagonist of significance, but who isn’t developed as a serious threat. And so, their clash in the closing minutes has little emotional oomph.
See also, the Emperor himself, a miscast Christopher Walken.
And so, while the films are very handsome – and the sub-bass very loud – in terms of emotional drama, for me, for the most part, they sort of drift by, at a distance.
[ Updated. ]
It strikes me as not unlike trying to make a two-hour film of I, Claudius.
Canada has become the new France.
It’s not even a real country anyway.
overall I didn’t find the experience particularly gripping. Much like the first film, in fact
It’s my favourite book, re-read it every couple of years, but I concur that it’s impossible to film in a reasonable length (most books can’t be). While watching the first one I found myself being quite satisfied with the faithfulness of the scenes they included, while wondering whether any of this would make sense to someone who hadn’t read the book. It felt like stitched together vignettes where characters enter and leave without having any real impact on the viewer or narrative.
Dune might conceivably work as a lavishly produced ten-part mini-series costing an unviable amount of money
That was the problem with the 2001 mini-series. It’s a much better adaptation, but you can see the budget straining at the rivets in every scene.
There’s this sense in Hollywood that they can repeat the success of Star Wars and Game of Thrones if they can just find the right property, but Hollywood is very bad at understanding why certain films resonate with audiences. Dune is going to appeal to the kind of people who like James Clavell novels and allegorical science fiction. That’s not a big intersection.
Yes. See my (updated) previous comment.
I first read Dune about 1973, and have re-read it several times since. Of The sequels, I prefer God Emperor. Don’t know what that says about me. I like the complexity and the context-setting digressions. Probably why I liked Neal Stephenson’s door-stoppers, and Tolkien.
I found the first film soulless, for lack Of a better term, and have no desire to see Dune 2.
A recurring problem. Inevitable, I think, absent the mini-series solution.
Likewise with regard to Herbert’s ideas about ecology, political philosophy, religion, etc. If an idea is to have a powerful effect on the viewer, it must get its due share of screen time. (And it’s much harder to explore ideas in film than in a book, as books say while a film shows.) A writer/critic once wrote that important ideas should be presented multiple times in a variety of contexts.
…virtues, entitlement and self-preoccupation…
Speaking of which, “Stand for me peasants!”
Authors, too. An author once remarked to me over lunch that he would love to repeat the blockbuster success of his early 80’s tetralogy. His subsequent books were successful, and fine works, but not news makers. Sigh. Authors tend to write the stories that move them, but what moves them may not excite a large readership. (An obvious exception: When authors are pressured by publishers to churn out sequels.)
I’m looking forward to Rendezvous with Rama.
Re: Dune, it did feel at times like an overlong perfume commercial.
As Matt Walsh said (repeatedly), ‘but what are they then identifying as?’
I really hate the phrase ‘late capitalist’
Why should we leave America to visit America Junior?
I’m not. It seems like the sort of story that Hollywood could only ruin–probably with killer biots and irrelevant “woke” garbage. But Wikipedia says they don’t even have a script yet, so there is still hope that it will never be made.
It’s only been 11 years since that Vietnamese grocer was murdered in Saint Louis by a mob of young “urban” thugs playing the knockout game. Seems like it’s been a lot longer. 🙁
just how often progressive posturing seems to require a fairly high tolerance of contrivance and short-cuts, internal contradiction
Her incantations go from Smash Teh Patriarchy type slogans to A Woman Is Whatever Identifies As One type slogans, but one has to wonder if Teh Patriarchy says “I’m a Woman today”, then it’s totes ok, and they all go the ladies’ together for some gossip? Or crafting. I’m a bit confused on that whole bit.
The gossip will be character assassination and the crafting will be terrorist tools, because that’s more fun than normal civilized life.
Speaking of which, does anyone remember the Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society of the 1970’s? A number of feminists I knew mentioned it approvingly but I am still not clear what exactly it was, although the casual talk about terrorism does not encourage trust and respect and tolerance.
–Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (p. 518). Part VII: Stalin Is No More, Chapter 3: The Law Today, HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.