The Struggle To Find Fault
Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course:
In the piece linked above, Ben Sixsmith responds to an attempt, by Lukas Shayo, to problematise a much-loved comic strip, one that must now, it seems, be fretted over as both “violent” and “sexist.” Readers familiar with the strip in question may wonder whether complaining in print about Calvin’s mom being, well, a mom, and about the “sexism” of a cartoon six-year-old, should result in some reflection on one’s chosen career, and one’s life choices more generally.
As Ben replies,
When you write such a lazy and opportunistic piece, you’re also conditioning readers to expect that sort of prose. You’re conditioning them to expect the kind of regurgitated pablum that a text generator could produce on demand. You’re contributing to your own redundancy, Lukas, and to the redundancy of what we love to do… If you want an image of a future we should try to avoid, imagine a text generator producing mirthless moralistic listicles — forever.
I’ve said before, regarding the pop-culture site io9, the more insufferably woke the site has become, the more generic and unwritten its content feels. By which I mean, it was once possible to stumble across lengthy articles on niche pop-culture subjects, often written with an affectionate expertise. Now, however, it’s difficult to differentiate one contributor from another. The content doesn’t read as if anyone in particular wrote it. It’s flavourless, uniform in its politics and ideological assumptions, both pointedly announced, and uniform in its tone. It might as well be generated by an algorithm.
Regarding Ben’s piece, Aelfheld adds,
It’s practically a genre – and a tool for the forging of progressive credentials. Basically, take something that’s very good and that a lot of people like, or have liked as children, and then problematise it, sour it, generally in a narrow, glib, and self-satisfied way. While getting details hopelessly wrong and missing all kinds of subtlety.
Or as Ben puts it, “joyless Buzzfeed-esque finger-wagging.”
See also, certain popular songs of the 1940s.
The author of the joyless prattle, Lukas Shayo – CUNY and Brooklyn, naturally – does rather struggle to find his “10 ways” in which Calvin and Hobbes should elicit regret or disapproval. We’re told, for instance, that,
And we’re informed that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices – the strip concluded in 1995 – may be “baffling for young readers.”
Mr Shayo also bemoans Calvin spending “too much time by himself,” thereby allowing his imagination to entertain the reader.
We’re told, with improbable earnestness:
Also troubling to Mr Shayo is the thought of our comic-strip protagonist being “unsupervised in an enormous forest.” Or, unregistered by the author, what Calvin perceives as an enormous forest. This, remember, is a six-year-old boy who regularly ventures into outer space and who perceives his stuffed toy as an eloquent, talking tiger. This one reminded me of being six or so myself and, with my cousin in tow, fearlessly exploring a small strip of woodland behind my grandmother’s house, and which six-year-old me chose to see as enormous and therefore a basis for adventure.
Given that the charm of Calvin and Hobbes so often hinges on the mismatch between what Calvin imagines and rather more mundane reality, you’d think that Mr Shayo might entertain such possibilities. But no. Wokeness must be announced, a posture assumed, and things found problematic. Because contrived disappointment, a souring of all the things, is the latest must-have. For a certain kind of person. And everything, especially things that many people have enjoyed, must be judged – and found wanting – by the narrow standards of one’s own self-admiring in-group at this precise point in time.
Update, via the comments:
Aitch adds,
While Dean reveals,
I suppose that’s what makes it grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way. If you poke through Mr Shayo’s other, numerous contributions, the tone, such as it is, is much the same. There’s no obvious personality – no sense of any particular person having written it – no sense of mischief, and no discernible wit. Mr Shayo is, however, capable of making entirely contradictory claims, on the very same subject, mere days apart.
For instance, in the “10 Ways” article quoted above, Mr Shayo worries that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices may be “baffling for young readers,” and he bemoans how the strip “doesn’t have any modern technology.” And yet we’re told – days later – that, “the lack of technological influence makes the strip read as a timeless work.” “It always feels that it’s something that could still happen today… the absence of technology is hardly notable.”
Likewise, Mr Shayo insists that “ending Calvin and Hobbes is exactly what saved it,” and praises the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, for refusing to license spin-offs, adaptations, and potentially lucrative merchandise, thereby “living up to the ideals that the strip… championed.” “Ending the strip,” we’re told, “was a good decision” and “there is no reason to tarnish that legacy by adding more to an already concluded work.”
While, one week earlier, “Calvin and Hobbes needs to be an animated show.” Because “an adaptation or continuation is essential.”
These, shall we say, inconsistencies, among many others, aren’t a result of some cunning AI spoof, some infinitely deep intelligence. This is just the standard of writing, and thinking, now deemed good enough.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Oh, look. Buttons. I wonder what they do.
Regarding pop-cultural staples being found problematic, this came to mind.
*bangs head on desk*
It’s a bit like complaining that Calvin doesn’t have siblings to distract him. As if this were an oversight, an error.
No, no, no! You’re supposed to bank Mr Shayo’s head on the desk!
It’s a great comic strip so of course the first thought is ‘how do I spoil it?’
Bang, not bank, dammit.
Just can’t win: If I comment before my morning coffee, I make typos. If I comment after, I call Jane an ignorant slut and get sent to the correction booth. [ Mutter, mutter, grumble, grumble. ]
Well, it’s the familiar arc of “How can I take something that lots of people remember fondly and make it out to be problematic? How much contrivance can I get away with? Because, again, absolutely everything must be judged – and found wanting – by the narrow standards of my own self-admiring in-group at this precise point in time.”
On the upside, it has reminded me of how I enjoyed reading the books, and laughing, over a weekend, despite having toothache at the time.
But this is how The Narrative works/gets established. He was just doing his job.
I feel a great need to introduce Lukas to ‘Andy Capp’ just to see his head explode!
I just remembered the storyline, unfolding over several weeks, about the injured baby raccoon, which Calvin finds but can’t save, despite his best efforts, and even with the help of his otherwise all-powerful mom. Calvin can conquer outer space, create snowmen armies, and, as a giant monster, level entire cities. But he can’t save the life of one very small baby raccoon.
Dammit. I think I made myself sad.
As a child, that’s where I learned what SOB meant. I did have to ask Dad, though. Mom was a little…While there was some continuity break after Smyth(?) died, it was still enjoyable for many years. Then they ruined that strip with Andy trying sobriety and other PC BS and it was never the same.
How about a real life Andy Capp?
To C&H specifically, I notice when those cartoons pop up in 80’s/90’s culture groups/discussions it often prompts big political fights starting from either (all?) side, so it’s not just this writer doing this. Though he does take it to an eggheaded extreme.
Probably too early for OT but before I lose the link, and as a palate cleanser, beach scenes.
Shayo and his ilk seem never to have read Aesop’s Fables.
He was just doing his job.
Yep.
We are supposed to believe that, despite his apparently never having set foot outside of NYC, an alleged adult whose life revolves around his living in the fantasy worlds of comic books and comic book derived TV and movies doesn’t actually see the fantasy in C&H (the comic strip, not the pure grain sugar from Hawaii).
As the alarmingly similar AI generated reply to Sixsmith shows, upchucking Teh Current Things™. It is easier and hurts less than thinking, I guess.
It’s a variant of the process described by @iowahawkblog:
Somewhere behind Shayo’s catty pansiness is likely the desire to seek approval from women. Such approval does not translate to being desired, however. For that one must buck the rules women would lay down upon us and embrace the spirit of the suicide sled:
https://twitter.com/Misericorde91/status/1769232688202830224
When I’m reading old Agatha Christie novels I’m baffled by the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices.
One of the things that I find…interesting…is as the Turing Test has become more and more relevant to current events what with AI, the less I see any references to it.
One Suspects poor Lukas Shayo doesn’t know any better: He knows what gets rewarded and types just that. He doesn’t get Calvin and Hobbes, since there’s no reward for doing so.
Or maybe he does get it, and it bothers him.
Out of curiosity, I did in fact ask LM Studio to give me an essay on “10 Ways in Which ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Has Aged Poorly”. Here are the ten points it highlighted, with my comments in brackets.
Heh. I’d have thought that part of the modern-day appeal of Agatha Christie novels is the absence of modernity, and of The Current Thing, which often seems to be shoehorned into just about everything else, whether relevant or not. Ditto The Crown, or Downton Abbey, or any number of other things. A couple of hours of relief from the trappings and political noises of the present day. A sort of holiday in time.
I’m now picturing Miss Marple with a smartphone.
LOL. *Critical Drinker voice* MODERN AUDIENCE.
presentism: The Brits introduced universal schooling into countries that lacked it over 100 years ago, India particularly. It is easy to complain that they did so in English and were otherwise sometimes brutal, but the impact of schooling is massive. Judging everything by whether the people in question were perfect by today’s standards (which change daily by the way) is nutty.
I’m more startled by the ready availability of lethal quantities of arsenic or strychnine at the local corner shop. “To keep down the wasps.”
But will the woke ever find rap/hiphop that calls women “hos” and uses the N word problematic? ahhahahaha no
Having them would have ruined Harry Potter.
Off Topic:
Jordan Peterson provides a brief, phlegmatic summary of the “World Professional Association for Transgender Health“
Likewise liquid nicotine for keeping down insect pests. Or a crate of dynamite for pesky tree stumps. Codeine for pesky coughs. Opium for pesky depression when Diana Villiers again refuses to marry you and instead runs off with another unsuitable man.
As I recall, the second series of that got more political. More so than the first series where the war and social norms exposed were more in the context of the WWI timeframe. The second go-round seemed to have pushed the modern narrative on those times a bit harder.
I was thinking about the confusion about the word ‘beaner’ being problematic, as was referenced here from an old post and commented on again. Myself and someone else had the same initial reaction in that we didn’t see it as a pejorative Hispanic reference but a pejorative reference to people from Boston. I would guess that people with SW US backgrounds would get it that way but those of us east and south of…BeanTown…would see it differently. Which reminded me of a term we used in south Florida in place of the (generally for the times) forbidden N-word that I don’t think I ever heard outside of south Florida. Curious if the term ‘spooley’ means anything to anyone else.
Also, I will deport myself to the correction booth post-haste. Whatever those words mean.
Not all poisons were readily available – Lizzie Borden wasn’t allowed to purchase Prussic acid.
Oh no, incoming! Again.
[ wipes blood from door to correction booth ]
Not like anyone would notice
Ah, simpler times.
[ Checks stockpile of deadly tinctures. ]
If only she’d known enough to synthesize her own from potassium cyanide and sulphuric acid – both on sale at her apothecary. Probably.
I wouldn’t count on that: Some of them are [shudder] sober.
How long until Britain outlaws axes? I believe urban American hardware stores already tend to keep them locked up, to avoid vibrantly enriching experiences.
LOL @ I09 – you just knew it was over when “With Leather” went woke 🙂
I honestly can’t tell if it *is* an AI parody.
Ah yes. Modern violence prevention.
Maybe Lukas was hatched as a prissy adult and never actually went through childhood. I grew up in that bad old era of mid-1950’s/60’s (graduated high school in 1972) and, even as a girl, had tons more unstructured freedom to be a kid than most today. Summertime was bouncing out of the house after breakfast and playing with the neighborhood kids without an adult anywhere in sight for hours (only rules were to be within mom’s shouting distance and never go into anyone’s home without telling her first). And since most of the kids on my block were boys I got a good glimpse into pre-pubescent boy thoughts because I played right along with them.
Lukas tut-tuts at Calvin’s “dark thoughts” and drawings? We regularly played “war” or cops-and-robbers or any other ‘violent’ based games (SoCal, so no snowball fights — we resorted to mud and dirt clods). Boys in my classroom regularly doodled in the margins all sorts of guns, tanks, war ships — stuff that might get a kid suspended or even expelled now.
My husband recalls he was allowed to range far beyond home on his bike as long as he was back before dinner time.
Someone needs to introduce Lukas to “free range kids”.
Something changed starting in the late 80s. Kids stopped playing their own made-up games and got corralled into adult-organized/supervised activities — and so booked up that ‘free play’ with the kids learning to solve their ‘I’m bored’ claims on their own was lost.
One measure of io9’s decline is this review of the grating, godawful, widely mocked Batwoman TV series, in which we’re told that its enormous list of shortcomings, including the severely limited range of its lead actress, are actually good things and very progressive. It’s “powerfully unique” and “vitally important.” And so, the headline informs us,
Ms Alex Cranz, the senior reviews editor and author of the piece, has learned to excuse a film or show’s farcical awfulness provided said film or show ticks enough progressive boxes. Because crass, ham-fisted politics, not quality or competence, is apparently what matters. And she’s quite upfront about it.
I’ve been noticing that: With all the organized extracurricular activities, there’s no actual free time. I gave the kids books for Christmas, and the novels aren’t going to get read until school’s out for the summer. They most they’ll have time for is an occasional short story or standalone bits of interesting things in books like The Annotated Hobbit. Seems like a definite loss.
Another New Yorker. Of course.
But it’s only splashed on the inside of the door.
Ms Cranz honed those skills at Jezebel, you know.
You didn’t notice the smears on the outside doorknob and drops on the floor? Clearly not an Instapundit Crime Scene Technician. Not that there’s anything criminal around here.
[ Sounds of shredding, flushing. ]
Hey! That was my Calvin and Hobbes!
“was known to the police” But not imprisoned, thanks to liberal policies.
Anybody want to place bets on how long his criminal record is?
Has anyone noticed the recent increase in extremely young victims?
Band name.
From that comment thread:
Many intellectuals seem to be far less interested in actual enjoyment than in rarefied, even coldly, intellectual games. That a work was enjoyable was far down on their priority lists. (And maybe even completely off the list, especially for the most snobbish ones.)
I fell down my own rabbit hole and found this:
Still laughing.
Time to dump on Snoopy next.
I mean, Sopwith Camel might be baffling for modern day, screen-staring juvies as well.
Lucy perpetuates misogyny. Pigpen “others” ablutophobics. Linus devalues childishness. And so on.
Getting sloppy in your work?
Don’t you mean ‘clumps of cells’?
2023 – Radical leftist Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky defiantly coaches his students on how to break the law in pursuit of their ideological objectives.
2024 – Radical leftist Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is deeply offended when his students illegally interrupt his dinner party in pursuit of their ideological objectives.
I’m gonna say this article under blast-review is actually a joke, a descendent of anti-humor classic “Professor Kennilworth [IIRC] Explains The Joke” that used to run in National Lampoon back in the late 70s’. But Kennilworth and C&H were funny, whereas this Shayo cat isn’t. Or his AI isn’t, anyway.
One of the victims in that Sydney AU stabbing attack is a nine month old baby.
I have seen other similar news reports in recent years.
The Biden White House issues a memo warning all you Yankees that the Constitution is a threat to the Government’s ability to keep you safe by secretly spying on you.
Your Congress agrees and votes to keep right on secretly spying on you. For your own good, of course.
I’m now picturing Miss Marple with a smartphone.
Text messages from Columbo.
Shot.
Chaser.
[ Angrily shakes comment box ]
Every time I wonder if this latest stupidity is finally the bottom of the “YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS” barrel, but no….
It just seems like a parody (six year old……sexists?) because it’s so clearly insane and yet this is a real article someone edited and published and everything.
I grew up in that bad old era of mid-1950’s/60’s (graduated high school in 1972) and, even as a girl, had tons more unstructured freedom to be a kid than most today.
I’m a little younger. I entered middle school in 1972 and graduated high school in 1978. But I have great memories of grade school up to 1972–both structured and unstructured.
Unstructured, we’d go down to the creek and fish suckers, turtles and crayfish out of the creek with our hands and feet. We’d go to the dead-end (where a neighbourhood road ended) and walk in to a wooded area where someone had dragged an old mattress. Our 10 and 11 year-old-selves would hide in the trees around the mattress hoping to catch some couple “doing it.” We’d dig shallow holes in the ground and cover them with sheets of plywood and old lumber from the garage (of course, we built the de rigueur trap door, stealing the hinges from one of dad’s carpentry projects.) My friend Wayne, whose father was a fireman, had a nasty habit of stuffing our underground forts with paper and lighting them on fire and then taking the long way around to his driveway and acting innocent when the fire was discovered.
Structured: in Grade 5, I partnered with my friend Jim (who was in Grade 6) to enter the Science Fair. We decided to build a bomb. I’m not kidding. And our teacher let us. We cut open a shot gun shell and extracted the gunpowder, packed it into a narrow plastic tube we procured from somewhere and created a friction based trigger that was supposed to ignite the gunpowder. It was actually from a confetti popper. Of course, the thing never worked. We tried it by tying the “bomb” to a tree at the dead-end and used a very long string to set off our device. The crazy thing is, our teacher encouraged us to do it and gave us a good mark for our results.
If I did the same things today I’d probably end up at Guantanamo. But it was a different world back then. I remember getting pulled over by the local police sergeant when I was 10 for the crime of double riding my brother on the handlebars of my bicycle. He lectured us for over 10 minutes and drove slowly along the road while I walked the bike and my brother home. Today, someone can steal your home and the police might not even show up.
Good times!
I suspect that AI was in fact involved, and that the author edited little of the result.
It’s another iteration of the princess and the pea: only True Royalty is perceptive and insightful enough to find the niggling pea under all those mattresses.
We all saw some high-profile stories about kids being snatched off the streets by pedos. When I was growing up, the only kids who were kidnapped were the super rich, and they were being held for ransom. We were in danger of falling in the creek or getting hit by a car or breaking a bone (which didn’t cost a fortune to get plastered), but those hazards a kid could either avoid or they could be dealt with.
No doubt there were instances of kids getting snatched by pedos prior to that, but child molestation was such a verboten topic that it didn’t make the papers.
And then it did. And then in the forefront of every parent’s mind was the possibility that their kid could be stalked and stolen by a pedo. Sure, we had the trope about the dirty old man in a white van with “Free Kandy” scrawled on it, but it was a joke. Pedos were passive actors. They were so obvious they were easily avoided.
I don’t know how you talk parents off that ledge, either. “It’s really rare” isn’t going to dissuade them, especially since we get occasional reports in the local news that a kid was almost snatched by a creep but managed to run away. (Maybe some of those stories are even true.)
Maybe if all pedos are swept from society and sent to the Mariana trench, but until then….
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WTF libturd. IT”S a cartoon, not real life. Who cares what calvin does to anything as long as it makes people laugh, that is the point.
Freed.
[ Slurps coffee.]
How can I take something that lots of people remember fondly and make it out to be problematic?
I think much of this is just a conscious effort to gin up outrage, which translates into more clicks and exposure.
Having them would have ruined Harry Potter
Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series started out set in the current year, but after the first few volumes Grafton consciously set the novels in the 1980s because the Internet and various civil databases makes detective work boring as hell.
I don’t know how you talk parents off that ledge, either. “It’s really rare” isn’t going to dissuade them
People are in general very bad at understanding probability, but people overestimate the likelihood of random events, and they especially overestimate the likelihood of scary random events.
I vaguely recall a study that demonstrated that the average American could not distinguish between odds of 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, and 1 in 1000000.
There’s a reason for that. Evolutionary reason. Societies that become complacent in the face of low probability events that are very similar to events that they see others experiencing, or have historical knowledge of having actually occurred, don’t last long. For some reason.
John D: “When I’m reading old Agatha Christie novels I’m baffled by the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices.“
When I rewatch old tv episodes of, say, ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ I’m always struck by how so many plots would not have worked in an age of cellphones.
Which suggests an unhappy line of work, an odd vocation. And a suboptimal payoff for an expensive education.
The first series I can think of to use having a mobile phone as a recurring feature of the drama is The X-Files.
Granted it is Wikipedia but I found this bit of tortuous writing in regards to Iran’s seizure of the MCS Aries rather…amusing.
Regarding the broader point of wokeness as corrosive to quality…
I was reminded of several YouTubers whose views on books, films, adaptations, etc., used to be worth the occasional peek, but who’ve since become faintly aggravating, and less insightful, because of a compulsion to signal their progressive politics. And so, a game of spot-and-denounce-the-racism/sexism/thing-we-now-disapprove-of routinely overshadows more interesting details and seems to inspire the greatest enthusiasm, if only for the one playing the game.
One reviewer of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos got bizarrely indignant about Wyndham’s use of the word Eskimo – in a science-fiction story written in 1957. Despite the fact that, among the general public, at least outside of Canada and Alaska, the term Inuit, among others, started to replace Eskimo decades after the book was written. But it seems that mere anachronism mustn’t inhibit the ostentatious tutting and wagging of fingers.
You’re conditioning them to expect the kind of regurgitated pablum that a text generator could produce on demand.
Speaking of which, an antediluvian actress regurgitates pablum.
Of course it is.
She left out transhomopedophilophobia, but we’ll assume she forgot in her excitement, but once again, no actual thought involved.
OTOH…
TBF, she should, seeing as how she and her ilk did create the crisis out of their warped imaginations and ideologies, but created it nonetheless.
Oh they’ll certainly show up to arrest you if you try to take it back.
Independently taking the law into your own hands is a threat to their authoritarianism. Thieves, on the other hand, are by definition already under their control. At least in principle. The same holds true for welfare supplicants.
The threat to totalitarian authority comes from an independent and assertive citizenry.
[ Angrily shakes comment box ]
Indeed, I see the capricious Spam-No-Mor (Ausf. G)™ was made in the People’s Code Monkey Zavod No.74 “Glory to FORTRAN” as was the rest of the Link-O-Mat family.
[ Zavod No.74 Henchlesbians burst into the room, one of them carrying a tractor transmission under her arm. ]
Without presentism they wouldn’t have enough to tut about.
Heh. Well, yes. Quite.
The reviewer’s indignation also made me wonder on whose behalf he was being so pretentiously indignant. Is there some vast readership of 1950s British science fiction novels among the Inuit, Iñupiat, Yupik, and Aleut? And if so, was that niche literary following already flourishing in 1957?
Seeing as how the Spam-No-More (Ausf. G)™ is having a hissy fit (probably because of an archive link) over a previous mostly relevant post, let us try to fool it with another not entirely relevant…
Mental illness or “depathologizing resistance? Only your shrink will know if it “Revolutionary Suicide” or not.
[ Pauses watching Thunderball to free Muldoon’s rogue comment. ]
[ Resumes watching Thunderball. ]
.
Heh. The way she slings those slippers in her hand and gives him that look. I watched it about a dozen times. Sigh…
I honestly thought it was a pretty good parody of the Ten-Problematic-Things-About-Something-Everyone-Loves genre, and said as much in Ben’s Substack comments. But apparently Lukas Shayo is definitely Woke, so not, alas, a Babylon-Bee-style takedown. Satire just isn’t possible any more.
Don’t say I never do anything for you.
To which the only sane response is ‘What’s this ‘we’ stuff, white woman?’.
I just noticed that after she drops the shoes, he does a little Adam’s Apple swallow.
Understandable, given the circumstances.