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.
Doubtless those psychiatrists will also praise “revolutionary throat-cutting” and “revolutionary suicide bombing”.
I think the West has had more than enough “cultural enrichment”.
How many people would actually read that drivel? There are millions of Calvin and Hobbs fans around the world. I doubt a thousandths of a percent would find and read the article.
From the article “The actress blamed the climate issue on a ‘manifestation of racism, misogyny and patriarchy’”
Which is to say that by “we” she means all those rough, hairy, fossil-fuel-abusing men who come around to install her plumbing, lay her driveway, or chauffeur her to the airport so she can self-promote in some distant corner of the world.
Not entirely unrelated.
Monty Python did it better.
“The actress blamed the climate issue on a ‘manifestation of racism, misogyny and patriarchy’”
So often, “actor” and “actress” are euphemisms for “silly bint”.
From that comment thread:
Wasn’t there a South Park episode which involved idiots sniffing their own farts the way wine connoisseurs sniff wine?
Off topic (well, off this topic) and back to the seemingly vexed question of hot-dog toppings. Take a tip from the British, whose cuisine is remarked upon world wide – use baked beans.
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.
I don’t know; aside from mundane slasher flicks, “OMG no signal” is a standard trope in supernatural horror films. Which isn’t as hacky as it sounds; the point of a horror film is to be discomforting, and taking away something normally reliable that grants agency, communication, and security is a stock trope. The car won’t start; the phone lines are down; the power goes off.
Also, rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets a lot more fun when you realize that Buffy is Marti Noxon and whatever vampire she’s f*cking at the time is Joss Whedon.
At this point I started sharing my cat’s tranquilizers to try to make sense of it all.
Better to administer them to Mr Shayo.
Take a tip from the British, whose cuisine is remarked upon world wide – use baked beans.
Remarked upon, usually not favorably, but please, Beanee Weenees have been around forever.
Climate change at it again.
From this article if you wish to peruse further. I think they are laying it on thick. FMD
Oddly enough, I happened to read the perfect rebuttal to this nonsense a week or so ago.
It was a blog post from a woman who has three children under ten. She has two daughters, and one son, and she was lamenting the ludicrous lengths that she and her husband must take to protect them from pedophile-friendly school teachers.
Apparently teachers seem to not only think that things like bestiality and graphic sex are perfectly suitable topics for 1st to 4th graders, and should be mandatory are topics, they are also horrified by “problematic” and “unsuitable” books like Huckleberry Finn, and The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.
The woman said that the problem for her daughters was that they were being flooded by a nonstop stream of child molester friendly content. In contrast, her son was starved for things to read, because nothing produced in the past 25 years is of the slightest interest to him, and/or is completely unsuitable.
The only thing that they’ve found that he likes, and can relate to, is, in fact, Calvin and Hobbes. Who would have thought that a seven year old boy would be interested in a comic strip about a… six year old boy? He even asked for a pet tiger (which they happily got for him) after reading it.
Naturally, a child happily finding a series that amuses him, that he can relate to, and which he delights in reading is offensive to modern scolds.
The sad thing is that C&H is, at 25+ years old, the most recent thing that they could even find that was aimed at boys under 10 years of age that wasn’t either sexually explicit, political, or both.
The Ministry of Silly Walks actually exists.
I’m sure that Kanook readers will be excited to learn that the Divisional Court of Ontaria has now ruled that your tax dollars must be used to pay for the surgical addition of a vagina between a resident they-them’s penis and his anus. Through your “health” service.
Apparently this procedure can only be carried out at your great expense in Texas. Which, for those of us who pay little attention to the insanity on your side of the pond, is not in fact in Canada.
Socialised medicine at its finest!
I knew it. I fucking knew it.
Apparently this procedure can only be carried out at your great expense in Texas.
TBF, there are other places, but it is unclear if you get your choice if it is on the government’s
dimeloonie.I guess if you have both parts that could be considered autonomy, but I’m not sure about how dignified that might be.
More cultural enrichment.
My autonomy and dignity are reduced by being forced to pay for others’ free shit.
The meanings of “dignity” and “autonomy” have been creatively expanded beyond all recognition. Presumably by an infusion of gaseous “emanations” and “penumbras”.
This is what happens when judges cease to respect the actual text of the law. Recall that the Soviet Union reportedly had (on paper) a fine constitution, but it was always interpreted by corrupt judges.
Socialised medicine at its finest!
Hear! Hear!
Also a very selective interpretation of the charter of rights. The same week a man received a visit from the authorities for saying bad things on line about the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history
If you are ever not sure which side is right and which is wrong, always look for the nihilism. Those are the bad guys.
It is interesting to note that Shayo is literally a mutant. Take a look at his photo. His right eye and brow are set noticably lower than the left. His jaw is twisted to the right. He’s an incredibly creepy mutant. And spiteful, one might say. We have to take our country back from these monsters.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Every single… well, you know.
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 advancing entirely contradictory ideas, 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 expected.
[ Post updated. ]
That was forensic (and definitely “grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way”).
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I don’t know what y’all’s problem is. The poor chap was only trying to access his welfare funds, which as you know is his human right as a legitimate seeker of sylums.
Did Ohio’ns think that these migrants were free or something? New York pays $10,000 for each of theirs.
Thank you, that’s very kind. Though I think it’s more that some people just seem to have a very high tolerance of dissonance and internal contradiction. They seem to lack even a dull inkling that what they said earlier, sometimes moments earlier, doesn’t quite sit with whatever emphatic position is currently being mouthed. Progressives in particular seem prone to this.
The tinkling of the tip jar is the sweetest noise. Bless you, sir. May your feet be free of toe lint.
[ Slides tip jar to more prominent position. Adds glue, glitter. ]
Ohionuns are going to have to up their game. We Britons pay extra for our migrants. Which is why we get to choose the cream of the crop.
? Huh?
In other media news, NPR’s new CEO is, well, pretty much what you’d expect.
As I said in reply, neuroticism with lecture notes.
She badly needs to get mugged by members of her favorite “victim” groups.
It may be unkind to wish it, but it doesn’t seem entirely unfair.
Band name.
As to that, you can read a sad trombone NPR retrospective over at the Free Press from someone who, inexplicably, still works there.
He opines: “A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand.“
Which seems an odd attitude from a “journalist”. But hey – we live in contradictory times.
On the bonus side – I did not know that Professor Flappr had a website. Duly noted – thanks!
Got to be cruel to be kind. Sometimes it takes a sock in the face to fix an attitude. Although in the case of an NPR executive stronger medicine might be needed.
I am, I gather, featured there regularly.
And why bloody not?
It may help explain the exquisite neuroticism of Mr Resnikoff, mentioned upthread.
And of course many others.
Would these keep NPR executives out of my home?
He can’t help the way he’s made but it does look like the concerned head tilt is built in.
Just wanted to pass along the news that you must update your pronouns when speaking of Luc / Lucy Sante.
Pity. I loved his book “Evidence.”
It would just give her an opportunity to expound on the ‘victimhood’ of her attackers and her ‘guilt’ for their ‘trauma’.
That’s witches. With a w.
“Her transition had been catalyzed by an interaction with artificial intelligence.”
When delusions collide.
I’m still processing the phrase “the transition into womanhood,” as if this were somehow a thing a man can do.
One might, I suppose, transition into an approximation of womanhood, a weird facsimile, provided you squint and tilt your head, and provided you don’t pull at any number of threads. But it’s the way this description of what would be an uncanny and miraculous event is mouthed as if it were a physical fact, a commonplace reality, at least among Our Betters.
As if mouthing the words somehow made it true.
via Wiki…
…
Only a journalist would consider such a person a “leader in tech”.
Indeed. It has been heavily suggested that she is a CIA plant:
‘There is no way she is not working for the Feds on narrative control and combatting “disinformation”‘
That describes pretty much all of the orthodox media and most of those running social media.
There is a lot of that on the Left. Such as insisting that raising the min wage helps the poor (just ask restaurant workers being laid off in CA if that worked for them). Or mouthing “me too” a few years ago. Or posting “bring back our girls” on facebook when schoolgirls were abducted in Africa. Or declaring “the border is secure”…though that probably falls under “the big lie” category.
Remember that scene in I, Claudius where Caligula announces “I have become a god”?
It feels as if we are living inside a Monty Python movie. And not in a good way.
It certainly is one of their characteristic disfunctions – it’s a nauseating blend of believing that saying a thing, like a magical incantation, will make it so, coupled with the preening self-regard that speaking caring phrases or pretending to care is the same as actually caring.
It manifests in many different ways – from the implementation of “caring” social policies without any regard for their actual effects, to passing “caring” green policies without being constrained by their practicality.
The only thing that’s not clear to me is why this has become such a characteristic of the left particularly. I usually associate leftists’ pathologies with their childish utopianism, but I’m not so clear about the connection in this case.
Their constructivist world view does seem to originate in post-modernist philosophy generally so perhaps it’s just a result of their ideological phylogeny?
In some ways, the dynamic is remarkably similar.
Now searching – vainly, it seems – for the clip.
Here is the clip.
Heh. That’s a good one. Though I was thinking more of the scene in which Caligula asks Claudius if he’s noticed anything different about him. Or words to that effect.
I’m now considering whether to watch the entire series again. Heh.
Retail scenes.
Footnote of note.
Each example you cite increases the power of the government and reduces the autonomy of the individual.
The ‘caring’ is the rationale, the aggrandisement the reason.
However the Emperor doesn’t want to make too much of it He doesn’t want any fuss or public announcements. He wants us all to behave normally.
If only the modern versions were so reticent.
A persistent pattern: Utter lack of interest in solutions which do not facilitate that aggrandizement. Unshakable love of solutions which do, even when they solve nothing and even make things worse.
Should have installed diving boards.
It is interesting to note that Shayo is literally a mutant. Take a look at his photo.
A face only a mother could punch. Or something like that…
Or, as Dennis Prager has opined: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”
April 15 — tax day, and (of course) here comes the usual suspects to not just say we aren’t taxed enough but to morally badger that taking legal deductions is wrong. You see, ALL income and wealth really belongs to our Betters in government.
A sociologist at a university. Of course.
Another example: Woman stabs good Samaritan, is let out on bail, then randomly stabs woman and 1 year old boy.
Mentally ill: the stabber.
Morally ill: the “turn em loose” judges and prosecutors and activists.
As on commenter says, FA in FL and FO. FAIFLAFO?
Taking legal tax deductions is wrong…
More CogDis. Does the prof really not believe in the wisdom of the governmental social engineering behind those deductions?
Gov power is Good! Necessary to control the base, ignorant urges of the lumpenproletariat.
Except when I disagree with the goal or the beneficiary. Then, It’s Bad and must be Opposed! Especially if there’s a chance it might crack my rice bowl.
A sociologist at a university. Of course.
You misspelled “communist” as “sociologist”, though that is a distinction without a difference.
I gave it a shot but had to quit after 10 minutes, because:
But oh, there unfolds such palace intrigue.
Agreed. The field has been corrupt for generations.
David,
I believe it is known as trannysubstantiation.
Do give it a chance if you have any interest in the history of the Roman Empire. We started watching it last night*. I could tell my wife was a bit…ummm…quiet about it so early on…about 10 minutes in…I stopped it and gave a brief explanation of the players/context. My memory on the specifics was not very good so it did me well to check a few things on Wiki (Octavius==Caesar Augustus, btw) in the process. By the end of the first episode she was very interested and looking forward to the rest of the series. As for the palace intrigue, while that is a big part of the story, it gets more interesting as the men start questioning each other’s motives without saying things out loud. It also helps to have a lineage of the main players handy. A lot of cross-marriages, adoptions, etc. mix things up a bit. And the names can get a little Russian-novelish iykwim.
*After a few previous attempts over the years, I found it on Acorn TV
Also, Livia has to be near the top of any list of watchable and quotable villains.
“By the way, don’t touch the figs.”
Oh, we need to get that into the common parlance.
[ Starts remembering great Livia lines of dialogue. ]
Wife has reservations about Livia’s hairstyle. The mini curly cues…
Just remember, should you displease your Beloved Other, be very careful come meal times.
The ambient noise tho