Jake

Idle Thumbs 153: Blondie, Freckles, and Glasses

Recommended Posts

The Cold War still isn't done as well as it should be in school. The professor with whom I work covers it reasonably well, but her colleague doesn't, because he assumes the students know all about it, even though none of them were alive at the same time as the USSR was around. I think the Cold War's only really beginning to be thought of as something distinct from our historical "now", which is part of what's giving us great new period films like Tinker, Tailor, so maybe I'm revising my initial statement to be that communism hasn't been digested that well either? There has to be a difference between two roughly similar ideologies of evil to account for their different places in our mental landscape, though. Maybe it is just that we fought a war with one and not the other? It can't be that simple, no.

Yeah I don't think it can, and with that I really can't think of anything else to add. I think we've hit the wall. (More accurately, the limits of my knowledge on the topic)

I don't know we'll ever be able to have any sort of satisfactory resolution until everyone who ever spoke to anyone who was there is dead

... Badass.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Dammit, that was poorly worded, wasn't it?

Very, but I know what you meant so it's cool. It was possibly the most intense description of the passing of time I've ever heard.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

ctually, I'm going to go further than that. No one really complained that you could play comical bear-wielding Soviets in the Red Alert series. No one really complained that you could play as Stalin, enslave millions of people, and then build the UN in Civilization IV. Both those things are awful and very much weaken the cultural sentiment surrounding the multiple Soviet genocides of the twentieth century, but they aren't Nazis, so... I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with this. Like I said, I think "cool" Nazis are an understandable but sometimes incongruous hot-button when games love so many other equally problematic historical aesthetics. Luftrausers seems an even odder place to draw the line when you have genocide-free Nazis shooting at Americans in Company of Heroes and then at Commies in Company of Heroes 2.

That's an interesting point regarding Civilization. You can play as Stalin, and while you usually can't commit genocide in the Civ series, you can choose if you want to play harshly and deceptively, or take a more diplomatic approach. People often cite how the Ghandi AI in Civ as ruthless and how amusing that is, so shouldn't you theoretically be able to play as Hitler and go for the purely diplomatic victory?

The answer, of course, is the reaction Luftrausers has gotten now, and that visceral physical feeling the excellent reader mail talked about this week. But purely intellectually, is there a moral objection to playing as diplomatic Hitler in Civ 6? 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Luftrausers debate is the big issue of the week. I wish I had something smart to contribute to the discussion, but I really just don't know how I feel about it.

 

I did want to chime in on the comments about obtuse indie game storytelling that in some ways acts as a cover for what really matters to the creators of the works. Either Chris or Sean brought up Kentucky Route Zero as a case of that. I think that is totally true in the case of the actual episodes, but I think that thematic elements of the game come forward in the interludes, particularly in "The Entertainment."

 

I'm not going to spoiler tag this since I'm just speaking in big thematic terms rather than any actual specifics about the plot. Anyway, throughout the first two acts of Kentucky Route Zero, there is a general sense of decay and post-industrial/post-agrarian abandonment. This lends the setting some of its wild and even magical elements. Since it is a forgotten landscape, it is a site for the unexpected. The problem is that the game never makes explicit why this place is forgotten and left behind.

 

"The Entertainment" does a better job of this. Without giving too much away, the interlude takes the form of a one act play that addresses issues of rural life in the early 21st century, debt, and banking corruption. It still does so in a weird metatextual form where the player controls a non-speaking character on stage and can look out at the audience and read their reactions to the play, but the thematic elements are way more explicit. I hope that some of this comes over into the main parts of the game later on, because that really does seem to be the more grounded story that the developers are interested in telling. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had played the interludes and if they felt like they did a better job of avoiding the too-vague style of the first two acts.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

At the time Germany was consistently producing incredible engineering work. Their weapons, equipment and vehicles were often steps ahead of anyone else. Even down to the smallest details like the jerrycan which were regularly stolen and used by the British troops. If we rejected every technological advance simply because it was created in the same country as Hitler we would be loosing an incredible amount. The Volkswagen Beetle was specifically designed in collaboration with Hitler but is clearly not associated with anti-semitism.

 

First off, I absolutely agree that it's wrong to associate all of Germany with Nazism. However, I do have one small point to bring up here: I think the Volkswagen is actually caught up in Nazism. A big aspect of Nazi propaganda was trading on the idea of the Volk - "the people" - who were ethnic, "regular" Germans (analogous to the "real Americans" who get brought up in American discourse today). The message of a lot of propaganda was that Jews and "gypsies" were the ones responsible for all the problems of the Volk and that the Volk were the true inheritors of German society. So I think it's tough to untangle the car from that, since it was marketed as the People's Car, with a specific notion of who "the People" were.*

 

Man, there are other, dumb things I want to say about other stuff from this episode, but this discussion is really good so I won't interrupt.

 

*Please somebody with better knowledge of WWII Germany correct me if I'm misrepresenting something here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Even down to the smallest details like the jerrycan which were regularly stolen and used by the British troops.

 

I just realized why they're called jerrycans. Neat. I knew they were of German origin but I never made that connection until now.

 

First off, I absolutely agree that it's wrong to associate all of Germany with Nazism. However, I do have one small point to bring up here: I think the Volkswagen is actually caught up in Nazism. A big aspect of Nazi propaganda was trading on the idea of the Volk - "the people" - who were ethnic, "regular" Germans (analogous to the "real Americans" who get brought up in American discourse today). The message of a lot of propaganda was that Jews and "gypsies" were the ones responsible for all the problems of the Volk and that the Volk were the true inheritors of German society. So I think it's tough to untangle the car from that, since it was marketed as the People's Car, with a specific notion of who "the People" were.*

 

Man, there are other, dumb things I want to say about other stuff from this episode, but this discussion is really good so I won't interrupt.

 

*Please somebody with better knowledge of WWII Germany correct me if I'm misrepresenting something here.

 

If I remember correctly, they were sold to members of the The National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazi Party) for a heavily discounted/subsidized price, so that they could have access to similar transportation as Americans. Those never actually got delivered due to the outbreak of World War II, and the car factories stopped making civilian models and started making military transports to support the war machine. No civilian production models were actually sold until after the war, when the factory was bought by a Brit. After the split of Germany, Volkswagen as a company apparently played a reasonably large role in getting West Germany back on it's feet, since almost all heavy industry had been demolished by the Allies. There was still heavy industry in East Germany, but East Germany was East Germany.

 

I don't think that makes it hard to untangle from Nazism. The autobahns were constructed under similar circumstances, and were something that Hitler apparently took great pride in, but I've never heard about those being caught up in Nazism. While they were created under the Third Reich, the majority of their existence, maintenance, reiteration, improvement, expansion, and so on, occurred after 1945. While the origin of things is not meaningless, I don't think a good thing being created under an oppressive regime should reflect poorly on the thing in question.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To what extent is the mechanical treatment, the lightness, the sore spot here? If I can trot out an old chestnut, there is a certain irony in pointing a finger at a game where you play what amounts to a genocidal maniac for casually evoking the imagery of genocide.

 

Unity of Command, Panzer General and countless other strategy games have positioned you as either the Wehrmacht or Stalin's forces. I've always felt a little uneasy about that aspect, because you're asked to perform the actual acts seemingly stripped of ideology, but I don't quite feel the same about Luftrausers. It's interesting to me that I'm more concerned about people experiencing the mechanical act rather than just trafficking in the symbolism, but I guess some people have the reverse issue. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Full admission of guilt, I haven't read the episode or caught up on the thread.

I think an important element that was missing from the Rausers discussion is time. Nobody cares if you appropriate Roman, Egyptian, Viking, Mongolian, etc imagery without unpacking the destructive or amoral nature of those societies. This is not to say that Naziism should be treated the same way today, but only that it inevitably will be. This might only happen when the society is so foreign and distant as to seem fantasy, but there is an argument to be made that that already is the case for Naziism. Outside of a few fanatics, Naziism seems to most(?) people an impossibility enabled only by the insanity of another time.

Which is to say, I don't think every creator will always be able to carry the sizeable baggage of all history. I err on the side of Naziism having passed into the realm of free appropriation, even as someone whose family came from Nazi occupied Poland. On the other hand, it's cool to e having the discussion. In the end though, the appropriation of imagery will be completed simply when the culture of creators distances itself enough, and I wonder how much any discussion will change that timing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the reason that I personally don't find the Luftrausers controversy interesting is because it seems to have less to do with a particular offensive thing in itself (and how the offensive thing is delivered) and more to do with who is offended. To expand on Jake's point on at what point is Luftrausers okay if they included Soviet, Japanese, or Americans I think there's nobody you can portray from that era whose hands are clean. All the nations in that era are guilty of being horrible monsters and murdering innocent people's families and that memory is still there today, it seems to have more to do with who they are and how they are perceived in popular culture as being good or bad. For example, I doubt any of us really gave much thought to the movie Memphis Belle other than it's a cool story about some WWII good guys' last mission but if you were the only surviving family member that lived through the bombing of Dresden you might have a completely different feeling about that movie, why is your feeling less valid than the guy whose family was in a concentration camp or Hiroshima? Is it okay that we respect one more than the other? And more than that I find it much less interesting for creators to limit themselves to only create stuff that is palatable to the public and won't raise eyebrows. Despite my love for his movies I think that's something Tarantino does and it's really boring to me to see another movie of his where society's good guys win and the bad guys are killed graphically. That's not to say that creators shouldn't think about these issues, but the idea that a story showing a Nazi as a hero is totally off limits because it will offend someone is boring to me. It's why a movie like Grave of the Fireflies or The Wind Rises is so infinitely more interesting to me over something like Memphis Belle, because it's something im not totally familiar with already. And I know those two movies are very intentionally avoiding the controversial stuff but at least it's from a point of view that hasn't been done to death.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's worth remembering that Vlambeer acknowledged the legitimacy of those concerned about the watering down of Nazi imagery. Watering down the imagery is kind of emblematic of forgetting the scale of the crimes entirely - there's plenty of people who quite rightly feel that what happened in Germany should be the last time we let this kind of thing happen (which is why I look at what's going on in Hungary, Turkey and Russia with creeping horror).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There is cultural value in Luftrausers borrowing from the Nazi aesthetic. We have pushed so hard into the direction that they are monsters that any comparison to them seems immediately absurd. Most crucially, this hurts the discourse of public policy. I tempted to use the reaction to Luftrausers as an example of why our perception of the Nazis have become so homogenized. Anything that remotely brings back their humanity is reviled and as a result, we are steadily lost our ability to detect or discuss Fascism in its milder forms. 

 

Sorry if this post seemed hyperbolic in tone and message.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Your robot Threes divergence into solving climate change mirrored very closely one of the short stories in Asimov's I, Robot. It basically involves a super-intelligent AI that humanity has put in charge of economic policy. In theory humanity should have zero concerns because of the Laws of Robotics built into these things, but they find some people are occasionally getting screwed by the AI decisions. Like you guys concluded, the AI is really just playing the long game for the greater good, which humans by nature, have a very hard time with (here is the wikipedia synopsis that probably does a better job than me if you care). That book in general is just a bunch of thought experiments on what a world with artificially intelligent robots would be like, so maybe worth checking out for those robot obsessed among us (with the disclaimer that I read it like 15 years ago as a teenager).

 

Also you forgot to mention that the noise the Threes robot makes when it moves is completely terrifying.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree with electricblue.  I was born and raised in the US, so I was given an education that focused on Western history.  However being of Chinese decent, I have a personal empathy with that side of history.  In China, there is still a very large degree of animosity toward Japan that stems from the events of the Pacific theatre of WWII.  Nazis aren't considered to be nearly as historically evil as Japan is.  Even the swastika isn't seen in the same light because it's use as a religious symbol long predates the Nazi adoption (granted the one associated in Asia with luck and prosperity is turned 90 degrees from the Nazi one).  In the culture of the Americas and Europe, the Nazis are the paragon of evil but if you look at it from another culture there are far worse things.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Personally I dislike the wholesale tarring of anything vaguely German as "Nazi". The National Socialist German Workers' Party was, as the name indicates, a political party. Just like having a republican president wouldn't instantly make every citizen a republican, not everything German was Nazi. Its easy to demonise the 'bad guys' but Germany is a country of millions of people. The GI's in media yelling about killing Nazi's are often wrong and are more likely fighting conscripted Germans.

 

Yeah, I cringed a lot during that discussion...

 

If Luftrausers actually had you playing as Hitler flying an experimental plane constructed from the bones of Jewish children then that would obviously push things into the realm of "bad taste", but I don't think that's what is bothering people here. There was a profound evil at the heart of Germany during the second world war. To some people (Americans in particular, maybe because of the distance) that forces them to believe that everybody involved was a monster. Life is never that simple though. There were Germans who did ingenious, brave, and heroic things. There were Germans who went out of their way to save innocent lives. Conversely, there were allied soldiers who committed war crimes.

 

If the game were to have an authentic historical setting in WW2 Germany then the protagonist would probably be a member of the SS (and so a Nazi party member) because I doubt he'd be trusted with an experimental super-plane otherwise. Even then, there are many possible motivations you might give for somebody joining the party, such as: being indoctrinated from childhood, wanting to protect your family, wanting to reclaim your family's homeland, etc. There is another potential game* out there (if someone had the guts to make it) that could address these issues and ask the question: "What would you do if you (and your friends and family) were on the wrong side, and would you even be able to tell?". I imagine the average playthrough would be pretty short though, as refusing to fight typically got you shot. Even surrendering to the "good guys" could get you killed.

 

For what it's worth, the game didn't get me thinking "hells yeah, Nazis!" though I do think they missed their stated aesthetic target. The main feeling I got was that of being the plucky underdog trying to stop an overwhelming enemy force. Same as FTL.

 

Also is it just me or are all of the colour themes except for the default one unplayable? Particularly the ones that make the background have a higher contrast than the enemy planes.

 

* Yeah I know Deus Ex kind of did this already but I'm talking about something that makes the game about those choices, rather than just a narrative conceit. I do think there was some of that stuff in the "Dark Side" story of the Old Republic MMORPG but I never played it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Luftrausers is an intensely aggressive and fatalistic game. It reads as the creation of someone who feels angry and frustrated and powerless. The fact that it was made at the same time Ridiculous Fishing got "fast follow'd" before it even came out isn't a coincidence (Vlambeer has said as much).

It's a game about a doomed man taking revenge on his tormentors. Every session of Luftrausers is about the protagonist getting killed gloriously. I don't think it's a stretch to say that there are potential problems with dressing that narrative with WW2-era German imagery.

I think it's fair to criticize Vlambeer's response as a bit of a "sorry you were offended" non-apology, even if you don't consider yourself wronged by them. We should maintain high standards for these situations specifically because we're all susceptible to finding ourselves stomping on the long toes of others, because we all have room to improve.

Being empathetic isn't about being born with the correct feelings and visceral reactions, it's about recognising and acknowledging the feelings in others that you don't necessarily share and learning to take them into consideration in the future. Because our own lack of empathy is often invisible to us, we have to rely on others to make us aware of it.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of people who aren't disgusted by the things we're disgusted by as monsters and people who are disgusted by things we're not as overly sensitive or irrational or dishonest. It makes insensitivity the quality of a villain instead of a human so that when you find yourself on the wrong side of the disgust gap, we want to deny it or minimize it or double down to protect our self image. The non-apology as a thing is the manifestation this self preservation in action.

The takeaway of all this, for me, is that we are often taken by surprise by our own insensitivity, and that the only thing we can do is acknowledge it and learn to do better.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A couple things worth noting:

  • Nazism isn't a thing that happened, it's a thing that still exists. White supremacy and neo-nazism are movements that still exist.
  • Holocaust denial is a destructive movement that still exists.
  • The refined aesthetics of nazism are no small part of it's appeal to youth.
  • The sub-genre "hate rock" capitalizes on hard rock's long-time fascination with images of nazism and fascism to recruit young people into white supremacy movements.

So this isn't about how we talk about or represent a thing that happened 70 years ago. The aesthetics of nazism are still politicized today.

 

Is this to say that anything to come out of WW2 Germany should be banished from the collective consciousness? Of course not. But it should be done with thought. Even well-meaning use of this imagery can have an adverse effect on an audience. In the 90's groups like KMFDM and Marilyn Manson heavily utilized fascist imagery as a satirical attack on oppressive mainstream cultures (Marilyn Manson aiming at Christianity, KMFDM in a more generally liberal anti-war, anti-censorship way). But that imagery can still be problematic if the message isn't clear. Which it sounds like it isn't in this game (again, another asshole who hasn't played it).

 

Hate crimes are a real problem. Holocaust denial is a real problem. Obviously playing Luftrausers won't make someone become a nazi. But, the same way jokes minimizing rape can contribute to rape culture, separating nazism's "sweet aesthetic" from the horror of it can be erosive. 

 

 

I think a good example of thoughtful portrayal of nazism and WW2 as the protagonists in mainstream entertainment would be Das Boot. It's about a German U-Boat stuck behind enemy lines trying to get back home. It's a thriller and most of the entertainment comes from these sailors struggle to survive against all odds, under harsh conditions, narrowly evading and defeating British destroyers. It's not long before you're rooting for them. So why is this not horrible? 

 

  1. The movie goes to great lengths to show these men are apolitical. They were sailors before Hitler rose to power. Just blue-collar men doing a job. 
  2. It shows that they actually despise nazism. It opens with the captain giving a speech that is subtly anti-nazi, and later in the film they refuse to heil Hitler.
  3. **SPOILER** At the end of the film, after 3 hours of harrowing drama, they finally arrive back to occupied France and are greeted as heroes. Then the Allies bomb the port, and most the crew are killed.

The film is first-class entertainment, but it also has a point about the real working-class people who get caught in the crossfire of world struggles. But as much as you empathize with them, and rooted for them to succeed, they were still officers in the German navy during WW2. The ending throws that into sharp relief. It makes the audience question the way they've been manipulated throughout the film. It's humanizing but still critical. It's thoughtful, which is what any work that involves or evokes Nazis as anything other than unequivocal evil-doers has to be, especially if it's going to be mainstream entertainment.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The takeaway of all this, for me, is that we are often taken by surprise by our own insensitivity, and that the only thing we can do is acknowledge it and learn to do better.

 

I often struggle with this kind of thing. The answer of course isn't to ignore those we've offended, nor is it to bend to every outcry. Doing the former will do nothing to improve the state of the world, but the latter could lead to homogenized works too tepid to offend but too bland to inspire. How do we strike a balance  between the extremes? How do we determine a valid criticism from an invalid one. Is there some mathematically determinable threshold for outrage? This isn't specifically about Vlambeer of course. This is true of all creative works.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think an artist should feel free to touch on contentious issues, but they should do so in an informed way and with a specific goal in mind. I don't think the issue is this imagery being used, so much as it is this imagery being used thoughtlessly as window dressing. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I often struggle with this kind of thing. The answer of course isn't to ignore those we've offended, nor is it to bend to every outcry. Doing the former will do nothing to improve the state of the world, but the latter could lead to homogenized works too tepid to offend but too bland to inspire. How do we strike a balance  between the extremes? How do we determine a valid criticism from an invalid one. Is there some mathematically determinable threshold for outrage? This isn't specifically about Vlambeer of course. This is true of all creative works.

 

Broadly, you should look at who holds the power. Is the work speaking truth to power? Is the person most likely to be offended by this rich, old, white, male, straight, cis-gendered, etc. Or is it a marginalized person?

 

But it's all subjective. Which is fine. Free speech should work both ways. People should be free to create work has the potential to be regressive, ignorant, nasty and offensive. And people should be free to call out such things when they see it. And when those two groups of people butt heads, ideally both should show empathy for each other.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 think a good example of thoughtful portrayal of nazism and WW2 as the protagonists in mainstream entertainment would be Das Boot. It's about a German U-Boat stuck behind enemy lines trying to get back home. It's a thriller and most of the entertainment comes from these sailors struggle to survive against all odds, under harsh conditions, narrowly evading and defeating British destroyers. It's not long before you're rooting for them. So why is this not horrible? 

 

  1. The movie goes to great lengths to show these men are apolitical. They were sailors before Hitler rose to power. Just blue-collar men doing a job. 
  2. It shows that they actually despise nazism. It opens with the captain giving a speech that is subtly anti-nazi, and later in the film they refuse to heil Hitler.
  3. **SPOILER** At the end of the film, after 3 hours of harrowing drama, they finally arrive back to occupied France and are greeted as heroes. Then the Allies bomb the port, and most the crew are killed.

The film is first-class entertainment, but it also has a point about the real working-class people who get caught in the crossfire of world struggles. But as much as you empathize with them, and rooted for them to succeed, they were still officers in the German navy during WW2. The ending throws that into sharp relief. It makes the audience question the way they've been manipulated throughout the film. It's humanizing but still critical. It's thoughtful, which is what any work that involves or evokes Nazis as anything other than unequivocal evil-doers has to be, especially if it's going to be mainstream entertainment.

 

 

It is an incredible movie for all the reasons you mentioned but If they were political nazis and were awful jew-hating people but still went through the same harrowing drama and met the same ending I don't think that automatically means the film's message is that these were role models were should aspire to be like. I wish we could be grown up enough to acknowledge that people can be awful but they are still human beings and that can go through harrowing ordeals and grow as characters even if they start the film as the worst people in history. I wish I could watch a film that had the balls to take that on, even if ultimately it falls short I think it would be way more interesting for the attempt. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Broadly, you should look at who holds the power. Is the work speaking truth to power? Is the person most likely to be offended by this rich, old, white, male, straight, cis-gendered, etc. Or is it a marginalized person?

 

Assuming that's a list joined by "AND" rather than "OR" (and I'm a bit puzzled by the word "old" in there) then I look forward to your bright future of "punch Donald Trump in the face" games. =P

 

The general problem I have (so this is not a slam on you or anything) with that sort of singular and ideologically-motivated critical lens is that you are limiting the scope of what you can address. If you interpret everything in terms of power-oppression axes between different subgroups then you can never break out of that to ask questions about "the human condition". Neither can you get down to level of individual personalities.

Edited by AlexB

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm a terrible person for doing this and just ignoring the Nazism discussion occurring in this thread. But does anyone else (specifically British Thumbs) think of Slade's Christmas classic Merry Christmas Everbody when the new "Videeoooo gaaammmess" interlude comes on? I'm sorry to keep harping on about interludes in these threads. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It is an incredible movie for all the reasons you mentioned but If they were political nazis and were awful jew-hating people but still went through the same harrowing drama and met the same ending I don't think that automatically means the film's message is that these were role models were should aspire to be like. I wish we could be grown up enough to acknowledge that people can be awful but they are still human beings and that can go through harrowing ordeals and grow as characters even if they start the film as the worst people in history. I wish I could watch a film that had the balls to take that on, even if ultimately it falls short I think it would be way more interesting for the attempt.

 

Interesting it would be, but I don't think Das Boot would work if it's sailors were political nazis. It's just too strong a choice, it'd overwhelm all other aspects. The reason I bring up Das Boot in the first place is that it's pleasures are primarily visceral, not intellectual. Like an arcadey video game like Luftrausers, it's totally mainstream entertainment. It just takes the extra effort to give the traditional adventure story a thoughtful context. 

 

Another example might be Starship Troopers. Paul Verhoeven drew heavily on Nazi and other fascist imagery for the aesthetics of The Federation. But that film's primary function is to satirize war propaganda (particularly WW2 era Hollywood films), and the way it dehumanizes enemy troops. So it's a fitting, thoughtful appropriation.

 

 

But we're talking about narrative films and I think that it's probably a lot trickier in games.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Assuming that's a list joined by "AND" rather than "OR" (and I'm a bit puzzled by the word "old" in there) then I look forward to your bright future of "punch Donald Trump in the face" games. =P

 

The general problem I have (so this is not a slam on you or anything) with that sort of singular and ideologically-motivated critical lens is that you are limiting the scope of what you can address. If you interpret everything in terms of power-oppression axes between different subgroups then you can never break out of that to ask questions about "the human condition". Neither can you get down to level of individual personalities.

 

The "or" was distinguishing between the list of groups that are not marginalized and marginalized. The inclusion of "old" is probably problematic, I admit. I was thinking in terms of "old-fashioned morality", to which works that are sex-positive or contain vulgar language might be offensive.

 

And I don't think I was advocating power-oppression as THE singular critical lens to apply to all work, just a broadly useful way to determine what offended parties should be given the most credence.

 

 

And punch Donald Trump in the face is already a game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now