Separating Art From Artist

[Tinuviel]

@Pandora

[Ghost]

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

Choosing to officially affiliate with a particular party is mind-boggling to me. But then again so is 'deciding not to vote.'

Yeah. But that's our Stateside infancy in creating good government and elections.

You can register "Independent", but if you want to participate in the Primaries most states require you to be a member of the party running the primaries (think: Democrat-only election votes to help whittle down which of the 22 Democrats who are going up against Trump) or else you cant vote in the primaries at all.

[Tinuviel]

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

Choosing to officially affiliate with a particular party is mind-boggling to me. But then again so is 'deciding not to vote.'

Yeah. But that's our Stateside infancy in creating good government and elections.

You can register "Independent", but if you want to participate in the Primaries most states require you to be a member of the party running the primaries (think: Democrat-only election votes to help whittle down which of the 22 Democrats who are going up against Trump) or else you cant vote in the primaries at all.

Yeah, primaries are another weird thing to me - when compared to the Westminster system. Not that I'm saying bad or good, just weird.

[Pandora]

This is a strange derail, guys. But since we're here, let me just add this real quick: I live in England now, and just before this recent vote, I got the most CHARMING mailer, on glossy paper with bold colors and bold all-caps print advising me that if I was considering voting lib-dem, just DON'T, because every election they say they're close, and they never are, so ffs don't split the vote and just VOTE LABOUR unless you like losing to the Tories so goddamn ALWAYS. Obviously the language is hyperbole, but that's basically what it said, with helpful charts and graphs that showed how terribly the liberal democrats always lose after lying and saying they're polling well.

I can't vote here as a non-citizen, but it tickled me to death; American mailers are much less abrasive, usually.

[Tinuviel]

@Pandora said in Separating Art From Artist:

This is a strange derail, guys.

Eh, it's not really a derail. The main discussion is over, really. At least anything useful has been beaten out of it with sticks, then we rolled around in the entrails for a bit, and now we're sitting down talking about political things without actually talking about politics.

[Pandora]

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

anything useful has been beaten out of it with sticks

True, but historically, when has that stopped a conversation on MSB, ever.

[Tinuviel]

@Pandora said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

anything useful has been beaten out of it with sticks

True, but historically, when has that stopped a conversation on MSB, ever.

Give it about an hour until someone scrolls through and starts replying before reading through to the end of the thread.

[Pandora]

@Tinuviel I'm going to bed, PM me if I get more upvotes than you and/or OP, that's all I really care about obviously.

[Tinuviel]

@Pandora I feel dirty being upvoted in this thread, honestly.

[Ghost]

So is Mark Twain in the same category as HP Lovecraft?

[Auspice]

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

Choosing to officially affiliate with a particular party is mind-boggling to me. But then again so is 'deciding not to vote.'

Unfortunately, in many states, you are required to do so. And as someone who prefers to weigh all options, I fucking hate when Republican/Democrat are the only two options.

(It also opens you up to getting calls from politicians so it's almost worth it on major election years to swap affiliations. 'Oh the Republicans are the incumbent party this year? Time to be one for an election cycle so I don't get a shit ton of campaign calls and emails.')

[Pandora]

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Pandora I feel dirty being upvoted in this thread, honestly.

Conceding defeat is still LOSING, loser.

[Kestrel]

@GreenFlashlight said in Separating Art From Artist:

Oh, and as a random aside because I only just figured out why this has been bothering me: you ever notice how "Oh, he's just a product of his time, you can't blame him for his beliefs" only ever applies to white people? Black people in the 1930s were not confused about whether they were subhuman, nor were Jewish people. It's not the time an artist is a product of; it's a culture, and the culture is not a monolith.

I wonder if that's why people say "a product of his time." It feels like a deliberate attempt to uphold the power structures that existed and still exist.

I think "product of his time" is a valid point but it depends on the context.

I felt annoyed by the notion that Lovecraft was a product of his time, because he just wasn't. He was so much worse. In his case it's not so much that it's not an excuse, it's also untrue, and I feel calling him that serves to minimise his racism. It's the kind of thing that happens a lot these days when people talk about other events that took place during that exact same era, which he endorsed. And I have a personal axe to grind with that.

But then, what about Tolkien? Was he a misogynist? There aren't a lot of female characters in his books, and most of them are all described in the same dreary, ornamental way, willowy figures with long blonde/black hair (I guess he didn't like redheads or brunettes) who prance about looking pretty. Diehard fans even get annoyed when new female roles are created in his works' adaptations (Tauriel), or when existing female roles are expanded (Arwen).

But I think it is fair to say that he was a product of his time, because women really didn't exist in combat roles back then, were almost never educated, and his experiences were shaped by war/academia. This is different from how Lovecraft lived in a progressively multicultural world and had a bone to pick with it. Wildly different.

Tolkien also furthered antisemitic tropes through his gold-grubbing dwarves, but I'm personally able to forgive him for that because I don't believe his intentions were sincerely malicious. I don't speak for all Jews, obviously, but I also don't actually know any who dislike Tolkien on grounds of antisemitism, and I grew up in Israel, where his books are wildly popular, and his books had my family's and all my friends' families' stamps of approval. YMMV. I arrived at my conclusion about his intentions based on reading letters he wrote to people about Jews and his dwarves, and it seems to me he meant to honour a people he respected, albeit poorly understood and had scarcely met; he just did it in a way that was very clumsy. But there is a difference between ignorance and wilful ignorance. For my part, I do value intent.

Lovecraft's letters detailing his intense hatred of the Jews paint a very, very different picture.

[Tinuviel]

@Pandora Hey, I said I felt dirty. Not that I wouldn't take it.

[surreality]

It's mostly a case of 'just about anybody can have stuff dug up about them here'. People can get invasive about someone's views and more is on display than might be imagined. You don't need to be posting racist screeds all over the internet for there to be something people find objectionable to be available info about you, and get you 'canceled'.

[Auspice]

btw reading that article:

*That’s precisely the kind of reaction Mikey Dickerson envisioned for VoteWithMe, an app drawing on public voting records to show whether friends and family in your contact list are participating in America’s democracy. *

yikesyikesyikesyikes

look, I don't approve when people don't vote, but I don't shame them either.

There's a cycle I didn't vote in because I had moved before the cut-off, had to do an absentee, and it arrived over a month after the election. I don't need someone up in my face all WHY DIDN'T YOU VOTE IN 2004?!?!?!?!

[Tinuviel]

@Auspice The easiest way to make more people vote is to ease accessibility to voting.

[Auspice]

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Auspice The easiest way to make more people vote is to ease accessibility to voting.

For truth.
I loved Washington's method: 'we're gonna mail your ballot and a booklet of all your options to you, you get 2 weeks to fill it out and drop it in a mailbox'

In TX, they've massively expanded the 'early voting' options so that you have plenty of time to sort out your schedule (jobs aren't the only thing that can get in the way for people, after all) and transportation.

States are getting there, but I wish everyone would use WA's method.

[Tinuviel]

@Auspice Assuming the nation, or the states/counties/whatever, has the infrastructure for everyone's vote to actually be counted.

[Pandora]

Election day should be a federal holiday and the fact that it isn't smacks of a contempt for the right to vote for the poorer working class who have less control over their work schedules.