"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[Angst]

Whatever labels are used for us, at least make them polite, non-condescending, and if we object to what you are using, have the courtesy to ask us what we would prefer.

For instance, I don't see any sense in referring to a disabled person as "differently-abled." My inability to do certain things does not translate to a different ability.

Not to get too off topic but I empathize with this position. I have a mental illness and some people try to frame it as a strength, and sometimes even try to weaponize my disorder as a force against capitalism. While I do have my irks with capitalism and understand the attempts as empathy, and while it does sometimes help being "off" when writing poetry, this particular framing of what I have always bothers me. I have a disease. That it's in the brain doesn't counteract this.

 

[João III]

And if I did that and still thought the joke was in poor taste, contributing to racist stereotypes, and pretty much pointless in the greater plot of the movie?

If you take the time to actually watch the film, then I hope you'd understand that the scene is making fun of the racist for being racist but a lot of people can't seem differentiate depiction and endorsement. If I watch Starship Troopers and walk away thinking it's endorsing fascism, that's not Paul Verhoeven's fault

I don't think you'd accept anyone's criticism of this movie (in particular), and I get it. You like the movie. But somebody criticising a thing you like isn't the same as criticising you, unless you decide to die on the hill of "racism is fine, actually". I doubt that's the case.

I don't mind criticising the film, or any other for that matter, but doing so based on poor media literacy is misguided at best and asinine at worst

 

[Gorbles]

If you take the time to actually watch the film, then I hope you'd understand that the scene is making fun of the racist for being racist but a lot of people can't seem differentiate depiction and endorsement. If I watch Starship Troopers and walk away thinking it's endorsing fascism, that's not Paul Verhoeven's fault

Again, we're looping back to "it's not endorsement". It doesn't look like anyone called it endorsement, and I'm open to corrections (and indeed have already asked once).

Regardless of the intent, regardless of how clever the director thinks they're being, my earlier repeated point stands. Racism (among other things) is a very tricky thing to portray well, and any choices willingly made by the director are entirely open to criticism. To ignore the criticism just because some of the critics suggest that the work doesn't then deserve some award or accolade is also a choice, and arguably a poor one. It reminds me of the "you sound mad" kind of counterargument, where the points made (valid or otherwise) are dismissed because of how the person is sounding.

It comes up a lot when discussing "woke" subjects, because the power dynamic normally involves a marginalised demographic. People being harmed by the inequality of this dynamic are going to feel more angry than someone who isn't affected, and for whom the entire discussion is academic.

I don't mind criticising the film, or any other for that matter, but doing so based on poor media literacy is misguided at best and asinine at worst

Someone arriving at a different decision to you doesn't mean they have poor media literacy. You're doing the thing again where your opinion is apparently the correct and factual interpretation of the film.

 

[Joij21]

ethics and psychology are disciplines in their own right and have very little to do with most of these other fields (ethic has more in common with philosophy or certain fields of theoretical law than with any of the above), so it's quite normal they aren't versed into them .

Who needs professional ethicists when you just know what's right?

Or as they would say down South, who needs the college educated boy to tell me ethics when it's all in the Bible?

 

[João III]

Again, we're looping back to "it's not endorsement". It doesn't look like anyone called it endorsement, and I'm open to corrections (and indeed have already asked once).

The film was accused of being racist. It's only racist if it endorses racism; it's not racist for merely depicting racism

Someone arriving at a different decision to you doesn't mean they have poor media literacy.

No, it's entirely possible to misread a film; hence my example of Starship Troopers

 

[Gori the Grey]

This is quite interesting. I was under the impression that liberals did not really grok the concept of words as sites of contestation.
I think I shared this essay with you before but I'd be curious on some of your thoughts as I think the author is making basically the same point you are.

https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/conservatism.html

It's a good article. A little broad-brush. (And dated! I don't fault the author for that; I'm just myself astounded at how much the words we must contest have changed between 2004 and now).

My response is going to be a little scattershot/impressionistic/unsystematic. First, of course, in its section on language, it's making the same basic point I'm making. And here are what I find to be the key bits on that. First, his sense that the right is concerted in its efforts to control language territory: "They do not use a word unless they have an integrated communications strategy for taking control of that word throughout the whole of society." (contrasting Bush's use of "heart" with Kerry's of "values.") (The example--in our more immediate conversation of "woke"--is that the conservative rhetors* have attached "mob" to the word. If you listen to Hannity, you'll only ever hear that as a unit of thought "the woke mob"). Just the fact that Gingrich worked up a document called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" (which I learned from the article), tells you how focused the effort is.

Second, from the paragraph beginning "The main idea," he talks about messaging, and suiting facts to the message. This has gone onto steroids in the time since his article, for two reasons: first, the Fox rhetors have gotten even better at this messaging. I listen to Hannity, and all he does is reel off fixed verbal formulae. He'll literally say stuff like "the deepstate, Clinton, bought-and-paid-for, dirty Steele dossier" and he'll say that, that particular string of words, forty times in an episode of his show, every time he refers to the dossier. And second, the overabundance of information on the internet means that one is even more free to fit facts to a message than have one's message derive from facts, because everyone can now say "well, who could possibly get to the truth on such a matter?"

The other person I read, who's in synch with you and me and Bahktin and Agre, is George Lakoff, from his Don't Think of an Elephant. He too faults liberals for being much less systematic and organized in their efforts to control the national logosphere.**

Third, the phrase "flamboyant nastiness" squares with the position of the right as I was trying to characterize it.

Oh, and last, I'm a liberal, but I'm most fundamentally a word guy. So maybe I grok some things that other liberals don't so much. I'll try to dig up my favorite Bakhtin quote on this.

*(and his use of that word is one of the good things about the article)

**https://twitter.com/warrenisdead/status/810200372505677825

 

[Gorbles]

The film was accused of being racist. It's only racist if it endorses racism; it's not racist for merely depicting racism

The film was not, in fact, accused of being racist.

No, it's entirely possible to misread a film; hence my example of Starship Troopers

It's possible for anyone to misread a film, even yourself. That doesn't necessarily have any bearing on anyone's media literacy.

 

[João III]

The film was not, in fact, accused of being racist.

It was literally in the headline:
"Asian activist group demands boycott of ‘Licorice Pizza’ over ‘racist’ scenes"

As well as the statement cited in the NY Post article:
"Just showing racism isn’t a critique of racism, it is actually doing racism…"

"MANAA strongly urges voting members of the Academy and other film critic associations not to reward Anderson for the racist portrayals of Asians in his film."

It's possible for anyone to misread a film, even yourself. That doesn't necessarily have any bearing on anyone's media literacy.

A misread based on a surface-level understanding is borne out of poor media literacy

 

[Evie]

Ahhhh, the classic old racist switcheroo where any specific claim that a very specific action or depiction is racist or perpetuate is invariably prsented by the usual suspects as accusation that the work or person are morally irredeemable.

Part of the whole obsession of the same group about making racism a matter of intent rather than impact; a personal moral failure to be condemned rather than a societal problem in need of remediation.

 

[João III]

Ahhhh, the classic old racist switcheroo

Ahhh, the classic "people who disagree with me are just bigots"

 

[Gorbles]

It was literally in the headline:
"Asian activist group demands boycott of ‘Licorice Pizza’ over ‘racist’ scenes"

As well as the statement cited in the NY Post article:
"Just showing racism isn’t a critique of racism, it is actually doing racism…"

"MANAA strongly urges voting members of the Academy and other film critic associations not to reward Anderson for the racist portrayals of Asians in his film."

None of that is "the film is racist".

A misread based on a surface-level understanding is borne out of poor media literacy

Your opinion that said criticism is a "misread based on a surface-level understanding" is not by itself factual evidence of such. You consider it such, and as an opinion to hold, it's valid. Doesn't mean that it's right, or that others have to agree.

 

[Narz]

Who needs professional ethicists when you just know what's right?

Or as they would say down South, who needs the college educated boy to tell me ethics when it's all in the Bible?

It's possible for anyone to misread a film, even yourself. That doesn't necessarily have any bearing on anyone's media literacy.

Is there just one correct 'reading' of a film?

Take Fight Club for example, you could see it as a celebration of certain values or a mockery of them depending on your perspective (and what those values are, nihilism, primitivism, anarchy, toxic masculinity, anti-capitalism, etc etc etc are also up for debate).

Even in a boring romantic comedy one can debate over dozens of cultural presuppositions, stereotypes, etc within just a single scene.

 

[Evie]

"Racist switcheroo" as in "Switcheroo involving making everything about whether or not a person or thing is indelibly racist in character", for crying out loud. IE exactly what I described in the entire on that post, where claims that an action is racist, that something involves racism or that racism ismpresent somewhere are turned into injurious character assassination.

Which, thank you for the epically spectacular demonstration, by the way.

 

[Gorbles]

Is there just one correct 'reading' of a film?

I mean, exactly. There isn't.

But that doesn't mean these readings inherently don't have merit, either. For example, with the article João provided, nobody's even arguing that the character isn't being racist. It's what that conveys, and how it's used, that's up for debate (and criticism).

 

[Akka]

I guess the subject to discuss is A) whether the usage of "woke" is useful at all, being an exonym and an approximation of disparate beliefs (some believe it is), and B) if woke is not useful, what to do when people use it.

Thanks for the explanation ^^

As some have pointed, "woke" as a term is understood. As such, it's by definition useful - to be understood is the point of a word. It's no less useful than "left-wing"/"right-wing" (which are actually massively more vague) or "neo-liberal" or any other word encompassing an ideology.
To be honest, I don't think I've even seen an argument against it's use that is not basically rooted in "don't call me name". Which is pretty ironic, because both "woke" and the previous "SJW" were actually self-identification, so they just somehow went full reversal, with people going from wearing them as badge of pride to chastizing their use as insults. I'd say there is something to think about this, along with the fact that "liberal" didn't get the same treatment despite being just as much used by the right as an intended insult.

It goes without saying by now that I don't see eye to eye with your OP.

 

[Evie]

As someone explained just a few posts ago, the fact that there is a massive media/communication machine redefining any terms associated with the left and especially with social justice to make them demeaning and even derogatory *probably* has something to do with that, Akka.

If the definition of a word changes (especially if it's changed to become an object of mockery), it's quite normal that the people who identified with the original definition may not identify with the new one.

 

[Lexicus]

To be honest, I don't think I've even seen an argument against it's use that is not basically rooted in "don't call me name". Which is pretty ironic, because both "woke" and the previous "SJW" were actually self-identification, so they just somehow went full reversal, with people going from wearing them as badge of pride to chastizing their use as insults. I'd say there is something to think about this, along with the fact that "liberal" didn't get the same treatment despite being just as much used by the right as an intended insult.

I don't believe "woke" was ever used entirely unironically, though. And for the record, it emerged as African-American Vernacular English slang, not from leftist circles per
se. It was then, if you will, "appropriated" by broader "progressive" circles, and only then was it taken by the right and turned into a term of abuse.

Ahhh, the classic "people who disagree with me are just bigots"

Just want to memorialize this magnificent self-own for posterity.

 

[Joij21]

Which is pretty ironic, because both "woke" and the previous "SJW" were actually self-identification, so they just somehow went full reversal, with people going from wearing them as badge of pride to chastizing their use as insults.

I actually saw an alt-right video on YouTube from back in 2016 that was meant to be an instructional video on how fellow alt-rights can properly wage meme warfare. It went into great lengths about symbolism and coded messages and how one of the best tactics for gaining ground in this new "propaganda arena" was to co-opt language that is originally liberal in origin and spin it around back at them in order to "own" the terminology, pervert it, and forever take it away from them thus denying the liberals of effective language. The idea being that if you take away all the Left's symbols and make them your own, the Left will eventually run out of effective means for creating counter propaganda because you own and dictate the entire narrative.

Similar to how Yankee was originally an insult from Loyalists during the American Revolution but the Patriots adopted the term, accepted it and made it something to be proud of in order to deny the Loyalists propaganda power of their own.

 

[Akka]

As someone explained just a few posts ago, the fact that there is a massive media/communication machine redefining any terms associated with the left and especially with social justice to make them demeaning and even derogatory *probably* has something to do with that, Akka.

See my point about "liberal". I just am not convinced at all by this supposed big machine that manage to manipulate everyone into transforming a word into an insult.
Also, my own experience with redefinition of terms leave the "woke" side with being just as intent on weaponizing language (and probably even more).

If the definition of a word changes (especially if it's changed to become an object of mockery), it's quite normal that the people who identified with the original definition may not identify with the new one.

But the thing is, the broad definition didn't change. It's still about the same subset of ideology. What has probably changed is more simply the "tone". But that just seems to stem from how this ideology is perceived and not from some sort of smear campaign. You can change the label, but if what is mocked is what is covered by the label, then you'll just run from one definer-becoming-insult to another.

 

[Joij21]

See my point about "liberal". I just am not convinced at all by this supposed big machine that manage to manipulate everyone into transforming a word into an insult.
Also, my own experience with redefinition of terms leave the "woke" side with being just as intent on weaponizing language (and probably even more).

Because "liberal" is too old and historical of a word to successfully pervert it's meaning. It dates back to the enlightenment, that's how old and established it is.

"Woke" on the other hand is more recent and started out as a slang term identifyer among certain individuals. It was much more easy to pervert because only a small subset of the population was using it as complement when it first came into use. Most people didn't hear about it until it got demonized, so the perverted definition is most people's first introduction to it.