Whitewashing Dahl's texts to encourage goodthink

[GuitarStv]

He used known antisemitic tropes, and you think it's unreasonable to assume that they were intentional, because...???

What would amount to antisemitic use of negative Jewish tropes for you? How explicit does it need to be?

Because all of the tropes that Dahl used but the baldness/wig thing were pre-existing and commonly associated with witches, not Jewish people.  It makes sense for him to use them given that the story he wrote was about witches.

Effectively the crux of the antisemitism argument you've presented for the work itself rests on two things:
- Some sects of Hassidic Jewish women are forced to cut their hair off and wear wigs as part of religion, which is superficially similar to witches who cannot grow hair in Dahl's book
- The modern depiction of witches shares some similarities with antisemitism from a long time ago

I just don't find those two things taken together to be very convincing.

Also, I agree, I don't necessarily categorize all works that incorporate imagery that is derived from historically antisemitic tropes as being antisemitic. I don't think anyone in this thread has.

I can take issue with the imagery being antisemitic, even if unintentional, but no, I wouldn't write off an entire book or movie just because it uses a commonly depicted form of something that once was derived from offensive imagery.

Good, we are in agreement on this.  If this is the case then we pretty much eliminate one of the two concerns related to antisemitism (the generic witch depictions), and are left really with just the baldness/wigs thing.

But when the creator IS antisemitic and uses such witch imagery, especially when it's more specifically Jewish than a lot of other witches, like with the bald heads and wigs, then yeah, you bet I'm going to err on the side of assuming that the anti-Semite who uses antisemitic tropes is being antisemitic.

It actually seems downright whacky to assume anything else.

Just like in my hypothetical, if an openly anti-black racist wrote a children's book with evil monkeys, I would not give him the benefit of the doubt that his monkeys are not racist.

That would also be downright whacky.

This seems to be in agreement with what I was saying earlier then.  Dahl's work is being judged by it's author rather than it's content.  The content isn't really objectionable on it's own, it's the author that makes it problematic.

I'm sorry, where is it a common trope for witches to be bald and wear wigs???

It's not, that's why I mentioned it as being separate from the other common witch stuff that Dahl used.

And yes, his very vocal beliefs do matter. If he wrote an entirely benign character that didn't at all include even debatably antisemitic imagery then I wouldn't call the work antisemitic just because of his beliefs.

You keep saying it's *just* being judged because of his beliefs, but that's pure nonsense. It's being judged holistically: the imagery has quite distinct Jewish tropes (even if you don't see that) AND the author is antisemitic.

Yet again I'm going to use the example of the anti-black racist making a children's book with evil monkeys. People would be up in arms with outrage if a vocal white supremacist made children's content with evil monkeys.

When a racist produces content that's even suspicious of being racist imagery, yes, we should take issue with that.

I cannot believe that *you* of all people here don't see that. You are often so insightful on this kind of thing.

If you told me tomorrow that Baum had some diaries found where he said Hitler was right and Jews are sent by Satan to drink the blood of good Christian children . . . does The Wizard of Oz suddenly transform into a hateful antisemitic story that has been teaching children to hate Jews for decades?  I don't believe that hate really works at the flip of a switch like - something that the holistic approach requires.

If you go back to page 1, where the thread of this conversation started, there were a couple specific things that I mentioned:
- Dahl said a lot of terrible and antisemitic things
- I don't think that Dahl's books teach antisemitism and hatred of Jews to children

There's plenty of evidence that Dahl was kind of a dick.  He was a dick to women, to his family, to publishers.  He liked to make broad and sweeping controversial statements that would get folks angry.  He really didn't like the country of Israel (which is justifiable - Israel is a pretty horrible place when it comes to human rights).  But it wasn't all that clear cut.  Dahl also had friends who were Jewish.  He put his trust in Jewish people pretty regularly.  His comments caused some friction with them.  Certainly, he appears to have held antisemitic views towards the end of his life.  I think it's very reasonable to call him antisemitic.

But have his books been teaching children to be antisemitic and hate Jews since they were written?  I'd still have to say no, that doesn't seem to be a reasonable claim to make.

[Metalcat]

We're just talking past each other at this point.

[chevy1956]

We're just talking past each other at this point.

You make a good argument but I don't know where that leaves you. Does your point of view lead to any form of censorship ? If so what do you do ? The book at worst is also a fantastic children's story and he has a fairly large body of work. How do you treat his other stories ? Where does that leave censorship in general. It's imagery. It's not specific words.

[Metalcat]

We're just talking past each other at this point.

You make a good argument but I don't know where that leaves you. Does your point of view lead to any form of censorship ? If so what do you do ? The book at worst is also a fantastic children's story and he has a fairly large body of work. How do you treat his other stories ? Where does that leave censorship in general. It's imagery. It's not specific words.

I've never once in this entire thread advocated for censorship.

I've said from the very beginning (as has PeteD01 for that matter) that it's fucking stupid and hypocritical to rewrite Dahl books and paint some bullshit "woke" veneer on the racist works of a racist.

There's plenty of offensive literature out there. If people want to read it, that's their right. But don't slap some PC shit on antisemitic content and try to pass it off as progressive.

I'm fine with offensive shit existing and people using their own judgement as to whether they're okay with it.

What I fucking hate is bullshit hypocritical woke-washing. It's an especially hypocritical move coming from Netflix of all fucking companies.

This move is an insult to the intelligence of people on both sides of the ideological divide on this issue. And that is the point that both PeteD01 and I have been making since our very first responses in this thread.

[iris lily]

We're just talking past each other at this point.

You make a good argument but I don't know where that leaves you. Does your point of view lead to any form of censorship ? If so what do you do ? The book at worst is also a fantastic children's story and he has a fairly large body of work. How do you treat his other stories ? Where does that leave censorship in general. It's imagery. It's not specific words.

I've never once in this entire thread advocated for censorship.

I've said from the very beginning (as has PeteD01 for that matter) that it's fucking stupid and hypocritical to rewrite Dahl books and paint some bullshit "woke" veneer on the racist works of a racist.

There's plenty of offensive literature out there. If people want to read it, that's their right. But don't slap some PC shit on antisemitic content and try to pass it off as progressive.

I'm fine with offensive shit existing and people using their own judgement as to whether they're okay with it.

What I fucking hate is bullshit hypocritical woke-washing. It's an especially hypocritical move coming from Netflix of all fucking companies.

This move is an insult to the intelligence of people on both sides of the ideological divide on this issue. And that is the point that both PeteD01 and I have been making since our very first responses in this thread.

I think Malcat’s is good summary. I’d be surprised if most reasonable people on this thread do not agree with it. Guitar Steve, do you agree with this?

[PeteD01]

We're just talking past each other at this point.

You make a good argument but I don't know where that leaves you. Does your point of view lead to any form of censorship ? If so what do you do ? The book at worst is also a fantastic children's story and he has a fairly large body of work. How do you treat his other stories ? Where does that leave censorship in general. It's imagery. It's not specific words.

I've never once in this entire thread advocated for censorship.

I've said from the very beginning (as has PeteD01 for that matter) that it's fucking stupid and hypocritical to rewrite Dahl books and paint some bullshit "woke" veneer on the racist works of a racist.

There's plenty of offensive literature out there. If people want to read it, that's their right. But don't slap some PC shit on antisemitic content and try to pass it off as progressive.

I'm fine with offensive shit existing and people using their own judgement as to whether they're okay with it.

What I fucking hate is bullshit hypocritical woke-washing. It's an especially hypocritical move coming from Netflix of all fucking companies.

This move is an insult to the intelligence of people on both sides of the ideological divide on this issue. And that is the point that both PeteD01 and I have been making since our very first responses in this thread.

I think Malcat’s is good summary. I’d be surprised if most reasonable people on this thread do not agree with it. Guitar Steve, do you agree with this?

I don´t know. I wasn´t really thinking about Steve as an individual as whatever he posted was pretty generic stuff.
I would respond rather differently to new and original antisemitic material, trust me on this.
In the right mindset, this thread is pretty educational because it does reveal to some extent the insidiousness of cultural antisemitism.
There is also the issue of when someone posts as a malicious antisemitic troll and your own activity also included trolling until they were fully exposed.
Then the question comes up if the posts that were published impersonating a malicious troll are proof of an actual malicious troll behind the keyboard.
Honestly, I have no idea and no interest at all.
Then add to that the theme of this thread, which is important but distressing to many, and to which Steve does not seem to have much to contribute to going forward.

 

[GuitarStv]

We're just talking past each other at this point.

You make a good argument but I don't know where that leaves you. Does your point of view lead to any form of censorship ? If so what do you do ? The book at worst is also a fantastic children's story and he has a fairly large body of work. How do you treat his other stories ? Where does that leave censorship in general. It's imagery. It's not specific words.

I've never once in this entire thread advocated for censorship.

I've said from the very beginning (as has PeteD01 for that matter) that it's fucking stupid and hypocritical to rewrite Dahl books and paint some bullshit "woke" veneer on the racist works of a racist.

There's plenty of offensive literature out there. If people want to read it, that's their right. But don't slap some PC shit on antisemitic content and try to pass it off as progressive.

I'm fine with offensive shit existing and people using their own judgement as to whether they're okay with it.

What I fucking hate is bullshit hypocritical woke-washing. It's an especially hypocritical move coming from Netflix of all fucking companies.

This move is an insult to the intelligence of people on both sides of the ideological divide on this issue. And that is the point that both PeteD01 and I have been making since our very first responses in this thread.

I think Malcat’s is good summary. I’d be surprised if most reasonable people on this thread do not agree with it. Guitar Steve, do you agree with this?

Yep, my read is that it mirrors my initial concerns about the changes made to Dahl's material (way back in the very first post!) pretty well.



I think the only real point of contention between the two of us is that to Malcat, material becomes offensive or not based on recorded opinion of the writer in addition to the written text of the material.

Under this viewpoint, something like the US Declaration of Independence is also a document to be reviled.  This is because the talk of freedom and rights must be read in the context of the rich white men who wrote it - all of whom benefited from slavery and the oppression of women (and I'd have to double check, but I'd be shocked if they weren't also anti-gay and anti-trans given the time period and location they were living in).  Thomas Jefferson for example was recorded saying some pretty antisemitic shit in his letters ("'Ethics were so little studied among the Jews, that, in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there is only one treatise on moral subjects.").  The language throughout the Declaration then has to be understood as either open or coded misogyny, racism, antisemitic, and homophobic/transphobic stuff.

I think that I understand the reasoning that is used to come to this conclusion, but don't really share in it.

While context is certainly important, I think that even a document written by racist homophobic antisemitic misogynists like the declaration of independence can still stand on it's own without necessarily being overridden by those negatives.  It isn't necessarily misogynist because it mentions 'all men' being created equal (even though the writers very clearly were misogynists by modern standard).  It isn't necessarily coded that black people are not 'men' (even though the writers owned slaves and therefore didn't think of black people as men).  The document can instead be judged and appreciated for what it actually says.

This is my reasoning, which I think I've made as clear as I can by this point.  And it's fine if others don't share it.

[former player]

[quote author=GuitarStv link=topic=130013.msg3121359#msg3121359
I think the only real point of contention between the two of us is that to Malcat, material becomes offensive or not based on recorded opinion of the writer in addition to the written text of the material.

Under this viewpoint, something like the US Declaration of Independence is also a document to be reviled.  This is because the talk of freedom and rights must be read in the context of the rich white men who wrote it - all of whom benefited from slavery and the oppression of women (and I'd have to double check, but I'd be shocked if they weren't also anti-gay and anti-trans given the time period and location they were living in).  Thomas Jefferson for example was recorded saying some pretty antisemitic shit in his letters ("'Ethics were so little studied among the Jews, that, in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there is only one treatise on moral subjects.").  The language throughout the Declaration then has to be understood as either open or coded misogyny, racism, antisemitic, and homophobic/transphobic stuff.

I think that I understand the reasoning that is used to come to this conclusion, but don't really share in it.

While context is certainly important, I think that even a document written by racist homophobic antisemitic misogynists like the declaration of independence can still stand on it's own without necessarily being overridden by those negatives.  It isn't necessarily misogynist because it mentions 'all men' being created equal (even though the writers very clearly were misogynists by modern standard).  It isn't necessarily coded that black people are not 'men' (even though the writers owned slaves and therefore didn't think of black people as men).  The document can instead be judged and appreciated for what it actually says.

This is my reasoning, which I think I've made as clear as I can by this point.  And it's fine if others don't share it.
[/quote]
There is a lot in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States which is absolutely to be reviled.  I suspect that they are document that have been much easier to appreciate over the centuries if you are not native american, black or female.  Or indeed, one of the very many people who were killed as a direct result of them.