Interesting Links for 12-02-2020

[andrewducker]

Why broadcast media has an expert problem

(tags:experts media journalism UK )

Storytelling should not be a thing only professionals do

(tags:storytelling society )

"I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right)"

(tags:meat vegan environment farming )

"Can we keep our Father Ted box sets?" ask Guardian readers

(tags:transgender LGBT TV comedy bigotry )

CIA secretly bought encryption company, used it to spy on clients

(tags:cia spying surveillance )

Queensferry Crossing: How do you stop ice falling?

(tags:ice weather bridge scotland )

Comments

[cmcmck]

I always take the view that people's art is not the people themselves- Richard Dadd, the artist, murdered his father, Gesualdo, the composer, murdered his wife and her lover, Eric Gill was a paedophile as was Benjamin Britten. Dickens was antisemitic, Jennifer Rowling is a transphobe and the number of racists, homophobes and misogynists in art, music and literature is beyond count.

Enjoy what people did or do while being aware of what they were or are.

As a trans woman, I don't want people to stop looking at, listening to or reading things they enjoy because they are afraid they will hurt my feelings.

Surely I have to be able see beyond that?

[andrewducker]

You can if you like.

I feel uncomfortable feeling like I'm associating with someone who spews hatred.

And when I'm watching TV he wrote I'm going to have the connection itching in the back of my mind.

If he wasn't active any more then I might feel differently, of course.

But I wouldn't feel comfortable watching anything new he wrote.

[cmcmck]

I fully understand if people disengage because it makes THEM feel uncomfortable but I'm bothered when they do so because they think it'll make ME uncomfortable without actually asking me how I feel or what I think about it.

The guy is a bigoted idiot who knows nothing about the issues whereas I had to deal with the outcome of not being able to access such treatments young enough, so it's up close and personal for me.

[ninetydegrees]

I'm unable to separate the two and I don't want to. It's a very personal choice, of course.

Regarding artists and al who are alive, I see no reason to support them. There are plenty of talented people out there to give my money, time and attention to.

Regarding artists and al who are dead, I like to know more about them and their art before making any decision. What were values and morals like at the time? How were they and their art perceived then? But, even then, I think that while I can appreciate their art as art, I can't really engage with it on an emotional level.

[cmcmck]

I think what bothers me is when people feel they have to disengage because they think it will make me uncomfortable without knowing me or how I might be thinking about the issues. It's different if you wish to disengage because it's making you uncomfortable and that's fine.

As it happens, I'm an academic historian and that's perhaps why this sort of reverse censorship bothers me- as they say, 'the past is a foreign country- they do things differently there'.

I hear you on living artists though- I see Rowling's behaviour as an appalling betrayal!

[dewline]

Leslie Charteris, for another example, had that disclaimer often showing up in later reprints of his Saint stories renouncing the past bigotries that worked their way into those stories in the days of their original publication. As uncomfortable as I still find myself looking at those instances now...

[cmcmck]

That was then and this is now- I wish we'd occasionally remember that.

[andrewducker]

And yet there were people then who weren't sexist or racist or in favour of slavery.

[calimac]

There are people today who are vegetarian. What does that say about those of us who aren't?

[andrewducker]

That we don't care about animals enough not to eat them?

But we're not any less or more moral than people who eat meat fifty years from now.

[calimac]

"But we're not any less or more moral than people who eat meat fifty years from now."

That's my point.

It looks like we're moving to a point where someday, eating meat will be considered immoral.

If we're going to condemn people from the early 19C for being insufficiently antislavery on the grounds that a few sanctimonious gits from that time were morally pure, we're allowing ourselves to be hoist on the same petard.

[andrewducker]

Not necessarily insufficiently anti slavery. But I'm not okay with the people who were actively Pro slavery.

(Death makes a big difference to me, but I think the level of unhappiness with different moral approaches is going to be mostly a gut reaction.)

[cmcmck]

I'm vegetarian as you know, but I have to admit that there's no moral vector to it. I simply don't like the stuff much.

I don't think it makes me morally superior to people who do like it.

[cmcmck]

Indeed there were.

It was Oliver Cromwell who met with Rabbi Manesseh Ben Israel of Holland and invited the Jews back to England for example.

Every age has its bigots and non bigots.

[dewline]

Yes, there were. And are.

[alithea]

I can take this attitude with dead people* but if they're still living, I might well choose not to support them because I do not want to contribute to their income or their perception that their views are acceptable.



*Altho I have exceptions even here - watching Mary Beard's programme on nudes the other night they were discussing an artist who abused his daughter and I have to say I disagreed strongly with the curator who'd made the decision to exhibit pictures he'd done of the daughter around the time he was raping her. Dead or not, that felt disrespectful of his daughter.

[cmcmck]

I absolutely agree that every individual has the right to disengage from what makes them uncomfortable, but I have a suspicion that disengaging from something from the fear that it might make me or those like me uncomfortable is not the way to go.

Artimisia Gentileschi, the great renaissance artist was raped by a fellow artist but it didn't stop her painting.

This was her revenge:



Judith is a self portrait and Holofernes is the fellow artist.

Sweet revenge I'd say!

[alithea]

Sweet revenge indeed - she was able to fight back in her own way, no-one mentioned what happened to the artist's daughter...

[calimac]

The distinction you're making in your footnote concerns whether the art is directly related to the abusive behavior. That's a fair distinction.

As someone who never had any interest in or knowledge of Louis C.K. I can't parse this, but I am curious about implications I've read that the content of his comedy made it no surprise when he turned out to be the kind of person that he turned out to be.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I've seen some of his comedy, and he definitely had some material centered around "here's how self centered and morally rubbish men can be". But I think people mostly assumed he didn't mean himself.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, this is similar to my approach.

Having grown up with a Jewish mother who adored the operas of Richard Wagner (a fairly infamous anti-semite), this question has dogged me pretty much ever since I was old enough to be aware of it, and I've wound up distinguishing between the art, the message, and the person.

On the one hand, great music is great music -- The Ride of the Valkyries still hits me at a gut level, and I like a good chunk of his operas. I can, on a personal level, appreciate the art for itself.

OTOH, I'm cautious about recommending the works, and tend to point out the racial undertones if I'm ever talking *about* the work. If nothing else, it's a usefully teachable moment about the ways in which racism can be couched in art, and how to watch for it.

And if Wagner was alive today, I would almost certainly avoid patronizing his work in any sort of monetary way (that is, I probably wouldn't buy it, go to concerts, etc), and would be even more cautious about recommending his stuff. With a living artist, the line between artist and art is necessarily thinner, because patronage rewards the artist.

[calimac]

When you cite Britten you are conflating pedophiles in the sense of abusers of children with pedophiles in the sense of those sexually attracted to children whether they act on it or not. After one unfortunate early incident, Britten learned to do what we all want those attracted to children to do, which is keep their hands to themselves. I've seen nothing to indicate against, and much to indicate towards, that his subsequent behavior with children he worked with was exemplary, and that he was very good for them artistically. It's behavior, not inner impulses, we should be concerned with.

That said, as a lover of music by some pretty appalling human beings (Wagner, Beethoven), I draw the line here: will they personally benefit from my purchase of their work? If they're dead, they won't.

[cmcmck]

His later behaviour is something for which we have to thank Sir Peter Peers.

[calimac]

At least in part, yes. But whatever the cause, what we celebrate is the result.

The love of a good person has been the salvation of a lot of us.

[cmcmck]

True, that!

As for Crypto AG?

[dewline]

Yeah, that's going to be fun to have to cope with the consequences of that particular revelation, isn't it?

[calimac]

Here I am an American trying to figure my way through British stuff again.

An article I didn't get (who is Father Ted?) contained a sidebar link to another article amusingly titled "Let’s build a bridge across 20 miles of open water, says man who failed miserably to build a bridge over 200 metres of open water." I know who the man is - it's Boris, of whom a photo is helpfully provided - and I know what the 20-mile bridge is, but what is the 200-metre bridge he failed to build?

[alithea]

I assume the Garden Bridge over the Thames back when he was Major of London

[alithea]

Oh and Father Ted was a fictional priest with an eponymous TV series which was a cult classic.

[anna_wing]

Not only is the past another country. Other countries are too. The assumption that one's personal views and specific cultural context somehow reflect universal truths that all others should comply with on pain of legal,social or military disapproval is one that rests on the (equally untrue) assumptions that (a) the people who disagree with us will never be in the position to do the same to us; and (b) our views are the final ones for all time. In any case morality is a matter of priorities, and it is not reasonable to expect everyone to have the same ones.

I do find it useful when reviewers of works of art are explicit about their ideological biases, whether I agree with them or not. It is helpful to know when an opinion, favourable or otherwise, is based on something other than artistic quality.