Ceci n’est pas une pipe

Here’s Brendan O’Neill of the National Review:

Not content with harassing white people who wear their hair in cornrows and branding as “cultural appropriation” everything from college cafés serving sushi to Beyoncé donning a sari, now the new racial purists are coming for film director Kathryn Bigelow. Her crime? She’s a white woman. More specifically, she’s a white woman who dared to tell the story of the 1967 Detroit riots in her latest movie. It’s wrong for whites to tell black stories, apparently, because they can never truly understand those stories. It’s a profoundly philistine argument that exposes the misanthropy of the racial thinking that passes for radical commentary these days.

He’s right, but I think even he concedes too much:

A Variety cover story asked: “How could Bigelow — a white woman raised just outside San Francisco by middle-class parents and educated at Columbia University — understand and illuminate [this] kind of raw experience?” This movie speaks to “the problem with watching black pain through a white lens,” said a writer for the Huffington Post, as if Bigelow were reducible to her whiteness; as if she turned up to work on Detroit every morning thinking and behaving as a white woman, a racial creature, rather than as a storyteller. This is a “white filmmaker [using] the spectacle of black pain as an educational tool,” says the HuffPost, which is bizarre, since Detroit doesn’t feel educational at all: It invites both emotional and intellectual responses, but it never once feels like a lecture.

At Slate, Dana Stevens argues that film directors — and surely by extension, all artists — cannot escape their origins when telling stories: “The people behind the camera . . . will create a different film from a different perspective depending on the lives they’ve led and the bodies they inhabit.” Bodies — here we get to the ironically dehumanizing element of PC racial thinking, where people are mere skin, driven, sometimes without realizing it, by their bodies, their biology. “The fact of the filmmakers’ whiteness can’t help but inflect their depiction [of racial history],” says Stevens. Can’t help. This resuscitates the very fatalism that lay at the heart of older varieties of racial thinking — namely, that we are prisoners of race, that our racial origins shape how we view and act in the world.

I have no idea what it’s like to be a black or a woman, but I also have no idea what it’s like to be a white male—or more specifically a white male other than myself. For instance, I can’t even imagine what’s it’s like to be Donald Trump.  I have no idea what thoughts go through his mind.  I have no idea what aspects of my inner consciousness are general “white male experiences” and which aspects are specifically “Scott Sumner experiences”.

The key mistake of these philistines is to assume that a work of art is in some sense “about” the characters being depicted. In my view it makes no sense to talk about a work of art being about anything.  But if one insists, then I’d rather say it’s about the artist.  Consider these two paintings, both widely viewed as supreme masterpieces of the art form:

The smarter people who worry about cultural appropriation would say that Velasquez should not have done this painting, as he can’t possibly know what it’s like to be a black man.  The dumber people who worry about cultural appropriation would say the painting is OK, because unlike film, painting is not about the inner lives of its characters.

In fact, this painting is not a black man.  If anything, it is a Velasquez.

Similarly, the smarter foes of cultural appropriation would say that Velasquez has no idea what it’s like to be a woman:

People on the left sneer at the lack of cultural sophistication of many Trump supporters.  Then they concoct an ideology that looks at art with all the sophistication of a 8-year old. They would look at Magritte’s famous painting and not get the joke.

PS.  Maybe I was being too solipsistic in my previous remarks.  But if we can imagine what it’s like to be another person, I’d be far more comfortable putting myself in the mind of a (black) writer like Teju Cole, than I would trying to imagine being Donald Trump.  At least with Cole I find his expressed thoughts to be intelligible. I often feel the same way. Indeed compared to Trump, even Barack Obama has a sensibility closer to my own perspective on the world.


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21 Responses to “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”

  1. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    7. September 2017 at 10:31

    You say your daughter has been taught that certain appropriation is bad, but was this an issue outside of that classroom or school district? I never encounter this stuff.

    I do encounter something far worse, which are liberal Maduro apologists, but they seem rather rare too. They’re definitely fringe.

  2. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    7. September 2017 at 11:42

    “But if we can imagine what it’s like to be another person, I’d be far more comfortable putting myself in the mind of a (black) writer like Teju Cole, than I would trying to imagine being Donald Trump.”

    Can you imagine what it’s like to be a Chinese currency manipulator?

    *runs away*

  3. Gravatar of Anand Anand
    7. September 2017 at 11:48

    I have a fundamental problem with the “outrage porn” which is being peddled in the National Review article. It has to to with selection bias.

    There are hundreds of articles published in all kinds of media on everything imaginable. Of course, one would find all kinds of views expressed in them. By sheer chance, a few of them would have somewhat similar views on some things.

    The various pieces cited are from a “social media editor” at a South African newspaper, a “culture editor” at Huffington post, and (a halfway decent reference) Variety cover story. All of them include disclaimers and hedges of various kinds, which the author failed to mention. And all of them are actually pretty positive on the film. Variety has multiple articles on the film, and they are all largely positive. The “controversy” likely only helped the film gain publicity. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was manufactured by some cynical PR firm. Recall that Bigelow herself stated that she “worried she was the wrong person to direct “Detroit.”

    Meanwhile, the movie has about 80% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which is more popular-based) and about the same on Metacritic (which is based on movie critics). So the views Scott is worrying about are marginal at best. Many people even on the left have criticized the concept of cultural appropriation. Here, from Freddie DeBoer is one (https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/why-is-this-so-hard-91ba11624d2f)

    How on Earth can these ideas be responsible for Trump and Bannon? Perhaps if some people want to get outraged about them, and want you to do the same. Some perspective, please.

  4. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    7. September 2017 at 12:17

    Scott, I very much doubt that my daughter just happened to be in the one school district where this was a big issue.

    Bob, I think they look like unicorns.

    Anand, You don’t seem to understand what’s going on in this country. Conservatives find it increasingly difficult to speak on college campuses. Students and faculty go through highly traumatic propaganda sessions, which only serve to convince them that the white nationalists must be on to something. One of my (non-white) colleagues was ridiculed when she suggested that she didn’t consider herself a person of color. A conservative speaker was invited to Bentley, then the invitation was pulled under pressure from faculty. (And Bentley is one of the least left wing colleges you could find.)
    Authors are ostracized as racist if they try to write about nonwhite characters. Publishers are increasingly reluctant to even touch those works.

  5. Gravatar of Carl Carl
    7. September 2017 at 12:58

    I often think you try to write about subjects that only SPF30ists understand when it’s clear from your pictures that you’re an SPF40ist.

  6. Gravatar of Lorenzo from Oz Lorenzo from Oz
    7. September 2017 at 13:00

    Hitler’s obsessions (with race and identity) are winning the culture wars in key institutions and then creating keeping-the-framing counter reactions also based on Hitler’s obsessions: it is deeply depressing.

  7. Gravatar of Doug M Doug M
    7. September 2017 at 13:45

    Regarding your colleague, it seems that a short while ago it was very PC to say “I don’t see color.” However, this has recently become a very un-PC thing to say.

    You don’t see color? You are privileged. Your race-blindness is a symptom of your privilege. As a white-heterosexual-cisgendered male you are the beneficiary of the status quo. You are (or you enable) systemic racism / patriarchy / oppression. You are a racist!

    Of course if this is what it means to be a racist these days, we have really dumbed-down the meaning of the word.

    Philosophically, it is Marxist at its core. Now the “class struggle” is divided along lines of social justice in addition to economic lines.

  8. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    7. September 2017 at 14:20

    It’s just racism and collectivism. Old wine in new bottles.

  9. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    7. September 2017 at 14:39

    Scott,

    So it doesn’t seem we have any idea about the scale of this issue.

  10. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    7. September 2017 at 16:44

    To express solidarity with my Han brothers, I will stop eating spaghetti.

    Marco Polo appropriated noodles from China, which became spaghetti back in Italy.

    To show I am fair, I will also boycott the NBA, in which black and now even European ballplayers appropriate a game invented by a white American, James Naismith.

    I will only eat burritos in secret.

  11. Gravatar of Dune Dune
    7. September 2017 at 19:26

    Agree with Anand. These are fringe views on the left that don’t have much traction with the establishment. Scott just linked to an NYT oped approving cultural appropriation. Universities have also pushed back against speech surpression. On the flip side the right ELECTED DONALD TRUMP PRESIDENT.

  12. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    7. September 2017 at 19:33

    Scott,

    “I have no idea what aspects of my inner consciousness are general “white male experiences” and which aspects are specifically “Scott Sumner experiences”.”

    This issue is is massively underappreciated. Even on the sensory plane, how do we know that sensory experiences do feel the same to the next person? See , e.g.,
    http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/

    All generalizations and categorizations are social or scientific constructs. All of them. Anyone who thinks physics is “real” should try to explain the particle-wave duality.

    Now, these constructs are often useful, but they overlap and they’re just models of our understanding of the whole of the world.

    Related, another irony: I still remember that until recently, left wing theory would muse that “race” is a meaningless concept to begin with. Now they swallowed it whole as if it were the only thing.

  13. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    7. September 2017 at 21:32

    mbka, As usual, I agree on pretty much everything.

    You said:

    “This issue is is massively underappreciated. Even on the sensory plane, how do we know that sensory experiences do feel the same to the next person? See , e.g.,
    http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/

    I am missing a few:

    I don’t get parades, weddings, funerals, etc. I just get bored. So it’s not true that “everyone loves a parade”.

    I don’t get envy. I never feel that way. (And God knows I’ve plenty of flaws–indeed I’m often disgusted with myself.) But not envy–I just don’t get that particular sin.

  14. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    7. September 2017 at 21:45

    Dune, Don’t agree that it’s a fringe movement, but do agree that Trump is 100 times worse.

  15. Gravatar of Dune Dune
    8. September 2017 at 07:46

    Scott, I could not find a survey looking at progressives’ views of cultural appropriation. However, to get a rough sense of things, I would encourage you to go to the NYT article you linked to:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/opinion/in-defense-of-cultural-appropriation.html

    Go to the comments section and look at the top reader’s picks (a fairly liberal bunch). Out of the top 20 most liked comments, the overwhelming majority are critical of cultural appropriation. So, while I think some elements of the left have indulged their worst impulses, there is some fairly rigorous pushback from everyone else.

    My take as a left-leaning independent is that there is some insanity on both sides, but the intellectual rot goes far deeper on the right.

  16. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    8. September 2017 at 13:50

    @Dune: spot on. To be more clear you should probably say “the overwhelming majority are critical of stigmatizing cultural appropriation”.

    That is to say, most on ‘the left’ (NYT commenters) are ok with what the loonies are getting all upset about.

  17. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    8. September 2017 at 19:51

    Dune, I think you know that comment sections are not scientific samples–they reflect the views of those who read the article. Gee, I wonder what type of reader would be attracted to that article?

  18. Gravatar of BC BC
    8. September 2017 at 22:43

    In Arnold Kling’s 3-axis model, progressives like to frame their political rhetoric in terms of oppressors and oppressed, i.e., privilege. Privilege hypotheses — that an observed phenomenon reflects or is the result of privilege — are unfalsifiable. All humans either interact or don’t interact with each other. If they don’t interact, then one group can be said to be neglecting or ignoring the other, hence privileged. If they do interact, then one group can be said to be exploiting the other, again privilege.

    In the case of film, if a white filmmaker never makes films about black stories, then she would be neglecting blacks out of privilege. If she does make films about black stories, then a term is needed to describe that as a form of privileged exploitation. That term is “cultural appropriation”.

  19. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    9. September 2017 at 06:54

    What could be more profoundly racist than the belief that a person of one race can’t understand the experiences, culture, mindset etc. of a person of a different race?

  20. Gravatar of Scott Sumner Scott Sumner
    9. September 2017 at 06:57

    BC, Good comment.

    Patrick, Funny how some people on the left can’t see that.

  21. Gravatar of Anon Anon
    10. September 2017 at 20:08

    “My take as a left-leaning independent is that there is some insanity on both sides, but the intellectual rot goes far deeper on the right.”

    Seems like a non-sequitur? You are treating the post as if it were an attack on your team and therefore you have to attack the other “team” to even the score.

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