Askia you are right. That is just an apeshit rant. There’s not even anything in there that can be repsonded to, much less deserving of a response.
Any chance you cna discuss the actual literature rather than reesorting to ad hominems and baseless assertions?
Guess not.
Why do you even bother asking me questions if you’re going to make up my mind for me?
Are you even aware of how condescending and insulting you’re being?
That’s precisely my point. Lewis makes it quite clear on numerous occasions that the Calormenians aren’t bad because they are “dusky”, and they aren’t different because they are “dusky”. In fact he stresses those points. They are “them” because of what they believe and do, not because of what they are.
IOW the skin colour isn’t a shorthand for badness. As I said the stories are littered with examples of people who are bad and white. In fact the most evil person in the stories is the white witch, who is whiter than anyone else. Similarly a great many Calormenians are described as being good people and go to heaven in the end.
Let me put it this way: If the evil people had been predominantly dwarves would that be hightist? And if they had been predominantly green frogs would that also have been racist? The Storm Troopers all wore white. To me that doesn’t imply that Lucas has a thing against people who wear white. The evil group, if it’s in any way homgeneous, must have some common characteristics. To me that doesn’t suggest a bias against other groups with those characteristics.
You may have other views, but to me a work isn’t racist until it says or implies that a group has characteritcs because of thier race. Lewis says specifically that a group has characteristics and has a race. He also says that individuals have characteritsics regadless of race. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine anything less racist than that.
Catholic Sunday School, yes: not that that makes any difference. I really hate playing Dictionary Wars, but if you insist. Beatify is a transitive verb and so one cannot simply “be” beatified: One must be declared to have attained the blessedness of heaven and authorised the title “Blessed” and public religious honour. It’s a status bestowed by religious authority, in other words: merely getting into heaven doesn’t cut it.
I’m going to have to ask for a pretty hefty cite that the apostles ruled any part of the Earth in even a metaphorical sense. “Word-for-word literally” is a tautology, too.
FFS your own dictionary says “to declare to have attained the blessedness of heaven” while the somewhat more authoritative OED says “To pronounce (a person) to be in enjoyment of heavenly bliss”.
If the children are described as having been taken up into heaven by alongside Jesus/Aslan himslef then what clearer declaration can the author give that they are enjoyment of heavenly bliss? Simple question, what exact words would you require Lewis to have used before you would consider the children to have been declared as enjoying heavenly bliss?
I have no intention getting into an in depth religous debate concerning precisely what the apostles ruled and when. However I will give you "There is only one Church in Christendom which claims to be built upon that apostle; and that the one whose centre is Rome, where Peter ruled and where his body lies. We can of course debate which Christian theologies are correct and which incorrect but I would think that since you have been arguing from Cathgolic theology so far you would accept Catholic doctrine that Peter ruled Christian Rome.
And no, “Word-for-word literally” is not a tautology. I can say that ElizabethII rules the people of England and you can point out that any time there are various anarchists, revolutionaries etc. in England whom she does not rule. That’s what a word-for-word literal inetrpretation requires. However a simple literal interpretation means that we take the meaning of the sentence literally, not every individual word literally. No tautology at all.
You’re missing my point: pronounced by whom? The churchly authorities: one cannot simply be beatified by general consensus or even God or Aslan Himself, since beatification is bestowed by the appropriate authorities Down Here and not attained Up There.
In any case, it’s been a while since I read The Last Battle, but from memory nobody goes to heaven per se: they’re transported instead to some kind of ideal Platonic realm. I suppose you’re going to argue now that that constitutes literal beatification.
And the Mods come down from their beatified Platonic wossname to deal with it. Askia is calling the inferences delusional, not the person. That’s … well, I guess that’s technically not insulting the person. I’m not actually sure if an argument can be delusional; I think an argument can be a delusion, but “delusional” tends to refer to the person. In any case, Askia seems to be putting one toe over a grey fuzzy line. And characterizing a statement as “ape-shit rant” certainly seems to be beyond the realm of polite, civilized discourse that is supposed to be the nature of this forum.
So, I need you to cool it. Relax. Lovecraft and the other authors we are discussing are long dead.
Now, the question of “What impression do you get from ethnic slurs in old books you like?” is a legitimate one for this forum. The question of “What is racism?” is not. Before we can assert that an author is “racist,” we’d need to define it, and that’s a realm for Great Debates… or the Pit, as you prefer. Once you’ve got a working definition, you can ask here whether a certain author is or isn’t… and provide a link or quote your definition.
(I’m not sure whether I’m now speaking as moderator or poster): This thread is about ethnic slurs – I take that to mean (a) words that have since become considered inappropriate such as “nigger” or “wop” or “kike” and (b) stereotypes. Those did not, in themselves, constitute racism historically.
Regarding words, words evolve. Note that the word “Negro” was once considered the polite word to use, but now is not. “Nigger” was always derogatory, but whether and how much of an insult it was varied over time. Prior to the 1950s, it was not the mortal insult it has become. Hence, the mere use of a word (especially if spoken by a character) does not, ipso facto, constitute racism.
Similarly, stereotypes exist because there were some (often many) people of that ethnicity who fit them. They weren’t made up out of whole cloth. They become racist when one assumes that all (or a vast majority) Chinese are devious, all Jews are thieves, all blacks have natural rhythm, etc. That’s racism. But no one would deny the political intrigues of Chinese history; Jews taking on occupations that were not permitted (or not “nice”) for Christians such as merchants and money-lenders; or music (like jazz) developed by blacks.
The use of stereotypes is a short-cut for writers. When those stereotypes are ethnic or racial, we today feel uneasy. But we still have stereotypes of bankers, lawyers, soldiers, etc. … just watch the way that movies set up stereotypes of characters based on their looks, occupation, etc. It’s a fast way of getting a characterization.
OK, enough. I want to say that this is not an easy topic where there are black and white (heh) answers. The question of whether an historical person was “racist” depends on your definition and on many factors; and how harshly we judge them (“what impression?”) depends on how much they were simply in-step with mainstream thought of their time.
Meanwhile (Moderator hat firmly back on), NO INSULTS IN THIS FORUM. (Caps for emphasis.)
Dex. Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you. I would quibble on a couple of points, mostly the notion that racial slurs did not historically constitute racism (Verbal and written slurs are the most common evidence of racism!) but I’ll surpress my impulses and bow out.
Apologies to all for expressing the smaller part of my anger and irritation in the wrong forum.
BTW, “black and white answers?” You just couldn’t resist that, could you?
Blake :
Sorry. I don’t buy it. I’ve read plenty of Lovecraft and Lovecraft scholarship, but I find that I can’t read that story any more without the thought of the evils of marrying aniother race. Lovecraft may not have intended it that way, but it comes across loud and clear – the underwater folk want to marry our people, and when you do marry them, you and your kids will fall into a degenerate cult and way of life. I don’t know if Lovecraft had inheritance of madness in mind (and if he did, it still doesn’t make a good case for this story not being about the evils of marrying outside homo sapiens), but looking at the story from the Deep Ones’ point of view, it’s hard to see this story as anything but insulting.
Kipling always comes across as a rather superior figure when discussing blacks in S. Africa or people from the Indian sub-continent.
George Orwell has a good counter-argument though - although it comes close to justifying Kipling as being “a product of his time” (which is a bit of a wimpy response).
Re Lovecraft
I did know he was married to a Jewish woman. They both found that they weren’t suited to married life and divorced. However, IMHO this supports what I’d been saying all along. Lovecraft had been taught to fear and hate and had never had the experience or emotional development to unlearn it. But, when he meets a woman who shares so many of his interests and characteristics, he questions his antisemtism and discards it.
I said he was pro-isolationism. Somewhere in this thread I said ‘The Spanish should stay in Spanish places and do Spanish things’.
Re His Aunts
Sorry, I misremembered and though his mother had died a few decades earlier.
True, but reanimation made everybody seem like some kind of sub human animal. When they reanimate an esteemed doctor, he becomes so bestial that his family barely recognizes him. Addditionally, the reanimated black man had been a semiprofessional boxer. Lovecraft was a skinny nerd. It’s not surprising he’d call a big jock a gorilla.
Which is what I’ve been saying all along.
CalMeacham
There’s no arguing that Lovecraft was a racist. But, Shadow Over Insmouth is as clearly about his fear of hereditary insanity as Charles Kane is William Hearst.
OTTOMH HPL Stories that could reasonably be argued to be about hereditary madness-
The Rats In The Walls
The Festival
The Diary Of Alonzo Typer
Pickman’s Model
I’m sure there are more.
Fweeeet! HEY. Blake.
Odds are you know this, but in case you don’t, you’ve been pitted. Join me in frank discourse.
It occurs to me Blake may have me on his Ignore list, and thus feels that he can safely avoid the consequences and repurcussions of yesterday’s discussion.
Someone kindly quote me in the post above, or this one, so he can see his Pit invitation. I want him to have every benefit of the doubt.
My gratitude.
Wow. A lot can happen to a thread in a few days.
Blake, one thing that’s big in literary criticism right now is “the fallacy of authorial intent.” It’s basically the idea that we can never know for sure what an author intended, nor does it matter.
I’m not so sure I would agree with the second part, but the first part is unfortunately true. Even if we were able to call up Lovecraft from some materia, there’s no reason to believe he’d give an honest answer if he knew how these things were viewed today. And since we can’t, nothing short of a journal entry saying “Today I wrote the Shadow over Innsmouth and it was about miscegenation” or “…it was about insanity” would be the only way to settle that debate.
To my knowledge, no such journal entry exists.
Having read most of Lovecraft’s opus, I’m inclined to believe he was probably racist. The language he uses (particularly repeat uses of the word “degenerate” and all its cognates), taken in the context of the time, suggests racism to me. I say this even as a fan of his work. I love reading his stuff, but I do wince from time to time when I trip over certain words and phrases.
YM, as they say, MV.
(You actually get this a lot in literature classes. some professors are obsessed with certain authors, and want to believe such authors can do no wrong. So they teach the works as if everything that seems racist/sexist/homophobic is actually “misunderstood” or “irony.” Reductio ad absurdum, you start to get the impression in English critical theory courses that there were no racist, sexist, or homophobic authors ever before – only ironic authors that are misunderstood.)
I 'll have ye know I can do that very thing! But, I was not able to acquire the complete remains of the author. I derived the essential saltes according to the formula of Paracelsus. But, the incompleatness caused most disappointing results. I raysed up a thing malformed in body and mind. He did answer when called by name and was wholly without reason. I still hope to find in the years to come some method to render him whole. Then, my men and their scorpions shall get answers from him.
Your Colleague,
DC
PS
I pray you, remind CA that I am to have the coil maker next. With the very inventor to guide me, I shall at last be able to finish my thanatic energy projector.
pssssssst…Blake…over here
Was Lovecraft a racist, or simply a man of his time? Let’s not judge those of the past by the standards of today.
Temporal relativism is all very well, and certainly attitudes towards race have changed over the past century, but plenty of other writers of his time avoided the kind of outright hatefulness that’s been quoted, which suggests it wasn’t the social or literary norm.
To take a contemporary example, some of P. G. Wodehouse’s earlier stories, in which his characters visit America {Psmith Journalist springs to mind} certainly employ racial stereotypes which would be frowned upon today: Irish are pugnacious drunks, Italians are voluble cowards, blacks are gibbering happy-go-lucky comic menials. These characterisations jar today, but were perfectly acceptable nearly a century ago.
On the other hand, Wodehouse is writing comedy for that period, and there’s no sense of any hatred or invective: as far as I’ve read he didn’t have a racist bone in his body. He stereotyped foreigners as funny because the funny foreigner was an accepted comic device of his time: as his long career progressed, it became less funny or acceptable and he quietly stopped it.