First off, I want to say that I have nothing but boundless admiration for the moderators of the SDMB. I think that the moderation here is the most even handed, the most consistient, the most reasonable moderation concievable. The luxury of having the benefits of moderation without the disadvantges moderation often carries is what makes this board work, no question. The only reason that this is in the pit at all is that those same wonderful moderators have said that all comentary on moderating ought to be here.
I started a thread on the Harry Potter books over in GD. Gaudere promptly moved it over to IMHO with the following comment:
I respectfully disagree–there are good and suficient reasons why formal art critisism ought not be restricted to IMHO. First, the difference is not that one forum is designed to deal with opinion and the other with fact–that is the difference between GQ and the rest of the board. The difference is that opinions in GD have to be supported and opinions in IMHO can stand on their own. Where it is perfectly legitimate to ask someone in GD why they feel the way they do, that same question might seem inappropriate and even tacky in IMHO. If all the art critisism threads are put in IMHO, readers and posters will come to those threads feeling like it is a place to put one’s personal, unsupported opinions. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but under those circumstances the people that want to “play hardball” come across as assholes with no respect for other people’s beliefs. It seems like those of us that enjoy serious critisism ought to be able to debate in the forum that encourages vigorous, supported debate–GD.
Not that I am not lobbying to have the earlier thread moved back–instead, I am just concerned about the general policy.
Why is everyone who has posted to this thread posted twice?
Anyway, I read the Harry Potter thread and it seemed like a GD in the making to me (mind you, a debate that I didn’t care enough about to choose a side).
If the mods start moving all the “I think. . .” threads to IMHO, then I hope that slythe enjoys Creationism v. Evolution MCXLVII: The Return next time it shows up.
I almost started this thread a couple of days ago. Though I couldn’t post regarding the subject of the OP (haven’t read any HP books), the OP was academic, cited, and well-supported. There is a difference, mods, between literary criticism and “what’s your favorite fantasy novel.” I’d hope that on a board whose stated purpose is eradicating ignorance, those in charge could see that. Debating Hemingway’s misogyny and the relative merits of Grisham’s latest are as different as Picasso and Nagel, Coltrane and Kenny G., or “The Simpsons” and “The Flintstones.” One is artistically and aesthetically, as well as academically and scientifically (if you look at literary critics over the last 60-odd years) debatable, the other is a matter of personal taste, or lack thereof.
Though perhaps (and in IMO) Harry Potter is not the best subject for this kind of decision, the scholarship that went into the OP certainly, again IMO, deserved that the thread stay in GD. Though the Potterites hijacked it beyond belief (the only post that had citations was the OP IIRC), this was a debate, and not merely an “opinion.”
Now for the pit-party. You techie mother-fuckers. Just because some of us read books and study them beyond their mere brain-candy value, how the fuck dare you tell us that it’s not more of a debate than Bush vs. Gore? How the fuck dare you tell us that our undecidable debate is less worthy than the never-ending evolution/creation, gun/no gun, abortion/no abortion crap that goes on there? Shit, people, if it weren’t for poor burned out English majors, you wouldn’t have an Adam Sandler movie to piss on. Nor a crappy-assed remake of the Grinch. Hell, let alone a sequel to “101 Dalmatians.” Give us a fucking break and let us pretend that books are important, and that the interpretation of books (them are those things in Barnes and Noble with them pieces of paper in them) is important.
This I have no problem with. My beef was that Gaudere seemed to be setting a broad general policy that would put threads like “Tolstoy has no business in the canon” or “Postmodernism is fundamentally flawed” right next to “What color is your fridge?” and “What animals make the best lovers?”
Stofsky. nice rant–I couldn’t do that because I didn’t want to OP to sound so angry that it could be dismissed as an attack, but since the tone has been set and all I am glad you said some of the things I wanted to say. One request, though --I am emmensly flattered tht you liked Potter post, but please don’t make any more remarks on the other thread. Every instinct I have suggests I do not want that brought over here to the pit. That is why I am trying to keep this abstract.
Well, to be fair, I’m not sure you can call something a debate if it follows the format:
MJ: OP
Poster 1: I disagree and here are my reasons.
MJ: No, I’m right.
Poster 2: I disagree and here are more reasons.
MJ: No, I’m right.
Poster 3: well, you get the idea.
It wasn’t so much a debate as a case where the person who posted the original OP simply rejected any number of strong arguments refuting the OP. So I hold for putting literary criticism in IMHO, but only for lack of a forum called In My-Not-So-Humble-and-Completely-Unchangeable-Opinion.
Actually, Finagle, as Poster 3 (or some such) in the HP thread, I have to say I disagree with you. While several of us dissented from Manda JO’s thesis, she responded with further support and well-reasoned arguments. So much so that, although I still disagree with most of her conclusions and some of her arguments, I find myself agreeing with her main point, which is that Rowling has created a character to whom things come too easily, and who has no room to grow because he’s already got those desirable traits that other characters have to spend entire novels developing.
I’d also like to see this sort of debate in GD, if only so I don’t have to visit IMHO too often. And I have to say, too, that even the level of debate described by Finagle has not required the moving of, for example, Jack Dean Tyler’s thread to IMHO (and certainly he, more than anyone I’ve ever met, “debates” in the “No, I’m right” mode).
No worries. I posted in the Potter post (nifty little piece of alliteration there) merely to state that your scholarship was good. Not having read the primary text, anything else I said besides my impression of your work would be overkill. And I don’t rant outside the Pit–I like posting here.
And Finagle, that’s not how I read the thread. It seemed to me to be more like:
MJ: OP
Poster 1: How dare you screw with Harry Potter? Can you re-cite the things you cited?
MJ: Re-cites
Poster 2: Where did you get that idea about Harry? Can you re-cite?
MJ: Re-cites
The scholarship and the citations were solid. If people disagree, then that’s why it’s a debate. I notice Posters 1, 2, and 3 in your scenario never said, “Gee, I guess you’re right.” MJ blew her wad in the OP, nobody refuted her actual scholarship or her OP, therefore she has every right to say, “I’m right and I already answered this.”
Though the OP in the Harry Potter thread was thoroughly researched and supported by citations, it boiled down to “HP isn’t a good role model for kids,” which strikes me as more of an IMHO kinda thing. Had the thorougly researched OP been more along the lines of “Resolved: Rich white people are ineligible to have problems” and used Harry Potter as an example, I think that’d be more of a Great Debate. But I think literary debates in general (“Tolstoy has no business in the canon” and such) could certainly be Great Debates.
There’s also this:
H.P.'s pretty firmly entrenched within the sphere of pop culture. I personally think “Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer” is one of the most urgent questions of our time, but it was rightly moved to IMHO when that forum went up, 'cause it’s not exactly on par with debating the doctrine of the Trinity.
I haven’t read the thread in question, so I’ll refrain from commenting on where it belongs, but with regard to:
I disagree.
While it is obviously up to the moderators to decide what belongs where, there is a difference between “What’s Your Favorite Mystery Novel?” and, say, “To What Extent Did Manichean Thought Influence The Master and Margarita?”. The former is wholly a survey of opinion and while people can list reasons why they prefer one book over another ultimately there is nothing to debate; everyone has their own reasons for prefering a book and even if it’s “I like it just because” that’s fine. The latter, however, is (or can be) a debate, where opinions must be backed up with cites (to the work itself, to other writings of the author, or to the works of scholars or bibliographers). That’s really the difference that I see between IMHO and GD, whether opinion, without backing, is acceptable on a question. That said, the moderators may see it differently.
Hell, for that matter, whether or not literary criticism when applied to Harry Potter should be a GD or not can be in itself a debate. Granted, such a debate draws heavily from the older debate of literary value of popular literature vs. that of (so-called) high literature, but based on the outcome, and drama, of the Whitbread award, it seems somewhat valid. Having not yet read the new translation of Beowulf, I’m of the “it’s a translation of an existing work, so what’s the big deal” school of thought but, again, that’s a whole 'nother discussion.
Hum. I didn’t know I would cause such a tizzy with an offhand comment. FTR, my motivations were much as Lux Fiat described; while I’ve read and enjoyed the whole HP series, they’re more in the range of pop fantasy, IMHO, like the Star Trek v. Star Wars wrangles. I mean, the Enterprise v. Star Destroyer thread posters had lots of cites to back up their opinions, but still I tend to rule it as not a Great Debate. Yes, this is resting rather heavily on my personal opinion of what works are “popular” and which are “great”…I can see myself quite possibly leaving in “Guernica Is the Most Powerful Political Statement of Our Time” and booting “N’Sync Songs are the Most Powerful Political Statements of Our Time.” Harry Potter is quite a bit better than N’Sync, but not quite at the level of Dante or Blake. I’m rather stuck; I would like a way to keep in debates about Beethoven’s influence on historical musical thought and keep out debates about Christina Aguilera’s influence on historical musical thought. GD has a bit of a chronic problem with threads like “Jerry Springer v. Geraldo: Who Would Win?” and “The Nose Hair Clipper is the Greatest Invention. Discuss” and I tend to move such threads that seem a little “light”, while keeping in their “heavier” bretheren like “The Huns vs. The Greeks: Who Would Win?” and “Genetic Engineering is the Greatest Invention”. Given that critiques of particular works is very often grounded primarily in personal opinion, I suspect the majority of them would be best suited to IMHO, but discussions of the political and historical influence of “great” works may likely stay.
I don’t want IMHO to be seen as the red-headed stepchild of Great Debates; it is a viable forum in its own right and could thrive quite well as GD’s less-bloodily-political brother. Slythe has to deal with threads like “what’s your favorite color?” that—while legitimate topics–don’t really showcase the highest capabilities of his forum. And I have to deal with threads like the circ thread, that–while a legitimate topic–doesn’t really showcase the highest capabilities of the GD forum. I dunno, I’m still kind of leaning toward moving to IMHO threads that deal only with the work of art in question, and do not include its political and historical impact…the OP was promising, since it brought up the “Me-Generation” bit, but it became more about the books themselves–some rather fun and fluffy bits of fantasy–and had very little about their influence on the generation reading it, IMO.
Sorry it took me so long to respond to you, I’ve been a bit scarce for the past week.
No, no, you obviously don’t GET poststructuralist theory! You see, the only reason you would perceive a qualitative difference between these two topics is that YOUR location within the structure of discursive society has CREATED/CAUSED (yes, he weilds the mighty “/”!!!) your predictable valuation of excessively cerebrallly-tinged terminologies when there is no defendable universal perspective from which to defend this valuation. (For that matter, the placement of this thread in this forum is itself a “TEXT” and we ourselves are “doing literary criticism”).
Though you have a point, I’d venture to add that any critical theory taken to its extreme becomes ridiculous. That said, I also think that there is a difference between Maus and, say, X-Men Graphic Novel #43, to use the same postmodern/poststructuralist genre. All of these theories are useful to a point, and I’m one of the seemingly few willing to mix-and-match.
But it might be fun to deconstruct Homer’s monkey-butler post. Kind of like working with Burroughs while sober
And I have to say, too, that even the level of debate described by Finagle has not required the moving of, for example, Jack Dean Tyler’s thread to IMHO (and certainly he, more than anyone I’ve ever met, “debates” in the “No, I’m right” mode).
