Me Too, Cancel Culture, and Art

[jon zingale]

Briefly, last vFriam, a couple of us got to talking about the complicated
relationship between the Me Too movement, cancel culture, and art. Too
often, and likely due to the sensitive nature of the topic, I find that
the challenging questions posed are quickly and all too thoughtlessly
dispatched. That I find Michael Jackson monstrous, contributes to the
unease I experience (at times) when hearing his music, but also to the
ambivalence I have when purchasing the Beatles' music that he owned.

It was suggested, in the meeting, that there is the possibility of
monsters without victims. Cases, where those transgressed against, were
not *damaged* or cases of *pure depiction* where there is no one to be
transgressed against. While these points are interesting on their own,
I wish here to address the question of *erasure*. Should a statue be
removed or should it stand as a monument to shameful dominance? When
does the fact of the statue serve to catalyze tools for preventing future
occurrence, as in the case of Heidegger, or the related complication of
Heisenberg's work.

For me, as a bibliophile, I often pour over the works of individuals
that would never let me (and have not let me) sit at their table, those
pompous asses that would cancel me simply for my lack of pedigree. I
intuit that this reversal of the cancellation question may provide an
in-road. Here, there is not the same paradox of I like this person (the
work)-I don't like this person (the monster). Instead, I like this person
(the work)-this person does not like me (the wastrel). Suddenly, I am
free to derive whatever value I wish from the work. This, of course, is
only the case *access* willing.

As with the statue problem, it seems important to distinguish the cause
from the symptom. Here I, and naively so, suggest power differential as
the cause and the artifacts produced by this difference as the symptom[☤].
Whenever I would pass that besieged plaza statue (surrounded by its
pathetic little fence) and its public statement about the *savages*, I
could not help but to stop and think about how embarrassing and abstracted
the culture that would erect such a thing must be. For such a wound to
heal, I suspect there must be enough balance for the discussion, the
discussion that begins with one side claiming, "We must not forget our
glorious past" and the other claiming, "Yes, you must not forget your
monstrous past". Here, I do mean begin. The past *will* be forgotten,
as ultimately it should. But here, while in memory, we have the opportunity
to heal the past and to establish a balanced discourse. The move to
erase is not equivalent to the move to forget. Erasure is higher-
level, in that it is a desire to forget what one cannot tolerate.

[☤]OTOH, the symptom-cause metaphor is perhaps not the best one. That I
advocate for addressing power by addressing the statue, suggests to me
that it isn't quite right.




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[thompnickson2]

Perhaps graffiti is the answer?  Every generation get to scrawl on the statue whatever they may have learned from it.   Perhaps the ponderousness of the original erection process should be mirrored in the graffiti process.  Money should be raised, a committee formed, to determine the nature of the graffiti.  So, perhaps, the answer is not to take the statue down but, say, to dangle it by it's feet with an inscription like, "'savages', you say, you who have committed genocide upon my people".  Let that stand in the Plaza for a few decades.  
 

N

Nick Thompson
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Monday, February 8, 2021 11:44 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Me Too, Cancel Culture, and Art

Briefly, last vFriam, a couple of us got to talking about the complicated relationship between the Me Too movement, cancel culture, and art. Too often, and likely due to the sensitive nature of the topic, I find that the challenging questions posed are quickly and all too thoughtlessly dispatched. That I find Michael Jackson monstrous, contributes to the unease I experience (at times) when hearing his music, but also to the ambivalence I have when purchasing the Beatles' music that he owned.

It was suggested, in the meeting, that there is the possibility of monsters without victims. Cases, where those transgressed against, were not *damaged* or cases of *pure depiction* where there is no one to be transgressed against. While these points are interesting on their own, I wish here to address the question of *erasure*. Should a statue be removed or should it stand as a monument to shameful dominance? When does the fact of the statue serve to catalyze tools for preventing future occurrence, as in the case of Heidegger, or the related complication of Heisenberg's work.

For me, as a bibliophile, I often pour over the works of individuals that would never let me (and have not let me) sit at their table, those pompous asses that would cancel me simply for my lack of pedigree. I intuit that this reversal of the cancellation question may provide an in-road. Here, there is not the same paradox of I like this person (the work)-I don't like this person (the monster). Instead, I like this person (the work)-this person does not like me (the wastrel). Suddenly, I am free to derive whatever value I wish from the work. This, of course, is only the case *access* willing.

As with the statue problem, it seems important to distinguish the cause from the symptom. Here I, and naively so, suggest power differential as the cause and the artifacts produced by this difference as the symptom[☤].
Whenever I would pass that besieged plaza statue (surrounded by its pathetic little fence) and its public statement about the *savages*, I could not help but to stop and think about how embarrassing and abstracted the culture that would erect such a thing must be. For such a wound to heal, I suspect there must be enough balance for the discussion, the discussion that begins with one side claiming, "We must not forget our glorious past" and the other claiming, "Yes, you must not forget your monstrous past". Here, I do mean begin. The past *will* be forgotten, as ultimately it should. But here, while in memory, we have the opportunity to heal the past and to establish a balanced discourse. The move to erase is not equivalent to the move to forget. Erasure is higher- level, in that it is a desire to forget what one cannot tolerate.

[☤]OTOH, the symptom-cause metaphor is perhaps not the best one. That I advocate for addressing power by addressing the statue, suggests to me that it isn't quite right.




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[jon zingale]

Ha! Yeah, that would be pretty wonderful. Some of my favorite graffiti art in
the city (and elsewhere) has that quality. Have you seen the piece dedicated
to Onate's foot along the river trail?



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[Stephen Guerin-5]

Jon,

I don't know about the piece on the Santa Fe River. Do you have a photo or location?

btw, here's some of the story of his statue having his foot cut off:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/insider/new-mexico-statue-conquistador-foot-thief.html

On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 11:39 AM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ha! Yeah, that would be pretty wonderful. Some of my favorite graffiti art in
the city (and elsewhere) has that quality. Have you seen the piece dedicated
to Onate's foot along the river trail?



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[jon zingale]

Here you go, though seeing it in person is better. It is hard here to make out the 20 different feet placed about the mural and a number of the other thoughtful additions. It is easy to walk by a statue of Onate on his horse and know nothing about the monstrous event initiated by him. The multiple vandalisms, the stealing of his foot (feet), was not meaningless. As the NYT article states:

In 1599, they included amputating a foot from each of more than 20 male captives from Acoma Pueblo. The viceroy in Mexico City forced Oñate to resign as governor of New Mexico, and the conquistador was put on trial and found guilty of excesses. Oñate never returned to the land he conquered.

A mural referencing, a vandalism, referencing a monstrous act. The mural here incorporating the vandalisms into the greater story.

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