On HU
Featured Archive Post: Susan Kirtley praises Lynda Barry.
Me with a couple of hello songs for Adele.
Ng Suat Tong on Frazetta’s racist porn.
Chris Gavaler asks if Katniss Everdeen is a superhero.
Roy T. Cook on She-Hulk’s gender presentation.
Kael Salad on being a teacher and talking to students about pop culture you don’t like.
Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates for comics in early 1950; lots of EC here.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Playboy I wrote about
—why Bernie Sanders’ focus on private prisons is a distraction.
—the WFA getting rid of the HP Lovecraft statue, and why they should honor Octavia Butler instead.
At the Guardian I wrote about
—imperial idiocy in Narcos and Our Brand Is Crisis.
—Supergirl and how women aren’t allowed to enjoy superpowers.
At the Establishment I wrote about Britney, Taylor Swift, and selling your body vs. selling your soul.
On Splice Today I wrote about—
—how Katha Pollitt is happy to forgive mistakes of transphobes, less willing to forgive mistakes of trans activists.
—the Walking Dead, Spectre, and whether you should show the zombies mercy.
GOP lies about the economy and why many people don’t see them as lies.
Other Links
While I was sitting in the very same room with her, Tara Burns wrote up this interview with Margaret Cho.
From a bit back, this is a great piece by Dorian Linsky on the efforts to ban Birth of a Nation.
Zoe Quinn made a Lovecraft vs. Hitler quote game.
I just took the Lovecraft quiz (it’s pretty easy if you realize that Hitler didn’t say much about black people or New York) and thought her running commentary was really stupid and juvenile. Yes, let’s all pat ourselves on the back for our superiority to Adolph Hitler and a hardcore racist from the 20s.
I wasn’t so taken with the running commentary. I thought it was a fun/interesting exercise though.
It’s kinda weird to criticize a purposefully stupid and juvenile writing style for being stupid and juvenile.
Otherwise clever people often turn off their brains when analysing low culture, resulting in brainfarts like this.
Anyway, I kinda liked the writing. Matter of taste, of course.
“thought her running commentary was really stupid and juvenile”
says more about you than her
I’m a bit taken aback that people think Jack’s criticism of the commentary is over the top or illegitimate. I thought it seemed grating and odd and unnecessary. You don’t need to keep telling me that Hitler (!) and Lovecraft are saying awful things. It makes it about the game maker in a way that struck me wrong too.
Though, again, I think juxtaposing the quotes is funny, and a nice way to illustrate just how extreme Lovecraft was (and that he and Hitler were really both involved in very similar eugenic discourses.)
I have no problem with the intended message in Jack’s post. He didn’t find it funny, and I’m cool with that. He might even be right.
It just irks me when a work with obvious intention presents a certain element in full view, and some people points out that the work indeed contain that very element.
Like when someone complained that one of the heroes in the Watchman movie was a rapist. Or when someone after watching a woman-in-prison flick says that the movie objectitifies women. Or when people say that the Millinium series is “too dark”. Or when a reviewer wrote that Scary Movie “is engineered to appeal to the lowest instincts” …
This Captain Obvious analysis always applies to low art. You won’t find a reviewer complaining that the future described in 1984 is way too negative and depressing.
I don’t think it applies only to low art…or it shouldn’t. I’m pretty sure folks are willign to point out that Moby Dick and Henry James are slow and boring, and that Finnegan’s Wake is incomprehensible.
I think people are actually way, way too reluctant to point out the obvious in art—especially when the obvious seems intentional. Sure, the commentary in hitchcock vs. lovecraft is meant to be snide and juvenile. Intention doesn’t stop it from being snide and juvenile, though, you know? As Jack points out, what exactly is the point of jeering at Lovecraft like that? To show you know he’s racist? It’s obvious he’s racist. Something can be intentional and a bad aesthetic choice.
1984 is really quite sexist. That’s fairly obvious—but people get pissed when you point it out, in my experience.
Yeah okay, nothing wrong with criticizing the core element in a piece of art. But people have to go a little deeper than just pointing out that they have cleverly observed something totally obvious.
Speaking about stating the obvious… I notice this ‘LOVECRAFT VS. HITLER QUOTE GAME’, which, after declaring that it contains some of Adolf Hitlers heinous statements about minorities, delivers this disclaimer:
“This game contains really hateful quotes and quoted racial slurs. If this isn’t a thing you feel like reading, I would suggest not playing this!”
Really? Hitlers opinion on Jews are considered to be racist in nature? Wow. Just wow.
Noah: Hitchcock?
Anyway, I recently reread Call of Cthulhu for the first time in years, and thought that one could make a quiz titled “Call of Cthulhu or Turner Diaries?” without too much trouble, so I ain’t mad at this quiz.
Ack! Sorry about that! I’ve been writing about Hitchcock for a gig and he just slipped in there! (Hitchcock is kind of a shit, but obviously he’s not Hitler.)
@Kasper Hivid
Believe it or not, there are people who get really uncomfortable reading racist statements that vile. Some may even be triggered by it hence the warning.
The constant jokes and mockery just seemed to be taking the piss out of Hitler and Lovecraft. Considering how upset just changing the bust of the latter made some people, maybe that kind of irreverence is necessary.