First they came for Aunt Jemima
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Ax, grab a bowl of popcorn and enjoy. Sidney Toler was probably my favorite Chan...
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@Catseye3 said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
I am actually encouraged, the more extreme these developments become. It is more than probable, don't you suppose, that this whole movement will burn itself out as its childish ridiculousness becomes more flagrant?
In China the cultural revolution lasted 10 years.
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@Jolly said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
Human nature does not change. One of the reasons the Bible is just a relevant today as it was when it was written, is because human nature has not changed one iota.
Also Shakespeare.
A modern black actor would have no more clue as to how a black man behaved in the late 1500's than a white one. Authenticity is a false premise.
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It's arguable whether human nature has changed. Clearly, society as a whole would be largely unrecognizable to people of 2000 or 500 years ago.
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Like I said, it's arguable. With regard to society, it's a product of human nature, so it goes some way towards reflecting it, as well as in turn influencing it.
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@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
It's somewhat tautological to say that great literature/art transcends time and fashion and concern human nature/condition. Human nature and condition change over time, so we're just going to stop calling certain pieces of literature/art that fail to reflect the relevant human nature/condition "great." The authors/composers themselves could not tell for how long their works would remain relevant. We can argue about whether any piece of art/literature is "relevant" today, but it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that any piece of art/literature will, given enough time, eventually become "irrelevant." It's "relevant" until it isn't. It's "great" until it isn't.
I disagree. What about the human nature has really changed over the last few thousand years? Greek mythology will always be relevant. The bible will always be relevant. Shakespeare will always be relevant. These works contain findings that are comparable to the discovery of laws of physics, except that they pertain to human nature and not physics. What you are saying is similar to the proposition that, say, "Gravity is relevant until it isn't". It doesn't make sense. And it doesn't stop us from making new discoveries on top of the laws of gravity. The famous phrase of us being "dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants" does not only apply to science. It applies equally to art. You cannot get to a Chopin without going through a Bach first.
What you seem to promote reminds me of the "New Soviet man" and similar utopian ideas. The problem with these ideas is that that's not how humans work. Human nature isn't malleable by utopian ideas.
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@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Klaus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.
I can't comment on these particular operas, but I couldn't disagree more with the general sentiment of your statement. Great literature and great art transcends time and fashion. They concern the human nature and human condition, and that doesn't change within a few hundred years. It doesn't matter whether superficial aspects of the story/play/... relate to the time frame in which the piece was written. Love, hate, envy, greed, sacrifice, death - these are all human universals and there's infinite wisdom on those to be found in the canon of art and literature of the last 5000 years. It is both silly and narrow-minded to think that they are no longer relevant today.
It's somewhat tautological to say that great literature/art transcends time and fashion and concern human nature/condition. Human nature and condition change over time, so we're just going to stop calling certain pieces of literature/art that fail to reflect the relevant human nature/condition "great." The authors/composers themselves could not tell for how long their works would remain relevant. We can argue about whether any piece of art/literature is "relevant" today, but it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that any piece of art/literature will, given enough time, eventually become "irrelevant." It's "relevant" until it isn't. It's "great" until it isn't.
I've seen your movie picks, Ax. You're talking way out of your depth here.
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Education is extremely important.
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@Horace said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Rainman said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
transgenders play transgender part(s),
Transgender folk often have their parts cut.
POTD
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@Mik said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Horace said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
@Rainman said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
transgenders play transgender part(s),
Gender Fluid can pick any roles they identify with that day.
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@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:
So, we should do away with blind auditions, amirite?
Yesterday I posted about the proposed elimination of “blind auditions” for symphony orchestras, so that race and gender could be used as selection criteria to help diversify orchestra musicians. It would be the elimination of what previously was a meritocracy:
For decades leading symphony orchestras have used “blind auditions” to hire musicians. That is, the musicians are not seen at all, only their music is heard. That way, implicit or explicit racial, ethnic, or gender bias cannot enter into the hiring decision, only the quality of the music. It is as close to a pure meritocracy as I can imagine….
The desire to move away from “blind auditions” hurts people who otherwise would have been chosen based on the quality of their music, or in other contexts, their academic performance on standardized tests and other objective measurements….
I mentioned in that regard that this overt intent to discriminate was, in campus-speak, called “equity,” which is the opposite of equal opportunity:
On campus, this is called “equity,” a euphemism for racial, gender and other discrimination. It’s the opposite of equal opportunity, it’s demanding equal results even if it means discriminating against some people on the basis of race, ethnicity or other immutable factors. It’s the core driving the “antiracism” movement on campus. When campus activists and administrators say “equity” (as opposed to “equality”), what they really mean is discrimination based on race to achieve a desired racial outcome.
As mentioned previously, the suggested Cornell summer reading and discussion topic is How to Be AntiRacist, which seems to be the roadmap used to develop the proposed compulsory racial activism for faculty, students, and staff. Here’s a key concept from How to Be AntiRacist:
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
The Orchestra post inspired a reader to send me this message:
“Harrison Bergeron lives!! Only thing Kurt Vonnegut got wrong was that he thought it wouldn’t happen until the latter half of the 21st century.”
The message was accompanied by a link to the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1961 short story, Harrison Bergeron. I’m embarrassed to say I had not read it before, but now I’m glad I did. As with George Orwell, and other authors also, Vonnegut understood human nature, and the tyranny to which we seem inclined.
Vonnegut foresaw the abysmal “equity” culture, though he didn’t use that term:
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
As that opening paragraph suggests, all were made equal by handicapping the over-achievers in various ways, including requiring them to wear weights and to have their thoughts interrupted through implants and other devices.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April forinstance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteenyear-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
Harrison Bergeron was too smart and could not be easily handicapped:
“He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
Harrison Bergeron required special handicaps in order to bring him down to others’ level, so all would be equal:
He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
Want to know what happened? Read the story. It’s short. Short enough even for people who are used to typing TLDNR.
I think Harrison Bergeron holds great relevance to the campus and societal push to achieve “equity” at the cost of “equal opportunity,” through discrimination on the basis of race in the name of antiracism.
We are heading for this dystopian vision, or we may already be there.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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I remember when I was on the Board, I would question central cabinet members during presentations to the Board, asking them to define terms they so easily threw around.
One was "equity" vs. "equality."
Overall, they confused equity with equality, mostly coming down on the side of "equality of opportunity" to be the basis for both words. To doubly confuse, I would ask for definitions for "outcome based education" which is of course, equity.It was not deliberate confusion on their part. But over the years, "equality" came to mean "equity" and it's like these assistant superintendents never realized the change.
But, the Rubicon had been crossed. By the time a distinction could have been made between equity and equality, it was too late. Any criticism would be immediately countered with accusations of racism.
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Mr. Vonnegut got most things right.
He really got it.
I think I've read all of what he published, it's been a while. But I haven't seen the movie.
I think I liked Player Piano the best. This pandemic might actually bring us something like the reeks and wrecks.
Diana Moon Glampers is everywhere.
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https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/why-auditions-fail-and-the-times-is-so-wrong/
Max Raimi of the Chicago Symphony takes issue with the New York Times’s demand to abolish blind auditions:
To promote greater diversity in our symphony orchestras, The New York Times’ chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini proposes that auditions should no longer be held behind a screen. Here is an excerpt from his article: “Blind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy: An orchestra should be built from the very best players, period. But ask anyone in the field, and you’ll learn that over the past century of increasingly professionalized training, there has come to be remarkably little difference between players at the top tier. There is an athletic component to playing an instrument, and as with sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros, the basic level of technical skill among American instrumentalists has steadily risen. A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.”
“Ask anyone”? Nobody asked me. I play viola in the Chicago Symphony. A significant percentage, very possibly a majority of our auditions, end up with us failing to hire a musician. I am currently on the audition committee to find a new Principal Viola. We have had two rounds of auditions—prelims, semis, and finals—and have heard well over 100 candidates. We even tried out two of the more promising players, having them play a few concerts as Principal. The committee and our Music Director, Riccardo Muti, have been in agreement that none of the candidates meet our standards. Mr. Tommasini’s premise, that there is any number of more-or-less interchangeable candidates who can fill the openings in our major orchestras and the decision of which of them to select is essentially arbitrary is a fantasy. Unfortunately, once the pandemic allows it, we will again be back at square one, sitting for hours and days on end listening to one violist after another play Strauss orchestral excerpts.
The statement I cited was troubling for another reason as well. Mr. Tommasini talks about the “athletic component to playing an instrument”, comparing us to “sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros”. Fair enough. But then, in a splendid sleight-of-hand, he talks about “dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.” Disingenuously, he inserts “musicianship” into it; this has no parallel in his athletic metaphor.
Many years ago, our former Music Director here in Chicago, Daniel Barenboim, insisted that we have violists play the opening of the solo viola part to Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante” at auditions. It is not at all technically demanding. But I was astonished at how after six measures—perhaps twelve seconds of music—I knew everything I needed to know about whomever I was listening to.
The viola in this passage, in octaves with a solo violin, rises an octave on E Flats, the lower one a grace note, the upper one held for more than two bars that call for a crescendo and then a diminuendo. The music then meanders down the E Flat major scale, taking a scenic route with brief digressions. At first, the soloists are all but inaudible, lost in the sympathetic vibrations of the E Flats in the orchestra. Miraculously, at some point in the crescendo, we become aware of the soloists. It is as if they have always been there, since the beginning of time, but we hadn’t noticed.
The violist, in a matter of seconds, must transform his or her sound from a shadow to a physical presence, and then contrive to sing the circuitous downward line in one uninterrupted phrase, lyrically and yet with utter simplicity. E flat is a notoriously hard key to play in tune. The music is sufficiently slow so that your sound and intonation are stripped naked; the passage comes off as either absolutely gorgeous or grotesquely flawed.
The reason that this little except works so well in auditions is because it crystalizes perfectly what we are looking for in a colleague. The technical command that Mr. Tommasini references is a given; our search goes far beyond this. What is required is a concept, a way to tell a story with sound, with phrasing, with dynamics, and with every other resource at our command. Mr. Tommasini would reduce the criteria by which we evaluate candidates for our orchestra to speed and accuracy; judging us as one might judge a stenographer. I find it quite frankly offensive.
An argument can be made that hiring musicians of color is of such importance for the place of orchestras in our society that it should perhaps be a higher priority than necessarily finding the best musician for every opening. If Mr. Tommasini wishes to make that argument, it is a discussion well worth having. But to say that there are so many people who can step into our major orchestras and perform at the highest level that it doesn’t matter which of several candidates get the job (so we might as well take the musician of color) is simply not true.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
