Marvin Heiferman thinks we shouldn’t call photography a “universal language”:
People talk about photography being a universal language but really it’s not; it’s multiple languages. The dialogues you can have with neuroscientists about photographic images are as interesting and as provocative as the dialogues you can have with artists. People have wildly different contexts in which they use photographs — different criteria for assessing them, reasons for taking them, priorities when looking at and evaluating them. It creates incredible possibilities for dialogue when you realize the medium is so flexible and so useful.
How we should think about photography:
Galleries and museums have spent the last 30 or 40 years trying to say this is art. Yes it is, but on a bigger level it’s life. Photography is all about life. You can have a philosophical conversation about a red light photograph that you got a parking ticket for as much as you can over something you see in a museum. We need a broader appreciation of photography as it comes to play a more central role in our lives; it shapes our imagination; it shapes our values; it shapes our activities. We have to understand that better.
Sarah Mirk welcomes the news that, between 2007 and 2011, “the teen birth rate nationwide dropped a whopping 25 percent.”Mirk credits a change in how the government funds sex education:
Instead of betting all its money on abstinence-only education, since 2010, reproductive health advocates pushed federal policy to instead favor “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs—meaning rigorous research has shown they’re actually effective. Or, as Katy Suellentrop of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy puts it, “The biggest policy change in teen pregnancy was in 2010 when there was a focus on using programs that work.” From 1998 to 2010, the federal government spent over a billion dollars on abstinence-only sex education. During that same time, the teen birth rates slowed, flat-lined, then actually began to increase in 2006, and then declined again. Now, the government sets aside $190 million to fund “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs like the ones working with Multnomah County’s Latino youth.
The birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds reached a record low of 31.3 per 1,000 in 2011, according to the CDC.
Daisy Buchanan praises Babyklar.nu, or “Baby Ready Now”:
[Site founder Emmanuel Limal] revealed that men make up 53% of the site’s membership. This seems surprising – in the media it is often suggested that women are the ones who are most keen to procreate. If we’re single, we’re meant to be sobbing into our white wine and worrying that there aren’t enough shoes in the world to fill our baby void, while our male counterparts are meant to be staring into the distant mountains with nothing but a fringed leather jacket for company, like the Marlboro Man.
But I know plenty of men, single and in relationships, who plan to start a family either “some day” or in the immediate future. And I know plenty of women, myself included, whose answer to the baby question is either “no” or “not sure”. Getting married and having children is no longer more or less inevitable for everyone. And when something so big can cause such a difference of opinion, doesn’t it make sense to be sure when you’re setting off on the path to happiness that it’s with someone who’s on the same page as you?
Have you guys seenDumbo? Pay close attention to the crows that appear near the end and teach Dumbo to fly. The stereotypes deployed with these characters is almost unbelievable by today’s standards. And yet, not only are they essential to the plot, but Disney has expanded the profile of Dumbo in the new Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World here near Orlando.
If children going to the new Fantasyland haven’t seen Dumbo yet (it was released in 1941), they probably will want to see it after visiting. And then they’ll see these guys (one of whose name is actually “Jim Crow”!). While their end purpose in the movie is certainly admirable, they are portrayed as cavalier bullies at first, and the way they’re berated by Timothy Mouse is just unreal in today’s context. Hell, Song of the South is almost expunged from vision at Disney, but here’s Dumbo, portrayed in their featured theme park as one of their touchstone old films. Don’t they get it?
Another actually defends blackface, in a way:
There is a contemporary assumption that it is inherently racist for a performer to perform in blackface. Obviously this was not always the case. As recently as the mid 1980s, Billy Crystal regularly appeared in blackface to do his Sammy Davis Jr. impression:
Though of course the blackface he used was quite different from the minstrel show variety featured in your thread, where performers have their mouths accentuated, clown-like, with white makeup. Still, Billy Crystal would NEVER get away with that today. But why not? His intent wasn’t racist. It was realism. He also wore a wig and a false moustache. So the dark makeup was of a piece with the rest. But cultural norms change.
Still, the assumption that a blackface performance from the 1930s or ’40s is racist just doesn’t seem on the mark. I had a pop-culture professor back in grad school who was always going on and on about the minstrel show. He actually wrote a book on the subject. He saw the minstrel show as the sort of wellspring of all sorts of musical styles that followed, from jazz to blues to hip hop and as a very positive force in black American culture, and his argument was persuasive. The minstrel show, it is important to remember, typically featured black performers (not white ones) in blackface.
By the 1930s and ’40s, these old performances were likely a well-understood part of the cultural zeitgeist of the past, along with vaudeville. Throwing the odd minstrel show number into a musical seemed no stranger than throwing in the odd vaudeville number I’m sure.
Don’t get me wrong. White attitudes towards black Americans in the 30s and ’40s were insensitive and casually racist. But these performances are not racist in and of themselves, and we would do well as a culture to try to get over looking at them in that way. (Though I must admit that I can definitely understand how a black person watching this stuff today could be deeply offended.)
Another takes more of a middle ground:
Can I ask why everybody is so uncomfortable watching those old classics?
Are they not aware that times and culture have changed? I am asking because as a cartoon fan, I regularly reread the Tintincartoons, and especially the first ones, written in the ’30s and ’40s have some pretty bleak stereotypes of the Soviets, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese and Africans. Tintin in the Congo hasn’t been published in English in a long time because of its racism. But remember, the Congo was still under Belgian control in the ’30s! And if you read through the series, you see the change in culture between the ’30s and ’70s. And you see how author Herge gets more modern. How awesome is that?
I have never been perturbed by Tintin and old, off-tone films. Times change. Culture changes. You know it, so why not enjoy it? The changed culture does not make these old pieces of art better or worse; it just makes you aware that culture has changed. And since we live now, we think it’s for the good. Let’s celebrate that instead of cover it up. And who knows what they’ll think of us in another 50 years.
Another example of how a classic series reformed itself:
From 1910 to 1930, more than half of the American juvenile fiction market was produced by the “Stratemeyer Syndicate” founded by Edward Stratemeyer, who produced nearly a thousand volumes by providing 2-3 page outlines of proposed books to impecunious ghostwriters, who would do the actual writing. The Syndicate created numerous iconic series in the period including Tom Swift, the Rover Boys, Dave Fearless, Ted Scott and the Bobsey Twins, but their most famous series today are The Hardy Boys (starting in 1927) and Nancy Drew (1930). Edward Stratemeyer died in 1930, but his daughter, Harriett Stratemeyer Adams, continued the work of the Syndicate almost to her death in 1984.
The earliest Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books reflected their times; many of the books contained racial stereotypes (See the Hardy Boys’ The Hidden Harbor Mystery, 1935), or Jewish stereotypes (See Nancy Drew’s The Hidden Staircase, 1930). During the 1950s, the books’ publisher, Grosset and Dunlap, started receiving complaints about the racial and religious stereotypes in the old books. The old books also had outdated printing plates, and a much slower pace than the new titles concurrently being published.
Beginning in 1959, Harriett Adams and the Syndicate addressed these issues by discarding the original texts and putting new books inside the old titles. Some were just rewrites of the old story; some were completely new stories with the same title. But the racial stereotyping in the original texts was gone. One of the earliest Hardy Boys books to be revised was The Hidden Harbor Mystery, 1961. In the 1935 version, the black characters who worked on an old plantation in the South were the bad guys, stealing from the plantation owners and fomenting a feud between neighbors. But in the 1961 version, the black characters were suddenly the good guys, helping the Hardy Boys solve the mystery and end the feud.
Other stories with Chinese and Mexican stereotypes had similar revisions. Once the new book with the original title was published, the old book simply went out print, only to be found in used book stores, or later on EBAY. (Some of the original books were also reprinted as collectors editions in the 1990s). Despite their racist content, most collectors of the series think the original texts were much better written. The revised texts from the 1960s remain in print today. In addition, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are now owned by Simon and Shuster, which continues to publish completely new titles to this day; the new titles current 2013 sensibilities.
This is an example where we went back and excised the old racial stereotypes. But did we lose something authentic when we painted over the 1930s America in the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew original texts with the more sanitized 1960s America reflected in the revised texts?
On that note:
My own experience with this kind of thing occurred a few years ago when I bought some DVD collections of the old Warner Bros. cartoons for my young kids to watch on long car rides. It turns out many of these contain vile sexist and racist stereotypes. But to Warner Bros. credit, they have mostly released these as is, with a note advising essentially that times have changed and they recognize that many of these are not acceptable by today’s standards, but that they are a record and reflection of their times.
I think this is basically healthy. I think it is good that we be reminded how recently these types of terrible images were considered perfectly acceptable. It’s a good wake-up call for folks anytime we start to celebrate how far we’ve come. Many people, especially white males, but also many younger people who may never have really witnessed racial or gender-based prejudice first-hand, need to be reminded how hard it was in this country for almost every out-group until very recently.
Yesterday the DOJ released the above memo, which indicates that it won’t sue to prevent Colorado or Washington state from legalizing marijuana. Sullum analyzes the document:
There is plenty of wiggle room there for the Justice Department, which can decide at any point that “state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust” and move to shut down state-licensed growers and retailers. The experience with medical marijuana, where promises of forbearance led to a “green rush” of cannabusinesses that prompted a crackdown, suggests no one should get too excited about the Obama administration’s willingness to tolerate deviations from prohibitionist orthodoxy. Furthermore, no matter how intrusive the Justice Department turns out to be in practice, all bets are off in the next administration. Still, this wishy-washy yellow light for legalization is better than might have been expected based on Obama’s broken promises regarding medical marijuana.
This makes it somewhat safer to be a state-licensed cannabis grower or retailer, but it doesn’t make it safe.
Today’s policy statement – as opposed to a binding rule, which would be part of the U.S. Attorneys Manual explicitly does not constrain the discretion of the United States Attorneys in Washington and Colorado. It creates no rights or remedies. It is subject to revision at any time, and that revision would have retroactive effects.
Some of you surely are questioning the sanity of those who are releasing statements of exuberance about this announcement. However, I do understand at least one reason for doing so. Since the administration is playing the “game” of appearing to be reasonable while not actually committing to anything real, a tactic by the other side can be to publicly accept that “appearance” as something real, in order to cement that impression with the public. Thus, when the administration acts in a contrary manner, the public will view the administration as double-dealing once again.
Sullum rounds up other responses to the announcement.
According to a big new announcement from the IRS and the Treasury Department, if you’re a legally married gay couple, the federal government will recognize your marriage — even if you live in a state where your marriage isn’t legal.
The statement, released by the Treasury Department Thursday, says that department and the IRS will use a “place of celebration” rule in recognizing same-sex unions (recognition that was illegal before the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act last month). That means that the U.S. government recognizes a marriage if the union was legally recognized in the place where it occurred, where it was celebrated. That’s true even if the married couple then lives in a state where gay marriage is illegal.
The new policy applies to all federal tax provisions where marriage is a factor, including filing status, claiming personal and dependency exemptions, taking the standard deduction, employee benefits, contributing to an IRA, and claiming the earned income tax credit or child tax credit.
This is no small development.
Under the old policy, if a same-sex couple in Vermont gets married, then moves to Florida, they would no longer be treated as married under tax law. Now, no matter where a same-sex married couple lives, that family can take comfort in knowing they’ll be treated equally under federal tax law.
June Thomas considers other consequences of this decision:
As Matthew Yglesias recently wrote, a willingness to relocate is essential in times of high unemployment, and married gay men and lesbians shouldn’t suffer a loss of rights if they need to move to a state without marriage equality. It’s also good news for the 13 states that, along with the District of Columbia, perform same-sex marriages: Any same-sex couples who want to tie the knot but live in a marriage-denying state would be well-advised to give up on waiting for their state to see sense and spend their wedding dollars in a more welcoming jurisdiction.
Barro notes that same-sex married couples can amend old returns:
[O]ne key component of today’s announcement is that the IRS will accept amended tax returns from gay couples going back as far as 2010. If you filed previous years’ taxes as single because the IRS didn’t recognize your marriage, you can go back and change old tax returns to say you’re married—but only if you want to.
Gay couples will presumably only take this option if doing so gets them a tax refund. Typically, that would happen for one of two reasons. If the spouses had highly unequal incomes, it’s likely they missed out on a marriage bonus, because graduated tax brackets kick in at higher levels for couples than singles. Or, if one spouse put the other on his or her employer-provided health plan in previous years, amending old returns will allow the couple to deduct the cost of that spousal health benefit from tax.
Since only couples getting refund checks will be likely to amend, the IRS decision is likely to cause a short-run revenue loss. But it will be made up in the future, when same-sex married couples have to file their taxes as married whether they want to or not.
Finally, Linda Beale examines remaining legal inequalities:
In spite of the relief this federal ruling provides, same-sex couples will still face enormously complex legal issues because of the states that discriminate against such couples. They may have adopted children in the state in which the marriage was celebrated, but they may move to a state that doesn’t recognize gay marriages and doesn’t permit gay adoptions. What kind of issues will that raise? They may be able to transfer property at death without probate in their home state, but not in their new state of domicile. All of these issues continue to argue for an equal protection right to gay marriage and the rights and obligations that correspond to it, as well as sister state comity in recognizing gay marriages conducted in other states.
While Obama insisted that he hasn’t yet decided on whether to intervene in Syria, the UK legislature, after live-streaming their debate, has:
Barack Obama’s plans for air strikes against Syria were thrown into disarray on Thursday night after the British parliament unexpectedly rejected a motion designed to pave the way to authorising the UK’s participation in military action.
The White House was forced to consider the unpalatable option of taking unilateral action against the regime of Bashar al-Assad after the British prime minister, David Cameron, said UK would not now take part in any military action in response to a chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus last week. Although Britain’s support was not a prerequisite for US action, the Obama administration was left exposed without the backing of its most loyal ally, which has taken part in every major US military offensive in recent years.
Elsewhere in Syria coverage, we wondered how its ally Iran would react to intervention, doubted the “credibility to America” argument, and continued to question the Obama administration’s refusal to go to Congress.
Meanwhile, many black liberal bloggers were critical of the president’s MLK speech from yesterday and a few readers rushed to defend it. Readers also sent us more dead saints, looked for signs of gay acceptance in the hip-hop community, cited some unsettling depictions of Asians in classic cinema, and reminded us that all kinds of cultures can produce annoying tourists.
A few readers push back against the criticism we aired earlier:
Regarding Obama’s big speech yesterday, it was fabulous. In other words, I think the pundits are full of it. They’re upset that he didn’t get specific with policy proposals? I call bullshit. I went back and read MLK’s original. Not a whole lot of specifics in there either. I counted not a single policy proposal. MLK’s speech was a true oration. And so was Obama’s yesterday.
Near the end, when Obama said, “That’s where courage comes from,” tears came to my eyes. He moved me. He zoomed out and showed that this day isn’t about Martin Luther King. Obama made it clear this wasn’t just about black versus white. He included all of us. If anything could be called a theme of his term in office, it’s this spirit of the collective – the community. It’s not about any one man. We’re all in this together.
Another also liked the speech:
It made me think of his first inaugural address. I recall I was driving to the airport and had to keep switching stations. I was at first disappointed because I didn’t hear a capital-Q quote – an “Ask not what your country can do for you” or “The only thing we have to fear”. But the speech made me think.
I especially liked when he quoted Scripture, saying it was time to put aside childish things, mostly because it made me think what was going through Bush’s mind: “Hey not a bad speech. I wish I could deliver a line like that; it sounds like a good sermon. Hey, he’s even quoting Scripture, good for him. Childish things … put aside childish things … Hey, wait a minute, is he talking about me?”
Sometimes an inaugural quote (small-q, admittedly) will pass through my mind (e.g. “greatness is never a given”, “we rejects as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”). I think his speech yesterday will be in the same vein – no capital-Q, “I have a dream” lines, but enough good stuff to make you think.
A demonstrator shouts at the riot police during clashes that erupted after a march in support of Colombian farmers protesting in demand of government subsidies and greater access to land, in Bogota on August 29, 2013. Backed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest leftist guerrilla group, farmworkers called the open-ended protest to demand government subsidies for certain agricultural products and lower prices for inputs like seed and fertilizer. Protesters also are seeking guarantees on access to land, special land preserves for poor farmers, policies in support of traditional miners, improved delivery of healthcare, and potable water in rural areas. By Guillermo Legaria/AFP/Getty Images.
It’s easy to say we can learn from people who have been raised differently. It’s harder to determine how those lessons should be applied. Take, for example, the several fascinating chapters on violence and dispute resolution in non-state societies. The core of Diamond’s argument is that traditional systems of dispute resolution have different goals from modern trials.
They seek to restore relationships rather than find the truth or mete out punishment. But as the author goes on to explain, these practices take this form because, in tribal societies, people are likely to remain in contact with the same small group for their entire lives. While repairing those relationships through reconciliation may make people feel better, their crucial purpose is to stave off cycles of retributive violence. By contrast, most Western legal disputes occur between strangers who never have to see each other again when the matter is through, and who probably won’t consider killing each other in any case. If the two parties do know each other, our mobile society gives them as much leeway to become future strangers as they would like.
So by the time Diamond decides that traditional non-Western methods of settling disputes could “inspire” new forms of mediation here, the addition to our “repertoire” seems rather deracinated. The question of exactly how citizens of states should learn from traditional societies is left unresolved. Do existing forms of mediation really count? Can such forms of mediation really deliver just outcomes in a system where the side with more money is likely to win? Diamond zestfully engages these questions, considering everything from European systems of prison rehabilitation to the question of who should pay for trials. But in doing so, he ends up pretty far afield from the stated subject of traditional societies. Or, at least, pretty far afield from a workable merging of the two.
The Dish 