Well OK, but you have to understand that my thoughts here come from somewhere. I've been witness to brand peacocking my entire life and I really do not understand it, and I've been insulted over that before. Even out here in the sticks where you'd think such things would be uncommon, it happens all the time. Though if I had to guess, what's considered fashionable up here is probably several leagues out of step with what is considered fashionable in more developed areas.
The problem is, you're treating everyone that follows fashion or likes nice clothing like those sort of people, who I think that most sensible people who enjoy good clothes really do not like. I mean, if you're wearing a suit that costs three grand and it fits wrong and you wear it in a way that makes you look sloppy, who even cares what label made the thing? Your taste is expensive and bad. Good taste knows no price bracket.
Мишка has also done stuff with Psychic TV, Crass and Spongebob Squarepants
I don't know anything about fashion, but I'd just like to say that my life's been enhanced by knowing there's a Genesis P-Orridge fashion line out there.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
The reason that Richie Rich stuff exists is because DreamWorks Animation owns him, and a bunch of other irrelevant characters, now and is desperate to milk them
On the surface, Garfield does adhere to rigid convention, but it can't be forgotten that, in many ways, Jon Arbuckle is the ultimate existentialist clown.
but dreamworks aren't the ones making the clothes, they're just leasing out the trademark to a company that expressed interest in doing so.
Well, yeah, but it's still part of DWA's troubling transition towards "brand management" above all else
Truthfully, of all the Classic Media characters, I'd like for them to keep working at Rocky and Bullwinkle - narratively, above all. Some good official licensing artwork would help, the existing stuff is dreck.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
@Anonus: lol, you managed to get Occupy Richie Rich to post about it
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I feel like the thing with Beethoven being called black is that while yes, race is socially constructed, our current social constructs are bad and limiting. Claiming a symbol that is strongly associated with whiteness changes something for us in the here-and-now. While things were definitely different for them, we always look at history through our own eyes, and take the lessons that apply to us in the present.
I mean, as I type up this post my younger brother looked over my shoulder and told me; "They're saying Beethoven was black? That's kind of dumb," his first instinct being to assume that he was nothing but white.
I don't have the right to say that he is or isn't black. The matter of degrees is a complicated matter. And he's not one of mine. But I understand the need to say that he is.
Methinks that the fact that, either way, Beethoven was who he was and was treated as he was by his society regardless of his skin tone serves as a far better object lesson in tolerance than "reclamation" past provable fact ever would. What makes the issue frustrating, however, is that there are people who will dismiss this regardless of evidence due to prejudices within themselves.
Yeah, the whole need to justify black slavery is really what brought modern conceptions of race into high gear, although ironically the man who first invented the terms "Caucasian," "Negroid" and "Mongoloid" was actually trying to demonstrate that race had nothing to do with intellectual or moral superiority by showing that all people, regardless of basic appearance and body shape, were essentially human and equal.
Which was really fucking progressive for the seventeenth century, I will have you know.
Meiners' treatise was widely read in the German intellectual circles of its day, despite muted criticism of its scholarship. Meiners proposed a taxonomy of human beings which involved only two races (Rassen): Caucasians and Mongolians. He considered Caucasians to be more physically attractive than Mongolians, notably because they had paler skin; Caucasians were also more sensitive and more morally virtuous than Mongolians. Later he would make similar distinction within the Caucasian group, concluding that the Germans were the most attractive and virtuous people on earth
Nope, Blumenbach was who I was thinking of. Didn't technically invent the term, but popularised it. Quoth the man:
Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro.
Blumenbach's rhetoric is very colonial-era, and his scientific conclusions were dubious, but the basic sentiment there is that environmental factors and appearance do not change the fact that people are basically the same everywhere, and there are people of great merit and worthiness of every ethnicity.
Caucasian variety—I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (original members) of mankind.
i would bone them so they're probably the original
I always found that bit of trivia pretty funny, particularly given how many years later Fox News were reassuring their audience that the Boston marathon bombers were "not Caucasian."
I think that Linnaeus was the taxonomy guy. Not sure if that was the same person.
i just remember he taxonomized humans in the same way, using those terms, lol
i don't think he did actually.
In the first edition of Systema Naturae, Linnaeus subdivided the human species into four varieties based on continent and skin colour: "Europæus albus" (white European), "Americanus rubescens" (red American), "Asiaticus fuscus" (brown Asian) and "Africanus niger" (black African)
"caucasian" was more of an anthropology and post-evolution I think thing and I think Linnaeus was too much of a botanist to give a damn.
Nope, Blumenbach was who I was thinking of. Didn't technically invent the term, but popularised it. Quoth the man:
Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro.
That is an awesome old-timey sentence.
As for the Beethoven thing, I'm kind of on the fence about it? Yes, Beethoven's race wasn't viewed in the same way that, say, my race is at this current time. But it is nice to be able to think of Germany, a country from which so much of my favorite music has come from, as a country that featured people who looked kind of like me.
Or, in other words, harping on the specific case of Beethoven is a bit obnoxious, but the overall goal of breaking the common conception of European art as a white man's game is still valid.
Or, in other words, the overall point of the tumblr is specifically to show that old-timey Europe didn't have the ideas about race that were propagated, particularly in America, to support the subjugation of minorities.
The point isn't to throw Beethoven in the 'Black' bin of Ancient Historical Heroes. The point is to get people thinking about European History in a more realistic sense, as opposed to the sanitized narratives that get pushed in certain history classes in certain states.
The problem I have with medievalpoc is her dismissal of Jews and Roma in Europe as "white". Sorry, you do not place the two racial/ethnic groups that have seen the most racial hatred in Europe, including attempts to eradicate them from the earth, in that category.
She's erasing the actual history of racism in Europe in order to make a point entirely about 21st Century America, and that I cannot get behind.
My issue with the Beethoven thing is the awful scholarship behind its premise. I believe it's possible he had some African ancestry. I think the narrative strung together to "show" that is full with enough "maybe" and "possibly" and "could have" to sink a battleship.
The problem I have with medievalpoc is her dismissal of Jews and Roma in Europe as "white". Sorry, you do not place the two racial/ethnic groups that have seen the most racial hatred in Europe, including attempts to eradicate them from the earth, in that category.
She's erasing the actual history of racism in Europe in order to make a point entirely about 21st Century America, and that I cannot get behind.
Actually, she seems to have apologised pretty extensively regarding the Romani thing, and has admitted that part of the reason that they are not better covered on the blog is how hard it is to tell when they are being depicted in older illustrations outside of explicit mentions because, like Native Americans in old drawings, they tend to be given generic European features. The same goes for Jews, for the most part. Furthermore, the fact that there are and were dark-skinned Jewish and Romani people tends to get severely marginalised in modern art history - despite the fact that skin colour was less important than culture and religion in Europe at the time, particularly in the realm of persecution, which is sort of the whole point of the blog: That "race" wasn't at all the same then as it is now. She discusses this matter here and here.
I don't disagree that some of her conclusions are dubious, but you're misrepresenting this person's angle.
My issue with the Beethoven thing is the awful scholarship behind its premise. I believe it's possible he had some African ancestry. I think the narrative strung together to "show" that is full with enough "maybe" and "possibly" and "could have" to sink a battleship.
On the one hand, his unusually dark hair and complexion were well-documented, and a proportion of African or Middle Eastern ancestry is far from implausible given where his family was from and when. On the other hand, his appearance was not described in quite the same terms as mixed-race associates of his, and suggestive evidence of one thing is not conclusive proof of another.
But at the end of the day, the only people drawing truly radical conclusions from this are cranks who really want to believe that there is an active conspiracy to this day to falsify and destroy evidence of the achievements of dark-skinned and/or non-European people. Beethoven being partly of African ancestry would change little save to embarrass neo-Nazis.
I remember the last time something like this came up (okay actually it was a blackface Mozart, which isn't like this at all) there was a guy who was mentioned who was prolific and was definitely black but I can't remember his name anymore. I think it might have been a variant of Suleiman which means that it's pretty much going to be impossible to find.
Sredni, it's entirely possible I missed her apologies, because I got pissed off enough to stop following her posts. My partner is Romani, so it's kinda personal.
I think what's behind my irritation is that she's been very dismissive of legitimate criticism at times. I think it may have something to do with being so inundated with bullshit criticism that she has been slow to recognize when a critic has a point, because she's become so defensive.
I think what's behind my irritation is that she's been very dismissive of legitimate criticism at times. I think it may have something to do with being so inundated with bullshit criticism that she has been slow to recognize when a critic has a point, because she's become so defensive
this describes like every decent SJ blog that i have ever followed
Comments
They're trying to make Lassie big again too
Truthfully, of all the Classic Media characters, I'd like for them to keep working at Rocky and Bullwinkle - narratively, above all. Some good official licensing artwork would help, the existing stuff is dreck.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
it's kinda sad