I always liked how he shredded the letter in his pocket, single-handedly.
I have never been able to shred an envelope using such a method.
Such manual dexterity, such force-of-will!
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Art, and specifically judging art involves methodology, and thereās logic certainly but, thereās no formal process by which to judge art and its value.
Do you judge it by intent? Say an artist sets out to make a statement on a topic, do you say he was successful because he was able to transmit his idea?
Or do you judge it by merit, do you judge it by the quality of the idea being expressed?
What if the artist is so bad that he wasnāt able to get his idea across, but the people that experience his art take something valuable away from it anyway? So bad its good.
My feeling is that art critics are successful when they are able to relate the subjective value of a work with our relationshipt to culture as we experience it. That is, not to say that something is good or bad art, but rather in being able to describe if said art is meaningful to her as a person when she experiences it and in what way.
An example from the always excellent flickfilosopher (Mary Ann Johansson) on critics and bias:
(All critics are biased, by the way. Itās an inevitable outcome of what we do in sharing our informed opinions with readers. Any critic who says he isnāt biased is lying, or badly lacking in self-awareness. If a critic comes across to you as unbiased, itās probably because you share that criticās biases, and so are tricked into a false sense of neutrality.)
Iām not arguing that truth doesnāt exist, Iām saying that truth in art can be subjective because so many times, art is just someones gilded opinion.
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Isnāt āLolitaā itself just long form mansplaining? The story is told first-person by a guy trying to explain what happened. But even if we accept his side of the story as 100% accurate he comes off as a creep.
Thereās not really anything to mansplain about āLolita.ā Solnit herself acknowledges itās an important piece of literature, and that she has read it more than once as well.
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Bingo.
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If you posit that there are people who view the world through the lens of gender but then judge it as wrong, youāve missed the point.
If there are people who view the world through the lens of gender, then thereās a reason for it, and its likely that its something they cannot get way from.
As for mansplaining, it doesnāt mean āA man explaining thingsā, womansplaining isnāt āa thingā. relevant conversation on āa thingā
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Itās needs a trigger warning.
It seems like at some point weāve forgotten the notion that when someone volunteers their opinion on something they generally just want to be part of the conversation and expound their view, and that itās okay to just shrug and move on. As opposed to being incensed that someone dares think their opinion is better than yours and isnāt party to your entire thought process enough to realise youāve out-thought them completely.
Anyway, this argument seems to be born of the misunderstanding that Solnit considered Lolita to be a book āno woman should readā, a message that Solnit eventually says she didnāt mean, but uh, does Cory support that? That quote you got seems quite pulled out of context.
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10 Internets to you!
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Cāmon, itās merely a memetic inoculation against opinions that are clashing with oneās āthe only right and correctā worldview. A single-word method to deny perceived relevance, an indicator that thoughtful engagement is not wanted, echo chamber is preferred, and you should not waste your time and energy that you can utilize better elsewhere.
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Thatās pretty terrible advice, coming from a guy with a sharp haircut and a nice suit.
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Wow, did I ever misunderstand the root of the term āmansplainingā. I thought it shared the same root as that word which describes a detailed and accurate explanation of a thing or process. You know, a manual. All this time it was just thinly veiled misandry.
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On, get in here you olā so and so! :hug:
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You do know that Rebecca is the woman that came up with the term āMansplainingā right?
āSexā with a minor is ārapeā - sorry, but its true. The book is about a lot more, but the rape and manipulation of minor (including dragging her on a road trip to the middle of nowhere so as not be disturbed in the raping of said minor) are central to the plot.
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I think you are doing a great disservice to history if you think the scientific method doesnāt apply to it. The scientific method isnāt just about what happens in laboratories; anything where objective measurements of truth can be applied the scientific method can be applied. History uses evidence just like laboratory science does. Yes, sometimes there is conflicting evidence ā some people said Richard III was a hunchback and others didnāt. But just like in the laboratory, the amount and reliability of evidence can be assessed in a scientific manner. This makes it far different from something like literary criticism.
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Is pointing out a thing that women experience when talking with men in a humorous fashion misandry?
I canāt wait to hear your opinion on icecream!
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Iāve not read the book, but itās my understanding that āsex with a child is rapeā logically follows from two premises.
a. non consensual sex is rape.
b a minor cannot give consent.
while a is self evident, b is more of a socially useful construct. (Assume that consent needs to be meaningful; assume that the kid does not understand enough for his āconsentā to be meaningful, void the consent) Those are useful assumptions in legal cases where the philosophical arguments about hypothetical situations that arenāt so hypothetical acquire a bit of an ick factor).
However, Lolita is fiction. Socially useful constructs need not have a place in fiction. Forgive me if I donāt understand the characters from a book I havenāt read.
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Thatās because you understood the book as it was written, not as it was translated in the adolescent minds of people like Roman Polanski (who apparently was the real life version of Humbert Humbert himself).
Lolita isnāt a sexpot ā thatās all in the twisted mind of the teller of the tale ā sheās his victim.
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What are your thoughts on the topic of ethics in game journalism? Iām very curious to hear more!
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Heinlein and Varley should both be on the list I suppose. But I am not getting rid of my copies.
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The novel definitely veers into ick factor. The narrator is a middle aged man, who first meets his āLolitaā when she is 12. He then married her Mother to get closer to her. I mean, on the surface of it, if you just list the plot points, its a manual on how to groom a childā¦ but its a lot more than that.
Full disclosure, I have read Lolita, more than once, its a fantastic book that is often misunderstood.
But its still about the victimization and manipulation and rape of a child.
Really, its barely fiction at all, we donāt need to look very far in the real world to find this storyā¦
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