Originally published at: "Reason and Emotion": A 1943 Disney cartoon foreshadowing "Inside Out," Putin, and Trump | Boing Boing
…
4 Likes
Holy shit.
I mean, they pegged MAGA-land. Hard.
I’m hoping someone with the ability edits out Hitler and edits Trump into his place.
7 Likes
Emotion drives the followers of right-wing populist movements, but don’t ever forget there’s a low animal cunning at work that allows them to translate it into sometimes methodical action.
6 Likes
Wonderful, thank you!
1 Like
3 Likes
I really don’t like this framing.
Logic isn’t the only component of rationality, and attempting to ignore emotion, entirely, doesn’t make you more rational. It’s led us into our current era of “rational, dispassionate thinkers” who like to convince themselves that they’re the only people who make their decisions by pure logic, ignoring how much fear and discomfort drives them. Socially, as well, ignoring other peoples’ emotional needs makes you a dunce, and you’re not off the hook just because they’re emotionally-based.
(Also: woof for misogyny and fat-phobie, but, hey, classic Disney)
2 Likes
The Federalist Society? 
2 Likes
Came here to say pretty much this.
I mean, yes, this kind of thinking is pretty emblematic of enlightenment philosophy and it’s heritage, which is still culturally dominant in many ways, so it’s hardly a surprise to see this come back over and over again. But people have also been absolutely slaughtering this thinking since the late 1800s at the very least (any phenomenologists in the house?). Pretending that “reason” and “emotion” are separable in this way is nothing more than an extremely elitist and holier-than-thou way of saying that ones beliefs and opinions are superior to others with a built-in tautological “argument” as to why this is.
People - including the OP here!: Please stop pretending that your beliefs and opinions are emotionless or somehow “purely rational”. There’s no such thing. There never has been. This false dichotomy serves nothing but making you and your arguments dumber. Embrace - and interrogate! - the emotional basis of your beliefs, just as you interrogate the logics they are bound up in. And not least, look at how logic and emotion are bound up in each other! While there are definitely things in this film that strikes some true notes, its shortcomings aren’t exactly hard to find, are they? Please, everyone, let’s stop replicating incredibly out-of-date modes of thinking like this - especially ones with pretty explicitly fascist/sexist/bigoted logics built into them like this has.
2 Likes
Do you think the America First folks et al in 1943 boycotted Disney for being too woke?
2 Likes
Those cowardly Nazi sympathisers were too busy laying low, lest they end up in an internment camp like Japanese citizens did.
2 Likes
Are you suggesting we were not operating with Reason either?! How dare you!
(Prescient nature of parts of that propaganda aside, it was well… propaganda.)
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
