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I cant love Fscott fitzgerald cuz he was a racist-do ur values affect ur view of art?
- Thread starter Khadijah
- Start date
i'm ashamed to say this, but i had no idea what those nuts were really called until just now. being raised in the South, my parents and grandparents always called them by that very unfortunate name, and thus, out of ignorance, that's all i knew them by. though, i've generally felt uncomfortable using the "n-word", so i referred to them as "black-people toes"... if ever i needed to refer to them.
with that said, i think there are some people who might use bigoted terminology not out of hate and not because they're bigots, but out of simply not knowing any better.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
either way, i suppose i can understand what you mean concerning literature. there've been a few times where i've picked up a book with strong religious messages and felt disinterested in finishing it.
To answer the original question.
My values do not effect my opinion on the quality of art. I have an excellent ability at separating my logical brain from my emotional brain. When I am assessing something for visual beauty, I consider all the visual factors, and none of the background information (who it came from, their history, etc).
I think this is an important skill to have. For example, I've always been very good at recognizing people that are smart, but also evil. A lot of people will tie logic and emotion together, letting their emotions taint their assessment of the subject in question. This is not logical.
My values do not effect my opinion on the quality of art. I have an excellent ability at separating my logical brain from my emotional brain. When I am assessing something for visual beauty, I consider all the visual factors, and none of the background information (who it came from, their history, etc).
I think this is an important skill to have. For example, I've always been very good at recognizing people that are smart, but also evil. A lot of people will tie logic and emotion together, letting their emotions taint their assessment of the subject in question. This is not logical.
i'm ashamed to say this, but i had no idea what those nuts were really called until just now. being raised in the South, my parents and grandparents always called them by that very unfortunate name, and thus, out of ignorance, that's all i knew them by. though, i've generally felt uncomfortable using the "n-word", so i referred to them as "black-people toes"... if ever i needed to refer to them.
with that said, i think there are some people who might use bigoted terminology not out of hate and not because they're bigots, but out of simply not knowing any better.
The thing is that you dont have to be conscious of it to be racist you feel me. Theres hateful racism and then theres the "innocent" "dont know no better" kind but that dont mean it aint racist, its just somebody who dont realize that they are, instead of somebody who is that way cuz they want to be and choose to be.
Anyways, Good post MaxPowers, you def. get the point of this thread
Kenickie
Bluelight Crew
but who didn't know she took her own life?
I don't know, I guess because of all my riot grrl in the past and whatever, I assumed every female poet I ever read killed herself, because that's what it means to be a girl poet.
I read Anatole Broyard's biography Kafka Was The Rage, and was absolutely infuriated to find out he was a passable mulatto who refused to admit so until he was on his death bed, not even telling his children that they were descendants of gens de couleur libre, and not even telling his wife. I couldn't believe it! I was in a rage over it for days afterwards, even though in the back of my head I could understand why he did it, shit, if I could pass, I would too. But to refuse to acknowledge his family, or even discuss it with his children! I love his style, but have refused to read another one of his books because of the lie he perpetrated his entire life, and how offensive it is to mulattos the world over -- it's not worth it to be yourself, you gotta lie to be worth anything. It disgusts me still.
tennesseetitans
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2011
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- 4
I know I'm a little late--but only a month or so--so I thought I could maybe rush to a dead man's defense. Now to put this out there I'm a HUGE Fitzgerald fan. He's the reason I started writing.
I'm also very sensitive to racism. I could offer reasons why, but that would probably only undermine my argument; see typical: 'I'm not racist, I have black friends, etc.' Anyway, it's something that I feel very strong about.
Like the OP I picked up on some overt racism in FSF's writing, especially in his early work. And like the OP this bothered me. I can embrace a hero with flaws, but I can also forgive a lot of flaws much more easily than I can racism--even if the social norms were different for the time.
(For the record, I think Joseph Conrad's writing about race is far too ambiguous to be labeled as racist. In 'Heart of Darkness,' he certainly catered to the stereotypical, 'romantic' notions of Africa as the Dark Continent, but the white men turned out to be the savages. Read 'The Nigger of the Narcissus'--easily one of the most complicated, morally ambiguous portrayals of race in literature, progressive for that time and tell me that the man that wrote that can be labelled as racist.)
Now back to Fitzgerald, it's much more black and white (no pun intended). Some of Fitzgerald's views--regarding Jews, Blacks, certain Europeans--were blatantly racist.
From his Princeton days (The Pierian Spring and the Last Straw):
BUT--and maybe this is just me trying to justify an old hero--I think towards the end of his life Fitzgerald undergoes a change of heart. In his unfinished novel 'The Last Tycoon' Fitzgerald reevaluates his treatment of Jewish and black characters.
But this was the story, a short poem really, that allowed me to fully embrace Fitzgerald:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/24/specials/fitzgerald-beloved.html
This was one of the last thing Fitzgerald ever wrote, and one of my favorites. Maybe an old bigot can outgrow his views; I take comfort, that in the end, Fitzgerald seems to have outgrown his.
For the record I'm 19 y/o college dropout--not sure it's relevant, but I don't want to come across as some stuffy academic type trying to defend an old relic.
I'm also very sensitive to racism. I could offer reasons why, but that would probably only undermine my argument; see typical: 'I'm not racist, I have black friends, etc.' Anyway, it's something that I feel very strong about.
Like the OP I picked up on some overt racism in FSF's writing, especially in his early work. And like the OP this bothered me. I can embrace a hero with flaws, but I can also forgive a lot of flaws much more easily than I can racism--even if the social norms were different for the time.
(For the record, I think Joseph Conrad's writing about race is far too ambiguous to be labeled as racist. In 'Heart of Darkness,' he certainly catered to the stereotypical, 'romantic' notions of Africa as the Dark Continent, but the white men turned out to be the savages. Read 'The Nigger of the Narcissus'--easily one of the most complicated, morally ambiguous portrayals of race in literature, progressive for that time and tell me that the man that wrote that can be labelled as racist.)
Now back to Fitzgerald, it's much more black and white (no pun intended). Some of Fitzgerald's views--regarding Jews, Blacks, certain Europeans--were blatantly racist.
From his Princeton days (The Pierian Spring and the Last Straw):
BUT--and maybe this is just me trying to justify an old hero--I think towards the end of his life Fitzgerald undergoes a change of heart. In his unfinished novel 'The Last Tycoon' Fitzgerald reevaluates his treatment of Jewish and black characters.
But this was the story, a short poem really, that allowed me to fully embrace Fitzgerald:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/24/specials/fitzgerald-beloved.html
This was one of the last thing Fitzgerald ever wrote, and one of my favorites. Maybe an old bigot can outgrow his views; I take comfort, that in the end, Fitzgerald seems to have outgrown his.
For the record I'm 19 y/o college dropout--not sure it's relevant, but I don't want to come across as some stuffy academic type trying to defend an old relic.
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AmorRoark
Bluelight Crew
In 'Heart of Darkness' Africans are made as pawns for the evilness of white people. They're not developed personalities in the ways that the white people are (good or bad). They're still 'cleverly' used to show the souls of the white people. This is bad enough. As if Africans were so inferior that everybody could take advantage of them due to their inferiority. Their societies did not mesh well with the West so this is represented, IMO, through his novel as 'inferiority', socially.
Secondly, it's almost in a "wow, you thought they were savages but these white people are worse. OMG SHOCK!" The fact that the Conrad depended on the clear 'shock-value' of the 'savages' being less savage doesn't erase the racism IMO. It's still very racist. If I can clarify it's like "you thought THEY were savages but we're MORE savage." That doesn't mean you're insinuating the first bit isn't savage too.... you get me? I was pretty disgusted by that novel. Of course they're cannibals. Of course they seem pretty uncivilized. All the stereotypes to benefit your ultimate message, I guess.
Secondly, it's almost in a "wow, you thought they were savages but these white people are worse. OMG SHOCK!" The fact that the Conrad depended on the clear 'shock-value' of the 'savages' being less savage doesn't erase the racism IMO. It's still very racist. If I can clarify it's like "you thought THEY were savages but we're MORE savage." That doesn't mean you're insinuating the first bit isn't savage too.... you get me? I was pretty disgusted by that novel. Of course they're cannibals. Of course they seem pretty uncivilized. All the stereotypes to benefit your ultimate message, I guess.
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tennesseetitans
Greenlighter
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- Jun 22, 2011
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I agree with everything you said but I don't think it's that simple. I agree that Marlowe (Conrad, ostensibly) never portrays the Africans as human (the closest he come is the "buck" who is killed by the arrows, and the only emotions he displays are arrogance and fear of death). This, I agree is racist, but I don't think it's what Conrad was driving at.
The Africans were treated as pawns, but I'm not sure how much of an indictment that is against Conrad, or rather Conrad's indictment against the Europeans. It's a very thin line he's treading. Africa, at that time, was essentially at the mercy of Europe and an unknown. The shortcoming of the narrator (author) was that he never gave the sense that the Africans had any morale compass of their own. But all Conrad had to go by was what he glimpsed from the banks of the river, whose language he didn't speak, whose way of life was so different from his own. He didn't have the hindsight of Achebe or you and I have; just a few months on a river.
Essentially the story is inseperable from the social conditions at the time Conrad was seeking to challenge. He was trying to convey something he very clearly couldn't grasp--hence the underlying ambiguity of the whole thing, the kind of reaching out. Maybe he was making the argument from the wrong side--that Europeans would be spoiled just by the very nature of the continent, that the continent and its people were not only already spoiled, but contagious--but I don't know that that's the case. I don't feel comfortable labeling this work as racist; race-ignorant certainly, but it's too ambiguous where his thoughts and his craft overlap.
Still, I would recommend reading the 'Nigger of the Narcissus', also by Conrad. In that he takes the racial prejudices of the time, and turns them all against the reader. James West is not only human, in a way, at the end, he's the most human of them all.
The Africans were treated as pawns, but I'm not sure how much of an indictment that is against Conrad, or rather Conrad's indictment against the Europeans. It's a very thin line he's treading. Africa, at that time, was essentially at the mercy of Europe and an unknown. The shortcoming of the narrator (author) was that he never gave the sense that the Africans had any morale compass of their own. But all Conrad had to go by was what he glimpsed from the banks of the river, whose language he didn't speak, whose way of life was so different from his own. He didn't have the hindsight of Achebe or you and I have; just a few months on a river.
Essentially the story is inseperable from the social conditions at the time Conrad was seeking to challenge. He was trying to convey something he very clearly couldn't grasp--hence the underlying ambiguity of the whole thing, the kind of reaching out. Maybe he was making the argument from the wrong side--that Europeans would be spoiled just by the very nature of the continent, that the continent and its people were not only already spoiled, but contagious--but I don't know that that's the case. I don't feel comfortable labeling this work as racist; race-ignorant certainly, but it's too ambiguous where his thoughts and his craft overlap.
Still, I would recommend reading the 'Nigger of the Narcissus', also by Conrad. In that he takes the racial prejudices of the time, and turns them all against the reader. James West is not only human, in a way, at the end, he's the most human of them all.
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AmorRoark
Bluelight Crew
It's just like lacey said. Being ignorant doesn't mean you're not racist. Yes, I look at people from 150+ years ago opinions' of black people in America differently than those now because they were different atmospheres but I'm not about to not call them racist merely because they're a 'product of their time'. They're still racist, just different.
tennesseetitans
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2011
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Fair enough. I can agree with that. Difference between racism and bigotry, though today racism is almost always an umbrella term for both.
ninjadanslarbretabar
Bluelighter
art isnt the messenger...
Benefit
Bluelighter
My values have no bearing on my appreciation of art. If I like something, I like it - I don't care if it's offensive, racist, violent, exploitative or anything else (unless it's being sensational just for the sake of sensationalism). Attempting to filter self-expression through the lens of moral or social acceptability defeats the purpose of art. The best works are often provocative; they stimulate uncomfortable or unfamiliar emotions and can make you think critically about your views and feelings. The fact that we are even having this conversation about Fitzgerald's work means that, on one level, he achieved his goal by evoking a strong response from his audience that lead to discussion about our own values.
I also wouldn't be so quick to toss aside the historical context argument. He was writing in a different time period when society's values were different. I'll be interested to see how the lacey k of 2005 is judged by people in 2060. Probably like a messiah.
I also wouldn't be so quick to toss aside the historical context argument. He was writing in a different time period when society's values were different. I'll be interested to see how the lacey k of 2005 is judged by people in 2060. Probably like a messiah.
AmorRoark
Bluelight Crew
If it wasn't his goal to evoke a racism conversation then we haven't achieved his goal.