James Lileks illustrates just how easy it is to construct a case to cancel a children’s song:
Image from The Kindergarten English Blog, https://markblogsfromjapan.wordpress.com/page/4/
At some point the mob will run out of things to cancel. All the low-hanging fruit1 will have been plucked to make smoothies for the commune. Wrongthink professors, authors, movies, newspaper columnists — easy enough. After that? Well, if you’re really going to root out systematic systemism, everything has to go. This means someone will eventually be tasked with canceling children’s songs, or recasting them for the new era. Pity the person who has to find the problematic problems in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
It’s not that hard. Take the first line: The very idea that stars are supposed to twinkle locks them into a societally prescribed mode of behavior. Expecting a star to twinkle is like telling a strange woman on the subway to smile. Strong, troublemaking stars explode! The very idea that we want “little” stars to engage in performative “twinkling” negates the life experience of massive gas giants like Betelgeuse. In fact “twinkling” itself strips the star’s identity and expresses it through the eyes of the beholder, who mistakes the effect of the atmosphere on star observation for the star’s true nature.
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Whew! Turns out there’s a lot to unpack.
How I wonder what you are.
Well, you wouldn’t if there weren’t racism in STEM that kept people out, but no, that’s not right. STEM is bad because it uses the Western empirical model to determine “facts.” Better: The speaker’s questions about the star arise from the suppression of the rich history of Arab astrological knowledge. So it’s a lesson in the ways Islamophobia prevents a greater understanding of the world. Next!
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky . . .
Hold on, hold on … okay, got it. The star’s remoteness is a metaphor for the entrenched power system and encourages a sense of powerlessness. The choice of a “diamond” is intentional, reminding the child of the commodification of natural resources and the brutal economies of the industries that extract them …
1. Just this morning, I saw a call to cancel the expression “low-hanging fruit” because it might remind people of lynching.
