… I can’t help feeling there’s a message here about supply and demand, dreary things like that. Something to bear in mind when, say, leaving school or choosing your degree course. The glamour of the artistic and literary life is, I fear, beginning to look quite thin:
The question of where to live on such a low income while trying to write becomes crucial: in the middle of nowhere with cheap rent, or in the city where day jobs help pay for housing? Compromise clouds every decision.
And this simply will not do. You see, creative people, that’s people like Ms Delaney, must live in locales befitting their importance, not their budget. You, taxpayer, come hither. And bring your wallet.
The city of Sydney recently tried to address the problem of artists being priced out by introducing six rent-subsidised studio spaces in Darlinghurst. Those chosen get a year-lease and pay reduced rent of $250 a week on a one-bedroom with work studio.
Creative people, being so creative, deserve nothing less than special treatment. I mean, you can’t expect a creative person to write at any old desk in any old room in any old part of town. What’s needed is a lifestyle at some other sucker’s expense. And so that garret has to be in a fashionable suburb or somewhere happening, where the creative vibrations are at their strongest and genius will surely follow. And that pad of choice has to come before the publishing deal and film rights and the swimming pool full of cash. Indeed, it has to materialise before the book itself, or any part thereof. How else can their brilliance flourish, as it most surely will, what with all that creativity. Our betters just need a little cake before they eat those damn vegetables. And possibly ice cream. Here’s some money that other, less glamorous people had to actually earn. You fabulous creature, you.
David Thompson, “The Humble Among Us”, David Thompson, 2014-01-21.
October 22, 2020
QotD: The needs of creative people
October 21, 2020
QotD: The Guardian
A less impressed commenter, unrelated to the editor, asks,
What is it with people’s inability to ignore the things they don’t like?
Meaning things you don’t like and which have no bearing whatsoever on your everyday life or the turning of the world. Say, “our” alleged “obsession” with cupcakes and their supposedly debilitating effects on helpless, hapless womenfolk. Women being so mentally insubstantial that even a tiny cake can unhinge their minds, apparently. But fretting ostentatiously about things of no importance has long been a standard template for Guardian articles, especially if you can shoehorn in some sophomoric theorising. It’s something most papers do to some extent, due to the obligation to Fill Space Somehow, but the Guardian is by far the greatest exponent and the most grandiose. Many of its contributors have mastered inadvertent surrealism. First you find some tiny, utterly trivial personal anecdote or grumble and then inflate it to sociological status with lots of wild, baseless assertion. Anything from the feminist politics of toddler excrement to the cruel, cruel agonies of spellcheck software. Whether the complaint is valid, or even sane, or can withstand a minute’s scrutiny, really doesn’t matter. It’s all about display — being outraged as theatre and social positioning. Which is why something as dull as temporary building renovation can be described vehemently, repeatedly and in all seriousness as “cultural apartheid.”
David Thompson, “The Cupcake Menace”, David Thompson, 2013-10-20.
October 19, 2020
Sarah Hoyt – “… I’ve been feeling like I’m at the end of a Bond movie, and the villain is telling me his big master plan and how Western Civilization is tied to the train tracks and can’t escape”
In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, Sarah Hoyt explains why she’s not expecting the US federal election next month to resolve anything, at least not in a positive way:
At this point I hold about a 10% chance the Democrats/Socialists/Communists (interchangeable now that the masks are off) don’t fraud their way into full power, pack the court and rip our system apart, to install (yet again) a form of communism. This is complicated by the fact that a lot of them are in China’s pockets. Or rather, China has been filling their pockets for a long while. We might find ourselves working for racist, hegemonic overlords, besides suffering all the ills of a descent into communism. (By the way, they’ve already been doing this to some extent to the less fortunate countries, including most African countries. The left in the US and Europe believes this is benevolence. And that Chinese aren’t racist. I wouldn’t believe it, if it hadn’t been said to me over and over.)
There is maybe another 25% of chance we’ll find ourselves in CW II, now with even more foreign interference. What comes out of that, G-d only knows, and I’m not Him. Which is good, because I have trouble enough being me.
And there is a very strong chance that even if Trump wins the White House, besides continuing to have to drive a car where the wheel is disconnected (the extent of which I wasn’t even fully sure of until this month) he won’t do more than delay the crash.
Sometimes here, and particularly at insty, because I tend to do that really late at night when I’m exhausted and less able to control my moods, you’ll catch a hint of how hopeless I feel our situation to be.
In fact since the lockdown, I’ve been feeling we were screwed. That the lockdown was imposed all over the world on such flimsy evidence, that countries and churches, and every cultural institution not only submitted to it but kept telling the people how much it was needed sent me into a deep depression from which I haven’t fully recovered. (Again, the evidence that this virus was MAYBE as bad as the flu has been before our eyes since the beginning. You don’t need special equipment to see it. The homeless were congregating and not dying in droves. The people in slums in the third world weren’t dying at a higher rate than usual. And there were the numbers from the Diamond Princess. Which some idiot here tried to justify with “but they got the best treatment.” In a floating petri dish. With no special equipment. May G-d have mercy on the soul of every idiot who bought that bullshit.).
This last week, on the other hand, I’ve been feeling like I’m at the end of a Bond movie, and the villain is telling me his big master plan and how Western Civilization is tied to the train tracks and can’t escape.
Oh, not the massive corruption of the Biden crime family. I mean seriously. Any of you who didn’t know already that Crackhead McStripperbang wasn’t being paid for foreign countries for his services must have been living under a rock.
Not even the ridiculous, immediate coordination with which our tech overlords moved to clamp down on that information and preventing it from reaching the virgin ears of most of our willfully and willingly ignorant countrymen.
No, what discouraged me most was the “sexual preference” suddenly becoming a slur and Webster dictionary falling in line. (Seriously, guys, sexual preference goes way beyond orientation. For instance, my sexual preference is monogamous and with someone I love. If you think that there’s no preference involved, you must think people have absolutely no control over their impulses.) Because that bullshit couldn’t happen, even in the most totalitarian of conspiracies.
And that’s the terrifying thought. These people are no more conspiring than your breaklines being cut are a conspiracy not to stop the car.
They are a result of deep inlaid propaganda and misseducation which cause a lot of people to try to fall into line with the “word from above” and be “right” with those they view as the smart people and the masters of society.
QotD: Afflicting the comfortable
The original quote is from Observations by Mr. Dooley, one of several works Dunne produced as the character, in which Dunne specifically satirizes the press’s penchant for trial-by-media. He presented Mr. Dooley through Irish dialect pieces, hence the diction, so the “affliction” quote below has been lightly edited for comprehension:
When anything was wrote about a man ’twas put this way: “We understand on good authority that … is on trial before Judge G. on an accusation of larceny. But we don’t think it’s true.” Nowadays, the larceny is discovered by a newspaper. The lead pipe is dug up your backyard by a reporter who knew it was there because he helped you bury it. A man knocks at your door early one mornin’ an’ you answer in your nighty. “In name of the law, I arrest you,” says the man seizin’ you by the throat. “Who are you?” you cry. “I’m a reporter for The Daily Slooth,” says he. “Photographer, do your duty!” You’re hauled off in the circulation wagon to the newspaper office where a confession is ready for you to sign; you’re tried by a jury of the staff, sentenced by the editor-in-chief, and at ten o’clock Friday the fatal thrap is sprung by the fatal thrapper of the family journal. The newspaper does evrything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead and roasts them aftherward.
That journalists of all stripes have touted a scathing critique of their profession and repurposed it as a mission statement is a textbook definition of irony that belongs on a Roman pedestal behind bulletproof glass in the Smithsonian. What is most vexing about the modern interpretation of Dunne’s quote is that its new meaning is implied to be synonymous with dispassionately seeking truth, which it necessarily is not.
Robert Showah, “Journalism Is Not Activism”, Quillette, 2018-07-05.
October 18, 2020
Larry Correia on the danger in allowing Big Tech to decide what speech is and is not allowed to be heard
The recent now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t over allegations that former Vice President Biden’s son used his father’s influence to gain vast sums of money are — ahem — unproven but persuasive. The frantic efforts of companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to keep those allegations out of the public eye get Larry Correia very angry:
If social media had banned Obama’s press secretary, and then stopped Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer from sharing articles from the New York Times, and then shut down the Obama campaign page nineteen days before his election against Mitt Romney, everyone would have lost their fucking minds. And rightfully so! Because that kind of blatant manipulation of information is evil.
If I put that into a thriller my editor would tell me it was too far fetched. Nobody would buy into such mustache twirling villainy, even if I was writing cyberpunk dystopia.
But Correia, they are private companies and you are usually against meddling in the affairs of private companies, you big hypocrite! Yeah, usually I am, but this is also something new, the likes of which mankind has never seen before, with these entities being the primary exchange of information for BILLIONS of people, so it’s kind of hard to put this thing which didn’t exist before into historical context. Facebook has no real competitors, and it has something like 2.7 billion regular users. With the flick of a switch it can stop a third of the Earth’s population from seeing whatever it doesn’t want them to see. Humanity has never had that before.
That’s real fucking power right there.
Now, unlike most people on the internet, I am not compelled to pretend to be a lawyer who just got my law degree from the University of Internet. Communications law is not my area, and I’m not going to be a Dunning-Krugerand talking about section 230 or whatever.
However, what I do know is that this is some seriously dangerous bullshit, and if we keep going down this road it is going to lead to some very bad ends. Freedom of speech functionally ceases to exist when both sides speak, but only one side is heard. If social media is a forum, then it needs to be an actual forum. If it is functionally a propaganda arm of the DNC, then so be it, but it can’t keep pretending to be something it’s not, while mindfucking the populace.
They are subpoenaing the Twitter CEO to come testify before congress but I expect that to be another utterly useless clown show where dummies ask dumb questions about something they don’t understand to some clever asshole who is just going to lie.
Like most liberty minded people, I have a reflexive dislike for government regulation of the free market. If the government can screw something up, it will. However I doubt I’ll feel that strongly about the sanctity of the free market as I’m being starved to death in a re-education gulag, after conservatives were stupid enough to let a tiny group of control freak statists have absolute power over the whole country’s speech and information.
What we’ve got right now with a handful of organizations having a monopoly over news and knowledge is stupid, getting stupider, and going to end extremely badly.
I don’t give a shit if you are liberal or conservative, the idea of some entity like Google determining what mankind is allowed to know or not know should terrify the shit out of you. Free speech becomes a meaningless concept if only approved speech is ever seen. And if you are cheering this shit on because right now it is helping your team score points against the other team, you are fool. Because once they have that power it is only a matter of time until one of your beliefs ends up on the naughty list too.
(note, that’s not an issue for Kool Aid drinking progs, because they don’t actually have any beliefs beyond GET POWER. It took them less than 24 hours to change “sexual preference” to a bad thing in the dictionary)
The only good thing about this situation is that even though Facebook and Twitter are trying to monopolize the flow of information, they are still bad at it. This week’s attempt at shutting down the New York Post‘s expose will probably go down as the biggest Streisand Effect in history. Their painfully obvious censorship will make far more people pay attention and lend credence to the report. Because after all, they wouldn’t try this hard to squish it, if there wasn’t some meat to it.
October 17, 2020
Andrew Sullivan on the pervasiveness of Critical Race Theory in academia
In his latest Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan discusses how deeply embedded Critical Race Theory has become in the academic, journalistic and cultural realms controlled by the left:
… the CRT advocates have brilliantly managed to construct a crude moral binary to pressure liberals into submission. Where liberalism allows neutrality or doubt or indifference, CRT demands an absolute and immediate choice between racism and anti-racism (defined by CRT) — and no one wants to be a racist, do they? Legitimate anguish about racial inequality and the sheer terror of being publicly labeled a bigot have led liberals to surrender their core values to the far left.
The second reason for CRT’s triumph is that it’s super-easy. Social inequalities are extremely complicated things. A huge variety of factors may be in play: class, family structure, education, neighborhood, sex, biology, genetics and culture are some of them. Untangling this empirically in order to figure out what might actually work to improve things is hard work. But when you can simply dismiss all of these factors and cite “structural racism” as the only reason for any racial inequality, and also cover yourself in moral righteousness, you’re home-free. Those who raise objections or complications or cite nuances can be dismissed by the same easy method.
Then there’s the deep relationship between CRT and one of the most powerful human drives: tribalism. What antiracism brilliantly does is adopt all the instincts of racism and sexism — seeing someone and instantly judging them by the color of their skin, or sex — and drape them with a veil of virtue. You don’t have to correct yourself when your tribal psyche makes you more cognizant of someone’s visible racial differences, and pre-judges them. You don’t have to resist this any more. You can give in to your core nature, and feel pride, rather than shame. You get to have all the feels of judging people entirely by their involuntary characteristics, while actually dismantling racism and sexism! What’s not to like?
Social aspiration also plays a part. The etiquette of wokery is increasingly indispensable for high society. They mark you as someone high up in the American social hierarchy. The right words and phrases signal your ease in this elite; the wrong ones — “sexual preference”! — expose you as a rube, a bigot or, worse, a middle class provincial. Rob Henderson argues that this aspiration to be in the upper classes helps explain why Asian-Americans, who are targeted for direct race discrimination under CRT, nonetheless often support it: “While money and education are tickets to the middle class, prizing diversity is a requirement to join the upper class. It’s part of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to as cultural capital — tastes, vocabulary, awareness and mannerisms which give social advantages to those higher in the social hierarchy.” Reihan Salam has also written brilliantly about this.
There’s little doubt, either, it seems to me that there is a religious component to wokeness. A generation of nones can feel bereft of transcendence and meaning, and “becoming woke”, like being “born again,” fills that spiritual hole. In an atomized and lonely age, feeling as if you are on “the right side of history”, banishing doubt, joining with countless of your fellow converts in marches and seminars, can abate the isolation and emptiness of it all. Many moderns want the experience of religion without God. With CRT, as in the past with communism, they can have it.
But what also make CRT so successful is ruthlessness. Those who hold a view of the world in which only power, and the struggle for power, matters, have few qualms in exercising it. After all, under CRT, power is always on the side of the white cis-heteropatriarchy, so payback is always fair play. Discriminating against the unwoke or whites or males or the cis-gendered or Asian-American, is not just fair, but vital. Shutting down speech protects the oppressed; bullying on social media and in the workplace becomes a form of virtue; mercy and forgiveness are mere buttresses for white supremacy; HR departments diligently identify dissidents, and discipline them. Once you set up this system of censorship and fear, persecute a few prominent sinners pour décourager les autres, and encourage snitches, dissidents will increasingly self-censor, and dissent peter out, until the new orthodoxy is the only one.
In the past, a new set of ideas could be engaged in a clash of argument and debate. But you’ll notice that the advocates of what Wes Yang has called “the successor ideology” never debate any serious opponents of their position. This is because debate in a liberal society implies equal standing for both sides, and uses reason to determine who’s right or wrong. But there can be no “both sides” within CRT, no equation of “racists” and “antiracists”, and debates are inherently oppressive. Logic, evidence, and reason are, in this worldview, mere products of white supremacy, forms of violence against the oppressed. In CRT, remember, there is no truth or objectivity; there are merely narratives. So, yes, 2 + 2 = 5, and math is inherently a function of whiteness. And what racist is going to deny this?
Actually, his photo has that effect on me too …
… except that I still keep the beard. David Warren, on the other hand, is clean shaven:
“Jack Dorsey, Twitter and Square founder, in a London cafe in November 2014.” by cellanr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Every time I see a photograph of Jack Dorsey, I want to wash and shave. It is seldom that another human being has such an hygienic effect on me; especially one I have never personally met. Thanks to him, I may report to gentle reader that, up here in the privacy of the High Doganate (surrounded by jackhammers), I am quite clean-shaven this morning. I was able to resist the temptation to bathe in Dettol, but my shower was the next best thing.
I’m going out on a limb here. I am assuming my reader knows who Jack Dorsey is. (It’s not hard to find his picture.)
The boss of Twitter is among the “deep tech” executives who have, in a less ambiguous way than ever before, shut the accounts of the Trump campaign, within three weeks of a national election, and are blocking those (rather numerous) subscribers who are trying to forward the meaty revelations appearing in the New York Post. Those, incidentally, unambiguously show that one of the presidential candidates (Biden, of all people) is seriously fraudulent and corrupt. Who’d have guessed it? (Well, I did.)Now, when I write “deep tech,” some reader will accuse me of touting a conspiracy theory. I use this expression on the analogy of “deep state.” Curiously, I don’t think this is a conspiracy at all. In the District of Columbia, where the bureaucratic institutions of the Merican Nanny State are chiefly located, Democrats routinely take well over 90 percent of the vote. Republicans do not necessarily finish second, however. That the labour pool for these institutions is overwhelmingly “progressive,” is something I infer.
Ditto for Silicon Valley. The residents do not need to conspire, although the speed at which identical editorial decisions are reached, is amazing. This I attribute to their electronic hardware.
Some seven years ago, under the influence of well-intended friends, I did a three-month experiment of “being on Twitter.” They said it would immensely increase my “hits,” and it did — while dramatically decreasing attention to them. I was flattered by all the fan-mail I received, because I am a shallow person, but when the three months were up I got off. For I do not covet a mass audience, or that kind of fame. Engaging in live-time battles of wits with other Twitterers is fun for a while, but sooner or later one recovers one’s self-respect. Or at least some people do.
QotD: The inherent triviality of most “news” programs
Anthony Daniels, “The European Working Time Directive & the Sound-Bite Culture: why the latter makes arguing against the former impossible”, The Social Affairs Unit, 2004-08-09.
October 16, 2020
“The Art of War” – Wisdom of Sun Tzu – Sabaton History 089 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 15 Oct 2020Sun Tzu says: “The Art of War is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.” The Chinese Art of War by Sun Tzu is one of the most influential books in history. Throughout the centuries it would accompany generals, statesmen, and philosophers alike. Those who follow his teachings, who safeguard themselves against defeat and make sure of victory before the battle is fought, will triumph. Those who know everything about themselves and their enemies will achieve supreme excellence.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu Text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/132/1…
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “The Art of War” on the album The Art of War:
https://music.sabaton.net/TheArtOfWarWatch the Official Live Clip of “The Art of War” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYoK1…Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołega
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.comVisual Sources:
– Pictures of Ming Dinasty courtesy of Yprpyqp from Wikimedia
– Pictures from the period of Opium War courtesy of Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2010 Visualizing Cultures
– Wellcome Images
– Major National Historical and Cultural Site in China
– Pictures of The Art of War book courtesy of vlasta2, bluefootedbooby on flickr.com
– Metmuseum
– Picture of Eastern Han Calvary courtesy of GaryLee Todd from Wikimedia
– Granger Archive
– Hallwyl Museum
– Nomura Art Museum
– The icons from The Noun Project: Man by vanila, Asian woman by Jaime Serra, Wise Man by Éléonore SabatéAll music by: Sabaton
An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
October 15, 2020
Twitter will now helpfully prevent you from committing thoughtcrime, citizen!
When you appoint yourself the guardian of speech, you quickly become the gatekeeper of all speech:
October 14, 2020
QotD: The frenetic pace of cancel culture
You want to say: Slow down, young’uns! First you seize power and send all your class enemies to the camps or the grave. Then you turn on your own to purge the ideologically wobbly or those who are insufficiently zealous.
But these idiots are eating their own before they have power. Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling? Off to the gulag for believing in biological sex. The New York Times editorial-page editor earned defenestration for believing in free speech. Day after day on Twitter there’s a frenzy of witch-burning and heretic-stoning; the entire platform is like a self-lubricating guillotine.
Then again, it might be seen as a new, efficient model. After you’ve overthrown the tyrants and set up the People’s Committee, you have a new world to build. Even if you devote the morning to inventing a postcapitalist paradigm and spend the afternoon figuring out how to get fresh water and sanitation to your typhus-infested camp, that means you have to spend the evening drawing up proscription lists. Purging is necessary, but who has the time?
So they’re getting it out of the way now, purging the culture and the Twitter lists of people and things that need to be extirpated for the good of all.
Perhaps this is what happens when people who have been bingeing on TV shows for three months with no place to go decide to have a revolution. Instead of watching the shows once a week and pacing themselves, it’s a whole season in one day.
James Lileks, “Twinkling’s Canceled, Little Star”, National Review, 2020-07-06.
October 9, 2020
“Ruina Imperii” – End of an Empire – Sabaton History 088 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 8 Oct 2020The death of Charles XII was followed by the rapid decline of the Swedish Empire. The Swedish nation had suffered much in the last ten years of his reign. The constant state of war had brought famine and poverty and ruined the state in many ways. Charles XII fought Sweden’s numerous enemies in the vain hope of restoring the empire to its old glory. He was the King who most strongly believed that Sweden was destined for imperial greatness, no matter the cost. What can be said about his reign? How would history judge his character or his decisions as a King?
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “Ruina Imperii” on the album Carolus Rex:
Carolus Rex (English Version) – https://music.sabaton.net/CarolusRexEN
Carolus Rex (Swedish Version) – https://music.sabaton.net/CarolusRexSEListen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.comVisual Sources:
– Nationalmuseum
– Carl Andreas Dahlström – httpruneberg.org dcateckn0126
– Icons form The Noun Project: Farm by Laymik, Fruit by Eucalyp, Vegetable by Eucalyp, treasure by dDara, treasure by Eucalyp, Wheat Grain Bag by Symbolon & Wine by Vladimir Belochkin.All music by: Sabaton
An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
QotD: How to analyze complex multivariate systems for the popular press
- Choose a complex and chaotic system that is characterized by thousands or millions of variables changing simultaneously (e.g. climate, the US economy)
- Pick one single output variable to summarize the workings of that system (e.g. temperature, GDP)
- Blame (or credit) any changes to your selected output variable on one single pet variable (e.g. capitalism, a President from the other party)
- Pick a news outlet aligned with your political tribe and send them a press release
- Done! You are now a famous scientist. Congratulations.
Warren Meyer, “Modern Guide to Analyzing Complex Multivariate Systems”, Coyote Blog, 2018-06-25.
October 7, 2020
Canada’s new documentary monoculture – many now “skew the truth by reinforcing the viewpoint du jour“
In The Line, Christina Clark explains why she’s no longer in the business of making documentaries in Canada:
Many of the stories now told through documentary skew the truth by reinforcing the viewpoint du jour. Interviews and scenes that break with the chosen narrative, that offer something other than a black-and-white approach to society and the complexities of humanity, happen off camera or end up on the editing room floor. This is all in an effort to promote diverse voices and the political opinions that allegedly support them. But when we lay claim to a singular viewpoint or dismiss a perspective because the creator’s or the subject’s skin tone or gender does not fit the narrative of inclusion, we are actually removing diversity from the storytelling equation. And what we’re left with are one-sided storylines that reinforce an echo chamber of virtue signalling.
I can no longer deny the dysfunctional approach to telling half-truths and undermining alternate viewpoints in my industry in the name of securing public funding for programming that fails to resonate with the public that is paying for it. Over the last year, I’ve been turning down contracts and finding an exit strategy. I’m pre-emptively cancelling myself.
Documentary was once considered Canada’s national art form. Part of our country’s success with the medium can be attributed to the creation of our National Film Board (NFB), established to “make and distribute films designed to help Canadians in all parts of Canada to understand the ways of living and the problems of Canadians in other parts.” The NFB was founded to provide public funding to storytellers to show us who we are, as a country, as citizens.
To secure public funding for a documentary film or program in Canada, producers typically need to have a broadcaster already signed on to the project. Then, they can apply to funds like the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm or Rogers. Without a broadcaster licence, you cannot apply for public funding. The criteria for licencing a film or television series has narrowed in recent years — not unlike the audiences these programs are targeting.
Take, for example, the Creative Relief Fund that the CBC put together during the early months of COVID to award $2 million in development and production funding for new projects, ranging from fiction and non-fiction television to documentary shorts to plays and podcasts. This was an enticing invitation for creators in lockdown. During this time, friends and colleagues of mine in the industry were messaging each other back and forth, offering feedback on each other’s ideas, as we were all intending to apply. These are some questions we all wondered aloud, in the safety of our private chats: “Do you think this story is diverse enough?” “This story might be too white …” “I don’t think the language is woke enough, do you think they’ll see the bigger story here?” That’s because many broadcasters have “Inclusion and Diversity Plans” that you have to fill out for your project, that track the racial and gender makeup of your crew and your interviewees. While it is not explicitly mandatory to accommodate broadcasters’ criteria for diversity, a lot of filmmakers already know before they even pitch an idea that their chances of getting greenlit are greater if they do.
October 5, 2020
QotD: Language changes to accord with critical studies theory
Leading progressive maternity and doula organizations now deploy and encourage a whole array of “gender-neutral language” with respect to sex, birth, labor, and parenting. And so we now have the terms “chest-feeding,” “persons who menstruate,” “persons who produce sperm,” and “birthing person” for breastfeeding, women, men, and mothers, respectively. And instead of a butthole, we have a “back-hole”; instead of a vagina, we have a “front hole.” “Ovaries” and “uterus” are now rendered as “internal organs,” which may strike you as somewhat vague. These may sound completely absurd now, but given the choke hold critical gender theory has on almost all elite organizations, you can be sure you’ll hear them soon enough. They’ll likely be mandatory if you want to prove you’re not a transphobe. It was an objection to one of these terms — “people who menstruate” — that got J.K. Rowling tarred again as a bigot.
Those of us who oppose this abuse of the English language, who try to abide by Orwell’s dictum to use the simplest, clearest Anglo-Saxon words to describe reality, are now instantly suspect. Given the fear of losing your job for resisting this madness, most people will submit to this linguistic distortion. As you can see everywhere, the stigma of being called a bigot sweeps away all objects before it. But the further this goes — and there is no limiting principle in critical theory at all — the less able we are to describe reality. Which is, of course, the point. Narratives, only narratives, exist. And power, only power, matters.
Andrew Sullivan, “China Is a Genocidal Menace”, New York, 2020-07-03.
