What a blinkered piece by @GiniaNYT on #WoodyAllen & "Manhattan." nytimes.com/2021/03/05/nyr…
It's not true no one in the film questions Isaac's relationship w/a 17-y-o. Mary (Diane Keaton) suggests, plausibly, that it's his escape from feeling threatened by the power of grown women.
Isaac is also *not* shown as a man of "unimpeachable moral character." He's shown as narcissistic, egotistical and often dishonest. He's frequently made to look ridiculous. He's also ultimately a sexual loser, like many other Allen alter egos.
Also, the idea that many women in the '70s didn't object to age-disparate relationships was b/c they didn't feel empowered is remarkably agency-denying.
Bellafante's piece misses a lot of really fascinating things about "Manhattan," including its major theme of female empowerment. I wrote about it in this essay 3 years ago.
The other day someone questioned whether the 2019 Katie Ishizuka/Ramon Stephens study exposing alleged racism in "Dr. Seuss" was related to the anti-#DrSeuss push. Why, yes it is. (It began in 2017 when Ishizuka's first version of the paper appeared.)
The Ishizuka paper is not only a paranoid exercise in decoding "harmful" tropes everywhere, it's also wildly fraudulent. Here, for instance, is a passage about the racist symbolism of ink stains in a Cat in the Hat sequel... which forgets to mention that the ink is PINK.
Am I concerned about what a rights holder does with some mostly minor works? Maybe not, but I'm certainly concerned when a classic author is targeted for a takedown that peddles lies and omits important details such as Dr Seuss's anti-racist work.
This piece is a good example of how crazy, paranoid & potentially authoritarian social justice discourse about "embedded" or subtly "inscribed" racist images/tropes can be.
Let's say that the Cat in the Hat really was partly based on images from black minstrelsy. (Dr. Seuss, apparently, said he was based partly on a real-life, black elevator operator, Annie, who wore gloves & had a mischievous smile.)
So what? How does this make the book "harmful"?
1. It's very unlikely that anyone would associate the Cat in the Hat with black people. 2. Even if they did, the Cat is a *positive* figure. (He's only there to entertain/inspire two white kids? Yeah, so are a lot of other magical figures in kid lit who are clearly white.)
I decided to investigate. Here's the passage from the review.
Intrigued even more, I got the book on Kindle. Here are the offending passages.
Oh, and McNeil's comment about his "attraction" to women in a Zika seminar in Puerto Rico? He describes the seminar leader as "an attractive young woman." STRING HIM UP!
It's kind of hilarious that these guys would pick a still from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" for their glorious image of trad manhood, because, well....
(stop reading now if you haven't seen the film and don't want to be thoroughly spoiled. also, go see it!)
What we see here is a young lawyer, Ranse Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart -- not exactly *young* here, but he's supposed to be), taking shooting lessons from rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) to fight back against the thug Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), who has robbed & humiliated him.
But ... Ranse sucks at shooting & other trad macho stuff. He's a college boy who insists on the rule of law & starts a local literacy program. Before his law practice takes off, he washes dishes & waits table at the tavern, wearing an apron, & is mocked as "the new waitress."
As you may have seen, @ArcDigi, the Medium-based publication where I am an associate editor & regular contributor, has taken a bit of a financial hit in terms of Medium support for our budget for authors' fees.
Why should you support @ArcDigi? No, not just because I'm involved. 😃 In today's partisan media environment, @ArcDigi has a rare commitment to intellectual pluralism as a foundational value. There may not be "both sides" to all issues, but there certainly are to most.
Take, for example, the recent controversy over the white girl who was shamed in the social media (& lost admission to a university) after the reveal of a 4-year-old Snapchat video in which she uttered a racial slur. Arc published four different, interesting takes on the story.
ICYMI: A look at the legacy of #VladimirLenin for his recent 150th anniversary, and why Lenin was not (as some modern-day socialists still think) "the good communist."
Also, I strongly recommend the Robert Service biography of Lenin, which I'm reading now (and wish I'd had time to read before writing this piece -- some devastating stuff there). A few tidbits:
(1) Lenin himself admitted on occasion that he knew very little of the Russian people or Russian life beyond his hometown, Kazan (where he went to the university) and St. Petersburg. He showed no interest in personal interaction with actual workers or peasants.