Thread by @JuliusGoat

In BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, Mickey Rooney played I. Y. Yunioshi, dressed up in buck teeth and a cartoon squint, a grotesque caricature of a Japanese person.

So I suppose in that sense “you wouldn’t be able” to make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today.

Which seems somehow preferable.

Now: what interests me is what it means to say *you can’t* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S these days.

It doesn’t mean you CAN’T. Unlike teaching, say,The Bluest Eye to Texas schoolchildren, there exist no laws to prevent Will Ferrell from putting in the teeth and playing Yunioshi.

So actually you *can* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today, I.Y. Yunioshi and all, and throw in Long Duc Dong if you want.

You can if you want wear blackface and dance around in white gloves, like Fred Astaire in SWING TIME, if you want to.

If you want to.

What is meant by saying “you can’t make that today” is actually “people don’t want to make that today.”

Will Ferrell probably wouldn’t want to play I.Y. Yunioshi today.

Which leads to another question: why not?

Well: because he doesn’t want to.

Nor do all the other people involved with making movies: writers, directors, producers, etc. Which means that even though it CAN get made, it WON’T get made.

Which leads to another question: why don’t they want to?

https://twitter.com/occamshavecream/status/1490875982344900608

Well: at some point, East Asian people, and particularly Japanese people, pointed out that this comic figure was actually a very demeaning representation of them as people.

They criticized that aspect of the film.

And over time, this criticism changed people’s behavior.

Why did people’s behavior change?

There are two main narratives.

The first narrative is that people became too fearful of the criticism to say what was on their minds.

The other is that people listened to those voices, which changed their hearts and minds.

Both happened.

What generally happens in art is people convey their ideas through their chosen medium—which makes them artists.

Some of those ideas will be purposeful and examined. Others will be uninformed, unconscious, received beliefs from culture.

If you make art, your beliefs will tell.

An artist's beliefs will tell; so will beliefs of the culture within which they work.

A culture that shares a belief that other people aren't fully people, will produce artists who reflect those ideas, in ways that might feel entirely harmless to people that culture favors.

The other thing that generally happens with art is other people engage with it—sometimes for thousands of years, if the art is engaging and lucky enough.

The people will comment on what the art means—which is critique.

Art is a conversation, if you want it to be.

If you want.

Art, and the critique of it, can create a unique context by which to expose and discuss the ideas of a person, a society, and a culture.

It's one of art's great functions, open to anybody or any society or culture, willing to listen and change.

So: any artist or audience willing to engage in the conversation of art opens themselves to hearing things about their beliefs that might be better off changed.

And, more conscious than before, they might stop presenting those beliefs in their art.

Because they don't WANT to.

And if that culture changes, then those who never wanted to listen and change might find themselves compelled to not present these ideas anymore.

And they'll say it's because they CAN'T.

See the difference?

So maybe there are people out there who look at today's art and see a recognition and representation of many people as actual people, and see this as pandering to others.

While completely failing to see that presenting those people as less than fully human was pandering to them.

Why do they fail to see this? Because they're not in conversation with art.

We know this, because they tell us in how they talk about it.

They resent that they CAN'T do, because they refuse to see what now CAN be done.

Their art becomes not critique, but resentment.

Ever see people defending yesterday's art presenting yesterday's progressive ideas—ideas they'd otherwise despise in today's entertainment—because it contains transgressions no longer in currency?

You CAN'T make All In The Family anymore.
You CAN'T make Blazing Saddles.

Can't?

The idea that it's impossible to make incisive comedies about race—even comedy containing slurs—is probably news to, say, Key and Peele.

And so it might start to seem we're not actually talking about what CAN be said, but who now gets to join the conversation.

Maybe there's no way to make All In The Family anymore.

Or *maybe* what people usually mean isn't "it's no longer possible to make incisive TV comedies about race" (which is obviously untrue)

but simply

"we don't tend to center such shows on slur-slinging bigots anymore."

And why don't we tend to do that? Is it because we CAN'T?

Or is it because we don't want to, because the conversation has moved on?

I submit that you'd know the answer, if you were listening to the conversation.

Which you can, if you want to.

If you want to.

I submit the question isn't "what can we do?" or "what can't we do?", but rather "what do we WANT to do?"

Those of us who are listening will know what you want to do, because you'll tell us.

So what do you want to do?

/end