Enjoy your fate, America. Out of hatred of a supposed con-man, you've elected a much more talented one. Sure. That'll probably work out well.
Who says that Obama voters hate McCain? Why can't we simply disagree about issues? I think McCain is a great man, and I would be fine with him being president. I simply think Obama is a better choice for this time.
Quit it with all the hatred and calm the hell down. Really.
Well, what is the 'somehow' you purpose to stop the violence then? That is the part I am missing.
It seems like your response to this action would be to make fun of them HARDER, but to me that would just make MORE violence, not less.
Its not like it terribly hard to NOT make fun of a group of people. Especially after they made it clear they do not find such actions funny, or even thought provoking. Its not like a Muslim extremist is going to see a picture like this one and think "You know, that is pretty funny, maybe I should be more opened minded."
Maybe, as Enslaught suggested, if someone made a thought provoking piece of art. Something a bit more tasteful that WOULD reach out and speak to the Muslim extremists, and not just piss them off. But so fair that is NOT the kind of art I have seen in this matter.
I'll jump back in for a second: Eventually, theoretically, the continued repeated theme of the provocative art should have something of a desensitizing effect. There's not necessarily a linear relationship between these sorts of offenses.
That said, yeah I agree with your characterization here of thought provoking, which I think might have been lost a bit when I was in the thread earlier. There's definitely a difference, like I said, between criticism through art and what is essentially vandalism. The line may be very hard to draw, though, and is more than likely completely subjective, but it's something that I feel should be challenged at times.
(Oh, with regards to the Super best friends thing - now that you mention it I do remember that episode. It sort of speaks to the issue of how widely and publicly the characterization is issued. The second time they were threatening to show Mohammed, there was a lot of buildup, and it was absolutely in reaction to the Dutch cartoons, so I think there was a lot of legitimate fear involved in the decision not to do it, versus the relative obscurity of the issue at the time SBF was aired. Plus SBF was pre-Sept. 11, if that means anything...)
I'm really, really not interested in what you or anyone calls art. If you want to depict the Prophet because you think it's some kind of edgy commentary on a moral system you clearly don't understand, go right ahead. You can call it art. I won't stop you.
If you're "really, really not interested" in what I or anyone calls art then why are you in this thread? It's precisely about a piece of (or the subject of) provocative art, specifically the depiction of Muhammad in an artistic context.
I agree with you that someone spraypainting a stick figure and writing Mohammad above it is likely not to offend anyone; it's also probably not art.
If you want to depict the Prophet, then publish it, stand out on street corners waving it in peoples' faces while screaming "LOOK AT ME, I CAN DRAW PICTURES OF MOHAMMAD0RZ, UR BELIEFS R WRONG!" (like the guy who posted the thread that started this one did, see post #1) you're welcome to call that art too. But it's tantamount to incitement to riot and it's wrong, wrong, wrong.
Right... I don't want to do this. I do want to be able to publish a relatively innocuous thought without feeling like my life will be in danger. Talk about "wrong, wrong, wrong".
This is a brilliant backtrack, and it just makes your reasoning even more faulty. Now the first step in your chain is someone growing up with a belief system that causes him to be offended by certain things - that's Islam in your case. Following your logic, wouldn't that make everyone who grew up in that belief system - all 1.2 billion of us - future terrorists? I'm guessing not even you can claim that's true.
No, because if you follow my logic, you'll see the real danger point is the insulation to other ideas and the ability to find a justification for action based on the original system. McVeigh and other terrorists have followed the same causal chain. I notice you didn't so much attack the chain as you got offended that I was implicating your religion's part in it.
"Guy forcibly insulates himself to outside perspectives (i.e. becomes a sociopath.) Fascinating. So now you admit that in order to get to the violence, our "guy" must first become a sociopath. Sociopath...sounds a lot like the wolf from my example earlier, a person who just wants to commit crimes and perform violence.
Your assertion is that "a person just wants to commit crimes and perform violence". My assertion is that a system of beliefs encourages him and then provides approval (tacit or explicit) to justify those actions. There's a difference. Nuance, remember?
Notice you didn't even bother arguing the infidel point since, you know, you're wrong. You must be real familiar with Islam. Same goes for the "centuries old" point.
Again we come back to nuance. The application of religion is generally different than the ideal of it. In theory, the concept of an infidel is supposed to apply to atheists and non-Christians/non-Jews (and non-Muslims, obviously). In practice, it is often used to apply to any non-Muslim. Yes, this use tends to be by extremists, but it's really more important that it is used that way, not what the original intention is.
I never said that "tensions in Palestine have nothing to do with the religious claims there." I said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not grounded in religious belief. It is not. It is the result of a political movement, Zionism, a political debt owed to that movement by the British government which led to the Balfour Declaration, and a political struggle between factions in what we now call Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. The actions of rabble-rousers on both sides (not to mention neutral rabble-rousers) have now pervaded the conflict with a religious flavor that they manipulate to serve their ends.
So Zionism has nothing to do with religion? This is what we call intellectual dishonesty.
Do you even know another word besides naive? Maybe you need a thesaurus to go with that history textbook you should be checking out of the library.
If you're not going to be capable of continuing this discussion without outright attacking my intelligence (assuming I don't have a developed vocabulary or an understanding of the concepts involved simply because you disagree with me), then I encourage you to stop coming back to the thread.
Can you please list for me all of the times when Muslims in the United States of America have, through professing outrage over a perceived slight to their religion, have committed violent acts?
It's not the Muslims in the US I'm worried about.
There are none. CC wasn't afraid of some kind of jihadi uprising here in the States because of some idiotic cartoon. They were afraid of public outcry, condemnation from liberal groups, ratings hits, loss of revenue - the things all broadcast networks are afraid of. I thought I was meant to be the naive one here?
I think you're definitely right. But I think they were not also unafraid of the same sort of mobs that the Danish depictions sparked.
You've tried to paint me this whole time as some unpolished, naive bumpkin who only sees the world in black and white and who can't understand all of the subtleties inherent in artistic expression. Then you come out with this and blow it all. By definition, all of these actions must either please a group who "get it" or disgust the rest, who don't? Is that what you call art? Sounds a lot like what you call religion (a series of beliefs designed to insulate one favored group against outsiders), which in reality is far more, just like the art forms you list above. And I thought I was supposed to be the one who couldn't understand the nuances?
This is my last post in this thread as it's become severely derailed.
Your argument that you understand nuances is that you will conflate the definitions of artistic movements and religions? Maybe it's better that you've pledged to leave the thread.
I just want to get this straight - you think real-life trolling is art? Ok.
I think real life art can have the consequence of "trolling" people, to use the loose colloquialism. There is a value in provoking people, yes. Would you prefer all art is pretty pictures of puppies and stained glass figures or would you prefer that people, at some points in time, push the goddamned envelope?
Didn't I just tell you? Violence. Killing people. And he needs a reason to do it so he can convince other people to join him.
I don't believe the causal chain was "Guy wants to commit some violence -> Guy finds a philosophy that he can use the commit violence -> Guy finds a cause to get worked up about -> Guy commits violence". I think the causal chain is "Guy grows up with a belief system that tells him to be offended by certain things -> Guy forcibly insulates himself to outside perspectives (i.e. becomes a sociopath) -> Guy recruits others who are easy to manipulate to his cause because they share a common upbringing/belief structure -> Guy finds a cause to get worked up about -> Guy commits violence."
You can't be more wrong. Non-Muslims (in this case, Jews and Christians) aren't infidels in any Islamic interpretation. The idea of Israel vs. Palestine isn't even one century old, and neither is it grounded in religious belief. Please find a history textbook. Don't try to tell me what you're familiar with when you can't even get basic facts straight.
Are you really trying to say that tensions in Palestine have nothing to do wtih the religious claims to divinity there, which are precepts of all 3 of the religions that inhabit it? C'mon now.
Should I even keep making points or do you want to just make them for me? This is exactly what I said - that the religion itself makes it clear what should and should be done, through texts and another accounts, but the people corrupt the message. Therefore, it is the people who must be held responsible. See my wolf and sheep metaphor - exact same argument.
No, the religion doesn't "make itself clear what should and shouldn't be done". That's the point. Despite a clear quote condemning violence or killing, a person could very easily pull quotes and celebrated actions that document the routing of infidels or incitements to violence against outsiders, the justification being the glorification of god's "people". Religion provides the moral basis for evil cloaked as good because it defines actions committed in its own name as being good and actions of outsiders as being evil. There is a nuance here you're not understanding. But keep up with the hostility, I'm kind of enjoying it.
This one I can answer - South Park's creators wanted to go ahead, but CC pulled it. I'm siding with "fear" but not the fear you're talking about. Certainly if you want us to believe CC pulled the episode out of fear for their lives from violent Muslim retribution, you are living in a different world to the rest of us.
Fear of what? Do you think they were afraid that they might make the baby Jesus sad? As I said before, stop being naive. The only reason the creators of South Park raised the issue at all was in response to the violent reaction to the Danish cartoons. They knew precisely what fear they were speaking of, and you do too.
So again. You openly admit there's no reason to depict the Prophet (an action you know to be offensive to some) other than to find out the consequences. That is trolling. It doesn't get any more clear-cut. How can you expect anything you say after this to be taken seriously?
There is no reason to rap in a song except to please those who appreciate rapping while simultaneously disgusting those who don't. There is no reason to add distortion to guitars other than to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There is no reason to scream unintelligibly into a microphone except to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There is no reason to splash paint on a canvas and call it art except to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There is no reason to string together frustratingly non-narrative scenes in a film except to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There are a lot of sectors of art that are defined by people who can stand it or tolerate it (and then come to appreciate it for being bold). There is value in that. But I don't expect you to really understand that. You don't seem to really be connecting with much outside of your own experience.
Many Muslims take PERSONAL offense when you make fun of Muhammad. Just like my GF took personal offense when I made fun of the South Koreans. But let me give you a different example then:
At my card store there is a wigger that LOVES to use the 'N' word. He uses it every chance he can get, and every time I hear it, I am offend. I guess, you feel, that ideally after hearing him say this word for 3 years (how long its been since I moved from NJ to NH) I would eventuality get over being offended, and will start using the 'N' word my self.
Its been 3 years, and if anything I think I find that word even MORE offensive than I did before. (He even spray panted another word that is derogatory to African Americans on the street outside my house in a drunken stupor. When he sobered up he removed it and said he was sorry, but I guess you feel he should have left it there, and fought against my trying to censer his freedom of speech)
Are you really conflating racist ramblings with art? There's quite a difference between provocative art like the Piss Christ and someone spraypainting swastikas on Jewish peoples' houses.
To your first point, the exact point of a piece of provocative art is to explore WHY people take personal offense to depictions of their religious/political/social figures. The only way to really examine that is to actually DO it. We can't really discuss political offense, for instance, in the abstract. It must be done, analyzed and explored.
Nod, that's the crux of it with me - my in-laws are Jewish by heritage (and most practicing, wife and her mother exempted) so when I see outrage by other Jews it hits close to home and I react a bit viscerally.
My gut reaction when I see a Muslim depiction is "no big deal" - but when I go through my mind to weigh out my feelings between anti-Semitic nonsense and anti-Muslim nonsense, even though the visceral reaction is different, I don't see a logical difference.
(And don't say that Jews haven't reacted violently before - they certainly have)
Interesting. I see a big difference between something meant to challenge/question a belief and something meant to denigrate a group of people through identity. The latter is what we'd more commonly term as racist- to say "All Jews are X" or "All Muslims are Y" is nothing of productive value. To challenge a Jewish or Muslim belief doesn't have to also make a value statement about the people involved, it just needs to question fundamental assumptions. We can learn a lot by questioning those assumptions (we can all learn a lot from questioning our own assumptions as well).
I have to ask, for the people who think it's strange that I would actually be fearful of the reaction of some Muslims to a portrayal of Mohammed, based on recent history, what do you think would happen if I did it? Say I have the power to publish an image in the Los Angeles Times, for instance. What do you think the reaction would be? Measured condemnation? Protests? Would I get fired? Would I have my life threatened? Would those threats be serious? I'm curious.
There's a great deal of difference between poking fun at an ideal and poking fun at a specific person. I have no problem poking fun at Muslim/Christian/Jewish/Liberal/Conservative ideals (including in many cases the people who represent them). That doesn't mean I would necessarily advocate being outright aggressive and hostile to specific people over that difference in belief (though it depends on how outlandish the idea is).
I feel I should also note that just because art is provocative doesn't necessarily make it GOOD. Primarily this type of art is challenging us to think, which is something most individuals are loath to do, and something that a group of people might be violently reactive to.
The way you're coming across is that you're an ignorant thrill-seeker (you already admitted to wanting to provoke people) who thinks he's figured out the rest of the world and wants to prove it to them. That does worry me as that's exactly the kind of person that Islamist terrorists tell their recruits the West is full of.
I didn't say I wanted to provoke people so much as that ART should provoke people. It should challenge norms, question preconceptions and examine beliefs. That it definitely a function of art. If you want to talk about a big giant taboo that exists in the world, the Mohammed one is right there. I'm just not artist enough or brave enough to attempt to tackle it.
Thanks for indirectly telling me I'm capable of being provoked to kill you though. I learn something new about myself every day.
Ok, I'm sure you're a gentle little bunny with no capacity to kill another human being. Happy?
I don't think you've been listening to me. To be blunt, the claim to be intimately familiar with Islam is outright false - don't insult me. If you were, you would know better than to say that portions of Islamic teachings, theology, etc. provide justification for terrorists. These people don't need justifications. They use Islam as a smokescreen. It's not like they woke up one day, read the Qur'an, and said "Oh, ok. Now I have to kill nonbelievers. The book says so." They were already going to try to do so. They just want a mythos they can use to hide behind and induct new members. In the Middle East, that mythos is by definition Islam, since no other religion claims its popularity.
Thanks for telling me what I'm familiar with. Look, the basis of motivation for groups like al-Qaeda is, at its base, Islam. What is bin Laden's great motivating factor? The presence of "infidels" (an Islamic concept) in the "holy land" (an Islamic concept). The idea of Israel vs. Palestine is a centuries old conflict between two primitive mythologies, fueled by supposed prophecies that say that each side has a claim to the land (an Islamic/Christian/Jewish concept).
You're acting like bin Laden woke up one day and said "Gee, I sure would like to kill a lot of people. But no one'll ever buy it... I know, I'll just corrupt this religious text and no one'll be the wiser."
I mean the bible out-and-out says "Thou shall not kill". It can't get much clearer than that. Yet, Christians kill. Sometimes they do it with justification they reap from the book that clearly says DON'T KILL. Religions are never that black and white, precisely because they don't want to be. Again, let's not be naive.
???
"Problem: People get offended.
Solution: Offend them as hard as possible until they stop being offended."
This actually does work. Think about the South Park thing. If it had been done in the dark ages of Christianity, the animators (or however they'd have pulled it off) would have been killed. They would have been killed because the institutions were set up so fundamentally that to question religion was to question society. I'm glad we've moved beyond that, and yes, provocative art has played a role in opening up what we know as freedom of speech.
I guess the only reason some of you are not trolling the hell out of everyone right now is the fear of being infraction. That makes me said.
I am not afraid of infractions, for one, and I'm not trying to troll. I know it's coming off that way, but I'm trying to play a hardline devil's advocate here. When I say that I am afraid of publically criticizing Islam in the way I would want to because I am afraid of the consequences (i.e. pissing off their followers) I am serious. I doubt I'd be high-profile enough to do it, initially, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, either.
Why do you think Comedy Central/South Park declined to depict Mohammed? Out of sensitivity or out of fear?
I don't want to seem presumptuous, again. But it seems like the only reason you would want to do that is BECAUSE it would piss off Muslims. As in, if they did not care, you would not care.
This is true, yes. If one is going to be a provocateur one has to do it in areas where people will be, well, provoked. I can't well go around making parodies of Odin because people have by and large figured out that Odin is a myth. It would similarly be irrelevant to repeatedly mock Nixon for being a liar. The well has been tapped on that.
And again we're, by definition, talking about provocative art. There's no other reason to depict Mohammed other than to explore the limits of that provocation and its consequences, so please dial down the umbrage. What did you think we were talking about?
#1: Nothing mythical about him. He was as real as you or I. Unless you want to start disputing historical fact.
#2: Nobody is getting "worked up" to violence over a picture. The people who commit the violence are already by nature predisposed to violence. The pictures are an excuse. For people like that - of any color, nation or creed - everything is just an excuse for violence. Your argument is meaningless.
#1: The prophet portion is what I'm referring to as mythical. I think you knew that.
#2: Let's not be naive. People kill each other over far less than silly drawings. The fact that you can get entire mobs of people riled up over silly drawings is scary, though. And to say that these are simply people who are predisposed to violence is naive as well. There are a lot of people who suddenly become irrational when you challenge, question or poke at their most deeply held beliefs. It has nothing to do with a question of whether they have the potential to kill (anyone capable of operating a gun and the means to acquire one has the potential to kill), but whether they are able to contain themselves when put to the challenge. Even in these correspondences, I can see I'm putting you on edge with the way I'm coming across, which is slightly disturbing. Translate that to a group of otherwise reasonable people (which I'm sure you'd consider yourself to be) and irrationality will reign.
You say you don't hate Islam. Of course you don't. You don't know Islam. What you know is the veneer of Islam that terrorists put up in order to justify their actions and gather in more recruits. It is a veneer that is easily transparent to those who know real Islam, but sadly it is a very effective veneer that fools most of the population. Insidiously it seeps into the media, and from there into our consciousness, supported by faulty logic such as the following:
I'm intimately familiar with Islam. I simply reject the proposition that people who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam are doing it under some sort of "perversion". Islam is a number of things. Many of them are good things. Some of them are very bad things. The portions that provide justification for terrorism are the bad things. It's a fairly fundamental flaw of most religions- in trying to be as vague as possible in their text, and their strong assertions to complete legitimacy, they create the possibility for evil acts to be justified in their name by virtue of their ambiguity. I have the same issues with Christianity or any religious text used to justify oppression, violence or terror. It's not much different than when the CIA arranges the assassination of a South American dictator to prop up American corporations; it's still done in the name of America, it still reflects on Americans and it still is tacitly justified by our vague construction of what powers our government should have (and our lax application of accountability).
Sarcasm? If I could publish something I would publish this board game I have been working on.
Why would you publish such pictures if you could? Any perticular reason?
It wasn't sarcasm, actually.
I believe a function of art is that it can and sometimes should be offensive. It should challenge social norms. It should force us to encounter the world in new ways. It should open new perspectives.
The idea that someone could honestly get worked up to the point of violence over a depiction of a mythical prophet in a picture (even if the picture doesn't depict anything necessarily disrespectful) is just such fertile ground for exploration that it interests me as an artist. The only reason I wouldn't pursue it is because I have very little desire to actually die for my art, and there are people crazy enough to kill because they find something arbitrary (paint on a canvas, or ink on a page) "offensive".
I don't think I've read anything so ignorant in a long time. This is a new low.
You have as much chance of being killed by "a or many" Muslims for anything (learn English by the way before you worry about publishing anything) as you do of being killed by a meteorite, being hit by a car, dropping dead of a premature heart attack, etc.
"A" is a synonym for "one". "One or many" is a phrase indicating a singular or arbitrarily large number of people, in this case, Muslims. Thanks for the English lesson, though.
And no, if I walked into a Mosque in Los Angeles and active held up signs disrespecting the prophet Mohammed, I'd stand some chance of facing a hostile reaction. If I did it in Mecca, I'd be killed. Let's not play games here. There are violently irrational Muslims and there will always be provocateurs in the world. The question is who should rule. I'd rather have the provocateurs.
There is no causation between the events "drawing pictures of the Prophet" and "being killed by Muslims." None. If that's "the way the world seems" to you, can I suggest prescription glasses?
Draw pictures of mohammed -->
Piss off Muslims -->
Muslim kills artist
It's not even a difficult causal chain to write. There are a lot simpler and stupider causal chains that lead to violence too ("Man steals loaf of bread --> Man loses hand" is one of them). The probability is far greater than zero. Let's not be blind here.
This is the kind of ignorance that fearmongers both in the Western and Muslims worlds want to capitalize on. In the West, the fearmongers want you to believe this so they can convince you to pay up for wars, hate measures, etc. In the East, the fearmongers want you to believe this so they can convince other ignorant people that "they hate us" and gain more recruits.
I don't hate Islam, I hate oppression. Take Islam and remove the oppression it wants to enforce on many sectors of the world and I've got no problem with it.
Trying to tackle the issue more simply, and I mean what I'm about to say:
I would draw pictures of Mohammed and publish them, were I in a position to do so, but I am afraid of being killed by a or many Muslims for doing so. I don't think that is the way the world should work, but it seems to be the way it does.
As it stands right now, the only actually defined word that should be used to refer to an uncountably large figure is "Infinite" as that is the appropriate mathematical term.
"Gazillion", whatever it would mean, would still be more limited than "infinite". A "gazillion" something is, as other people have pointed out, an arbitrarily large number. I would add that a "gazillion" is generally bigger than a billion, or trillion, or any other commonly accepted word for a large number.
It appears to function, as others have pointed out, like the words "Few", "Some" and "Many" fuction, but at the other extreme. We can all generally agree that a "few", however many it may encompass, is always less than a "gazillion".
However, it being some arbitrarily large number still means it is defined. Infinity is not a number, and thus is not defined. Whatever a gazillion is, it is infinitely smaller than infinity. They are not synonymous (except in very very loose contexts).
I find it interesting that I Am Champion's immediate response to an actual incident of blatant racism was to cite abstract examples of where it could possibly happen on the other side. Not only is that moral equivocation, but it also speaks to a pretty vile psychology.
Who says that Obama voters hate McCain? Why can't we simply disagree about issues? I think McCain is a great man, and I would be fine with him being president. I simply think Obama is a better choice for this time.
Quit it with all the hatred and calm the hell down. Really.
-E
(And I think I've read the whole thread but it sort of died off 2 weeks ago so if I missed something, apologies in advance.)
-E
I'll jump back in for a second: Eventually, theoretically, the continued repeated theme of the provocative art should have something of a desensitizing effect. There's not necessarily a linear relationship between these sorts of offenses.
That said, yeah I agree with your characterization here of thought provoking, which I think might have been lost a bit when I was in the thread earlier. There's definitely a difference, like I said, between criticism through art and what is essentially vandalism. The line may be very hard to draw, though, and is more than likely completely subjective, but it's something that I feel should be challenged at times.
(Oh, with regards to the Super best friends thing - now that you mention it I do remember that episode. It sort of speaks to the issue of how widely and publicly the characterization is issued. The second time they were threatening to show Mohammed, there was a lot of buildup, and it was absolutely in reaction to the Dutch cartoons, so I think there was a lot of legitimate fear involved in the decision not to do it, versus the relative obscurity of the issue at the time SBF was aired. Plus SBF was pre-Sept. 11, if that means anything...)
-E
If you're "really, really not interested" in what I or anyone calls art then why are you in this thread? It's precisely about a piece of (or the subject of) provocative art, specifically the depiction of Muhammad in an artistic context.
I agree with you that someone spraypainting a stick figure and writing Mohammad above it is likely not to offend anyone; it's also probably not art.
Right... I don't want to do this. I do want to be able to publish a relatively innocuous thought without feeling like my life will be in danger. Talk about "wrong, wrong, wrong".
No, because if you follow my logic, you'll see the real danger point is the insulation to other ideas and the ability to find a justification for action based on the original system. McVeigh and other terrorists have followed the same causal chain. I notice you didn't so much attack the chain as you got offended that I was implicating your religion's part in it.
Your assertion is that "a person just wants to commit crimes and perform violence". My assertion is that a system of beliefs encourages him and then provides approval (tacit or explicit) to justify those actions. There's a difference. Nuance, remember?
Again we come back to nuance. The application of religion is generally different than the ideal of it. In theory, the concept of an infidel is supposed to apply to atheists and non-Christians/non-Jews (and non-Muslims, obviously). In practice, it is often used to apply to any non-Muslim. Yes, this use tends to be by extremists, but it's really more important that it is used that way, not what the original intention is.
So Zionism has nothing to do with religion? This is what we call intellectual dishonesty.
If you're not going to be capable of continuing this discussion without outright attacking my intelligence (assuming I don't have a developed vocabulary or an understanding of the concepts involved simply because you disagree with me), then I encourage you to stop coming back to the thread.
It's not the Muslims in the US I'm worried about.
I think you're definitely right. But I think they were not also unafraid of the same sort of mobs that the Danish depictions sparked.
Your argument that you understand nuances is that you will conflate the definitions of artistic movements and religions? Maybe it's better that you've pledged to leave the thread.
-E
I think real life art can have the consequence of "trolling" people, to use the loose colloquialism. There is a value in provoking people, yes. Would you prefer all art is pretty pictures of puppies and stained glass figures or would you prefer that people, at some points in time, push the goddamned envelope?
I don't believe the causal chain was "Guy wants to commit some violence -> Guy finds a philosophy that he can use the commit violence -> Guy finds a cause to get worked up about -> Guy commits violence". I think the causal chain is "Guy grows up with a belief system that tells him to be offended by certain things -> Guy forcibly insulates himself to outside perspectives (i.e. becomes a sociopath) -> Guy recruits others who are easy to manipulate to his cause because they share a common upbringing/belief structure -> Guy finds a cause to get worked up about -> Guy commits violence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_Palestine
Are you really trying to say that tensions in Palestine have nothing to do wtih the religious claims to divinity there, which are precepts of all 3 of the religions that inhabit it? C'mon now.
No, the religion doesn't "make itself clear what should and shouldn't be done". That's the point. Despite a clear quote condemning violence or killing, a person could very easily pull quotes and celebrated actions that document the routing of infidels or incitements to violence against outsiders, the justification being the glorification of god's "people". Religion provides the moral basis for evil cloaked as good because it defines actions committed in its own name as being good and actions of outsiders as being evil. There is a nuance here you're not understanding. But keep up with the hostility, I'm kind of enjoying it.
Fear of what? Do you think they were afraid that they might make the baby Jesus sad? As I said before, stop being naive. The only reason the creators of South Park raised the issue at all was in response to the violent reaction to the Danish cartoons. They knew precisely what fear they were speaking of, and you do too.
There is no reason to rap in a song except to please those who appreciate rapping while simultaneously disgusting those who don't. There is no reason to add distortion to guitars other than to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There is no reason to scream unintelligibly into a microphone except to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There is no reason to splash paint on a canvas and call it art except to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There is no reason to string together frustratingly non-narrative scenes in a film except to please those who appreciate it and disgust those who don't. There are a lot of sectors of art that are defined by people who can stand it or tolerate it (and then come to appreciate it for being bold). There is value in that. But I don't expect you to really understand that. You don't seem to really be connecting with much outside of your own experience.
-E
Are you really conflating racist ramblings with art? There's quite a difference between provocative art like the Piss Christ and someone spraypainting swastikas on Jewish peoples' houses.
To your first point, the exact point of a piece of provocative art is to explore WHY people take personal offense to depictions of their religious/political/social figures. The only way to really examine that is to actually DO it. We can't really discuss political offense, for instance, in the abstract. It must be done, analyzed and explored.
-E
Interesting. I see a big difference between something meant to challenge/question a belief and something meant to denigrate a group of people through identity. The latter is what we'd more commonly term as racist- to say "All Jews are X" or "All Muslims are Y" is nothing of productive value. To challenge a Jewish or Muslim belief doesn't have to also make a value statement about the people involved, it just needs to question fundamental assumptions. We can learn a lot by questioning those assumptions (we can all learn a lot from questioning our own assumptions as well).
I have to ask, for the people who think it's strange that I would actually be fearful of the reaction of some Muslims to a portrayal of Mohammed, based on recent history, what do you think would happen if I did it? Say I have the power to publish an image in the Los Angeles Times, for instance. What do you think the reaction would be? Measured condemnation? Protests? Would I get fired? Would I have my life threatened? Would those threats be serious? I'm curious.
-E
There's a great deal of difference between poking fun at an ideal and poking fun at a specific person. I have no problem poking fun at Muslim/Christian/Jewish/Liberal/Conservative ideals (including in many cases the people who represent them). That doesn't mean I would necessarily advocate being outright aggressive and hostile to specific people over that difference in belief (though it depends on how outlandish the idea is).
I feel I should also note that just because art is provocative doesn't necessarily make it GOOD. Primarily this type of art is challenging us to think, which is something most individuals are loath to do, and something that a group of people might be violently reactive to.
-E
I didn't say I wanted to provoke people so much as that ART should provoke people. It should challenge norms, question preconceptions and examine beliefs. That it definitely a function of art. If you want to talk about a big giant taboo that exists in the world, the Mohammed one is right there. I'm just not artist enough or brave enough to attempt to tackle it.
Ok, I'm sure you're a gentle little bunny with no capacity to kill another human being. Happy?
Thanks for telling me what I'm familiar with.
You're acting like bin Laden woke up one day and said "Gee, I sure would like to kill a lot of people. But no one'll ever buy it... I know, I'll just corrupt this religious text and no one'll be the wiser."
I mean the bible out-and-out says "Thou shall not kill". It can't get much clearer than that. Yet, Christians kill. Sometimes they do it with justification they reap from the book that clearly says DON'T KILL. Religions are never that black and white, precisely because they don't want to be. Again, let's not be naive.
This actually does work. Think about the South Park thing. If it had been done in the dark ages of Christianity, the animators (or however they'd have pulled it off) would have been killed. They would have been killed because the institutions were set up so fundamentally that to question religion was to question society. I'm glad we've moved beyond that, and yes, provocative art has played a role in opening up what we know as freedom of speech.
I am not afraid of infractions, for one, and I'm not trying to troll. I know it's coming off that way, but I'm trying to play a hardline devil's advocate here. When I say that I am afraid of publically criticizing Islam in the way I would want to because I am afraid of the consequences (i.e. pissing off their followers) I am serious. I doubt I'd be high-profile enough to do it, initially, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, either.
Why do you think Comedy Central/South Park declined to depict Mohammed? Out of sensitivity or out of fear?
This is true, yes. If one is going to be a provocateur one has to do it in areas where people will be, well, provoked. I can't well go around making parodies of Odin because people have by and large figured out that Odin is a myth. It would similarly be irrelevant to repeatedly mock Nixon for being a liar. The well has been tapped on that.
And again we're, by definition, talking about provocative art. There's no other reason to depict Mohammed other than to explore the limits of that provocation and its consequences, so please dial down the umbrage. What did you think we were talking about?
-E
#1: The prophet portion is what I'm referring to as mythical. I think you knew that.
#2: Let's not be naive. People kill each other over far less than silly drawings. The fact that you can get entire mobs of people riled up over silly drawings is scary, though. And to say that these are simply people who are predisposed to violence is naive as well. There are a lot of people who suddenly become irrational when you challenge, question or poke at their most deeply held beliefs. It has nothing to do with a question of whether they have the potential to kill (anyone capable of operating a gun and the means to acquire one has the potential to kill), but whether they are able to contain themselves when put to the challenge. Even in these correspondences, I can see I'm putting you on edge with the way I'm coming across, which is slightly disturbing. Translate that to a group of otherwise reasonable people (which I'm sure you'd consider yourself to be) and irrationality will reign.
I'm intimately familiar with Islam. I simply reject the proposition that people who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam are doing it under some sort of "perversion". Islam is a number of things. Many of them are good things. Some of them are very bad things. The portions that provide justification for terrorism are the bad things. It's a fairly fundamental flaw of most religions- in trying to be as vague as possible in their text, and their strong assertions to complete legitimacy, they create the possibility for evil acts to be justified in their name by virtue of their ambiguity. I have the same issues with Christianity or any religious text used to justify oppression, violence or terror. It's not much different than when the CIA arranges the assassination of a South American dictator to prop up American corporations; it's still done in the name of America, it still reflects on Americans and it still is tacitly justified by our vague construction of what powers our government should have (and our lax application of accountability).
-E
It wasn't sarcasm, actually.
I believe a function of art is that it can and sometimes should be offensive. It should challenge social norms. It should force us to encounter the world in new ways. It should open new perspectives.
The idea that someone could honestly get worked up to the point of violence over a depiction of a mythical prophet in a picture (even if the picture doesn't depict anything necessarily disrespectful) is just such fertile ground for exploration that it interests me as an artist. The only reason I wouldn't pursue it is because I have very little desire to actually die for my art, and there are people crazy enough to kill because they find something arbitrary (paint on a canvas, or ink on a page) "offensive".
Witness:
"A" is a synonym for "one". "One or many" is a phrase indicating a singular or arbitrarily large number of people, in this case, Muslims. Thanks for the English lesson, though.
And no, if I walked into a Mosque in Los Angeles and active held up signs disrespecting the prophet Mohammed, I'd stand some chance of facing a hostile reaction. If I did it in Mecca, I'd be killed. Let's not play games here. There are violently irrational Muslims and there will always be provocateurs in the world. The question is who should rule. I'd rather have the provocateurs.
Draw pictures of mohammed -->
Piss off Muslims -->
Muslim kills artist
It's not even a difficult causal chain to write. There are a lot simpler and stupider causal chains that lead to violence too ("Man steals loaf of bread --> Man loses hand" is one of them). The probability is far greater than zero. Let's not be blind here.
I don't hate Islam, I hate oppression. Take Islam and remove the oppression it wants to enforce on many sectors of the world and I've got no problem with it.
-E
I would draw pictures of Mohammed and publish them, were I in a position to do so, but I am afraid of being killed by a or many Muslims for doing so. I don't think that is the way the world should work, but it seems to be the way it does.
-E
"Gazillion", whatever it would mean, would still be more limited than "infinite". A "gazillion" something is, as other people have pointed out, an arbitrarily large number. I would add that a "gazillion" is generally bigger than a billion, or trillion, or any other commonly accepted word for a large number.
It appears to function, as others have pointed out, like the words "Few", "Some" and "Many" fuction, but at the other extreme. We can all generally agree that a "few", however many it may encompass, is always less than a "gazillion".
However, it being some arbitrarily large number still means it is defined. Infinity is not a number, and thus is not defined. Whatever a gazillion is, it is infinitely smaller than infinity. They are not synonymous (except in very very loose contexts).
-E
-E
I didn't know Obama planned to continue Bush's economic policies. I may have to review his campaign literature.
-E