( edit ) And we have ‘BUT REVERSE RACISM’ and ‘BUT THE DICTIONARY’. I’m waiting for ‘BUT ANECDATA’ and we’ll have a full bingo card.
Stfuconfederates edit is spot on.
Can we please stop using “symbolism” as a catch-all apology for offensive things as if because something is ‘symbolic’ that absolves it of all problematic subtext — as if it is not the very symbolism itself which is making it problematic? Like. Not only did Florence + the Machine’s “No Light, No Light” video contain a man in blackface (already appropriative, tokenistic, and offensive) but he was symbolic of evil and a threat to Florence; his ‘voodoo’ was explicitly contrasted with Christianity, Florence’s salvation. This is the symbolism you’re invoking to try to absolve “No Light, No Light” of racism and it is explicitly racist symbolism. There is no deeper level on which this video is not racist. People who see the racism are not being too stupid to see past the racism to its ~intellectual and totally not-racist core. They’re seeing its core. Its core is, like, literally made of racism.
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http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com/post/13001637178 (For some reason Tumblr wouldn’t let me reblog, but this is the URL to the original post)
- I’m so unutterably disappointed in this video. Did no one on the creative team think that having a man done up in blackface, carrying out a stylised voodoo ritual intended to harm a white woman, then chasing that white woman in to the arms of a gaggle of white, Christian children isn’t… I don’t know, maybe INCREDIBLY RACIST AND PROBLEMATIC? I have no idea how anyone involved in the making of this video could have thought it was okay, and I despair that people are trying to defend it.
