south park solidarity, may 20
see also the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day home page
EDMD at Jihad Watch
Showing posts with label South Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Park. Show all posts
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
everybody draw muhammad ~ may 20
If our government won't stand up for us and our corporations only cower in fear, it falls upon the individual to keep the world safe for free expression by banding with his peers in a show of solidarity. If terrorists wish to control us through threats and fear, then we must banish that fear from our hearts and rise up to meet the challenge. Safety in numbers has been the watchword of all peaceful movements to change the world. Maybe fighting the close-minded, terrorist fascism of muslim fundamentalism can also be peaceful ~ why invade when we can take the moral high ground and draw!
We lost - you know what I mean? Something that was ok is now not ok, and that's just . . . fucked up.
Are you afraid that if the network allows you to unveil the prophet Muhammad that you will be bombed?
We'd be so hypocritical against our own mess... - our own thoughts if we said, "ok well let's not make fun of them because they might hurt us," like, that's messed up! - to have that kind of thought process, you know? ok we'll rip on the catholics cause they wont hurt us, but we won't rip on them cause they might hurt us?!?!?! Like that's, that is not what we -
It so sad that the whole Muhammad . . . the whole Danish cartoon thing . . . it's like if everyone would have just, like normally they do in the news organizations, just printed the cartoons -
Right, and no one rallied together -
Now that guy had to be in hiding, and all this shit, because no one, everyone kinda left him out to dry.
That's a big problem when you have, like, the New York Times and Comedy Central and Viacom basically just pussing out on it, I'm sorry to say. It's just sad. It's sad. I was like really sad about the whole thing.
So, help make the world a better place and participate in Everybody Draw Muhammad Day on May 20.
I know I will, will you?
Friday, April 23, 2010
south park solidarity
Any self respecting government refuses to bow to terrorist threats. If they allow terrorists to determine policy through the threat (or even the implementation) of cowardly violence against innocents, then that government is no longer autonomous—if others control your behavior through violence, you are a slave.
However, if the citizens and private organizations of a community themselves succumb to terrorist threats, the situation is no better than if the government itself had. For what is the government but the collective will of the individuals that comprise the state?
Comedy Central recently succumbed to terrorist threats and edited the 201st episode (season 14, ep. 6) of the TV show South Park. This episode depicted a number of religious figures and celebrities in humorous situations. One such religious figure was Muhammad, who was envied by all other celebrities precisely because he had the power of not being ridiculed. (Muhammad himself is depicted as an associate of the other religious figures who don't give a damn about such nonsense, as is fitting of a religious figure.) It ended, as all South Park episodes do, with a moral message. Comedy Central blacked out all appearances of Muhammad, bleeped out his name whenever it was uttered, and bleeped out the ending moral message, which "was about intimidation and fear," and "didn't mention Muhammad at all."
It is embarrassing that we live in a country were private businesses don't feel free to allow expression without fear of terrorist reprisal.
It is cowardly of Comedy Central to submit to terrorist threats (and vague, insubstantial ones at that) rather than stand by their content providers.
But it is scandalous and offensive that a moral message emphasizing the dangers of intimidation and the importance of resisting terrorist-imposed fear was also censored in response to nebulous terrorist threats.
Shame, shame Comedy Central you spineless Quisling, you patsy of the enemies of freedom, you embarrassment to free-thinking, liberal-minded citizens of the world. You enemy of morality. You servant of evil, oppression, and fascism!
However, if the citizens and private organizations of a community themselves succumb to terrorist threats, the situation is no better than if the government itself had. For what is the government but the collective will of the individuals that comprise the state?
Comedy Central recently succumbed to terrorist threats and edited the 201st episode (season 14, ep. 6) of the TV show South Park. This episode depicted a number of religious figures and celebrities in humorous situations. One such religious figure was Muhammad, who was envied by all other celebrities precisely because he had the power of not being ridiculed. (Muhammad himself is depicted as an associate of the other religious figures who don't give a damn about such nonsense, as is fitting of a religious figure.) It ended, as all South Park episodes do, with a moral message. Comedy Central blacked out all appearances of Muhammad, bleeped out his name whenever it was uttered, and bleeped out the ending moral message, which "was about intimidation and fear," and "didn't mention Muhammad at all."
It is embarrassing that we live in a country were private businesses don't feel free to allow expression without fear of terrorist reprisal.
It is cowardly of Comedy Central to submit to terrorist threats (and vague, insubstantial ones at that) rather than stand by their content providers.
But it is scandalous and offensive that a moral message emphasizing the dangers of intimidation and the importance of resisting terrorist-imposed fear was also censored in response to nebulous terrorist threats.
Shame, shame Comedy Central you spineless Quisling, you patsy of the enemies of freedom, you embarrassment to free-thinking, liberal-minded citizens of the world. You enemy of morality. You servant of evil, oppression, and fascism!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
what is post-post-modern?
Modernism invited artists to play with technique, to utilize the medium as medium in their storytelling.
Post-modernism encouraged the use of technique for its own sake: story and character, depiction and meaning became subordinate to self-awareness, self-reference, and alinear linguistic puzzles. If there was a surface narrative in the post-modern work, it was always subordinate to the numerous subnarrative strands which served to subvert it, seeping in through the interstices, reversing the author / reader power structure, etc.
But what of the post-post-modern narrative arts? Once the door to self-awareness and self-reference has been opened, it can never be closed. Nevertheless, the luster of for its own sake self-referentialism has worn thin.
Let's look at three strategies for bridging this gap, for moving beyond the self-indulgence of post-modernism while retaining its techniques; and reclaiming (if at all possible) the traditional narrative ideas of story and character and meaning.
David Foster Wallace, for example, explicitly speaks of finding a "compromise" between a fractional nonlinearity and a seductive and compelling story in this interview with Charlie Rose, discussing Infinite Jest from 19 or so min. and post-modernism ("after modernism") from 21 or so min.
What's of interest about Infinite Jest (in this context) is that the meaning of the novel has nothing to do with its techniques (or language, relativism, power-structures, etc.). The novel is a deep investigation of the contemporary American cultural of addiction, and unabashedly so. But it is not language which is convicted, but something subtler. And at all times, the individual is held to task and examined, rather than subordinated to the political and cultural commentary.
The centrality of the individual and his struggle to construct meaning in his life is also at the heart of Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions, a film about filmmaking in which one director forces another to repeatedly remake his most famous short, each time following a different set of bizarre rules. Despite the blatant self-referentialism and absorbtion in the medium of film itself, The Five Obstructions culminates in a touching a deeply humanistic affirmation of the human spirit, one which feels all the less trite for transcending its deconstructionist trappings.
As a final example, consider the Southpark 2-part episode, "The Cartoon Wars." A cartoon about cartoons and censorship, which itself is censored. The creators' commentary on the second episde is here:
Not only is the storyline self-referential and self-aware in the extreme, it overtly comments on the need for story and character development rather then mere fractured joke telling. Although the ultimate message is political, the emphasis is again on the responsibility of the individual rather than the culpability of society, language, or power structures.
Post-modernism encouraged the use of technique for its own sake: story and character, depiction and meaning became subordinate to self-awareness, self-reference, and alinear linguistic puzzles. If there was a surface narrative in the post-modern work, it was always subordinate to the numerous subnarrative strands which served to subvert it, seeping in through the interstices, reversing the author / reader power structure, etc.
But what of the post-post-modern narrative arts? Once the door to self-awareness and self-reference has been opened, it can never be closed. Nevertheless, the luster of for its own sake self-referentialism has worn thin.
Let's look at three strategies for bridging this gap, for moving beyond the self-indulgence of post-modernism while retaining its techniques; and reclaiming (if at all possible) the traditional narrative ideas of story and character and meaning.
David Foster Wallace, for example, explicitly speaks of finding a "compromise" between a fractional nonlinearity and a seductive and compelling story in this interview with Charlie Rose, discussing Infinite Jest from 19 or so min. and post-modernism ("after modernism") from 21 or so min.
What's of interest about Infinite Jest (in this context) is that the meaning of the novel has nothing to do with its techniques (or language, relativism, power-structures, etc.). The novel is a deep investigation of the contemporary American cultural of addiction, and unabashedly so. But it is not language which is convicted, but something subtler. And at all times, the individual is held to task and examined, rather than subordinated to the political and cultural commentary.
The centrality of the individual and his struggle to construct meaning in his life is also at the heart of Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions, a film about filmmaking in which one director forces another to repeatedly remake his most famous short, each time following a different set of bizarre rules. Despite the blatant self-referentialism and absorbtion in the medium of film itself, The Five Obstructions culminates in a touching a deeply humanistic affirmation of the human spirit, one which feels all the less trite for transcending its deconstructionist trappings.
As a final example, consider the Southpark 2-part episode, "The Cartoon Wars." A cartoon about cartoons and censorship, which itself is censored. The creators' commentary on the second episde is here:
Not only is the storyline self-referential and self-aware in the extreme, it overtly comments on the need for story and character development rather then mere fractured joke telling. Although the ultimate message is political, the emphasis is again on the responsibility of the individual rather than the culpability of society, language, or power structures.
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