When a collective noun is fundamentally masculine, how do you include women in it?
I know that the term “Latinx” is meant to be pronounced “La-teen-ex,” but given it doesn’t crop up much in spoken conversation around me, my brain tends to read it as “La-tinks.”
I know that the term "Latinx" is meant to be pronounced "La-teen-ex," but given it doesn't crop up much in spoken conversation around me, my brain tends to read it as "La-tinks".
I still think it’s a cool neologism, though. The Boy has been learning Italian and Latin in college, and is being thrown a curve by the gendered nature of those languages. Just as in English we’ve been tackling gendered aspects of our own tongue, languages built around gendered nows (and then verbs and other parts of speech that have to echo them) often incorporate sexual bias and traditional expectations.
“Latinx” is an effort at a collective noun that, unlike “Latino,” doesn’t seem to exclude half the people involved.
RT @BeschlossDC: Brown v. Board of Education—Supreme Court found segregated schools unconstitutional 65 years ago this week: https://t.co/b…
This week we commemorate the banning of “separate but [though it never was] equal” as a dodge to allow segregation.
Gosh, remember back when claims of “religious freedom” (as some folk used to defend “the Biblical separation of the races”) as an excuse for discrimination (racial discrimination in particular) were laughed out of court?
Daniel, 51, says he’ll be hanging up his slimline tuxedo after his fifth Bond movie is released next year. And after 13 years in the iconic role the actor says it should be open to everyone regardless of gender, race and sexual orientation.
He said: “I think that everybody should be considered. Also for women and for African-Americans, there should be great parts anyway, across the board.”
What was more, um, “interesting,” was the reaction of the Twitterati comments on that thread about the idea of a woman playing Bond, largely aligned around either “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard” or “Oh, look, the Social Justice Warriors are ruining everything some more.”
I’d like to examine this question a bit, to figure out what I think about it, but to do so based on, well, reason vs. knee-jerk testosterone poisoning.
Who, what, is James Bond?
My rule of thumb on expanding casting of traditionally white, male, straight characters into other categories is, does doing so make so significant a change in the character as to render it unrecognizable from the original?
It’s useful to remember that the James Bond movie franchise has been going on for over fifty years now. As someone who’s watched the entire series multiple times, and who’s actually read the Ian Fleming books fergoshsakes, I can tell you that “Who is James Bond?” has changed answers multiple times. Even the 60s grit of Sean Connery made Bond out to be a nicer, more heroic fellow than the damaged goods, self-destructive assassin and brute that Fleming wrote of. George Lazenby’s french cuffs made for a softer Bond in his one abortive outing. Roger Moore, in keeping with his times, pivoted the character around past the playboy of The Saint to almost a self-lampoon or urbane spydom (particularly as he aged out of the role). Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and especially Daniel Craig, have all shifted the role back to something harder and more gritty, but each have been product of their time and the targeted movie audience demographic. Suggesting that there is a unitary “Bond” to test against for gender characteristics is a dubious idea to begin with.
But, heck, let’s go ahead and hypothesize that there’s some ur-Bond that we can use as a touchstone, something the collective race consciousness would recognize as the Platonic ideal of Bondness. What are that character’s characteristics?
Bond is a Spy
Bond is a Killer
Bond has Class
Bond is a Thrill-Seeker
Bond is a Womanizer
Bond is English
Those seem to be the general attributes that go into James Bond. Now, does making Bond a woman break any of those?
Bond is a Spy: Whether it’s breaking into a mad criminal genius lair, obtaining material from (or sabotaging) a geopolitical enemy, or otherwise serving the covert missions of Her Majesty’s Secret Service in defense of the West, the World, or just that Sceptered Isle, Bond is the most famous movie franchise spy on record (Jason Bourne doesn’t even come close).
Can a woman do that? I don’t see why not, just as one might answer to the next one …
Bond is a Killer: While it’s sometimes played down a bit, ultimately that “double-0” agent nomenclature represents a “license to kill”. Bond is an assassin (in some movies, very clearly portrayed as such), and even when killing someone is not the specific mission, Bond has explicit permission from HMG to kill anyone who gets in the way of that mission.
Can a woman do that? Brute violence, getting one’s hands dirty with blood, often aren’t seen as traditional female courses of action, but we certainly have any number of models where it’s been done, from Black Widow to La Femme Nikita to Helen Mirren’s Victoria in RED, there’s plenty of precedent.
Bond has Class: Oh, that vodka martini, shaken-not-stirred. The tuxedos and the baccarat. The ability to flip back and forth from hobnobbing with the rich and royal to snapping the necks of their bodyguards (with appropriate bon mots for each). The discernment as to vintages of wine or points of origin for caviar.
Again, I don’t see anything there that a woman could not do, even is coolly assertive behavior from a man around these things might be reflexively labeled as being “pushy” or “snobby” from a woman. We’re going to touch on that in a bit.
Bond is a Thrill-Seeker: Fast cars. High-stakes gambling. Even his profession. It’s been noted (all the way back to the books) that Bond is an adrenaline junky, a thrill-seeker. “The world is not enough,” goes the translation of his family motto (and a later movie title). And there are times — in the movies and the books — where this appears taken to extremes, to the point where it seems that Bond has a death wish (to complement occasional PTSD).
Those are attributes that are not generally associated with female characters, though I’m not sure why they couldn’t be. The perception of a woman who’s an adrenaline junky, though, is that of a woman with a defect, someone out of control. When it’s a man, it’s usually seen as an admirable (if possibly foolhardy) trait.
Addressing that perception sounds like a challenge to me.
Bond is a Womanizer: This is where people usually get the most indigestion over gender-swapping Bond. What about the Bond Girls?
It goes largely without saying that Bond sleeps around. A lot. Keeping score during the movies is a hobby for some people. While this trait has mellowed out a bit in recent years, it’s still one of the key attributes people associate with the character. And, as we “know,” a guy who sleeps with a lot of women is seen as, well, especially manly. A gal who sleeps with a lot of men is seen as, well, a slut.
Even in a less promiscuous Bond world, as we’ve had under Craig, where there’s been some attempt to add personal depth to (usually doomed) relationships, there’s still a distinction that gets drawn between a spy who has sex with the enemy in order to achieve the mission when the spy is a man vs. a woman. The man is assumed to be a stud, acting with agency (and having fun at the same time). The woman, on the other hand, is letting her body be used, giving her all for England (and not with a wry wink). (Alternatively, she’s some sort of unnatural sexual predator who’s to be feared, if not pitied.)
I’m more than happy to say that’s a very sexist attitude, and one that I suspect a lot of people would not explicit cop to these days — but I’ll also confess I think it would stand in the way of directly mapping the traditional Bond model onto a woman. Jane Bond sleeping with a series of well-oiled “Bond Boys” is probably not going to cut it. (Nor, for different reasons, Jane Bond sleeping with a series of bikini-clad Bond Girls.)
Of all the problems here, this is the one that’s the most difficult.
Can you have a Bond who’s not a “womanizer”? Going back to the books is no help here — the Bond there would be thrown in jail for his treatment of women, certainly not lauded as a hero. The layers of societal expectations and prejudices about sex and romance for women vs. men seems difficult to work around. Heck, the occasional mooning by Bond for a long-term relationship, perhaps retirement and a family, sounds very different coming from a man than from a woman.
It would be the biggest challenge for any casting decision of this sort.
Bond is English: Yes, there are women in England, too. I think that would be fine.
(We’ll also handwave aside that Bond’s been played by some non-English actors, or that as a result of Connery playing Bond in Doctor No, Fleming actually gave the character a Scottish heritage.)
* * *
It occurs to me that there’s a further categorization that folds in a number of the above, and is part of what makes gender-swapping Bond so problematic: Bond is the quintessential alpha male.
He’s a stone killer. He is the ravisher of usually-cooperative women. He owns any room. He follows his instincts (successfully!), even in defiance of his stodgy bosses. He dares all. He wins all. Even when there is tragedy in his life, he bounces back. He lives well, even when (especially when) on the job. He doesn’t quite swagger, but he’d be justified in doing so. Men are jealous, intimidated, dominated by him. Women are eagerly (or fearfully) attracted, seduced, dominated by him.
He’s James Fucking Bond.
Can a woman be that?
On one level, there’s really no reason why not. But culturally, that’s really difficult to pull off. The quiet self-confidence and oozing of power that comes with all that window dressing is seen as quintessentially male, to the point where women who act that way get labeled in negative ways, the male virtues being portrayed as female vices. Women who dominate are called pushy and bossy. Women who strive to win conversational gambits are called bitchy. Women who are aggressive are abrasive. Women like the above “alpha male” are considered undisciplined, sexpots, man-eaters, irrational if emotional and frigid if not, judgmental, strident, vain, ball-busting …
(Insert any number of descriptions of Hillary Clinton vs. any number of male politicians from whom she acted no differently.)
It’s unfair and irrational, but it’s hard to argue that it would be an uphill challenge among a lot of the audience to have those Bondian traits applied, with that name, to a woman.
On the other hand, maybe that’s a challenge worth taking. Agent 007, after all, never backs down from something like that.
A few added notes:
Nobody in 1962 would have thought that “M,” the head of MI6, could ever be a woman, either. Dame Judi Dench begs to differ.
This is not a question about whether there are differences between men and women, as a broadly generalized binary whole. And, to my own aesthetic and orientation, vive la difference, as they say. But going from physical differences (in a broad range) to mental and emotional and behavioral differences, especially if you try to strip out the thick layers of expectations and stereotypes and biases and acculturation that our society assumes, still, about how “men” and “women” should be, is rightfully subject to a lot of debate.
And, of course, a character like Bond is an outlier, regardless of gender.
Craig (and others who have chimed in on this) also mentioned some other categories for cross-casting. While most of my awareness of British society comes from the media, I have the sense that the the idea of a contemporary black James Bond (Idris Elba is the perennial favorite here) would seem less jarring in the UK than in some circles in the US, and would not seriously conflict with any of the items above. (I have no doubt that some US racists would be outraged at the thought, however, even as they denied racism as the basis for their outrage.)
I suspect strongly, if sadly, that a gay James Bond would be even more fraught than a female one, with as little justification.
“But why would you want to do it? Why would you want to put a woman in as James Bond, except for some sort of SJW feminazi social mind control reason?” Two reasons come to mind.
First, why would you not choose the best actor to portray a character? To get back to my original point, if gender, or race, or whatever doesn’t affect the core story any more than hair color or eye color or handedness, then why not choose someone who can bring something interesting to the story?
Second, though franchises are about continuity, in the course of a fifty-year franchise, taking new looks and spins on the story of a British spy/assassin is not only inevitable, but necessary … and has already happened. Why not play with something that is attuned to the same vibe, but offers a fresh perspective? If you can go from Sean Connery (with an intervening step) to Roger Moore, why can’t you go from Daniel Craig to Emily Blunt?
“Can’t you just create another movie series about a British spy/assassin and cast a woman in it without desecrating the holy figure of James Bond?” Sure. Of course you can. Except that any movie that is part of the 007 franchise automatically gets a huge audience, at least for opening weekend. If you’re telling substantially the same story, why forego that profitable advantage? Or, rather, why would a movie studio choose to do so?
None of this is to say that the franchise must put in a woman in the title role, or even that they should, just that, perhaps, they canwithout radically changing what it means to be Agent 007, only giving it a new look.
Sketch of Bond commissioned by Ian Fleming as a model for comic strip artists at the “Daily Express.”
The hijab can be a symbol of oppression or of freedom
The hijab — the scarf-neck-head covering worn by some Muslim women — is not actually dictated per se by the Koran, but is a traditional dress in some parts of the Muslim world that has been tied to religious and theocratic rulings. It’s controversial in a number of places as religious wear, and as Muslim religious wear, but also as a sign of oppression against women in the Muslim world (and, as such, often conflated with other and more restrictive garb to hide, mask, or enforce the modesty of women).
Ilhan Omar, in hijab
The first article below demonstrates, though, that it’s not a matter of either-or. Some Muslim women (such as Ilhan Omar) wear hijab as a sign of their religious devotion, and celebrate it as a personal freedom. Others, esp. those living in some Middle Eastern Muslim nations, have it forced on them by state law, and consider it as a constriction of freedom.
The conflict seems perfectly understandable to me, analogous to another example of religious identification. I know a number of Jewish people, especially women, who wear a Star of David as a necklace, as an expression of their religious belief. Nobody (aside from anti-Semites) thinks a thing of it, save perhaps observing how cool it is that someone can choose to wear the symbol openly and without government sanction.
But if you had a law (as in Nazi Germany) where Jews were forced to wear a Star of David on their clothing to identify them as Jews … that’s clearly oppressive.
From there, it seems straightforward to celebrate that Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab have the freedom to do so … but to condemn nations who mandate that all women do so (or even more).
An interesting look at how politics has become an increasingly powerful source of identity, not just an outcome of it.
People sometimes decry identity politics — “I’m an X, so I vote for That Party” or “I’m a Z, so I only vote for other Zs or Z supporters,” with religion, race, gender, class, etc., taking the part of the variables.
But there’s evidence that political party or political identity along one or another spectrum is beginning to trump the others. Looking at long-term surveys (where the subject was given the same questions across multiple years), researchers are seeing those other identities changing based on political identification. E.g.,
Liberal Democrats were much more likely than conservative Republicans to start identifying as Latino or saying that their ancestry was African, Asian or Hispanic.
Conservative Republicans were more likely than liberal Democrats to stop describing themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual; liberal-leaning Democrats were more likely to start identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Again, it’s not that these people were “actually” changing — their genetics weren’t switching around — but that how they perceived or identified themselves was realigning based on their (unchanged in labels) politics, or how those other labels were seen as part and parcel of those political ideologies, rather than separate factors.
That change in the last decade or so may also go along with other observations as to the rise of Big Ideas and the decline of compromise within politics; when political ideology becomes not just an outcome of your identity, but your identity itself, emotionality and an unforgiveness for backing down become more natural reactions.
I think this article makes an interesting and positive case for addressing the misogyny and violence against women that’s frequently depicted in ancient art (the examples given being from Greece).[1] Abductions and rapes and attacks — how do we deal with the abusive treatment in an era when simply talking about the lines and forms or giving the briefest summary of what’s going on (“Oh, look, here’s yet another piece about the Lapith men fighting the Centaurs who have attacked the Lapith women”)?
I have no doubt that there are some who would say that the subject matter is such that we simply shouldn’t teach about it at all. And i can understand why some people (not just women) would rather not dwell on artwork that carries violence against women as central motif.
But I think it would be a mistake to do so, just as it was a mistake for earlier generations to gloss over (or mask, or even destroy) art that was deemed sexually improper and behaviorally immoral in a very different way.
Instead, why not confront it? We can’t understand Greek culture (and, thus, ultimately our own) without engaging in this stuff, so include examination of what’s going on with Persephone, or the Lapith women, or the Amazons. Don’t be afraid to talk about artistic form alongside problematic cultural practices. Ancient Greek art is valuable to understand, and part of that understanding is about what to us seems a very dark underside.
Don’t just glorify it. Don’t just ban it. Seek to understand it as a whole.
——
[1] We actually got to see the “West Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia” this summer, which was very cool. And, actually, ended up seeing many renditions of the whole Lapiths-vs-Centaurs battle at different locations; the Greeks were kind of obsessed with the story, and it’s important to try to understand why, and how that informs us (among many other things) how women were viewed and treated in Ancient Greek culture.
Actually what he seems irked by is that ABC’s Bob Iger called Valerie Jarrett to apologize for Roseanne Barr acting like an ass, but didn’t call up Trump to apologize for people saying “HORRIBLE” things about him on the ABC.
Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?
Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?
You’re freaking President of the United States, Donald. As one of your predecessors put it, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Also, do you usually refer to yourself in the third person and by full name and title? Or is the idea that you are a Much More Important Person, and therefore much more deserving of an apology?
Have you recently apologized for the “HORRBLE” statements you’ve said about others, Donald? Just wondering.
But keep sitting by the phone waiting for that call, Donald. I’m sure it’s coming. Just … keep … waiting …
Political correctness is ruining free speech in America. To fight it, we insist that professional athletes participate in nationalist rituals in the proscribed fashion without expressing any views, to avoid offense. To do otherwise would endorse snowflakes and their safe spaces.
I’m fascinated by modern iconography, and reducing information into a compact symbol that is easily understood and universally applied.
This article about the efforts (some of them inadvertent) to redesign the famous wheelchair / accessibility icon, and the emotions and controversy that’s raised, is pretty fascinating, too.
I recall this debate back in the post-Yugoslavia break-up days, but had no idea it was still festering. It all boils down to the question of who “owns” a national name, how such names can (or cannot) be duplicated, how fluid borders and history scramble such discussions, and why ethnic nationalism always makes things more difficult than they should be.
In short: the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) has had efforts to actually call themselves Macedonia continuously blocked in the international and European communities by Greek nationalists who say that name belongs to Greeks, as reflected in their own (neighboring) district called Macedonia. That many (though by no means all) of these folk in FYROM are ethnically Slavic makes this stickier; that folk in FYROM believe the name and cultural heritage belongs to them, and won’t hear about changing it, makes this even stickier.
Apparently there is a substantial population who believe that the Obamas banned the White House creche / Nativity display while they were in the White House, and that the words “Merry Christmas” were similarly forbidden, and that now the Trump White House has “liberated” both institutions.
They believe this despite the very clear and easily accessible documentation that it is simply untrue.
Officials at the Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) have been informed that certain terms must not,never,ever be used in their budget proposals.
Budget item proposals that mention those terms in them are having them sent back for correction.
It’s not clear if it’s just that these words might upset people higher up the food chain (like the President), or whether by forbidding the words it might mean that CDC work can’t be done in those areas (which seems a bid feeble, to be honest), or whether it’s to keep GOP big donors from getting irked (which feels a bit of a stretch).
It’s just weird, in an odd quasi-Orwellian way. Which, I guess, shouldn’t be a surprise, but it just feels a little less blunt than the usual Trumpian surprise.
The tragedy is that it doesn’t exist, but some Christians in the US are convinced it does.
Speaking as both an American and a Christian, here’s what I see.
Christians do still hold tremendous power in this country. They hold positions of influence. They have tremendous privilege. The national holidays, the public symbols, the social structure is all built around Christian traditions and Christian values and Christians beliefs.
But …
Some of that is changing. Christians are being told there are other people who want to sit at the table. Not just the Jews (who were, sometimes, tolerated), but Muslims. Hindus. Buddhists. And, heck, people who don’t believe at all.
And Christians aren’t automatically deferred to, or respected, or treated as not just the norm but the core of what it means to be American. People make jokes about Christians. People want other holidays off. People question whether churches should be tax exempt. People question Christian teachings on things like divorce, or abortion, or sex, or the role of women, or homosexuality, or the origin of the universe, or the existence of God.
Sure, there are a lot of Christians who have little to no problem with those things But the Christians who are most certain that they are the True Christians, the Real Christians, the Ones Christ Would Feel Were Truly His Followers …
They’re not always the undisputed top dogs. They’re not the center of respect. They can’t simply assert their opinion (God’s opinion!) as to what is Right and what is Wrong and expect it to be followed.
And that fall from complete, utter, and total social hegemony is perceived as … persecution.
“I don’t get to shun and fire and refuse to serve immoral people any more.”
“I don’t get to put monuments to my religion in the public square any more.”
“I don’t get to have my prayers read in classrooms any more.”
“I don’t get to forbid stuff, and shame or imprison the folk who do forbidden things, any more.”
“I don’t automatically garner respect and deference for being the epitome of morality and righteousness any more.”
“I don’t get to assume everyone is a Christian, and that they are Baptized, and that they have Read the Bible, and that they Celebrate the Same Holidays as me, and that they Believe The Same Stuff I do any more.”
“I’m being persecuted.”
The word “privilege” gets tossed around a lot, and it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but that’s exactly what this is: *Christian Privilege. And it’s being challenged. And some Christians simply cannot stand that.
Some Christians see any threat to their being Number One as being persecution. Some Christians see any challenge to their being the undisputed bosses of America as being persecution. Some Christians see criticism, jokes, disrespect, as being persecution.
Again, speaking as both an American and a Christian: suck it up, Buttercup.
Jesus didn’t promise any of his followers that they would be in charge of things here on Earth. He didn’t say that they would get a country that would follow all their religious dictates. He didn’t say that everyone would respect Christians, or treat them as the top dogs in society.
In fact, he pretty much said the opposite. And he said that was okay, at least according to the Bible.
Now, I’m not recommending that Christians should want to be persecuted. Or that any religious (or irreligious) group should be persecuted.
Heck, I’m not even saying that I don’t get peeved when people post stuff that says that Christians / Theists of Any Sort are deluded idiots who are responsible for all the ills of this world.
But that’s not persecution. That is, at best, a debate between worldviews, and, at worst, people being asshats. Being a Christian doesn’t threaten my job, doesn’t threaten my owning my home, threaten my kid being able to go to school, threaten my ability to go to church, doesn’t threaten my ability to vote or buy stuff or participate in society or eat in restaurants or stay out of jail. There are countries where that’s the case; this isn’t one of them.
Christians aren’t being persecuted in this country. They’re simply not the undisputed lords and masters. And, frankly, that bit of humility and need to actually sell the message of Christianity, vs. imposing it by rule of law and social diktat, is actually a good thing for Christians. Because, again, looking at the Bible, being the people in undisputed charge of things is not what Jesus recommended to his followers.
Pope Francis has suggested the Catholic Church consider a change in how it renders the Lord’s Prayer (the “Our Father”), when it comes down to that whole “temptation” thing. The line in the Catholic translation in English is “Lead us not into temptation.” A similar translation is used in Italy.
Francis says, “It is not He that pushes me into temptation and then sees how I fall. A father does not do this. A father quickly helps those who are provoked into Satan’s temptation.”
The Catholic Church in France recently tweaked its translation “ne nous soumets pas à la tentation,” (do not submit us to temptation), which has been replaced with “ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation” (do not let us enter into temptation). And apparently the official Spanish version of the prayer, which is what Francis would have grown up with, is “no nos dejes caer en la tentación” (do not let us fall into temptation). The Portuguese version is similar to the Spanish.
Of note, a new Italian version of the Bible, written and approved by the Catholic bishops there in 2008 (before Francis was made Pope), uses a different translation than the Italian Catholic liturgy: “Do not abandon us to temptation.”
Nevertheless, as with anything Francis suggests, the whole idea has been treated with a bit more alarm than it probably deserves (some of the color commentary about the Pope arrogantly “changing the words Jesus spoke” and “rewriting scripture” is particularly amusing).
The issue is all about translations of translations — Jesus’ words as ostensibly spoken in Aramaic have passed down through the original Greek the Gospels were written in, thence to Latin (at least for Catholic purposes) and then to their modern language “vernacular” renditions (notwithstanding the desire of some conservative American Christians to somehow sanctify the King James Version as perfect, as though Jesus spoke in English).
The key word in play in the Greek of the New Testament is πειρασμός (peirasmos), which has implications of trial, tempting, and testing. The Lord’s Prayer, using that word, shows up in Matthew 6:9-13 and (in a shorter form) in Luke 11:2-4. The key phrase in the Lord’s Prayer got translated into the Latin Vulgate by St Jerome as “ne nos inducas in tentationem,” which was translated into in English as “lead us not into temptation.”
It’s also been suggested, beyond Francis’ comments, that the original phrase prayer request doesn’t necessarily refer to temptation or trial around sin, but asking to be spared of the sorts of “trials and tribulations” that folk like Job went through.
Since God hasn’t offered a press release or set of corrections, the actual translation to use has been up to humans to make. And that, in turn, has meant the the interpretation of a given era tends to color the “correct” understanding.
Many Protestant English-speaking churches (including my own Episcopalian one) sometimes or always use an alternative phrase, developed by liturgists in the 1970s, “Save us from the time of trial,” which carries the same sense that Francis is going after here.
Interestingly, the debate about the change is not solely on the basis of theological truth, or even linguistic certainty, but ceremonial propriety. As one Anglican theologian quoted says, “In terms of church culture, people learn this prayer by heart as children. If you tweak the translation, you risk disrupting the pattern of communal prayer. You fiddle with it at your peril.”
Anglican and Catholic Churches are, by definition, liturgical, so varying the wording of anything there is always subject to a certain amount of angst and resistance from the traditionalists in the pews and pulpits.
In my parish, we use the traditional English most of the time, but for a couple of months each summer use an alternative translation (which includes that “time of trial” verbiage). The idea is to actually force people to think about what they are saying, not just rattle off a bunch of syllables in unison. I tend to agree with that mixing up the the approach, but I also understand that there are people who fall way on either side of it — those for whom the idea of repetitive prayer is anathema, and others who want things to always look and seem the same.
Pope Francis Suggests Changing The Words To The ‘Lord’s Prayer’
The phrase “lead us not into temptation” isn’t right, the pontiff says, because “a father does not do this.” France’s Catholic Church has changed the phrase in its version of the Lord’s Prayer.
Because suggesting that white people have intrinsic advantages in our society, and so also have blinders to problems that non-white (non-male, non-cis, non-straight) people have, is apparently, a racist and sexist thing to say in the eyes of certain, as they say, “snowflakes.”
Start with the premise that People Are People. Everyone, even great creators, profound philosophers, brilliant leaders … everyone has feet of clay, personality aspects that are troubling, dubious, or even just simply annoying.
Is the greatness of such people weakened by, or in spite of, those flaws.
As a guy with an historical bent, this is always a question. To what extent do we look at the reprehensible aspects of an historic personality, particularly those that are reprehensible by modern standards, and use that to inform our views of their other achievements?
Thomas Jefferson was a spendthrift, a man who could be be offended by petty things, and a slaveholder who had children by at least one of his slaves. On the other hand, he crafted seminal writings on freedom, liberty, and independence in the founding of our country — including, ironically, an attack on King George III on the slave trade. How do we blend those different aspects of Jefferson into a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down?
Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive icon, a man who broke the hold (for a time) of business interest rule over the Republican Party and the nation’s laws. Teddy Roosevelt also held some (certainly from a modern perspective) deplorable views about different races. Do I think he should remain on, or be chiseled off of, Mt. Rushmore?
Fast forward to today. As we look at Hollywood creators (or, as in the article’s case, a modern poet), to what extent do we judge or reject their art based on what we learn about their personal lives?
This has nuances, too — there are actors, artists, musicians, writers, whose work I enjoy, but who hold political opinions I find irksome at best, abhorrent at worst. These are not people who have committed crimes (or profoundly disturbing acts), but simply hold opinions I find, let us say, deplorable. Do I still enjoy their work, or does my opinion of the person bleed into my feeling about the creation? Do I buy their books and so support them and their causes?
In the case of the current Hollywood crowd under accusation of sexual impropriety and assault, an additional feature is wanting to keep them from being in a position to further perpetuate their antisocial and violating behavior. A director who groped people on the set, or demanded sexual favors off the set, should be kept out of such positions of power, even if not capable of being tossed in the hoosegow. If that means no more movies from that director, so be it.
But does that mean one needs to ever after shun that director’s movies already made to date?
Bill Cosby’s early stand-up routines are comedy gold. Bill Cosby evidently committed sexual assault. I would not pay a penny to go see Cosby perform now, because I would not reward him with even a fraction of my penny.
But if I have a recording of Cosby’s brilliant routine about Noah, should I delete it out of solidarity with his victims? (Can I, on the other hand, listen to it without thinking about his subsequent crimes?) (And, yeah, his revealed behavior gives a whole new, and much darker, perspective on his Adam and Eve “C’mere, c’mere, c’mere, g’way, g’way, g’way” piece.)
Charlie Rose did some remarkable, insightful, interesting interviews. Should those interviews now be disappeared because Rose turns out to have been a rather ugly individual when not doing his interviews? It’s one thing to fire him from doing further work and exposing more people to him in a position of power. It’s another thing to say, “All his work is tainted, and so should be rejected.”
I don’t have a clean answer to any of this. For historic personages, I tend to say, “What did they do for which they are famous?” (thus shielding Jefferson, whose reputation is based not on his slave-holding but writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom). For modern personages, I tend toward “Protect future victims, but enjoy the created art for what it is, not who made it.”
But I can think of exceptions for all of those, and it’s more difficult to extract the the creator from the creation, emotionally, than those simple rubrics allow.
The real world is messy.
[As a side note. NPR’s headline characterizing Pound’s pro-Axis broadcasts and calls for “yids” to be legally killed, as well as FDR, as “politics” seems a bit of a stretch for purpose of alliteration.]
That’s the point of this article in The Federalist. The author can’t seem to quite go whole-hog and say that character is meaningless (indeed, she keeps insisting that it’s of great importance), but she does dance around it a lot, ultimately coming down hard on the side of “Even if Roy Moore sexually assaulted young and under-age women, at least he’ll vote for more conservative ideologues on the Supreme Court, and that’s what really matters, because his leching after teenagers half his age is a private sin, not a public one, so it pales compared to his willingness to get rid of abortion, so it’s all okay.”
One irony here is that this is an attitude, a moral relativism, that conservatives often accuse liberals of. But social conservatives explicitly claim a moral righteousness, a purity, a demand for virtue in others, that flies directly in the face of this sort of realpolitik. Ultimately, the author has to sort of shrug and say, “Hey, God does great things through immoral people in the Bible, so God probably wants you to vote for Roy Moore.”
I’m not sure that’s a particularly moral argument, and it seems a poor theological one; hopefully it’s not (as it was last November) a winning one.
I swear to God, if Obama had created National The-Sky-Is-Blue Day, Trump would overturn the order and make it National The-Sky-Is-Brown Day, just for spite. (Though, come to think of it, given his activities to date regarding coal and pollution standards …)
An interesting video looking at how press coverage of antifa protesters (themselves hardly anything resembling a coherent organization) is misleading in terms of outlier bias (extremity is always more interesting than mainstream; violence is always more interesting than peaceful protest) and in terms of distracting from the message of protest to the practices of a tiny fraction of the protesters.
There’s a fascinating stat early on comparing violence at various anti-alt-Right, anti-White Supremacy, anti-Nazi protests to something much more mundane (and far less covered in the press).
One element left out of the video’s mix is that for much of the mainstream media, the need for catchy headlines and “if it bleeds it leads” journalistic practices are one thing. But there are those (Fox News being the most benign) for whom such coverage focus is actively pursued because of the misleading message it presents, a message they can actively, rather than passively, use to discredit what’s being protested in the first place.
It occurs to me, incidentally, that media coverage of pro Nazi / White Nationalist / White Supremacist / etc. protests, and the violence inflicted there, can similarly be misleading. I can certainly argue that the message of those protests is inherently violent, the rhetoric and culture intentionally aggressive, and the fascist ideologies profoundly dangerous on their own, but it’s still possible to aware that what one sees in a thirty-second blurb on CNN about such gatherings is going to be the most extreme and eyeball-grabbing, whether it’s a grotesque outlier or just the worst of the worse.
This doesn’t mean that one should actively mistrust the media, just that it should not get an automatic pass for what it does, and anything that seems particularly outrageous or troublesome is worth further digging into. Being aware of the bias toward blood that the media (and, honestly, the consumers of the media, i.e., ourselves) has is simply a good thing to remember in updating one’s view of the world.
