rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

the thing is though the page we're reading the story from seems to have chosen "nig*er cake" as its own descriptive and then put it in quotes so I suspect there are some levels of Swedish politics here. OTOH I don't know how many levels it takes to get away from HOW IS THIS NOT A TERRIBLE IDEA.

After all the many headspinning aspects of this, I am now very curious where the phrase in quotes in that first FriaTider headline came from.

xp

mind blown

have to say that it's quite an impressive performance piece/sculpture/conceptual stunt, but i do not think i would have been able to eat any of that cake

the recommended youtubes that pop up are pretty O_o

"Let them not eat cake."

saw an episode of baseball wives where one wife gets another wife a realistic looking porcupine cake or something that also had red cake inside

There's lots of Sweish politics going on here: this is going viral because Swedish nationalists are pissed that she's cutting off state funding for their newspaper, so they're sending this around as a "gotcha!" moment.

saw an episode of baseball wives where one wife gets another wife a realistic looking porcupine cake or something that also had red cake inside

― dayo, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:51 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Steel Magnolias has a bit about the groom's cake at a wedding being in the shape of a giant armadillo with grey icing and blood red cake. Maybe the b-ball wives were spoofing that. Sounds p similar.

100% with aero here; my guess is that the cake itself is a piece of very transgressive and extreme performance art that somehow has federal funding. The original article linked to though only blocks out one of the 'g's in n----- and seems to have some sort of vendetta against one of the attendants for cutting funding to a nationalist newspaper who is known for spouting off 'racist' beliefs, so I'm actually wondering if the article itself is actually more racist than the cake...?

yeah TWU otm xxp. Like as shocking as the cake is, it is probably akin to like The Swans playing at George HW Bush's Inaugural Ball

As far as I can tell, Fria Tider (the website linked to above) is a right-wing Sweedish Nationalist news organisation.

The URL made the cake sound like it came from Niger.

that's what I was expecting

in retrospect, I don't really know why; possibly the clearest example of my subconscious blatantly lying to me in order to preserve my sanity I've had in a while

just popped up on my tumblr and figured it was relevant here wrt makode's race:

http://thankyoubasedsantorum.tumblr.com/post/21272281605
Apparently Makode (the artist behind "Painful Cake") is not a woman.

Can everyone see how this is not okay?

Look, we talk all the time about how black women’s pain is often co-opted or turned into a gimmick for white people’s goals—and we’ve even had great discussion about how people of color will do the same to black people. This is one of those times. I don’t know about Makode’s make-up, but I know they are not white. And this is bullshit.

At the end of the day, I don’t care what they were doing or what they thought they were going to accomplish—they put painful history of black women’s pain (not starting with but including the Venus Hottentot) on display for white people to “teach” them about said pain. I can’t even begin to describe how truly fucked up that is, and how it enrages me. Even within POC spaces, black women are at the bottom of the totem pole. Our pain is hung out to dry for the benefit of white people and when it backfires, it is even more worthless. If it can’t even be used for teaching fodder, what good is it?

I don’t care who Makode is; they are not for us. If they meant to shock, they could have done it with trivializing the pain of black women. If they meant to teach, they could’ve done so another way. I’m tired of our history supposedly being used for the benefit of other POC. Makode was allowed to be there, probably paid, invited to sit under a table and scream for the laughter and enjoyment of white people. That’s all it was. It didn’t do shit.

i'm glad i read this thread because having just seen the photo/read the article i was entirely ooooo_0000000

well, i still am, but less kneejerk condemnatory now that i know the political and artistic context, which i think a lot of those outraged tumblrers would do well to find out about.

god the phrase "POC" really gets no better.

well, the article was super suspect just from the headline; that alone made me think there was more going on than those still pictures could convey (the video amplified that even more)

which i think a lot of those outraged tumblrers would do well to find out about.

lol @ yr assumption that they don't

yeah learning that the newspaper was a right wing one made things make much more sense - if swedish newspapers of that kind are anything like british ones, they'll probably target modern art at every given opportunity, and conflate using offensive imagery with actually being offensive while pretending the context doesn't exist

xp it's right in the paragraph you quoted

I'm not sure how to feel about Makode Linde's performance/conceptual piece. It's clearly transgressive, deeply unsettling, awful in many ways, but it's not entirely without substance.

Perhaps the only acceptable response is to condemn Linde, as the author of that wonderfully named blog does, for representing something other than his own "designated group" and/or personal experience. That's the safest strategy, based on the idea that we're all allowed to comment on ourselves, on the group(s) to which we seemingly belong, and on those we see as our oppressors - but everybody else is off-limits. By this standard, a man simply isn't entitled to make gross, transgressive art about female genital mutilation in Africa, regardless of his race or intent.

This is at least a coherent and morally sensible position. But i don't know... I agree to a large extent and this is pretty much how I try to handle these issues in my own life, but at the same time, I'm somewhat bothered by the puritanical and legalistically rigid nature of this approach.

^ i'm responding there to the thankyoubasedsantorum.tumblr that zachylon linked

lex "i don't care" does not mean "i don't know"

I think the point made by that Tumblr is more that it was an appropriation of an experience that wasn't his and presented in a manner almost guaranteed to be offensive and misunderstood, showing a profound lack of empathy for the issues meant to be addressed by the piece in the first place.

Like, it's okay to talk about female genital mutilation in Africa, but it's not really okay to make yourself into a screaming edible cake if you want the issue to be taken seriously.

where is Issues That Can Be Addressed by Screaming Edible Cake poll

Guess I'll have to come up with something else besides my Anne Frank Strawberry Shortcake Surprise for NPR's next remote at the University.

esp given the nature of a lot of performance art, which is as much about the issue as it is the identity of the performer. it's not really possible for him to separate the two when he goes about it like this. xp to DJP

he could have had plausible separation had he hired a woman to be the head of the cake, I think

am I the only one who was reminded of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucNYLsjKaTQ

I think the point made by that Tumblr is more that it was an appropriation of an experience that wasn't his and presented in a manner almost guaranteed to be offensive and misunderstood, showing a profound lack of empathy for the issues meant to be addressed by the piece in the first place.

yeah, i get that, but i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with art that is "almost guaranteed to be offensive and misunderstood", and "a profound lack of empathy" is very much in the eye of the beholder. when you take it down to basic principles, the blogger's problem is that, while linde may be black, he is not a woman, and his piece is therefore unjustifiable. if linde were a black woman, then her criticisms wouldn't hold. her headline makes this very clear:

Apparently Makode (the artist behind “Painful Cake”) is not a woman.

he could have had plausible separation had he hired a woman to be the head of the cake, I think

yeah maybe, or better yet, if it were a collaborative piece involving a black woman artist

or maybe they could've even found/paid one of the probably-countless women of color who could just as well have created a notable piece of art about FGM in africa (sexism is everywhere y'all)

lol xp

well obviously; my point was more about "what would make Makode's screaming mutilation cake more acceptable" than "what would be an acceptable performance art piece on genital mutilation"

yeah, i get that, but i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with art that is "almost guaranteed to be offensive and misunderstood", and "a profound lack of empathy" is very much in the eye of the beholder. when you take it down to basic principles, the blogger's problem is that, while linde may be black, he is not a woman, and his piece is therefore unjustifiable. if linde were a black woman, then her criticisms wouldn't hold. her headline makes this very clear:

what exactly is wrong with this tho, or are you just on some "this is reverse sexism!" shit

and anyway, if you read more of that blog in particular you'll find older posts that are still decrying the cake, before the blogger learned linde's gender. i just posted that one because it was relevant to the discussion here.

Do you post false dichotomies because you were beaten as a child, or are you a child beater?

lol

what exactly is wrong with this tho, or are you just on some "this is reverse sexism!" shit

i don't think there is anything wrong with this. i do have some (soft) reservations about this sort of thinking when it becomes a set of hard-and-fast rules. it's not the moral principles i object to, as they seem quite sound, but rather the rigidity and seeming puritanism of the stance.

you see it as rigidity, but i read that post and i see a lot of logical reasoning as to why this specific case is fucked. there's a precedent and a history of this type of stuff, and the blog was responding to it. not necessarily saying that men of color can never create art that centers on women of color, just that this piece of art is an example of going about it wrong.

when it comes down to it, from what i can tell, the cake thing has succeeded in A) offending/hurting women of color and B) making white people laugh. from any vantage point, hard to call it a success imo

oh hey it's a zillion post argument about whether that's obviously totally fucked and offensive is fucked and offensive

you see it as rigidity, but i read that post and i see a lot of logical reasoning as to why this specific case is fucked. there's a precedent and a history of this type of stuff, and the blog was responding to it. not necessarily saying that men of color can never create art that centers on women of color, just that this piece of art is an example of going about it wrong.

when it comes down to it, from what i can tell, the cake thing has succeeded in A) offending/hurting women of color and B) making white people laugh. from any vantage point, hard to call it a success imo

i think we're speaking at cross purposes. i agree with the blogger's criticism of this piece. i generally agree with the principles in which her criticisms are grounded. otoh, i have some vague reservations about the way those basically good principles are sometimes (or perhaps just could be) applied. that's all. not trying to stir up an argument or claim "reverse sexism" or any such bullshit. just exploring some tangents.

fwiw, i read the laughter in that video as a sign of discomfort more than jollity. not that that really matters much.

I read the laughter in that video as a sign that people don't take screaming cakes seriously as a medium for making a political point.

well maybe we can at least all agree that artists are the fucking worst.

not always, but sometimes they really are.

"Haha, well, this is certainly making me feel uncomfortable!"
"Because it raises your awareness of female genital mutilations in Africa?"
"…um, yes. ………. ……. No."

Are the laughing women in on the 'joke'?

people like makode linde are the absolute worst and i sincerely wish he had the balls to have himself butchered in public, that's obviously what he wants. one of those pathetic self-absorbed twats who live to spread themselves like a virus and use everything and everyone they can to do so.

*closes facebook page*

where my tea at

really doesn't like artists

not braying racist fame whore hypocrites who love being artists because it validates their every fart no. even if they're aware of it!