[extropy-chat] Fw: Deconstruction deconstructed....

[Mike Lorrey]

--- David Lubkin <extropy at unreasonable.com> wrote:
> At 09:19 PM 1/10/2004 -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> 
> >I would question the authors racist motives for saying things like
> "you 
> >get points for being French", and his homophobia of selecting
> homophobia 
> >as a topic to make fun of
> 
> I don't see either of these. But I confess to blind spots in my
> competency 
> at discerning subtext; you may well have spotted motives or attitudes
> I missed.

Methinks that Harvey is subconciously deconstructing the author.

The mentioned quote is not about racism, it is about elitism. People
with foreign accents in the US automatically get extra credibility
points with the left and the arts and sciences. Its not a matter of
those who comment on it being racist, it is an elitist sort of racism
on the part of the people who give such unearned credit to people for
their foreign accent, which may or may not be real.

A classical example in SF is, for example, the character of the
Merovingian in The Matrix: Reloaded. He is a program. He is not French,
but he adorse the French, speaks french natively, and is the most
snotty and elitist bastard in the whole Matrix, though in a laughably
nice way as opposed to Agent Smith.

The Merovingian goes on about how Neo needs to know WHY he needs the
keymaker, and not why as in the why that the 'fortune teller' told him
why, but his own 'why', blathering on about cause and effect and power,
etc. The Merovingian is a character that would make postmodernists
swoon with adoration (men and women). He is the penultimate of their
visions of deconstructive cleverness.

Are the Wachowski brothers racists for portraying the Merovingian in an
unfavorable light?



=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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