NationStates Jolt Archive

So, I just got back from my lecture (final one of the year! w00t!) where we discussing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Going through the critical essays on it there was one entitled:

An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe. In this essay he said due to how Conrad portrayed a native African tribe, both the book and Conrad were racist and he even called for the book to be taken off the curriculum. Of course I am not going to deny there are some elements of basic stereotyping but all in all the book did not seem racist, instead it seemed more anti imperialist. While discussing this point, the question was raised "Can racist art be considered great?"

Afterall Heart of Darkness is considered a great short story. We didn't have time in the lecture to discuss this question but I thought it would be an interesting one to pose to NSG.

Can racist art/literature still be considered great?

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

I have to agree. Another point was made, that if you took away Heart of Darkness away from the module, Literature and Empire, then you'd have to take away all the books associated with it. The attitude at the time when these books were written was that racism was accepted. It could even be argued that Conrad was ahead of his time and controversial because he linked the main character to the tribe and spoke of how he would have liked to have joined the tribe just for the basics of humanity that it showed.

Of course it can be considered great. The only problem is when people start insisting that great literature should be immune to criticism about its racist content.

Of course it can be considered great. The only problem is when people start insisting that great literature should be immune to criticism about its racist content.

No the bigger problem is when people try to ban it or change it because of its racist content instead of appreciating it in its own context.

Of course it can be considered great. The only problem is when people start insisting that great literature should be immune to criticism about its racist content.

Again agreed. There are a lot of clasics that are considered somewhat racist:

The Man Who Would Be King - Rudyard Kipling
The Beach of Falesa - Rober Louis Stevenson
King Solomon's Mines - H. Rider Haggard

etc.

All of these, in my opinion, are great pieces of literature and you can see the racist content there. I've both criticised it and defended it to a certain degree as in some cases you have to involve the context and the society of the time the book was written. It doesn't make it right but that is pretty much fact.

In the 19th century, the entire Western world was a lot more racist than anything we're used to. Pretty much any treatment of race, in art, fiction or science, would contain racist elements. I love Wilhelm Busch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Busch) for example, but the occasional thing in there is pretty hair-raising.

That doesn't make them bad, it just makes them wrong on certain counts.

Remove the racist, sexist, elitist, and otherwise 'offensive' works from the canon and what do we have left? Kurt Vonnegut and John Cheever.

H.P. Lovecraft had racist and antisemite views which were reflected in his work. Some argue that Tolkiens description of the noble elves as tall, white and blond-haired, and of the contrasting orcs as short and dark-skinned weren't exactly subtle hints at his world view either. Even the philosophers and poets of antiquity were hardly politically correct in their writings...

I guess you can appreciate a work of art as long as you keep in mind in which society climate it was created.

@Neu Leonstein:

"Es lebte dort ein schwarzer Mann,
der Affen fing und briet sie dann."

All of these, in my opinion, are great pieces of literature and you can see the racist content there. I've both criticised it and defended it to a certain degree as in some cases you have to involve the context and the society of the time the book was written. It doesn't make it right but that is pretty much fact.

Agreed, work has to be understood in the context it was made. Looking back on art (literature, paintings whatever) made in less tolerant times they will inevitable appear racist. And they usually are, but to avoid considering them for their artistic merits despite that is I think doing a great disservice to the civil rights movement and all thsoe who fought against racism during the time. It's effectively trying to retroactively represent a PC version of history and in doing so sweeping under the carpet the reason why the civil rights movement, the bill of right etc... were all so important.

Far better to take the art as it comes, look at it within the context it was created and remember why they were wrong and things had to change.

hiding from the past and from the (supposedly) racist attitudes of great writers solves nothing. are we supposed to pretend that the past was all nice nice?

Definatly. Frank Norris's McTeague is possibly one of the most racist writings I have ever seen...one in which the Irishman is depicted as an animalistic brute with no ability to control his actions, the German girl is depicted as a penny pinching miser to the point of losing her fingers to aviod having to give up gold, the Jew is named Zerkow (pronounced Jerkoff in Polish) and scavenges for gold...the list goes on. And yet, it is an amazing story.

Don't forget that a key part of HoD is that anyone can be a brutal barbarian, that at the start of the book, the random blasting was being carried out by white people, the Pilgrim's were irrational psychotics with guns, and that at the end, the villain (so to say), Kurtz, was European. I feel that the African tribesmen were constructed as they were for their part in the story, (to provide a counterpoint to the stereotype of the "rational white guy", and as a comparison to the actuality of the barbarity of white guys) rather than Conrad's views that they actually were like that.

Can racist art/literature still be considered great?
Of course. I have another question.

Can politically correct, i.e. non-racist, non-ageist, non-sexist, non-straightist, and otherwise non-discriminatory literature and art be considered great?
Can it even possibly be good?

'Cause said art is going to look like eight columns of m/f whites/blacks/hisp/asians, with rows of infant/kid/adult/elderly, each depicted straight, gay, bi and s&m.

Or the comparison that Conrad made to the Roman ship sailing up the Thames...that too is indicative that, perhaps, Conrad is saying more than "Africans are dumb...hurrrrrrrrrrr".

Yes it can, I am occasionally startled by coming across something massively racist in the middle of a classic. Though finding racism in books from the last fifty years seems more shocking than what Herodotus might say about the character of the Ionians.

I would only point to Triumph of the Will. One of the finest movies of the twentieth century; cinematography that would inspire and influence entire generations of filmmakers; the popularizer of tropes common to filmmaking ever since.

Director: Leni Riefenstahl. Purpose: To exalt the life and works of the Fuhrer of Germany, Adolf Hitler.

Vanity Fair contains many racist comments, but since they are either sarcastic, or made by unethical dimwits, I know not if it counts. I think it is actually poking poking fun at racism, because in the book there is a father who is paranoid about any of his children marrying someone who is black; the father later disowns his son for not marrying a certain Jewish/black women--she is very wealthy.

'Gone With The Wind' (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2427), anybody? ;)

Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation are undoubtedly great, important films, no matter their vile content.

And, like others, I'd contest Achebe's reading of Heart of Darkness.

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

Yeah, Huck Finn is pretty racist if you miss the entire point of what Mark Twain is trying to get across...

Yeah, Huck Finn is pretty racist if you miss the entire point of what Mark Twain is trying to get across...

Yes.

So, I just got back from my lecture (final one of the year! w00t!) where we discussing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Going through the critical essays on it there was one entitled:

An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe. In this essay he said due to how Conrad portrayed a native African tribe, both the book and Conrad were racist and he even called for the book to be taken off the curriculum. Of course I am not going to deny there are some elements of basic stereotyping but all in all the book did not seem racist, instead it seemed more anti imperialist. While discussing this point, the question was raised "Can racist art be considered great?"

After all Heart of Darkness is considered a great short story. We didn't have time in the lecture to discuss this question but I thought it would be an interesting one to pose to NSG.

Can racist art/literature still be considered great?

I have to agree. Another point was made, that if you took away Heart of Darkness away from the module, Literature and Empire, then you'd have to take away all the books associated with it. The attitude at the time when these books were written was that racism was accepted. It could even be argued that Conrad was ahead of his time and controversial because he linked the main character to the tribe and spoke of how he would have liked to have joined the tribe just for the basics of humanity that it showed.

Of course it can be considered great. The only problem is when people start insisting that great literature should be immune to criticism about its racist content.

No the bigger problem is when people try to ban it or change it because of its racist content instead of appreciating it in its own context.

1. I recommend people actually read Chinua Achebe's lecture An Image of Africa (pdf (http://www.sjsu.edu/upload/course/course_6697/Achebe_An_Image_of_Africa.pdf), html (http://www.idst.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Achebe.html)).

2. I'd be curious to see evidence Achebe called for Heart of Darkness to be banned or otherwise censored. My reading of the essay is one of stark criticism, but not an endorsement of banning.

3. Achebe, in part, criticizes Conrad and Heart of Darkness precisely because Conrad is such a great writer--"one of the great stylists of modern fiction and a good storyteller in the bargain."

4. Achebe's critique is compelling and detailed and should be dismised by those that haven't even bothered to read it.

5. On the subject of whether Heart of Darkness is great art, I'm not sure I agree with him, but Achebe makes a pesuasive argument that it is not:

The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely, that Conrad was a bloody racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticism of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected. Students of Heart of Darkness will often tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness. They will point out to you that Conrad is, if anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the story than he is to the natives. A Conrad student told me in Scotland last year that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz.

Which is partly the point: Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Of course, there is a preposterous and perverse kind of arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the breakup of one petty European mind. But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. I would not call that man an artist, for example, who composes an eloquent instigation to one people to fall upon another and destroy them. No matter how striking his imagery or how beautiful his cadences fall such a man is no more a great artist than another may be called a priest who reads the mass backwards or a physician who poisons his patients.

....

I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today. I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question. It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could possibly reside in such unwholesome surroundings.

6. I won't go into further long quotes, but I would note that Achebe directly addresses the "context of the times" argument.

Definatly. Frank Norris's McTeague is possibly one of the most racist writings I have ever seen...one in which the Irishman is depicted as an animalistic brute with no ability to control his actions, the German girl is depicted as a penny pinching miser to the point of losing her fingers to aviod having to give up gold, the Jew is named Zerkow (pronounced Jerkoff in Polish) and scavenges for gold...the list goes on. And yet, it is an amazing story.

This is an awesome book. But yeah - gots some racism.

How do you consider something great? For example, something can be terrible as a work of literature, but still have great historical significance, or demonstrate a brilliant artistic technique.

I would say that in terms of artistic or intellectual/moral merit, we might not find the racist elements of a work good. But we can still appreciate the other elements of a story. In other words, you don't have to agree with something one hundred percent in order to appreciate it.

I think it depends on the work in question. While it is considered a ground-breaking film, Birth of a Nation is pretty close to Triumph of the Will, ideologically, and both are scorned accordingly. Huckleberry Finn does not bear the same relation to The Turner Diaries, though and is also treated accordingly.

Remove the racist, sexist, elitist, and otherwise 'offensive' works from the canon and what do we have left? Kurt Vonnegut and John Cheever.My gosh, we would lose Nietzsche.

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

No, Huck Finn was not racist. In that, the author wasn't trying to express racist ideas. The characters were racist, yes, but that's something entirely different.

Depends on intent. If the intention is, clearly, to promote racism, then I don't consider it art. If the art is mirroring the attitudes of the time and place, then it could be if it has the other qualities that constitute art.

Mark Twain's writing, for example, mirrored the biases and attitudes of his time, but that doesn't make it any the less art. I don't think it should be omitted from curricula for that reason, but part of any classroom discussion should be about the prejudices of the Deep South as the writing displays them - that is part of literary education, isn't it, discussion of the influences on the writer's work?

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

Interesting how the world has changed. When we were reading it, only really loopy types thought it wasn't Sam Clemens arguing against racism-in particular, the racist culture built around Slavery in the South.

Now...apparently... Mr. Clemens wrote racist.

When I was a kid, there were people walking around looking for things to be offended at, we laughed at them...

now they're the majority, apparently.

When I was a kid, there were people walking around looking for things to be offended at, we laughed at them...now they're the majority, apparently.

Those people grew up, and now they're running the universities and writing the textbooks.

Of course it can. See Shakespeare's plays (The Merchant of Venice anyone?). That said, when you read these classics it's important to note the times in which they were written as well as acknowledge the ideas put forth by the writer. Even more so of course, you also have to acknowledge that the writer, great as he or she may be, was also human.

That said, I HATE Heart of Darkness with a passion.

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

Its not racist, its a commentary about racism. The whole book is a statement about how people are people regardless of their skin color.

I have a guilty secret in that I am reading all the Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu books. They are far from being art or classics, and they are undoubtedly racist, but I am really enjoying them.

@Neu Leonstein:

"Es lebte dort ein schwarzer Mann,
der Affen fing und briet sie dann."
Yeah. Or the one with the elephant?

http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=2996&kapitel=1#gb_found

The question is: is it wrong to find that just a little bit funny? Not because the dude is black, but because the combination of story and old-school language is?

I have a guilty secret in that I am reading all the Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu books. They are far from being art or classics, and they are undoubtedly racist, but I am really enjoying them.Agreed.

now they're the majority, apparently.

No, theyre actually not. But hey, I know how much some people love the PC boogeyman, so BS to your heart's content.

I have a guilty secret in that I am reading all the Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu books. They are far from being art or classics, and they are undoubtedly racist, but I am really enjoying them.

I enjoyed those too. Fu Manchu is the greatest super villain of all time.

Only if it involves DF. Take that, you tree-hugging hippies (http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Elf)! :p

So, I just got back from my lecture (final one of the year! w00t!) where we discussing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Going through the critical essays on it there was one entitled:

An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe. In this essay he said due to how Conrad portrayed a native African tribe, both the book and Conrad were racist and he even called for the book to be taken off the curriculum. Of course I am not going to deny there are some elements of basic stereotyping but all in all the book did not seem racist, instead it seemed more anti imperialist. While discussing this point, the question was raised "Can racist art be considered great?"

Afterall Heart of Darkness is considered a great short story. We didn't have time in the lecture to discuss this question but I thought it would be an interesting one to pose to NSG.

Can racist art/literature still be considered great?

I read it about 6 months ago or so, and the impression I got was that Conrad was trying to say that that regardless of race people were equal, not because they're really as civilized as we are but because deep down we're really just as savage as they are.

Sort of a Lowest Common Denominator Equality.

Of course. Huck Finn is pretty racist and its an unarguable classic.

Racist? Oh do tell.

No, theyre actually not. But hey, I know how much some people love the PC boogeyman, so BS to your heart's content.

The problem is that it's more than just a few people who think Huck Finn is racist. And beyond that those people, who probably are in the minority, are so loud that it gives the appearance of something approaching a majority. So while the PC Boogeyman statement may have been inaccurate, it's not hard to understand why someone may think that.

Depends on intent. If the intention is, clearly, to promote racism, then I don't consider it art. If the art is mirroring the attitudes of the time and place, then it could be if it has the other qualities that constitute art.
Must an artefact conform to a certain political/ethical outlook before you consider it art?

If so, why?

What's the integral difference between, say, Guernica and Triumph of the Will (ignoring their difference in medium)?

We have to remember that our modern-day attitudes towards race are vastly different from those held in years past; while racism is a fairly new concept, in its truest form only really arising in the past 500 years or so, it still had a considerable effect on some aspects of the cultural output of that period and can't realistically be separated from it.

The racial views of even the abolitionists and other anti-slavery activists in the 18th and 19th centuries were still often horribly racist by today's standards; few people seriously supported equal rights for women, let alone ethnic minorities, but I don't think we should discredit or otherwise denigrate works from those periods simply because some of the views are not acceptable by modern standards. Many great artists, scientists and other intellectuals held views that were pretty vile by today's standards, and some of them even turned a blind eye to or condoned horrific acts of genocide and racial oppression.

Now, importantly I wouldn't say we should view intentionally racist works as art; they weren't art back then either, and most really were either propaganda or cheap entertainment (such as minstrel shows and lovely songs like All Coons Look Alike to Me). They should be viewed as artifacts of their times, but are not art by any standard (although there may be something to be said for some forms of propaganda art and advertising). Everything needs to be viewed in the context of its time.

Now, importantly I wouldn't say we should view intentionally racist works as art; they weren't art back then either...
Why not?

I'd pose the same questions to you as I did to ASD, above.


Moreover, what do you mean by "intentionally racist"? Where's the line drawn between intention and 'product of the times'? We could argue, for example, that Triumph of the Will is just a product of its times; the times of Nazi-controlled Germany.

Why not?

I'd pose the same questions to you as I did to ASD, above.

It's actually pretty tough to answer.

I would say, however, because in a lot of cases they really were just cheap entertainment without a lot of effort or thought put in to them; it wasn't like their creators were interested in developing new ideas or refining existing ones, they were just looking for something that could be easily cranked out and could make a nice profit without a lot of costs. Now, that's not the same as, say, films like Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will; although their messages might be pretty damn repulsive by today's standards, there was a creative and innovative mind behind both of them that sought to create art. They advanced their respective fields and introduced a lot of ideas that are the basis for modern filmmaking.

However, I think in this case it has a lot more to do with how we define "art" rather than the message itself; since racism isn't a reason to disqualify or denigrate these works, it basically falls down to whether or not the works themselves are art independent of the salience of their content.

Of course it can. See Shakespeare's plays (The Merchant of Venice anyone?). That said, when you read these classics it's important to note the times in which they were written as well as acknowledge the ideas put forth by the writer. Even more so of course, you also have to acknowledge that the writer, great as he or she may be, was also human.

That said, I HATE Heart of Darkness with a passion.

I'd disagree that Shakespeare's plays were particularly racist or biased against a religion...you mention Merchant of Venice (original title incidentally was The Jew of Venice), which doesn't portray Jews well, but that is to demonstrate the culture of Venice. The play also contains the "Hath not a Jew eyes" monologue. Shakespeare was also one of the only British authors to portray Catholics in a positive light

I must disagree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#In_Antiquity) with racism being new or even close to new.

Also, as far back at Qin Shi Huang (221-210 BC), chinese emperors claimed they ruled "All under heaven" (aka earth), and all other nations were automatically vassals.