Heck Maybe

(she/her) Nonsense, anime, Broadway, cosplay

[nudityandnerdery]

James Gunn, Nathan Fillion and More on MAGA Outrage Over Director Saying Superman Is an Immigrant: ‘I Don’t Have Anything to Say to Anybody’

James Gunn is responding to the backlash surrounding his comments about Superman being an immigrant.

They're angry over one of the most basic components of his character?

I was kind of joking about that post about how you couldn't make Blazing Saddles nowadays, but I guess it's just true. You can't even make Superman these days without them complaining he's woke.

[monroejigsaw]

these idiots even assume he'd vote republican JUST BECAUSE HE GREW UP IN KANSAS

MOTHERFUCKERS ONE OF HIS MAJOR VILLAINS IS AN EVIL BILLIONAIRE

AND THERE'S A BOOK WHERE HE BEAT THE ABSOLUTE COUSIN FUCKING STUPID OUTTA THE KLAN

[nudityandnerdery]

He did it in real life, too.

Back in the 1940s, a guy named Stetson Kennedy went undercover to infiltrate the KKK in Georgia.

(Okay, actually, a bit of a note here first- Kennedy is the guy credited with all of this. He's also said that there were other infiltrators who he worked with, but didn't want to reveal their identities. Some people have said this should put his whole account into doubt. But whether he was the one who did it all himself or was just the point man, there's plenty of evidence he did a lot.)

So he infiltrated the KKK and decided to gather information to take them down- and quickly realized why that wouldn't work.

“It was obvious with the police uniform blue and the Khaki uniforms of the sheriff’s deputies sticking out beneath the Klan robes – and there were prosecutors and judges – they were all in the Klan.”

When he tried to go up the ladder and work with the federal government, basically ran into the same problem.

Stetson recalled trying to pass information on the Klan to agents of the FBI and “they showed less than no interest. On one occasion, I recall an FBI agent waited until he followed me out to the elevator – may have had his desk wired and didn’t want it on the record – but saying, ‘Well, what do you know about black militants – that’s the real threat to America.’ He didn’t consider the Klan a threat at all.”

He did get some stuff done- like putting together the reports that got the KKK to lose their status as a tax-exempt organization in Georgia. But if he wanted to do more, he needed to go bigger. So he went to a higher authority.

He went to Superman.

Specifically, he went to the people who made the radio show, The Adventures of Superman, and helped them on creating a story line where Jimmy Olson has been managing a youth baseball team and his star pitcher- an Asian-American kid- is getting terrorized by a group called the Clan of the Fiery Cross, a bunch of bigots who wear hoods and hassle minority groups- an obvious stand-in for the KKK.

But with Kennedy's help, it was a very specific stand-in for the KKK, to the point of supposedly referencing specific Klan secrets. And it didn't hesitate to make the villains appropriately, openly evil, while making Superman the defender of truth and justice.

And apparently, it made the KKK look dumb as hell. Members would see their kids playing "Superman vs. the KKK" and that the KKK were pathetic villains. And it pissed them off. The head of the KKK in Georgia tried to organize boycotts against the sponsors of the Superman radio show. (Cancel culture, tsk tsk.)

And, in the radio broadcast, when things are going downhill, and Matt Riggs, the local leader of the Clan, tries to go to the top for help? Well. He finds out what's really going on there.

Yeah. The writers of Superman were very straightforward about how the KKK's whole philosophy was dumb shit, and the people at the top were just using the outrage to manipulate the lower ranks.

And... Apparently this really had an impact on the recruitment of the KKK in the 1940s. So, yeah. Superman fought the KKK in our world, too. And he put them in their place.

It's unfortunate that we have to keep teaching people this lesson, though.

The radio shows are up on YouTube if you want to listen to them:

Also, the indented quotes above, I got from here:

Some Advice from Stetson Kennedy, Still the Nation’s Foremost Klan-Buster » P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History » UF Libraries » Universi

By James Cusick – October 5th marks the birthday of folklorist, activist, writer and Klan-fighter William Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011).  He w

Aaaaand the clip of dialogue from the show, I got from This American Life:

285: Know Your Enemy - This American Life

[cbrownjc]

And let's not forget this classic image from the 1950s with Superman telling a group of kids that talking badly about anyone because of their race, religion, or nationality is un-American:

I've found that most people whining about comic books being "woke" and, in particular, characters like Superman being that aren't actually long-time comic book fans. They're just a bunch of misogynists and/or racists who use the popularity of comic book movies over the past decade or so as a talking point platform to push their own right-wing agendas, if not just using it to outright grift from people who fall for their uninformed babble. (The same was true when it came to that GamerGate nonsense some years before as well.)

[vulpineamethyst]

even ignoring all of the above, Kansas and Oklahoma were very socialist, especially in the 1940s and 1950s, and they only started going Republican in the 1990s due to Democrats abandoning them and Republicans coming in.

Superman—Clark Kent—would have grown up immersed in socialism, and that informs his politics and essential character, leading to all of the things he does in the comics up there. if Republicans today assume he'd be Republican, it's because they don't know Kansas's history as a bastion of socialism in the US.

[segamascott]

[redstonedust]

extremely funny to me that harley quinns real name is apparently harleen quinzel, a name that sounds less real that harley quinn. they should do that with more comic characters. batman real name batthew manning. daredevil real name darius devilson. doctor strange real name. well okay that one doesnt count.

[haunting-kind-of-high]

I have some very good news for you about Black Bolt's real name

[redstonedust]

NOW THATS WHAT IM TALKIN ABOUT

[fucktoyfelix]

Lines of thought that seem Normal but are actually rooted in extreme puritanism:

-Seeing the nude human body is inherently traumatic -Sex scenes in art are pointless -Wearing kink-related clothing in public is the similar to performing a sex scene in front of unwilling participants -Depicting female characters expressing sexuality is always degrading -People's sexual fantasies are always an endorsement of the behavior they want to see in real life -Sex work is more traumatic and coercive than other types of work The goal is to treat sex as just another thing people do. That is a much healthier attitude than hiding it! It's not uniquely traumatic, it's not weird to talk about it or include it in society.

[indigosfindings]

i love getting exposure to misc fetishes that im not into because imo it's really interesting to see what the invented scenarios, art pieces, stories, etc reveal about the primary concerns of the fetish-holder, like the specific traits that are necessary to make the fetish "work"

like as an example, one would expect the bimbo fetish to exclusively involve the "bimbo" characters being uhh Universally Uninformed, but there are novels & comics etc that depict like.... Bimbo Scientists. but the Bimbo Scientists' projects are like "how can i make my boobs bigger" "how can i invent a really attractive man" etc. it casts the fetish in this really fascinating light--like, the character *can* be Conventionally Smart, as long as she uses her education for like vapid & trivial ends, which forms this really interesting like Reconfiguration of the conventional images & signifiers of "un/intelligence", like as if to say that for at least some adherents of that fetish, the values & concerns conventionally associated with Foolishness & Vacuity are more weighted than the actual primary traits associated with smartness

[treecitysessions]

[dropoutdottv]

Skype is shutting down after two decades | CNN Business

Microsoft is shutting down Skype, the internet-based phone and video service that was once the dominant way of staying connected in the mid

[chaser]

Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting

[chaser]

First like and this has already found its intended audience

[chaser]

uh oh

[itsmyturnonthegender]

[knightofleo]

[wizardarchetypes]

started to type “ppl will call themselves monsterfuckers just bc they’re into pyramidhead 🙄” and i think maybe i should logout and use facebook for a few days to recalibrate my perspective on society at large

[el-smacko]

“monsterfucking is second nature to us tumblrites, so it’s easy for us to forget that the average person probably only wants to fuck Pyramidhead and one or two xenonorphs”

[robomartyr]

This is the funniest thing I have ever seen. If I were a professor I would pin this to my office door.

[zanabism-deactivated20200529]

LMAO

[nitewrighter]

There were like 30 seconds where I was like, “Ah the joke is that Orcas are technically the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family–this is a joke about the whale making false claims about its whale heritage on an admissions form, hence why its lawyer is also a dolphin.” And then I realized, “Oh. KILLER whale.”

[pencilcat]

[urban-homesteading]

The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.

[hareofhrair]

tbh if they put that much thought and research into it and an unaware observer couldn't tell, is it actually fetish art? If it were actually fetish art, does that somehow preclude it from also being a commentary on women and violence?

Some of the boldest political and emotional messages I've ever seen came from straight up no nonsense porn. It's a setting that allows people to approach a major facet of the human experience without shame or obfuscation.

Keep in mind this is coming from an asexual person-- I don't think physical desire is some foundational keystone of life without which one isn't fully human. I think it's as morally neutral as hunger and thirst, and almost as impactful on all of human culture.

So why does the fetish cancel out the art?

Our tendency to dismiss anything associated with sex or the expression of sexual desire as frivelous and meaningless leads a lot of people to forget that pornographic art is still art.

The artist didn't just jerk off on the canvas and a beautiful minotaur appeared. They didn't spend hours researching greek dyemaking and bovine anatomy just because they were horny for muscular women. And their admiration for muscular women doesn't cease to be inherently transgressive of traditional and mainstream views of femininity just because they expressed that admiration in a sexual way.

Francisco Goya's The Nude Maja is a classical masterpiece that took three years to paint and is considered one of the greatest works of art ever made. [^] It's also porn. It was commissioned by a man-- the Prime Minister in fact-- to hang in a private room specifically for his nudes where he "often retired after dinner." It's believed the model depicted may have been his mistress.

In the political climate in which it was made, depicting a fully nude woman was extremely controversial (in fact it's considered one of the earliest western works to depict a woman's pubic hair without obvious negative connotations) especially because Goya painted her looking directly at the viewer, making her an active participant in an exchange of desire, rather than a passive object.

Eight years after it was finished, the Spanish Inquisition raided the Prime Minister's home, stole The Nude Maja and all his other paintings, and put Goya on trial for "moral depravity."

Goya, who had by then been rendered deaf by an unknown illness that may have been cumulative lead poisoning and was already sinking into the deep depression that marked his later years, escaped prosecution only by arguing that The Nude Maja followed in the "respectable" tradition of the classical nude [^^] , despite the fact that the full frontal nudity, pubic hair, direct stare, and the details that established the subject as a modern, living, literal woman, not a mythological figure or allegory-- the very features for which it was considered problematic-- were substantial departures from that tradition.

He could draw enough connections between it and a "respectable" painting in that genre by another lauded Spanish artist, appeasing nationalist egos and satisfying people that he was suitably reverent of the idealized past. Therefore, it wasn't porn. It was valuable, it was a classical nude.

To a modern viewer, it is in fact, more or less indistinguishable from any classical nude, despite the fact that when it was painted, anyone who saw it could have told you it was porn.

Today, The Clothed Maja, an almost identical but less risque painting which he created directly after The Nude Maja [^^^] is one of the paintings included in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Another painting included in New Leaf is Beauty Looking Back by Hishikawa Moronobu. It's an arch-typical example of the ukiyo-e genre. While far from all ukiyo-e art was erotic, it's not an exaggeration to say the overwhelming majority of it was, at the very least, intended to titillate.

The very name ukiyo-e associates the genre with hedonism, courtesans, brothels and pleasure districts. Beautiful courtesans were the most common subject. Nearly every ukiyo-e master produced explicitly pornographic work at some point in their careers. [^^^^] Beauty Looking Back is a pin up. It would have been recognized in the time it was created as something inherently sensual and referential towards sex, despite not being explicit.

And yet, it's "artistic value" (I do not like this term. The value of art is not and should not be quantifiable) is so unquestionable that Nintendo included it in arguably one of the most family friendly games in their notoriously, stringently family friendly catalog.

What is a fetish, if not a non-sexual element that inspires sexual desire?

What is fetish art, if not a depiction of these non-sexual elements intended, whether explicit or not, to arouse that same desire in the viewer?

What defines something as being outside the boundaries of "normal" sexual desire? Breasts aren't a reproductive organ, they're not inherently sexual. Neither is the ass. But they do inspire sexual desire, at least in those whose cultural back ground has taught them to associate those body parts with sex.

If feeling sexual desire because of anything that isn't genitalia is a fetish, then all erotic art-- from the most explicit adult films to those Levi's billboard ads where the models are doing their best not to wear the jeans they are advertising-- is fetish art.

So when did The Nude Maja and Beauty Looking Back stop being fetish art, and become art?

When does it stop being shameful to admire the beauty and technical skill of a creative work just because it's sexual in nature?

Is it just time? Or have we let ourselves be led into imagining the past was a land of chastity and virtue, its art inherently more valuable and firmly divorced from physical desire-- where men could paint tits all day and other men pay small fortunes to commission and purchase those tit paintings all without a single impure thought-- compared to which our modern age is debauched, immoral, deviant, degenerate?

If that Minotaur was hanging in a museum with a placard that said it was painted in the 1700's, would you, or your friend, still assume it was fetish art?

If you'd come across it in a context where you knew it was sexual, would you still have stopped to notice and appreciate the skill and the research put into the details?

This was a hell of a tangent, and if OP is the kind of person who notices period accurate historical details at a glance and the particulars of bovine anatomy to the degree of being able to make an educated statement about how well someone has accounted for the musculature whilst attaching a cow head to a human body-- probably none of this art history trivia is news to you.

The point is just this. Maybe you weren't "tricked" into seeing the art before the porn.

Maybe your friend was tricked by our deeply sex negative culture into only seeing the porn and missing the art entirely.

[^]: Though he's better known on tumblr for Saturn Devouring His Son, which I'm always delighted to remind people is not a name he gave it. It wasn't discovered until after his death, so we can't know for certain what he intended to depict. The greek myth of Zeus's father eating his children was a best guess and, imo, a way of sanitizing the disturbing nature of the image by framing it as part of the classical tradition of mythological art, rendering it allegorical and academic instead of horrifying and unexplained. It was not the first time Goya's work would rendered more palatable to conservative audiences by claiming it was part of classical tradition, which brings me back to Maja.

[^^]: Physically fighting the urge to add a rant here about fascism and "degenerate" art. Just go watch Jacob Gellar's "Who's Afraid Of Modern Art." He does a better job of it than I would anyway.

[^^^]: presumably also at the Prime Minister's request, with the intention they be displayed together and not, as urban legend likes to say, because the Inquisition forced him to. The concept of creating a clothed and a naked version of the subject so that the viewer can imagine undressing them is a tradition well preserved in commissioned pornographic art today.

[^^^^]: and I do not mean ~artistic nudes~ here. I mean fully explicit art created with the specific intention of being porn. Like I could not post them on tumblr without them being immediately taken down for violating community guidelines, regardless of their "artistic value" as historical works by globally recognized masters of the genre whose non explicit works are so well known and well loved they ended up in ANIMAL CROSSING.

[monarobot]

I must see the Minotsaur art

[secondbeatsongs]

(source)

[martinkhall]

I found this out seconds ago. How did it get put into the Tumblr emergency alert format so quickly?

[secondbeatsongs]

I turned on my PC the moment I heard the news. also I have a meme template set up in GIMP for this very purpose

[memeuplift]

[urbanfantasyinspiration]

Mike Hawk, huh

[up-north-values]

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

shoutout to my brother for setting me up for this

[theblob1958]

people are saying do it scared, but you also gotta do it alone. you'll miss out on so much you want to do if you wait til someone will do it with you. do it scared and do it alone.

[thumperdaetime]

me (scared & alone) out in the wider world trying to broaden my horizons: