{"id":17613,"date":"2018-08-18T15:49:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-18T22:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=17613"},"modified":"2018-08-18T17:42:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T00:42:27","slug":"dulling-of-the-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2018\/08\/18\/dulling-of-the-senses\/","title":{"rendered":"dulling of the senses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/09\/arts\/television\/matt-groening-disenchantment-netflix.html\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think particularly right now, people feel so aggrieved and crazed and powerless that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re picking the wrong battles,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Groening said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;d alter the thought just a tad, in explaining what they think the line between the characters of Apu and the ground-swell of Trump characters are.\u00c2\u00a0 And then comes an on-rush of commentary, as seen when The Simpsons aired their &#8220;defense&#8221; \/ &#8220;delay&#8221; \/ &#8220;answer&#8221; on the &#8220;Problem of Apu&#8221; &#8212; leafing through an edition of The Entertainment Weekly I saw the episode diagnosed in a thumbs down category as &#8220;tone deaf&#8221;, which mostly just means&#8230; we disagree with it.\u00c2\u00a0 And Groening is too white to get to have an opinion on this.<\/p>\n<p>The good news there, such as it is, is I can easily find a person of Indian descent who&#8217;s at war with pc culture and mocks the sentiment.\u00c2\u00a0 And then things get complicated on lines of authenticity, who speaks for whom, who gets to amplify whose voices.<\/p>\n<p>Segue some commentary from Indians moving through their complicated history with Apu &#8212; at first, good to see representation, then&#8230; this and that, that and this, and&#8230; I&#8217;m supposed to be that?<\/p>\n<p>Segue to an article pointing out what seems an obvious, and in some manner arrives at the: all of the Simpsons universe of characters are stereotypes.\u00c2\u00a0 And what do we do about Cleetus?\u00c2\u00a0 The point becomes: what a dull show this would be if we had played firmly within the lines.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe a thought on the new relevance of The Simpsons in a manner it hasn&#8217;t been controversial since the days of old &#8212; the frolicking devil-may-care early Fox News, assaulting your puritanical sensibilities &#8212; Married with Children, The Simpsons, and Living Color.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, those wacky Wayan Brothers.<\/p>\n<p>Hey!\u00c2\u00a0 Comedy must be from the vantage point of the powerless toward the power!\u00c2\u00a0 And&#8230; must it?<\/p>\n<p>And now I see commentary that the new show Groening is about to release &#8212; same bug eyed character design as always &#8212; and the take on fairy tales is &#8230; not subversive enough&#8230; in dismantling fairy tale motifs.\u00c2\u00a0 Which really means that it doesn&#8217;t confirm with their artistic or political ideology on what the &#8220;fractured fairy tales&#8221; should be saying.\u00c2\u00a0 And we&#8217;re back to square one with the problem with the problem with Apu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think particularly right now, people feel so aggrieved and crazed and powerless that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re picking the wrong battles,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Groening said. Yeah, I&#8217;d alter the thought just a tad, in explaining what they think the line between the characters of Apu and the ground-swell of Trump characters are.\u00c2\u00a0 And then comes an on-rush of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17613"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17617,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17613\/revisions\/17617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}