Disney, Marvel, and the change in movie formats and values

 

It's no secret that the culture war has touched on essentially all aspects of American life, that everything divides between liberal and conservative views and preferences, well beyond entertainment media and news coverage.  Since I've been watching more Disney content than usual lately (my wife subscribed us to Disney + last year) those patterns are becoming more and more familiar, related to their input to Marvel movies and television shows.  Probably it would be for the best if I just eased up on hearing any related commentary (online views on their content), since that has moved from interesting and insightful related to outlining the two related points of view to quite tiresome, creating conflict where there only really needs to be preference differences.

Here is one latest reference I just saw, mentioned in a Joe Rogan Reddit subforum:

That subforum is a good example of what I need to stop being exposed to.  Does it really matter if cartoon movie characters are gay?  I don't know; I guess opinions on that would vary.  Probably it would be more of an issue how they framed that status and general acceptance of it, the perspectives of different movie characters.  I'll get back to placing it further.

A seemingly deeper issue has been Marvel television series and movies "ruining" comic book characters and themes by swapping out white male characters for female and minority equivalents.  Any problem there?  Again it depends.  Plenty of that came up in renewing text comic series, making female versions of Thor and the Hulk, for example, so these are based on existing in-print character versions.  Beyond that it seems to mix with problems with creating good stories, which would seem like a real issue.  This Youtube "Critical Drinker" reviewer post seems to outline the conservative side of this perspective divide, in this post "Ms. Marvel:  How Not to Build a Hero."

One might expect that the problem is that the hero in question is a minority female, a Muslim Pakistani American teenage girl.  It's not really that, or at least as that Youtuber frames things it's not.  He outlines how a movie needs to go about setting up a good superhero story (which we should consider and critique, rather than accept, but at least initially the points seem reasonable).  You need these elements:

1. a hero, with some sort of origin story 

2. that hero's well defined powers (or some just have extra capabilities, like using a bow)

3. an internal conflict to be resolved in that hero, enabling some sort of character and story arc

4. an external threat, typically a primary antagonist, but this could take different forms

So the problem is that this story misses most of that.  This story's hero wasn't like that (as described in the trailer, a preview, since he didn't see the episode then, since it hadn't come out yet).  The Ms. Marvel character (Kamila) has a background, so in a limited sense 1 is met, but 2 didn't seem to be clear in that preview (although later it would be; origin stories can develop that over time).  Based on his assessment, which turned out to match the first episode, since I just saw that, there really isn't much internal conflict to be resolved in the hero, besides her being a teen, and a minority, and being into comic books (although in that story the heroes are real; it's set in the Marvel world, so it's really just the in-movie real life characters).  The external threat might come later; as of the first episode and the trailer there isn't one.

Does what he is saying work?  In one sense sure, but in another maybe not.  This is a primary earlier paradigm for telling comic book stories that he has outlined, for sure.  But do Disney and Marvel need to stick to this template for every movie or television series?  Not really.  Traditional action, adventure, and fantasy story telling tends to follow this form, but leaving a part out or replacing one might be fine.

A common critique is that in this new liberal oriented version, as in Captain Marvel, the hero--or heroine; I'm not sure which term is more acceptable now, probably hero?--is granted powers by an external agent or force.  They're not tied to a development story, or linked with character limitations the hero needs to overcome.  Then again Green Lantern was just given a power ring, Superman was born that way, Spiderman got bit by a spider; like that.  It's not as if Marvel themes are a completely different paradigm, but they do tend to follow their own somewhat rigid patterns.

It's worth noting that this paradigm is part of a much older "hero's journey" theme that evolved in older mythology, as something that was written into stories about Green and Roman gods, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and so on, up until the modern day.  Jordan Peterson--claimed to represent conservative perspective, and to some degree he does--attributes this form to Disney stories like Pinocchio, and it seems to fit.  This list of 4 plot points would need to add a rescuing of an external valued good, fulfilling a societal norm or family expectation, and probably transforming both self-understanding / actualization and also a broader framework of valued roles and actions.  Heroes often tend to "save the world" in some sense, not just overcome a serious threat.

What if a storyteller wanted to throw out most of these four "rules?"  It should be possible to still tell a different kind of story, which still may appeal to a broad audience.  Something like a tragedy form of story is different; it's not like this.  Of course a Disney television show can't be a tragedy, but I mean that the normal template isn't required, it's not the only one available.  Love stories set up a similar conflict / resolution theme, but they are also different.

All this makes me think back to when we saw forms of story telling change in the past, related to shifting how stories were framed, and which values and forms were promoted.  Star Trek tried to explain, justify, and lead societal changes by promoting inclusiveness for racial equality (represented by aliens, but clear enough in meaning), gender equality (to a limited extent), and the use of reason and value of promoting common good.  It all kind of worked, in a limited sense.  The parallel with the Cold War and roles of the Russians and Chinese (as Klingons and Romulans) was a bit heavy-handed, and they really weren't promoting a mature form of gender equality, but it was fine for the 1960s.

Prior to that what kind of rules could we derive from heroic story forms like Westerns, the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rodgers, previous equivalents of stories like Star Trek and Star Wars?  Maybe these:

1. a central hero is a white male, matching that real life societal expectation, for example that every US President was of this type.  This paradigm is from earlier European culture, but these movie forms are based out of the US, from Hollywood.

2. a sidekick role can be used to promote positive value of minorities, females, or youths, with these secondary in importance, personal strengths, and story resolution effectiveness

3. characters need to be truly good or truly evil.  They can change from one to the other, but there can be no anti-heroes (a character who is both), or heroes with deeply flawed characters.  A character arc can transition a deeply flawed but basically good hero to the more uniformly positive form; this is really the most typical form.

4. antagonists represent negative character, not just an equivalent moral value separate interest.  Limitations in character (morality) and competence link together and cause their downfall.  Again I'm referring to an old paradigm; in the most modern form it's better if people can relate to the villain's perspective as somewhat reasonable.  Even the Heath Ledger Joker made some good points, and he was clearly evil.

5. there is room for arbitrary "other" character range as background.  These rules for main hero and main antagonist don't apply to all other characters, although the others are generally aligned with one "side" or the other.

Can we still tell this form of story?  Sure, but it's not going to work out like that in most cases.  It's a dated form, and a far more interesting story theme to move on to the Marvel template, or even beyond that.  Superman is written in this older form (for example he has no character flaws or arc), and it makes stories too simple sticking to that.  This is why they tend to include "evil Superman" arcs in comics, or add shortcomings for him to overcome in movie versions.  Not so effectively in recent films, really, because it runs against his entire character type.

Why is it a problem to include a protagonist / main hero who faces absolutely ordinary and mundane background and challenges?  Why can't being normal be a problem, like being a minority teen seeking out a self-identity and clearer social role?  Or I guess a drug or alcohol problem, or losing a job, or physical injury.  Dr. Strange overcame a physical injury, but his real arc was about character transition, and change of direction in terms of what he values.  But a more mundane form of story might be more relatable, without taking up magic use being so central, or leading on to saving the world. 

In a sense having the Moon Knight (tv series) character experience mental illness followed a related form, even though Dissociative Identity Disorder isn't conventional or mundane.  Mental illness sort of is conventional; lots of people struggle with depression or schizophrenia, and so on.

I'm not sure that Marvel made that work, setting it up as an internal challenge to be resolved.  The two primary internal personalities quickly became friends, although I guess per the writers' intent maybe that was a series long challenge and resolution, and it only seemed thin to me.  The wife of one persona immediately felt a strong personal bond with the other, which I guess could be a basis for later tension and conflict, but it missed an opportunity to write in real conflict to be resolved.

Per the Star Wars story and character arcs what this liberal "side" wants to write are stories where characters are granted special powers, without facing an internal arc, replacing older characters as superior than them, and later triumphing based on those received attributes.  Some of the "life lesson" form intended in old myths, and in not nearly as old Marvel stories, then drops out.  That was about overcoming setbacks, conflicts, and personal limitations.  Is this really a problem?  It's hard to say for sure.

To succeed as a form of mythology, to transmit values for ordinary people to take on as lessons, it might be a problem.  It doesn't take much adjustment for a new form of similar lessons to enter back in.  Per one interpretation Captain Marvel succeeded because an accident gave her powers, and per another she realized her then-inherent potential through deeper self-understanding, and through accepting risk of failure in testing her own limits.  Rey of Star Wars played out a similar revised form of character and story arc.  She did nothing to earn being the most powerful force user in existence, with the movie #8 explanation being that random chance caused that, and there were no unusual choices involving her taking on the hero's path, she was pushed into it externally.

On the conservative side of the perspective divide it looks to some people as if Disney / Marvel / movie content producers overplay this theme by not only having the central character granted special powers, without going through any internal challenge and transition, but the same happens with supporting characters.  In the Shang Chi story one main hero was a sidekick--a minority, without physical gifts or aptitudes, representing an ordinary person--who saved the day in the final battle with a lucky shot with a bow and arrow, after a few hours of practice, hitting a small moving target 1 km away.  Roughly the same happened in the Star Wars series, based on almost exactly the same character type, and to some extent the exact same action sequence.

The lesson here is that ordinary people can be heroes, even if being a main protagonist involves special circumstances and in-born or granted attributes.  In a sense that really is ok.  It just doesn't match an earlier expected form, and per one set of expectations it makes luck way too central to main movie turning points, versus effort and earned aptitude.  It doesn't try to teach people to work to earn special status, and the ability to resolve difficult problems, the lesson is that luck determines most things.  Or there just is no lesson, really.

From there intentionally including a lot of reference to gender, race, and sexual preference is off-putting to conservative viewers.  Female heroes are more effective in many recent Marvel stories, and older central heroes are "nerfed," reduced in power level and importance.  In the new Hawkeye series Hawkeye doesn't take part in the final "boss battle;" his younger female sidekick does instead.  If a very high proportion of primary protagonists are female or minority race, or gay or trans, in a sense that's still fine, but to viewers of conservative political inclinations it won't work well.

Surely all this came up related to the old Star Trek series, and that earlier paradigm shift.  Everyone had to get it that female characters were playing a greatly expanded role, even though, as in James Bond films, those roles were secondary.  It must have been clear that it was all allegory about race or nationality.  Looking back that shouldn't have been a problem, because the Klingons (Russians) were evil, and Romulans (Chinese) were also evil, and also somehow less respectable, so from both of "that time period's" conservative and liberal views the stories should have still worked.  They broke new ground, but from this time period's perspective they were careful about limiting that.

Next we might guess at where all this is leading.  It's possible for better story tellers to use these potential new forms in more developed ways, that support broader acceptance.  That's another sticking point; these stories being told could be appealing to people valuing these minority and gender representations, but they're not great stories in terms of building compelling characters and plot lines, setting up conflict to cause tension, and leading to engaging action as resolution.  The real shift to acceptance should be based on that.  The Star Trek form, and those old shows, are still popular today because it was all so well done, while a series like Battlestar Galactica was novel but largely faded from view, for not pulling it all off as well.

Then it's a problem that new stories aren't being told, as often as old characters and franchises are re-used.  Television shows will need to lead this form, since it's a risk to spend $150 million on a major production not based on a known story context.  Or presumably small-scale drama oriented stories could lead action / fantasy / adventure story context changes.  Streaming platforms are definitely helping drive this.

In the meantime if you listen to liberal or conservative film and television content commentary both "sides" come across as a bit "toxic" (most typically a label the left applies to the right).  They both make reasonable points about these issues, but tend to miss that they are opposed to the sub-contexts that they don't prefer, based around story-telling mode preferences and gender and race character context.  Any one person should only see one set of opinions in their Youtube or Facebook related secondary opinion commentaries, given how political preference filtering works out in those platforms, so that side would seem more right.

Digging deeper into secondary issues and contexts

What about the starting point of opposing or being open to movie characters being gay, or self-defined in other less traditional ways?  That's back to a simpler sticking point of the culture war divide.  "Hollywood" really does want to press a liberal context acceptance agenda, and half of the US population isn't on that page.  Or maybe it's really 45%, with 10% not as actively involved in the left and right divide.  It may come down to which proportion of movies and television content take up that context and portray it as a normal life theme, a standard value norm, and which other content sets that aside.  

The last Marvel movie I saw, Dr. Strange, included a gay character (America Chavez), but they didn't include that portrayal in the story, beyond having her wear a "pride" pin.  I don't remember it coming up in the last Spider Man movie either, and the Eternals had gay characters kiss, as a reference to it.  It's an active culture war; it's going to come up.

As I consider further the challenges faced by the Ms Marvel character it seems like I'm overstepping "internal struggle" concerns as trivial that are being addressed as serious, and of primary significance.  That character was a Youtube content creator with no following, and she had friends, and participated in social activities, but wasn't popular.  Completely normal, right?  Sure, but to not see this as a problem trivializes how younger people, and people in general, relate to their own life experience.  If she was a very attractive girl, with parents pushing her to be popular, and academically successful, or probably if she was wealthy, her conditions would be quite different.  She would experience other status and benefits from social acceptance.  

Her minority status seems to not be problematic at all, as portrayed, but I suppose incidental challenges might be seen as more important than I'm attributing them to be, for example her character having a tighter curfew.  I suppose it's understandable that such context as personal challenges has to be inconsistent, to fit episode plot lines, for example that one week she can't go to a comic convention (real life hero convention "in-story"), and the next she can go to a party.

She isn't really identified as experiencing mental health issues, like attention deficit disorder, but it's implied there.  As a parent I can relate to the general concern that all kids who spend more than half their free time consuming media, playing games, or on social media might naturally develop a limited real-life context attention span.  Dealing with this in a story line is probably going to be problematic, for that show, so they won't go there, but waving aside the issue as trivial isn't right either.  Teens experience this as a problem; they have to deal with it.

The same parallel can come up related to kids who are gay, or who now see themselves as gender neutral, or gender fluid (which I really won't try to unpack here).  To them it's a serious concern and challenge, and it doesn't work for a more conservative viewer to just see that as normal, as nothing to be concerned about, as not a significant internal conflict.  

I'm reminded of one gay roommate experiencing a significant internal struggle with exactly this issue, and after some degree of dealing with self-image and external social image he came to see it as normal, as not particularly unusual or challenging.  But that process took years, probably a main life theme for him between 15 and 25.  It works better for Spiderman to work through challenges of having superpowers and balancing saving people as a demand than for him to be gay; it fits natural fantasy story lines.  I don't mean that it has to be off-limits, or that it's a story that can't or shouldn't be told, but it's complicated, and a lot easier to move plot points along related to having superpowers.  My roommate put it all together little by little, one discussion and social exchange after another, and it took that full decade.  Spiderman tends to go from the spider bite to stopping muggers within a few scenes, only delayed by uncle Ben dying in two out of three portrayals.  He could come to terms with a gender or sexual preference issue in 3 or 4 short scenes too, but it would conflict a lot with real life experience.

Back to the theme of good storytelling form, I think one main problem is that these can be real character concerns, internal struggle for them to overcome, but that in the movies or tv shows I've cited they're not actually addressing and resolving these issues, these are just background concerns for them to deal with.  In one sense the Moon Knight character resolved having multiple personalities, so that's a potential counter-example, but really it went from impossible to work with and relate to on to being completely resolved with very little struggle or resolution effort on the main character's part (the two of them, two personas).  It would've required very developed, nuanced, and abbreviated form story arc to change that, and I suppose to some viewers that's exactly what they pulled off, and I just didn't see it that way.  The same could apply to Captain Marvel; to many maybe she really did overcome personal self-limitations and fear, through long struggle and introspection, and that's just not how I saw it on-screen.  She realized that she had a control device on her and pulled it off; problem solved, easily.

Maybe these personal development arcs are going to need to be like that, to match real life forms, drawn out across running threads and many personal exchanges, across more scenes and screen time.  I'm referring to the abbreviation issue tied to my friend and roommate's case.  These Youtubers who are criticizing this content themselves spent years building up to 100k follower counts, learning their craft of developing content, managing algorithms, telling their own stories, networking to build viewer base, etc., and the Ms Marvel character can't be shown doing equivalent things.  Maybe in a montage sequence of some sort, but even that would look mundane, beyond the limitations of showing it in a half dozen visual images.  Her own resolution needs to be about having superpowers, as occurred in the Spiderman story.  Peter Parker struggled with relationship issues and job concerns, so they balanced all that, but it took careful storytelling to do so, adding a moving depth to that character.

There's one additional problem, a big one, that relates to why the news media divide thrives on developing this perspective divide, instead of helping resolve it.  That "Critical Drinker" Youtube video has 1.5 million views, and that content creator has made another 20 videos with almost exactly the same theme, across different Disney or other producer characters and stories.  It's his job, literally, to take that side on this issue, to express it and for others to consume that content, and for him to get paid for making it.  Over the next year he will make another dozen videos complaining about the same issues, in exactly the same way, and he will draw the better part of another 10 million views for doing it, and earn the related ad revenue.

He's not exactly an outlier in that regard; this other channel, Nerdrotic, made roughly the same video ("Marvel PANICS After Year of M-She-U FAILURES | Ms. Marvel DISASTER Undergoes EXTENSIVE Reshoots"), at the same time, which has so far drawn 680k views, for a channel with less than half a million followers.  It seems like a Youtuber equivalent to doing what it takes to succeed in a corporate job; maybe it matches their views and maybe it doesn't, but it pays off either way.  I don't know that liberal supporters of this content form draw quite the same following, but that content does exist.  Drama and negativity work better for drawing viewership, and this "conservative side" can build on attachment to earlier forms of the same stories, complaining that Disney is ruining comic book stories.  Maybe they are, per one valid perspective and set of expectations?

One might wonder how people in other cultures place all this.  I live in Thailand; what do people here think of sticking to more traditional forms of hero stories (like Iron Man had been), or moving away from that, embracing diversity issues over a main central character arc, like in the Eternals?  They don't tend to think about it.  

I recently discussed superhero movie preferences with my wife's cousin, who is on that page, and his main comment was that he didn't like the way general story tones became darker.  For example, the Infinity War story killed half the universe, Endgame killed off a few main characters, and even the last Spiderman movie killed one main one (aunt May), for no clear story support reason, just to add tension and impact.  The good guy tended to win in the past, and at most they dabbled in offing a secondary character to mix things up.  It's not unprecedented in written comics, but not a sub-theme he likes.  In the written comics characters could die and come back, which also happens in films, but it has a different feel to it.  

Characters being minorities or gay doesn't seem to hold positive or negative value for him, I don't think.  Gender perspective isn't transitioning here, and it was fairly open to begin with, so that people can self-define as they like.  No one is going to learn any extra pronouns, but in general people will call trans individuals according to the role they take up, without anyone overthinking that.  They're not exactly "fully enlightened" in relation to such issues, but a liberal and conservative culture war wouldn't have the same divide to build on, so one has yet to start.

Does it seem like I'm tipped pretty far in one direction related to all this?  I feel as if I can relate to both sides.  If these newer, more progressive hero stories were just better stories I'd be fine with them.  The Loki television series (on Disney +) included a powerful, compelling, well-developed alternate universe female character that completely worked for me, framed within a good story.  It's a little late for me to be newly introduced to the idea that a woman can be a superhero too, since Wonder Woman covered that in the mid 20th century, and Gamora is one of my favorite Marvel characters, but it added to that legacy.  Folding in more social role commentary might be tricky, but if it somehow told an integrated story it could be fine, maybe even if I didn't fully accept the point of view being suggested.  

It will be interesting to see if Disney ever can succeed in normalizing normal internal struggles as part of a new form of hero's journey.  I mean mundane ones, like normal teen social development.  It should work.  It might fail for a reason I've not brought up, that it's too ordinary, and fails to fulfill the function of fantasy escapism.  It was nice having Neo of the Matrix escape life in an office cubicle, but what if he worked there for the entire movie instead, and a main sub-plot was about mundane office politics, him not getting a raise or promotion?  Maybe the imbalance in parallel themes could be interesting, as they started to play off of in Fight Club.  But it took great writing to do what they did in that movie.  They didn't include sub-context just because it made for a cool background aspect; every point brought up was woven together into story lines and character development.  

In the Eternals one immortal character was a child, just because they happened to be that, as one seemed to be a teen for the same reason, and characters were gay just because they were.  It can frame these contexts as normal, as they should be, but without being a part of a story about characters and developed plots it doesn't mean anything.  Could an immortal being maintain the status and personality type of a child, instead of developing mature social perspective, matching an adult form?  Would such beings face and overcome conflict related to same sex gender preference, and would that form shift over historical time periods?  The movie didn't develop these points.  

This is really why a more standard path is to start with origin stories at a more detailed level, to build up how these inputs work, instead of starting from a team-up movie theme context.  It's just good story telling, versus showing cut and pasted versions of expected images, exotic locations, action packed fight scenes, and novel superpowers.  To do justice to supporting new social role definitions and issues movie makers will have to build up interesting characters and tell good stories.

Jordan Peterson on the Bible as the basis for modern worldview

 

Jordan Peterson recently made an interesting claim in a Joe Rogan podcase video that the Bible is really such a foundational work that to a limited extent Western literature and general perspective itself is based on it.  Maybe.  It takes some doing to get to why he's saying that, in order to evaluate it.  Or maybe it doesn't really work to evaluate it, but doing the framing part is still interesting.

He outlines the main direction as follows, in the first words in that video:

"if categories just dissolve, especially fundamental ones, then the culture is dissolving, because the culture is a structure of categories.  That's what it is.  So in fact culture is a structure of category that we all share.  So we see things the same way, so that's why we can talk.  I mean not exactly the same way, because then we'd have nothing to talk about.  Roughly speaking, we have a bedrock of agreement.  That's the Bible, by the way."

I'll start with a bit of an intro of Jordan Peterson's general perspective first, and get back to this.  I mentioned this video to an online friend who is into Christianity who responded that he wasn't interested because Jordan Peterson is not a reliable source (just not put that way).  There's something to that; I think a lot of what Jordan Peterson expresses is either meaningless or not informative without placing exactly what he is saying, or not saying, and why, with his normal form of expressing content not at all clear without that context.  So although it's all tangent I'll address that part first, then get on with looking at how the Bible really may or may not be the basis for a modern Western worldview.  

I've studied religion a little, even in a number of religion classes, but I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, it's just something I've already given some thought to.

Jordan Peterson versus the left

His conflict with "the left" came to head at the same time his popularity as a thought leader evolved, in relation to the gender pronoun issue.  More specifically, it was identified as something like illegal hate speech to not use preferred pronouns where he was living, in one part of Canada.  There are problems with that type of law, which he correctly identified.  And a general context problem with the use of diverse gender identification, which he also identified.  Then he does also go on to make criticisms and sweeping cultural identifications that don't make sense.  Let's start with those.

He consistently identifies a broad range of perspectives and directives as tied back to Marxists and Marxism.  Parts of it seem to work, it's just that the framing really doesn't, as if there is a unified far-left perspective that involves a lot of shared philosophical underpinnings and final conclusions.  The philosophical part is weak too; a far left perspective evolved a certain way, but not really based on those inputs, or at least not as directly as he explicitly links together.

It might work to say that perspective basis and positions on final issues might be generally common to a range that could be fairly identified as extreme left, but he just goes too far with the generalities.  It's probably because he is exposed to extreme versions, and within the academic environment what these derive from, in general, is more consistent and known.  But it's not really like that related to the average person who thinks that trans-gender individuals should or should not have equal rights.  They're not necessarily well read up on 19th and 20th century philosophy, or involved with the same degree of philosophical and psychological assumptions.  Some are extremists, sure, on both the left and right, and draw on ideas derived in lots of ways.  One could argue that their final positions and views are partial extensions of those earlier ideas, and the linkage doesn't need to be tight, and that's back to working better.

The starting point of rejecting mandated use of language works.  It's not problematic to restrict use of negative terms (the "n word," fag, and so on).  Telling people which words they need to use is a bit different.  If there was a distinct set of new gender pronouns being advocated that would at least be a more workable context, but the list of those expanded to over 50, and just kept changing and growing.  Tracking them and being responsible for use in every interaction was already impossible at that point, and it's not as if the numerous early versions were going to stay fixed.

If it had only related to that the subject wouldn't have drawn the attention it did.  Jordan Peterson next claimed that only a limited set of pronouns made sense in relation to being tied back to biological gender, which of course is a divisive and problematic position.   That issue never really gets settled, because people on both extremes keep redefining their position context and finer points, so they end up talking past each other.  

It doesn't work to say that biological gender identification is optional, or you end up with female powerlifters competing and breaking records who only identified as female for a matter of weeks prior, or maybe even only on that day.  It also doesn't work to say that gender identification needs to be tied only to genetic factors, because lots of other cases contradict that, and there has to be space for gender to be regarded as a social construct too, because of course it's partly that.  Leaving aside atypical biological conditions it's just not right saying that people can't change their personal identity because of some genetic biological context.  Of course they can.  It was this messy topic that made Jordan Peterson famous, as much as any other.

His core messages were never really mostly about that.  He is second most known for a self-development theme, encouraging people to set goals for themselves, to take responsibility for their lives, to start with making small positive changes in their life circumstances or self perception, to become aware of limitations they place on themselves, and so on.  His earlier academic work wasn't about either theme (political perspective and gender issues, or self-development).  He focused on two topics:  the basis for and experience of meaning, and how basic teachings and groundworks of psychological models fit together with biological and social inputs.  That second one tied to the gender issues.

So how did he ever become a spokesperson for the right wing?  The short answer is that this is wrong, and he didn't.  He opposes an extreme left / liberal set of ideas and positions, but for the most part doesn't support much that is associated with the right wing / conservative perspective, beyond not explicitly rejecting the alignment as much as one might expect for a professed "classic liberal."  Maybe self-development themes could link with themes about personal independence, and then it all connects, but it's a stretch.  I suppose the whole nature versus nurture / inborn characteristics versus social development set of themes does underpin positions he takes or opposes, which map to conservative themes in whatever ways.  It just doesn't work to connect it all together.  

When he debates liberal members of the media they are consistently attributing positions and claims to him that aren't accurate, so those interviews get bogged down in talking about rejecting what he doesn't actually say.  It's not worth watching more than one example of that, because there is limited positive content from either perspective (ideas actually asserted) to relate to or not relate to.

So how does Jordan Peterson go too far, what does he say that's not fair, or accurate?  He habitually categorizes positions and perspectives in broad, sweeping ways, so that most "leftists / Marxists" are making the same claims, based on the same foundational context.  Some of that may work as a generality for some people and positions, but it's just not how that really works, that you can paint a broad and general political perspective into such a limited and clear set of positions and assumptions.  That's partly what is going wrong with people identifying his ideas and position in relation to the right, or far right / conservative perspective.

Oddly that tendency and pattern tie back to what works well in his teachings.  You really can't easily pull apart what foundational thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Jung and Freud, and later French philosophers are saying, pinning each down to a half dozen core assertions and ideas.  They address complex divides in thought that only really make sense in relation to other sets of ideas they are building on, opposing, or responding to.  Sometimes parts of some models are very simple and clear, and then simpler summaries do work better.  

But the problem with saying that you can't extract complex teachings into a half dozen simple statements is that you need to do this to "work with" such ideas, unless you are able to take a graduate class that studies their work, and even then you tend to only focus on one text by one person.  So to a limited extent distilling Nietzsche down to a dozen "Nietzsche says..." statements misses what he is really saying, but at least it works with some ideas, it considers them.

The other part of problems with Jordan Peterson's thinking, besides overgeneralizing, and being judged for advocating ideas that he is really not advocating, is that he seems to get caught up in negativity that isn't really necessary, other aspects of the political divide, and the general downfall of society sort of themes.  Extreme personal difficulties could account for that, facing problems across a lot of scope as a main life theme, health issues and such.

On to the part about Christianity, which will tie back further to his general approach and thoughts on other broad patterns, but not to problems or criticisms with him, his statements, or his work.

Christianity / the Bible as a basis for Western perspective and society

This subject is good and sweeping, isn't it?  More context on JP's approach and perspective on things:  he sees legends and traditional stories as distillations of familiar narratives and old events that include life guidance, that set up a context for an individual worldview, and underpin it.  He uses the Pinocchio story to give the most detailed examples, but any hero's story will do to fill in the same pattern.  Let's start there.  

First let's be even clearer about what I've just claimed is his position:  these traditional legends may or may not be about people that did exist, but the stories are built out of other old stories and forms, including external details of activities (things added).  I think this part is right; extra interpretation and things added or taken away in retelling would change old story forms to borrow from or match other old stories.

The hero's journey (a broad and shared form) is that the central character is faced with some sort of external threat or demand, and needs to go on some sort of quest to resolve this, to seek something out, or finish a difficult task.  Then they undertake this, face extreme challenges, and question their own perspective, capabilities, and motivations, often making some sacrifice, finally accomplishing their goal and returning triumphant, and altered by the experience.  

Why these themes, what does it mean?  Lots of things, really.  It's a good story (a basis for one); that's part of it.  It's also a teaching about personal character, appropriate motivations, questioning assumptions and one's role in society, about transcending earlier self-definition and assumed capabilities, and contributing to society.  The bad characters, and their motivations and actions, represent what society intends to reject, and "quest" setbacks represent conventional pitfalls in self-understanding or development.  And it's also about other things, I suppose, but that works for a start.

Moral teachings are an important part too, about placing the good of others and the whole above your own.  That one theme repeats more than any other in a lot of story telling.  But why?  It's part of the basis for society itself, part of the fabric of what a collective of individuals is based on.  If everyone only acts for immediate and long term self interest then the institutions and broader goals suffer.  Societal level issues like global warming and national debt could never be resolved, because these relate to the interests of future individuals.  

Even more mundane restrictions on things like stealing also help establish societal order.  Proactive emphasis on themes like generosity work in a similar way, just from the other direction.  Self-sacrifice is a great example of extension of that kind of theme.  Minor norms would end up being swept in too, relatively value-neutral components that are still positioned as generally positive, something like urban versus rural living, or aesthetic themes.

So the old legends people accept and re-tell are really tied to a kind of meta-narrative, about underlying themes and conditions.  Tony Stark is doing what Beowulf had been doing, and these stories include life lessons.  Then it's interesting to consider if we are really soaking up that message; does anyone lead their own life differently because the Stark corporation moved on from selling defense goods, or because Tony risked his own life to defeat Thanos, and then actually did die?  Probably not really.  But that always had been part of the point.

The Bible is a lot more direct about this intention, or religion in general is.  You are supposed to learn from these examples and apply them.  Then in the end your own place in heaven is dependent on doing this, with it all taken in one way.  With religion taken less literally there probably is no literal afterlife like that, but we build up the reality we should be able to experience based on all our own actions, perspectives, life directions, and moral choices.

So far so good; Jesus and Moses and the rest are teachers of correct perspective and morality.  Jordan takes all this one step further in observations in that video, and it's an interesting step.  To him it's not just meta-narratives that "roll up" to a worldview and perspective context, we can apply all this to literature.  Shakespeare informs a lot of later story telling, both in form and content.  He asserts that the Bible was actually the first set of writings to be collected into a book, really more a set of books or a library, and the most disseminated early on in printing development, and the most influential in general.  Then from there he concludes that the Bible is the literal basis for Western perspective, related to that.

Does this work?  Kind of, or maybe not really, given probably only partially so.  Separating a Western and Eastern perspective alone may not work.  It would be necessary to consider the role of the earlier Greek thinkers in impacting Roman perspectives, and that of others, how these inputs built up and influenced later thinking.  To say that the Bible is the single primary cornerstone for a relatively unified cultural perspective goes a bit far.  But then Jordan is into sweeping statements and conclusions, and it also still kind of works.  

We would have to try to place access to the Bible by people other than priests throughout history, and the role of Latin in academic study and daily life across a range of centuries.  It doesn't help that Jordan Peterson is not really a historian, or an expert on literary history, and that the order of his specialization goes pretty far down a list to get to that range.  He's most trained in psychology, while also drawing on a good bit of philosophy, literature, and physical sciences for input.  Already that's kind of too much range.  Folding in the general anthropology scope of history of ideas and cultural evolution goes a bit far.

The Bible did have to be about as influential as any other single work ever created; how could it not be?  He's right that it's not really a unified, singular work, even beyond the division into old and new testaments.  It's just that last step, saying that the Bible grounds everything else, that seems to reach a little.  Breaking that apart into influences of the old and new testament and tracing both across sets of cultural forms would work better, in comparison with other inputs and conditions.

To me it's still well worth considering, even if the limitations in using imagination and intuition to flesh it all out means that won't get far.  Let's add one more consideration that frames what I mean:  to what extent have we received detailed, intact versions of early Greek philosophy, which could be a separate contender as a main influence in Western culture?  The timelines might be a little different; we think Plato lived from 428 to 348 BCE, roughly, and a 100 year history of culture he was building on still doesn't reach back to the early Bible age.  Egyptians had been around for a long, long time prior, but let's consider Greek philosophy anyway. 

Plato hung around; his writing we do have.  Socrates, his teacher, taught Plato, and Plato's work is considered to be based on that input, but we only have what Plato said about what Socrates said to go on.  Maybe a little of other references here or there, but nothing significant compared to Plato's accounts.  To be clear I'm basing these statements on only taking one undergrad class that reviewed Greek philosophy and pre-Socratic input, so probably one professor's input on that subject.  It could be wrong.  What I was taught could've been right and my memory and interpretation of it could still be wrong.  From what we studied of those pre-Socratic philosophers, of the teachings of 8 or 9 main figures, we only have a few fragments of statements or writing from each, a page or two of text worth in total.  It's not much.

Doesn't this support Jordan Peterson's ideas about the Bible being more primary, since "the trail goes cold" related to what we learn from those Greeks today at around 400 BCE?  Sort of, but also not really, as I see it.  Just because some ideas or texts are not available today doesn't mean that the ideas didn't have a lot of indirect impact 2000+ years ago.  Then we also still have a lot of writings from both Plato and Aristotle, which were also very foundational in our understanding of human reality, worldview, and perspective.  And of physical reality too; Aristotle didn't stop at philosophy.  It could work to try to compare the relative inputs of Plato and Aristotle as grounding Western perspective (as much as there is such a thing) in comparison or contrast with Biblical teachings, or to seek out dependency between the two.  I studied religion some in a degree program, and more philosophy, but nothing like that ever really came up.  It's too broad, too sweeping, and too difficult.  

It almost doesn't matter but let's check on Wikipedia's take on how old the Bible is:

Considered to be scriptures (sacred, authoritative religious texts), the books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the 5th century BCE. 

So someone inclined to believe Jordan Peterson (personally) and this interpretation could completely accept it, or based on their own biases could just as easily completely reject it.  Actually sorting through the ideas would be problematic; it would be a lot easier to draw on a personal bias against Jordan Peterson instead of making any start on that.  How could we evaluate the input of stories about Gilgamesh and Beowulf in comparison with those about Moses and Abraham, or the Greek gods?  It wouldn't really work to try.

I like that Jordan Peterson makes the attempt though, that he tries to connect the dots in such sweeping forms.  That's probably more about personal preference than whether it all works or not.  At the risk of over-generalization about two thirds of what Jordan Peterson says completely works for me, with a minority of the rest seeming less functional, or maybe even a bit wrong.  He keeps all the statements so general that it can be hard to really argue against one as wrong.  If he says "Nietzsche says (x)" there's a pretty good chance that Nietzsche really did express and intend what JP was talking about, but that his interpretation is open to being disputed, or more frequently too general to really see as right or wrong.  Then JP extends that to roll together parts of what a lot of people are doing for perspective or beliefs, and that part might not work either.

Nietzsche said a lot of things.  He was talking about a lot of broad patterns or specific aspects of human experience in a lot of different ways, but never in as cut and dried, bottom-up form as would be expected or familiar from other thinkers.  Kant was at the other extreme; her really explained what he meant, only stopping short of being able to pull together hundreds of ideas into a complete and unified system, but he did an insane amount of development work towards that, and others built on that later.  Nietzsche didn't do that; he expressed himself in isolated aphorisms and symbolic parables, which only sort of connected back up.

Conclusions, take aways

I think there is value in considering what Jordan Peterson says, but all that value drops out if you aren't already completely familiar with how he's placing background concepts and perspectives.  To completely get there someone would've needed to develop an interest in his presentation of earlier, better grounded ideas about meaning of life positioning or psychology basics, and get through a lot of his material, seeing how he uses concepts and expresses himself.  Just being conservative and liking most conclusions wouldn't be enough to help you really understand what he's saying about most topics.

It wouldn't hurt to be relatively familiar with the sources he's referencing, to help place how he is using ideas, and which parts he is adding.  I've read a lot of Nietzsche and studied his work in philosophy classes, and am familiar with some basics from Jung (another of his favorites), and am somewhat introduced to Piaget's work on development of perspective and reasoning forms.  What gets grouped together as later Continental Philosophy I'm less familiar with, Sartre and the rest, but I suppose I've had some exposure to that.  

Really when JP says "the Marxists say..." he's referencing his own collection and rejection of ideas tied to existentialism (more or less).  It's kind of a strange summary form but listing some basic principles helps define that:

Tenets of Existentialism

Existence before Essence:  people are born as a blank slate create essence through unique experiences

Impotence of Reason:  Passion and emotion

Alienation or Estrangement:  from Humans, human instructor, past/future, self nature, God (From God man has provided all answers through sciences)

Despair or Anxiety:  freedom to create decisions and morals based on evidence (experience) causes fear and anxiety

Nothingness or Death:  death hangs over all of us

Awful Freedom:  Awesome/ Awful

The Absurd:  Human tendency to search inherent value inability to find any

Cope:  Acceptance of absurd, religious, suicide

Bad Faith:  when individuals negate truth in an attempt to become a self they are not.

Doesn't sound so optimistic, does it?  Basically all fixed definition of human nature is rejected by existentialism (to the extent that it's all one thing, which wouldn't hold up), and the existence of God is rejected, and of rigid and meaningful social forms and societal norms.  So what's left?  A bunch of conventions, which can be changed, and a process of searching for more functional self-definition.  

Jordan Peterson doesn't care for all that because social conventions play a real role, whether we think of them as rigid and well grounded or not.  If you throw out the gender roles for men and women family structures are likely to become a lot less stable, and a real connection to biologically based natural tendencies gets tossed out with them.  

He talks more about the second point (connection between biology and conventional roles), but I think his concern is more the first, that men can become more feminine (or women more masculine, assertive and such), or people being gay can be completely accepted in a society, or trans-gender status can be, but if you lose all of it there are no broad social patterns to fall under.  That's not a problem, it's the social roles related to those patterns dropping out that is problematic.  Instead of kids growing up with a father and mother they could be raised by a group of ever-transitioning caregivers who may reject even the concept of pair-bonded relationships, between any defined or undefined genders.  That extends the problem a bit, because gay couples tend to embrace pair-bonding too, but rejection of social forms could lead to later extensions of rejections of social forms.  It's not really something I'm worried about; I'm trying to explain what I see as one part of Jordan Peterson's critique.

It's easy to see how this maps to conservative fixed adherence to past social definitions and roles, and liberal rejection of those in any strong form.  

Does this work, the broad project to criticize changes in perspective of social roles?  To an extent.  Is it a problem that people in the US now don't see gender roles in the same ways?  The culture is less unified than it could be, for sure.  70 years ago in the US "white culture" was fairly unified around the idea that black people are fundamentally different and inferior, and surely black people were a lot less certain of that.   Perspective was not unified. So there were just two cultures, right?  And related to shared perspective issues someone who believed that all "races" are equal would have had a lot of trouble talking to someone who thought that of course black people were fundamentally different and inferior.

It's not so simple mapping this to changes in gender role definitions, which are some fundamental categories.  Some people on the liberal side would feel that relatively rigid definitions of male and female should be "dissolved," just as a lot of people in the US felt that racism should be dropped, those categories dissolved, although some people still don't agree with that.

From a narrow, somewhat flawed perspective this would be all about rejecting trans-people's right to exist.  It's not about that, really.  It's about whether or not retaining some variation of traditional masculine and feminine identification should be important, if the concepts of mother and father should be retained, for example.  Some people would say no; a woman can be a father, and a man could make a great mother.  

I'm reminded of an ex-girlfriend telling me that I would make a great mother, because I was good with some maternal aspects of raising her daughter that she had trouble with (a little girl I loved very much).  Sometimes my daughter calls me mommy to make fun of this same set of ideas, because I empathize with her and care for her in ways a mother traditionally should instead.  I help her shower and get ready for bed every night, for example, even though of course at this point she needs no help, because she's 8.  It's a ritual role and activity, and her messing around until I start to get angry about that is part of the normal process.  Last night it was making a "beauty treatment mask" out of toilet paper, and often it's something about making potions.  I love those experiences; I value them.  Just not on days when I'm tired and in a hurry.

Moving back to the Bible, it's teaching people to live within social expectations through stories.  It's a little problematic that old testament versions are kind of dated, so people might get killed by stoning for relatively trivial offenses in stories, or slavery could seem normal, or whatever else they did or didn't object to as much 2500 years ago could come up.  The lessons about being empathetic and supporting others and society, even at the cost of sacrificing your own self-interest, would hold up better across time and shifting social norms.  It's all not as hard to sort out as what Nietzsche or Kant said, so there's that.

Jordan Peterson's statement that the Bible grounds a lot of modern forms of literature and worldview I see as partly right, maybe even completely right within the bounds of how he probably meant it.  If you look back through that list of ideas put forth by existentialism (in a crib-notes study guide reference form) it completely conflicts almost all of the assumptions the Bible starts from:  society and human nature are based on rigid, externally defined forms, there are clearly defined norms for right and wrong, self-determination relates to accepting these boundaries and acting within them, as externally directed, etc.  

So which set of ideas is wrong, or more right?  People make that selection in relation to assumptions, which are largely inherited, and often only develop them a little through internal review.  My own take might involve a bit more explicit review for being on that page (interested in this general subject), but in the end maybe I just fall back on what feels right to me to, in relation to which parts of the two sets of ideas I accept.  I suppose I merge them.  Or to give myself more credit I resolve some of the assumptions that lead to these contradictions at the level of assumptions instead of getting this far, on to different conclusions.  Something like "people are born with a blank slate" is just wrong, but it takes too long to unpack the two levels on which this is incorrect, about societal perspective being a framework and how genetics factors in.

Let's be clear, Jordan Peterson can accept that social roles and definitions, and moral norms, are all defined through an organic process of reason and natural evolution of forms, not through dictates from a real God.  This was really Kant's project, building it all up from reason, without any need for random and shifting external forms, which kind of didn't work.  Nietzsche felt that people were right at the cusp of completely rejecting a lot of prior norms, evolving past them, and that's not as much in contrast with thinking that relatively fixed social norms evolve through rational development as it might seem.  Nietzsche didn't see it all as rational in the same sense that Kant did, but it works out similarly enough anyway, that instead of a rational mapping process explaining it all, and then eliminating inconsistencies, we can experience a re-write of social forms through the input of greater vision, creativity, and self-awareness.  Nietzsche's ideas lead more directly to what JP's "philosophical opponents" take up than what he does.

Except those opponents, the modern "Marxists," kind of don't really exist.  People are certainly acting on continued ideas and forms from earlier Existentialism, but there are no "boogeymen" of people who really know what they are doing in proposing ingenuine and manipulative philosophical positions, and then also advocate flawed derived norms.  Some of the social forms probably are problematic, and ideas flawed, there is just no insidious conspiracy to push it all through as Peterson describes.  Maybe there might as well be; some Hollywood movies are still impacted as if there was.  

If you look long enough you could find academics with related positions to debate, but they aren't influential known figures, or people pulling the strings from the shadows, they're just college professors or authors.  Contemporary atheism has proven much more popular, related to selling books and drawing attention, and that's unrelated.

Related to how I personally place Christianity, I think what Jesus taught is what people need to hear, even though I've been influenced a lot more by taking up Buddhism.  Buddhism is too hard for almost everyone; it's a process of guided introspection that involves a number of components, different functional tools and contextual references.  There's no one clear and simple modern form to review and try to follow.  Christianity is better; the moral teachings are essentially equivalent, and they work.  

this role represents a part of Buddhist religion but to me the core meaning is something else

For people who absolutely need to get the rest sorted out Buddhism could be the best reference, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.  Sometimes the shortest path seems long, and Buddhism really is a long path.  The goal of understanding and revising your own worldview wouldn't be for everyone.   There's a bit on one core component here that fills part of that in.

Can we put Jordan Peterson's assertion that the Bible underpins a modern Western worldview to use in any way?  Not really, I don't think.  Reading the New Testament helps identify what Jesus really taught, but getting through the Old Testament is all but impossible for almost everyone, regardless of what is or isn't in there, or how much filtering would be required to place the ideas.  It's still interesting to consider, for me, but I'm not sure how common that positive reaction to the idea would be.  Jordan Peterson's broader themes are more worthy of consideration, or early work on meaning and psychology basics, but as I've covered here I see it all as connected.

Cancelling Dr. Seuss

I get it that Dr. Seuss wasn’t cancelled, 5 or 6 of his early books were instead.  And maybe that was appropriate, and reasonable; that’s what I’m going to discuss.  Obviously this is my take; that goes without saying.  

For issues like this I think it makes sense to keep any potentially objective conclusions or stances separate from personal opinions that are subjective, that could as easily be taken in different ways, that only represent preferences or differences in perspective.  It's helpful for mapping out complex or problematic issues, keeping the layers of baseline context straight.  There's nothing wrong with having strong personal preferences, feelings, and opinions, but it's best to keep that clear as not necessarily "right for all," since the project here is to identify finer points of perspective and communication.

The background is simple enough:  Dr. Seuss’s publisher dropped distribution of some of his works.  They were deemed racist, and unacceptable to today’s audience, primarily because they depicted racist images.  In particular depictions of black people and Asians drew on offensive stereotype images.  A Snopes review fills in more of that scope, effectively concluding that he was racist (implicitly).  Was he racist?  Maybe, but let’s not jump ahead.  And let’s call Dr. Seuss just Suess from here on; he wasn’t really a doctor, and that was some sort of pen name (presumably).

not so much better after the white-washing, but maybe not that bad initially

Part of what informs my perspective is being alive for awhile; I’m 52, so I can vaguely remember some of the 1970s, and I’m really a product of the 80s.  Living in a different country gives you a different perspective on race or nationality issues, as I do now, in Thailand.  I'm the minority here.  In Hawaii too; that was interesting.

Edit:  in this initial post form I didn't cite much for external sources, besides images from a Snopes article showing the background and two quotes framing Seuss's own take and some background.  A number of additional image and background citation in an end section add to that, identifying Seuss's own take on this matter even more completely. 

Before getting into sides or perspectives let's consider if "cancellation" is right context for what is occurring.

Questioning the cancel culture framing

In a good discussion of this someone quite familiar in tea circles asserted that this isn't a case of cancellation, as the football player kneeling in protest losing his career was (kind of the general culture-war theme; opposing liberal and conservative versions of rejections).  Instead it was just eliminating media content that is no longer relevant and acceptable.  

I'd cite that post link and give credit but people are as likely to not want to be mentioned in relation to sensitive views, and it doesn't change things adding an attribution.  And this doesn't reflect a proprietary creative contribution, it's just a framing statement.

To me that assertion kind of works, at first glance, but we still need to question if it's as well to update old media by removing access to it (effectively cancelling it; all of this just moves around the terms).  And it stops at the first glance.

I wanted to start here with Seuss’s side.  It’s backwards, intuitively; it would make more sense to flesh out the two different ways of looking at this first (or however many ways there seem to be).  Maybe I’ll just sketch a few stances as context then go straight to a statement from him that seems to imply where he stood on racism.

A few potential modern perspectives could apply:

-One extreme:  racism is ok; I’m a racist.  This really should be a minority view but it’s out there.  Obviously I'm not going to discuss that much here.

-Conservative, but not as extreme:  stop cancelling things, and ease up with the political correctness.  People could filter what they expose themselves and their children to without this complete removal of access.

-The other extreme:  anything remotely racist or inappropriate by today’s standards should be relegated to the scrap-heap of cultural history.  Maybe Tom Sawyer would get a pass, because it was clearly sympathetic to the slave / black perspective, or maybe not, maybe that should go.  Probably that works as a cut-off; anyone as far on the correct / liberal-left / inclusive side as Samuel Clemens had been is probably fine.  The general idea is that children shouldn’t be exposed to anything that doesn’t match modern sensibilities, which could distort their own.  Adults could view such material within the scope of studying cultural history but otherwise it’s irrelevant in relation to modern appreciation.  We should basically cancel it.

-Moderate (as I see it):  we should be able to look past or re-interpret past perspectives that don’t match our own, and view that material from our own lens and worldview, instead of cancelling it.  It may even be helpful to expose children to such content and explain what it is, to keep them open and primed to identifying and experiencing what doesn’t work in the modern world, and how perspectives change over time.  Analyzing older content that doesn't work now could turn up a different perspective than the black and white "racist / not racist" sort of divide we generally accept.

Suess's own position

This passage cites an interesting Seuss quote addressing a related issue, framed as a citation, which might be interesting to look up as well, so I'll include that part too:

How Dr. Seuss Responded to Critics Who Called Out His Racism

...Seuss actually has an essay, which I put up on my blog, where he thinks about racist humor and argues against it. It’s titled “ … But for Grown-Ups Laughing Isn’t Any Fun” and was published in 1952. He argues that writing for grown-ups is less interesting because they’re culturally conditioned. They have something called “conditioned laughter.” Here’s the passage.

This conditioned laughter the grown-ups taught you depended entirely upon their conditions. Financial conditions. Political conditions. Racial, religious and social conditions. You began to laugh at people your family feared or despised—people they felt inferior to, or people they felt better than.

If your father said a man named Herbert Hoover was an ass, and asses should be laughed at, you laughed at Herbert Hoover. Or, if you were born across the street, you laughed at Franklin Roosevelt. Who they were, you didn’t know. But the local ground rules said you were to laugh at them. In the same way, you were supposed to guffaw when someone told a story which proved that Swedes are stupid, Scots are tight, Englishmen are stuffy and the Mexicans never wash.

Your laughs were beginning to sound a little tinny. Then you learned it was socially advantageous to laugh at Protestants and/or Catholics …

That same work adds more depth to the images and framing that is problematic, related to the image I already included:

There are racist caricatures of people of African descent, people of Asian descent, of Arab descent. For example, at the end of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street [1937], the version that was published in the 1930s had a page that said, “I’ve seen a Chinaman who eats with sticks.” The man was colored yellow and had a pigtail, wearing one of those triangular hats. He cleaned that image up a bit in the 1978 edition, cut off the pigtail and removed the color, changed the language to “I’ve seen a Chinese man who eats with sticks.”

Unless that citation is completely wrong there must have been three versions, because the two already shown here change from "I've seen a Chinese boy who eats with sticks" to referring to a Chinese man.

In the first passage he’s basically saying that racism is bad, and also rejecting quite a bit of political division based on shared culture and learned bias.  That latter point is probably even more relevant today than it was in 1952 when he said it.  He doesn’t say that he’s not a racist there, and that he never was.  Whether or not the part about a Chinaman was an expression of racism requires more interpretation than it first seems to, to me.  I don't think it makes racism any more acceptable for it to have been expressed in 1937 but the dating is still an interesting factor in this story, something that needs to be considered further.

It’s also interesting how in today’s world someone might feel a need to explain that they aren't racist; it wouldn’t go without saying.  Can I justify that I’m not really opposing this cancellation (where this will sort of land, conditionally) because I’m sympathetic to racism?  Or that I’m not a racist?  Let’s make a start on that.

What if I could claim the following:

-I was raised as a liberal, including not tolerating any expression of intolerance from others, taught to openly and clearly reject such expressions when hearing them.  Too vague, right?  What if some of my perspective is still not up to date, or fully corrected?  That first part reminds me of one of my earliest childhood memories of my parents causing quite a stir at my grandparents' house because my grandmother called a Brazil nut a "nigger toe."  That was just the common term for them when she grew up, but my parents weren't having it, that being expressed to us.  I never heard "the N word" there again, but then I never had in relation to people before then.

-I’ve dated an African woman and married a Thai; my kids are half Asian.  That doesn’t seem to go far, does it?  Someone could be quite racist and do those things; it would just relate to how they related to those people.  A black person could be racist against black people, under the right circumstances.

-I don’t really know many white people as in-real-life friends now; I’m living within an Asian culture, for quite awhile.

And so it goes, on from there.  It’s hard to build up the proper credentials to really put yourself in the liberal right (probably only a bit easier for conservative scope), hence virtue signaling does actually have a functional purpose, if you see group inclusion as a function.

The point related to Seuss, tied to defending him, can take a few forms.  Let’s break that down.

1. He may have been somewhat racist in his younger years but clearly moved past it, related to being instrumental in teaching against it later on in his works.  It’s a subtheme of that to conclude that he was only a little racist, adopting imagery that wasn’t extreme at all in his time, in the same way that US Founding Fathers didn't completely reject slavery back in the 1700s. I’m skeptical that either works as a reflection of likely reality, but that is where most people seemed to move to right away.  

2. Regardless of his perspective the work is useful as a teaching point for kids, even if clearly and simply just racist, so cancelling it is inappropriate (already touched on earlier).  It’s not actually a defense, it just sets aside his own take as irrelevant, and by-passes the cancellation move.

3. He may have been trying to oppose those racist images by pointing out the problem with them.  I suspect some form of this is the actual case.  He might have became a lot clearer on what he was opposed to or accepted later on, and more than that he might have gained skill at expressing this opposition.  Or both.  He couldn’t really reject racism so directly, because on the earliest side it was nearly half a century before political correctness and those forms of images and expressions became commonly rejected by society.  He would've needed to take a less direct approach to rejecting norms that he saw as not ok (if that was the intent, which all this never does finally conclude).  It's relevant to keep track of the main context being cartoon images in kids books, which is not the right place for a text discussion of social norms.  

Edit:  he expressed regret later in life for creating these images, so it seems like option 1 is essentially how that went.  He was a racist by late 20th century standards, just perhaps within a mainstream perspective of his day.  But that's still a position of accepting unfair and inappropriate racial bias that could have been identified as wrong, even at that time, even if it fell within a general norm.

 

photo credit USA Today article; this was published around 1929

The Civil Rights movement in the 60s definitely related to the same rejection of racism theme becoming mainstream (Rosa Parks actually rejected a seat in the back of the bus in 1955; it started earlier), but it didn’t evolve to take that form of rejection until some time later.  My grade school mascot, an "Indian," was changed in the late 70s, so it had started then, only a decade and a half after the start of that broad movement.  The mascot became a "Super-Berry," a superhero version of a cranberry; different.

Seuss used animal or fictional creature images later on, since he couldn’t work with minority images to express or reject the same themes.  I see this as a development of maturity in his form of expression, his choice of communication method.  In this he could also by-pass addressing gender issues indirectly, because these animals or fictional characters didn’t need to have clearly expressed gender, when it wasn’t relevant to what he was expressing (in that same Slate article):

...He was also really resistant to criticisms of his work as sexist and wouldn’t change it on those grounds. He most famously said of Alison Lurie, who wrote a critique of gender and Seuss’ works in the New York Review of Books, something along these lines: Tell her most of my characters are animals, and if she can identify their sex, I’ll remember her in my will!

It seems like this modern discussion of this book cancellation is missing considering these levels of details and perspective.  The discussion I’ve seen, even from media commentary, has moved straight on to “wow, Suess was a little bit racist.”  I’m just not convinced.  I’m not even convinced he expressed bad judgment; it depends on his intention. 

By today's standards of course he did use terrible judgement, but I mean that in setting up opposition to images that were common then using those images wouldn't be problematic at all.  Getting back to the conclusion of that Slate article, that's exactly what they concluded:

Some people look at that and think, “We just must be wrong about Seuss.” That’s because they see racism as an either/or—like, you’re on Team Racism or you’re not. But you can do anti-racist work and also reproduce racist ideas in your work. And Seuss wasn’t aware that his visual imagination was so steeped in the cultures of American racism. He was doing in some of his books what he was trying to oppose in others.

This interpretation is definitely one possibility.  It's worth keeping in mind that the people who created the US Constitution also owned slaves, and surely were very clear on that contradiction.  I can't say why more of them didn't reject it more completely or more often than they did, but they didn't.

Placing cultural norm critique in recent examples

It's hard to find a comparable example of this somewhat blatant racism being ingrained in the mainstream today, isn't it?  Inclusiveness has extended far enough that low-hanging fruit of most striking examples isn't around.  Some people are still completely racist; I don't mean that.  I mean that within the least racist half it's hard to find comparable themes.  

Someone might see being ageist or ableist as new frontiers for subtle discrimination, or not so subtle but still accepted examples.  But a caricature version of old or disabled people shouldn't be used in similar unacceptable ways.  Shouldn't be; of course it still could happen.  Eventually saying "you kids get off my lawn" in jest might be seen as the same kind of inappropriate framing as comparing a Brazil nut to a black person's toe.

It's possible to go a step further, to look at examples of humor from the last 20 to 30 years that was designed to reject stereotyping through humor, but in a form that just wouldn't fly in terms of todays sensibilities.  

Two examples of 90s comedy come to mind.  In Living Color did comedy sketches about gay and disabled people that were intended to both poke fun at and reject negative images, using an approach that wouldn't be tolerated today (about gays in the military or a "handiman" superhero character).  Saturday Night Live did an Ambiguously Gay Duo sketch apparently intended to lampoon gay stereotypes.  Or maybe it was just in very poor taste (the last, I mean, or maybe all of it).  It could be hard to tell the difference between being in poor taste and not "pulling it off," just not being funny.  That Gay Duo superhero example was kind of a stupid premise; it's odd that it made it on the show at all.  Somehow it was supposed to be funny that maybe Batman and Robin were really a couple.

Edit:  in adding to this I'm reminded of an "Airplane" movie skit about interpreting "jive talk" of black people, adding subtitles to that scene.  In retrospect that was a clear expression of racism, just as the "blaxploitation" films of that era could rightfully be interpreted.  It didn't violate a social norm at that time.  Including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a positively framed character doesn't necessarily offset or resolve this depiction; it just was what it was.

Can we conclude that those television based examples were clearly trying to oppose extremist stereotypes that they were rejecting, through comedy, highlighting that absurdity? Maybe, maybe not. Today they would definitely be interpreted as an expression of that unacceptable bias instead, of racism.  Why the difference?  In general that societal norm is no longer so universal (bias against homosexuals or the disabled), so the indirect opposition just doesn't work. Of course we already know that gay people may or may not express the stereotypical mannerisms, and that handicapped people are exactly like everyone else, except within the scope of their disability.  That should have also been the case in the early 1990s but it definitely wasn't as universal a perspective.

In short, you can't make fun of a universal misunderstanding that has already been largely resolved.  Today SNL could do a skit making fun of Muslim stereotype preconceptions, because those are more universal, but the current cultural climate rejects use of such form in general.  It couldn't portray the characters negatively in any way, eliminating part of the form.  I've seen that kind of skit produced by SNL, about random airport security screening.  But it had to be so positive and limited that it eliminated most of the form typical of the Sacha Baron Cohen characters, like Borat, or the lesser known "Aladeen," related to Muslim stereotype.  

All of those Cohen character examples may or may not work as comedy or effective social commentary, depending on your perspective.  I think the Adam Sandler "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" movie is a good example of a film getting all that completely wrong.  It's not clear there was any somewhat indirect social commentary implied; it only made use of stereotypes, versus making fun of them, without offering any plausible redeeming observations.

The connection back to the Seuss theme is clear enough, right?  It seems likely to me that this was an expression of social commentary and critique, not racism.  Maybe just not an effective example of it.

Between the time he wrote the problematic Mulberry Zoo work in 1937 and the Cat in the Hat in 1957 maybe his skill at addressing such issues changed, or maybe a conventional framing of the ideas and images shifted.  Or both.  Maybe he was only trying to reject racism the whole time, in different forms.  Or it's conceivable that he could have went from being a bit racist to not as racist, or not racist at all, the common current media take.

It's really hard to tell what was happening on his end, but it helps to at least think it all through a bit before passing judgement.

Post-script:  referencing other research and discussion

Mentioning this link brought up more commentary about other media review of this subject, that adds good input about Seuss's later life feelings about these images, and a timeline for when different types of racist or racially insensitive depictions were published.  The earlier depiction of a black person with apelike features was probably published around 1929, but a clear date wasn't cited for that, just references to what seem to be related works.  This similar cartoon was dated:

photo credit Snopes article

The idea here isn't that racism was ok and normal back in the 1920s, although it probably was a lot more accepted and universal than in the 1950s or 60s.  It's to set up a timeline for a transition of Seuss's views and image publication practices over time.  Early works were more racist; that seems clear enough.  But this image from wartime is only more subtle in comparison, and targeted at a different group of people, not free of the same concern.

published in February, 1942 (BBC article source)

This BBC article citation lists indirect input from Seuss and direct statement from him about this issue and these depictions:

“I think he would find it a legitimate criticism, because I remember talking to him about it at least once and him saying that things were done a certain way back then,” Ted Owens, a great-nephew of Geisel, told The New York Times. “Characterizations were done, and he was a cartoonist and he tended to adopt those. And I know later in his life he was not proud of those at all.”

Seuss followed up a 1976 interview for his former college, Dartmouth, with a handwritten note in which he partially apologised for the cartoons. “When I look at them now they’re hurriedly and embarrassingly badly drawn, and they’re full of many snap judgements that every political cartoonist has to make… The one thing I do like about them, however, is their honesty and their frantic fervor. I believed the USA would go down the drain if we listened to the America Firstisms… I probably was intemperate in my attacks on them. But they almost disarmed this country at a time it was obviously about to be destroyed, and I think I helped a little bit – not much, but some – in stating the fact that we were in a war and we damned well better ought to do something about it.”

It's not exactly an apology or expressed regret over using racist imagery.  It's probably telling to include both the date, 1976, and the context, that of political cartoons, in this account.  It was common for cartoonish and overly exaggerated forms and images to be used in political cartoons at that time, not just of a wartime enemy or "hated foreign race."  Current political leaders and essentially every character in those works would be drawn as exaggerated cartoons.  It's highly insensitive by 2021 standards, or even the perspective of the mid 1990s, but drawing Herbert Hoover or Roosevelt in a similar way wouldn't be regarded as racist, even though it would essentially be the same thing.

FDR cartoon from 1935 (credit)

modern Carter and Obama cartoon, not different than those in the 70s of Carter (credit)

So it seems Seuss did go through a personal perspective transformation, and one that paralleled changes in standard American perceptions of race.  Highly negative black image depictions and racism itself were probably far more common in the late 1920s through some of the 1930.  Seuss didn't completely leave behind this type of imagery, using a related form as wartime propaganda in advocating that the US enter World War 2.  In retrospect that was the right call; staying out of that war was not a practical option, not in the long term best interests of the US.  The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor caused that shift in popular perception, not political cartoons.  But then it wouldn't have really fit with the style of political cartoons to not depict the Japanese characters in an exaggerated and cartoonish way, as shown in the 1935 and modern era political cartoon versions prior.

  

the transitions happen in Thailand, but they are behind (photo credit and story)