Should things that are now culturally verboten be cancelled?

[LeicsDom]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68546969
The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meat by Whistler, which by modern standards is wholly inappropriate, was hidden away let it offends those who like to be offended.
Now the Tate Britain gallery is displaying it alongside a video presentation which seeks to contextualise the piece.
Surely this is way better than hiding the mural away. All countries have, historically, been guilty of all sorts of behaviours which, hopefully, are not tolerated today. Only by looking back at our mistakes can we avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Colonizer checklist:

-justify behavior with "all countries/cultures have done xyz"
-moral relativity
-"cOnTeXt!"
-calling it mistakes to escape judgment for the fact that you lie about your history and glorify the "mistake makers."
-"if we erase the past, the terrorists win!"

Oops yall! I accidentally trafficked humans for hundreds of years and robbed an entire continent of all their resources. MY BAD YO! Just a little mistake, no Biggie Smalls.

 

[Latimer]

Interestingly, the Tate Britain Cafe' has lovely pastel-colored ceiling paintings reminiscent of Cocteau and Picasso's neo-classical period. I doubt they would offend anyone, although the proportion of female to male figures must be 20 to 1.

France-Lise McGurn – Display at Tate Britain | Tate

www.tate.org.uk

I'm going to be in London in May and plan to visit the Tate for the Sargent portrait/costume show. Perhaps I'll buy a membership so that I can visit the members-only dining room and check out the Whistler murals and how they have been contextualized. Having seen reproductions of the murals, I understand why a few scenes are now deemed offensive. No doubt the video is very educational and interesting, but this all seems a bit of a tempest-in-a-teapot.

 

[Latimer]

Colonizer checklist:

-justify behavior with "all countries/cultures have done xyz"
-moral relativity
-"cOnTeXt!"
-calling it mistakes to escape judgment for the fact that you lie about your history and glorify the "mistake makers."
-"if we erase the past, the terrorists win!"

Oops yall! I accidentally trafficked humans for hundreds of years and robbed an entire continent of all their resources. MY BAD YO! Just a little mistake, no Biggie Smalls.

Have you seen the Whistler murals?

 

[Latimer]

So far no one is objecting to the Whistler frescoes in the Brompton Oratory showing Catholics being drawn-and-quartered by Protestants in Reformation England. Perhaps, given the temper of the times, they are being applauded.

 

[rareboy]

So far no one is objecting to the Whistler frescoes in the Brompton Oratory showing Catholics being drawn-and-quartered by Protestants in Reformation England. Perhaps, given the temper of the times, they are being applauded.

But that is just white on white sectarian violence. Even I feel no remorse for them.

 

[Peloso]

Only by looking back at our mistakes can we avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

. . and yet half of the time we just keep on keepin' on.

 

[rareboy]

As far as I am concerned, don't cancel it at all...but white guys...don't prance around all butthurt and precious if I savage the fuck out og some piece of racist, misogynist, homophobic piece of historical trash just because you think it is pretty.

The knife cuts both fucking ways.

 

[fredroy]

Who is decreeing what is now verboten? If it's the same folks that do stuff like shows where Ann Boleyn is a sub Saharan woman, FUCK THEM.
And negro Vikings? Seriously?

Quit re-writing history.

Anyway. The past is a different place. Don't hide stuff "which by modern standards is wholly inappropriate". I imagine there a lot going now that would have had you burned at the stake 400 years ago.

 

[bankside]

If those two dingbats are indulged in their desire to destroy a painting, let it please be done in old Opernplatz, Berlin, in the time-honoured bonfire. The dialogue has become so absurd. “Interrogating” a painting, like a solitary bulb hanging down while a recalcitrant prisoner sits sullen in a wooden chair, while Columbo bangs on the table demanding answers.

Just “comment” on the fucking thing ffs. No need for the fucking Spanish Inquisition. And if people are “retraumatized” may I suggest a third exhibit be welded onto these two, a big bin full of horse blinders that people can put on while they traverse the room, we can call it “participative art” and it will “let people experience agency as they curate their own ignorance of the unsettling imagery of dead people.”

Ffs let’s chisel off the hieroglyphs because Set “othered” Ptah and NONE OF US SHIULD STAND FOR THAT FILTH.

Goddamn people are dumb.

 

[unloadonme]

Who is decreeing what is now verboten?

That was going to be my question too.

 

[LeicsDom]

So far no one is objecting to the Whistler frescoes in the Brompton Oratory showing Catholics being drawn-and-quartered by Protestants in Reformation England.

That's because white religious intolerance is not the cause of the day

 

[rareboy]

If those two dingbats are indulged in their desire to destroy a painting, let it please be done in old Opernplatz, Berlin, in the time-honoured bonfire. The dialogue has become so absurd. “Interrogating” a painting, like a solitary bulb hanging down while a recalcitrant prisoner sits sullen in a wooden chair, while Columbo bangs on the table demanding answers.

Just “comment” on the fucking thing ffs. No need for the fucking Spanish Inquisition. And if people are “retraumatized” may I suggest a third exhibit be welded onto these two, a big bin full of horse blinders that people can put on while they traverse the room, we can call it “participative art” and it will “let people experience agency as they curate their own ignorance of the unsettling imagery of dead people.”

Ffs let’s chisel off the hieroglyphs because Set “othered” Ptah and NONE OF US SHIULD STAND FOR THAT FILTH.

Goddamn people are dumb.

Funny you should mention Damnatio Memoriae.

It has been a time honoured practise in human civilization for probably thousands of years. We certainly know it was a thing for the ancient Egyptians onward.

And certainly the colonializers of all stripes have had no issue with cultural genocide and erasure over the last 1000 years.