h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello and thank everybody who has answered, I have got some new points of view on the whole story.
I would like to comment some of your postings:

Mark wrote:"Bur also work can be misapproriated, Wagner would be a prime example and the use the Nazi's made of his music."

In my opinion it is a completely different story, and Wagner´s family supported Nazis and Hitler had for a while an affair with Winnie, Wagner´s daughter-in-law. Wagner himself was openly antisemitic. So here's the fertile ground for blokes like Hitler. (As Woody Allen said in one of his movies: "I can't listen to Wagner, it makes me want to invade Poland.") But on that thought, I think Nietzsche was misappropriated.

Saturnine wrote: "In my opinion, you always have to take into consideration the context of the time period in which the person was alive, and influences and the suchlike. There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity."

True, I mentioned historic context - But, there always have been people, educated people, who struggled against prejudices.

In the lifetime of Bulgakov (from the end of XIX century and until the thirties of the XX) it wasn´t a question of influences anymore, everybody - especially educated people - could form his own opinion about Jews.

Then, Saturnine wrote: "And being Anti-Nazi, is just as much of a prejudice as being Anti-Black, or Anti-Gay. If you think about it..."

Oh, no, dear, it is not a prjudice like others. Most of Nazis were convinced Nazis and they shared the idea of "Aryan" people, so far so good, but they are guilty because they could choose between being murderers or not. The same is valid for communists.


BTW Who is ( J the P )?

Solnushka wrote "I think in terms of reaction to their output, doesn't it make a difference that the woman you mention (if it is the person I'm thinking of) used her filmaking skills to actively promote Narzism? You can't enjoy those films, I'd imagine, without approving of their subject matter. I am assuming Bulgakov's books were not written to support the wiping out of the objects of his prejudice..."

That's the point - I am not sure if he didn´t.


Teasswill wrote:"The original question here is similar to one asked about Pete Townshend[...]If the art in question is not itself racialist or whatever, then surely it can still be enjoyed. But just as you can like someone but dislike their work, I think you can disapprove of someone but like their work."

This is a good point, although I wouldn´t listen to a person who I know likes child pornography, whatever this person is saying.



Clive the flying ostrich about Heidegger, thank you, for this story, it is in fact an interesting case and is also related to many other stories of scientists, or philosophers, who were Nazis or Communists and supported by their work these regimes.


Saturnine ("sweating 'til my clothes come off") wrote: "She never joined the Nazi party, [...] Therefore her work was in context of the time...not a personal belief. [...] One fears what one does not understand.

Leni Riefenstahl has now a lot of time for thinking about her life and if she had another choice. But I agree that people fears what they don´t understand and this is the point about e.g. Bulgakov. He must know that Jews are different from those greedy and dirty men and that they donot suck blood of Christian babies.

Looking for other answers and thank you once again

Being anti-Nazi *is* just as much as a prejudice as anything else...prime example is the Anti-Nazi League. Who condemn associations like the BNP because of their prejudices, shout "You f**king Nazi" at the individuals in the street and try to censor them and their activities...

...now, if you replace the word "Nazi" in that above paragraph, and replace it with "Jew" "N****r" "Fag"...you have a prejudice!! Wow. Isn't it amazing.

By the way, I'm not anti-semetic, I'm not pro-BNP (good lord, the thought of that.Such lack of historical accuracy)...I'm just presenting an objective opinion. I hate having to put these footnotes.

Just wanderin' through...

cheers Thnak you for your thank you, if you see what I mean.

I wrestled with this one liong and hard at Poly when we were studying Faulkner, a fairly unashamed fan of the days before slavery was abolished, for a number of reasons.

in the end, I decided I didn't give a damn - his writing is still amongst the greatest of the 20th century, and his viewpoint intelligently, thoughtfully and cogently expressed.

Herge was a (possible) nazi sympathiser. Tintin remains one of the great adventure story icons of our age, and even Speilberg is pursuing the film rights.

Solzenitsyin was a left wing intellectual who spent his life fighting against one of the most brutally totalitarian regimes the world has ever seen, but his books are as dull as ditchwater (other than A day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch) and no amount of political correctness will ever make them otherwise.

The bottom line is that an artist has no duty save to the material, and he has to be true to it, and to himself.

I've often found the work of Alice Walker not only anti-male but anti-white. The Color Purple is a good point in question. There doesn't seem to be one white person with a shred of humanity in them. Also, virtually all the men are pretty nasty as well. The whole ethos of the book seemed to advocate that black people should live separately and the women would be better off as Lesbians. Alice Walker had a get-out clause by setting the book in the past (the book is a little vague on dates). Ithought it a nasty book but it won a Pulitzer prize. I think the charge of racism/sexism often depends on who you are attacking.

"...now, if you replace the word "Nazi" in that above paragraph, and replace it with "Jew" "N****r" "Fag"...you have a prejudice!! Wow. Isn't it amazing." saturnine

Seems to me that the difference here is that you can be born a "Jew" a "N****r" or a "Fag", but you have a choice over whether you become a nazi or not.

Seamus

Hello. Good point. Hergé! Hergé's first books are cr*ppy and racist, both in design and the story. If he would have gone on like that nobody would like his work today. The important thing is that Hergé changed his mind. This also affected his work, his later work is superb. I mean, people could have sympathized with Nazis and then change their minds, there must have been something in Nazism that seduced people - in the case of Hergé I think this change is clearly visible also in his work.

Leni Riefenstahl's filming of the Olympiad 1936 is great. Today she claims that she had distanced herself from Nazism when she found out about the executions. I tend to believe her.

There was a huge and controversial discussion around scientology going on here in Germany. I still like Travolta as an actor.

I think that what an artist is and what he does can be separated to greater or lesser extents. In some cases the bad-sides appear more clearly in other cases they fall under the threshold. It's a pity, but thats human behaviour.

The other thing to do would be to only buy and consume work by artists that have proven to be morally bullet-proof. But that can be dull, and as we know moral changes with time... So.

Oh, and the other, other thing is that people should be careful when electing their paragons. This can get complicated.

HELL

Good point Seamus! I hadn't seen your post before...

HELL

I think it's fair to say that Herge remained on the right of the political spectrum throughout his life - try looking at the booksset in central and south America again and comparing it to what we know about about the Contra's and the Sandanista's...

You certainly *CAN* be born a Nazi.

Perhaps another interesting thought is literature which wasn't controversial at the time, but has become considered so - such as Enid Blyton 'Noddy' stories & Agatha Christie's 'Ten Little N****rs' since re-titled.

Ok. I have heard this before, but what's controversial about Noddy?

Wasnt the noddy thing something to do with "gollywogs"(sp)

Personally I prefered winnie the pooh to noddy so I don't really know...

How can you be born a Nazi ?

There's an excellent Entry on Hergé BTW covering also Hergé and Politics: A752401 - Have you seen that one?

HELL

The life, loves and beliefs of an artist seems less important to me than the quality, purpose and meaning of their work. You can't totally ignore the artists influences but I think that labelling the work of an artist based on their beliefs is narrow minded.

For example The Who are a cultural icon, in much the same way as the Beatles and the Stones. John Lennon was very pro legalisation of drugs, but you wouldn't stop listening to either Sgt Pepper or Imagine because of it, would you? I can't claim to have listened to the entire back catalogue of The Who, but I can't recall a single piece which has any bearing on Pete T's current predicament either.

Anyway we enjoy the work of artists whose days are long gone, many of whom were of less than savory characters, simply because the pieces are good.

Ok. I'm obviously being incredibly thick here. What's wrong with gollywogs?

unANIMOUS - A little thing called the Hitler Youth...the KKK...the BNP...that is how you are born Nazi. Actually, I dislike that term. It's only referring to the name of the political party. That is how you are born a FACIST...it's not necessarily about physical genetics...psychological upbringing plays a huge part in identity too.

Psychological upbringing doesn't mean you are born that way. You can be heavily influenced by those around you including parents yes, but this means you haven't been born it and there's no way you can put being a nazi or a BNP member alongside being Jewish or homosexual. It's a personal view and a choice. And an evil one at that.

Saturnine c'mon, be serious... There's no genes saying you're going to be a nazi or a fascist. But there are genes saying you are black or white. Between 1933 and 1945 it was enough to have a Jewish Great- Grandmother, for the Nazis being Jewish was a racial issue.

You're also not born a child-pornographer. And according to your logic it would be the same saying that being Anti-Childporn is the same as being a Racist. The point is: You cannot justify the existance of Child Pornography by any moral standard, but you must admit that a Jew or a Lesbian have (at least) the right to exist. That's the slight difference.

Actually, being that being a paedophile is a mental illness, it's a pretty fair assumption that you *ARE* born that way. Of course, it's gonna take a while before you become claseed as a paedophile, but it's more than likely that people are from birth.

As for *being born a facist*...if a member of the KKK has a baby with another member of the KKK...it's pretty fair to say that the baby is born into the KKK, and is therefore born a KKK member. You are not repsonsible for yourself until you are 18 year old. Until then, your parents, and other authority figures define you. You may not be genetically born a facist, but you are already pre-dispositioned to be one in the womb. Childhood is a defining time, which is why so many organisations focus on setting up groups for children, so that the belief and the habit is ingrained as early as possible.

I also don't believe there is any scientific evidence to suggest that anyone is born gay (feel free to prove me wrong) aside from a bunch of animals humping the same sex, and a German doctor who has been looking at sections of the brain. My psychology teacher by the way, had a ten minute rant about this man, saying that it was prejudiced to research this. (I actually don't understand why there is a need to prove that being gay is natural - does it matter? If you wanna be gay, be gay. It's not detrimental to society.)