Halloween Thoughts on Americans and Racism

I wouldn't be surprised if Robin di Angelo (bestselling author of White Fragility) and Ibram X. Kendi (likewise, How to Be an Anti-Racist) turned out to be employed by Donald Trump. 

The three belong to different sects, but sing the same satanic hymn: divide and conquer. The first two want inner division: self-doubt, self-criticism, misplaced guilt. The last goes big time, ambitiously splitting whole populations.

If there's a true religion, it's love and unity. That's the message of the world's major religions, of John Milton, of Dr. Martin Luther King, of anyone seeking the common ground that is somehow still there under our feet, if we but looked for it. Comedians are trying but it's getting harder. Thank you, Dave Chapelle. Thank you, Sacha Baron Cohen.

Here come Ten Commandments!

I'm starting my own religion, even if the only one listening is the Great Pumpkin:

(1) Thou shalt not mistake empathy for "cultural appropriation." You can, if you're Thomas Mann, write a story in the voice of a woman past menopause ("Black Swans.") You can, if you're white and not an immigrant, write a story in the voice of a Mexican woman fleeing to the United States with her young son. That's what Jeanine Cummins did in her wonderful novel, American Dirt. You can, if you're Mark Twain,  become both Huck and Jim.*

(2) Thou art not thine ancestors. If your great grandfather was a lyncher or a Nazi, it doesn't mean you're tarred with the same brush. 

(3) Thou shalt know "Tarred with the  same brush" isn't a racist phrase.

(4) Thou shalt not think being on time is"white."

(5) Thou shalt not pretend individualism is "white."

(6) Thou shalt understand slavery as America's original sin, but not as America's founding idea.

The slave-owning founding fathers were promoting a political reality in which slavery would not exist.

P.S. Toussaint L'Overture owned slaves.

(7) Thou shalt honor common sense. In other words, it's okay to feel you "don't see color."

(8) Thou shalt have a sense of humor:

(9) Thou shalt "take responsibility" for the content of your character, not the color of your skin.

(10) Thou shalt remain down to earth--not swamped in the mystical notion of an all-engulfing white supremacy. 

 

*If you haven't read Zadie Smith's marvellous essay on the topic of who gets to write what, torpedoing that stay-in-your-own-lane philosophy, then read! Her essay appeared in November 2019 in the New York Review of Books. 

Why Squid Game isn't a Takedown of Capitalism

Because it's a takedown of narcissism. The players might be deemed narcissists--I could make a case for their narcissism--but it's desperation and denial that propel their eyes toward that golden piggy dangling from the ceiling. The game architects aren't desperate, unless you count their boredom as desperation. 

Spoilers ahead! 

Yes, the narcissists are swimming in money--so much that they don't know what to do with it, but to assume capitalism is what makes them so evil is to assume that all rich people are the same, that their money transforms them into doltish sadists who enjoy donning sparkling animal heads straight out of Suetonious to watch their version of gladiatorial combat--which is even more cruel than actual gladiatorial combats. The ancient Romans got a kick out of throwing a Christian to the lions or pitting two handsome young men against each other, but  they didn't go for the kind of mind games devised by the malignant narcissist architects of Squid Game. The sweet old man and his pals in golden animal head masks force friends to trick each other in order to survive. 

A you-tuber suggested Capitalism turns each player into a "mere number" but that's a false definition of capitalism. Capitalism creates individual success and under the right circumstances the success of a group. Capitalism promotes creativity and effort. Capitalism is what kept the Puritans and Calvinists from offing themselves; they believed in working so hard they'd get a sign from God they were saved--maybe they'd get rich, become a CEO, and feel safe from the fires of hell. 

Squid Games succeeds in making us feel sorry for the dying old man who started it all even as he reveals his horrifying inability to feel anything but a child's delight in a game. Gi Hun roars, "How could you do that to people!" and the old man--sounding like a four-year-old ignoring Mommy--asks him to play one more game. He smiles in anticipation; he seems not to remember or ever to have noticed the suffering except to be amused by it, as a child might be, not understanding the permanence of suffering and of death. 

There's no reason to assume the old man's self-centered world is the result of capitalism, or of his being so rich he doesn't know what to do with his money. To assume capitalism as the primum mobile of his sadism is to assume all rich people are all alike. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a point when he wrote in "The Rich Boy" (1926), paragraph 3: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand." Maybe. He wasn't born rich and had a natural envy of those who were, who have a natural envy of those who weren't. Even those born rich can't be assumed to be all alike. Rich people may not have to worry about how to pay the rent or buy food, but like most people they find things to worry about. Many never know who their friends are. 

If Squid Game isn't a takedown of capitalism, but a portrait of corrupt narcissists subsisting on sadistic seductions and murders, why are we all watching it? Probably to see how it ends--but also to feel, as we shiver with the players crossing the glass plates from which many tumble to their deaths, or the marble-rolling during which friends cheat friends, or any of the other horrible tricks, that "I lived through this but none of it was real! I killed with the worst and died with the best, and then I woke up, discovering my life, with all its petty frustrations, is so much better than that of either the perps or the players."

The actors are great, too.