Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Mr. Kennicott, Meet Mr. Cohen's E-Mailers

I posted the other day on Mr. Kennicott's article in the Post on hatred and bigotry. Today Richard Cohen follows up on his past columns (criticizing Stephen Colbert's humor and supporting Al Gore's speech on global warming), specifically on the nature of the e-mails he received in Digital Lynch Mob:
"The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations."
I think the two should compare notes.

[I'll take this opportunity to update my post on Kennicott. I must admit I blogged on the article in the heat of the moment, a sure way to lead to distortion and misreading. Upon rereading the piece, Kennicott uses most of his piece talking about how art handles hatred, claiming that modern narrative art in whatever form doesn't present hatred as living emotion, but rather as something to be examined in the laboratory. I think that's mostly true--I guess it's another way of saying it's mostly "politically correct" or post modern. At the end he asks: "Could our political life benefit from allowing hatred to speak openly once again?" My point was that there's plenty of hatred spoken in our political life already. However, to give Mr. Kennicott the benefit of the doubt, he may have been asking: "if modern art put hatred front and center, as a reality, would it help political life?"

I think Cohen and I would say "no". Certainly there was enough anti-LBJ and anti-Nixon art in the late 60's and early 70's to go along with the hatred in the streets to undermine the thesis. I'd guess the problem is that neither narrative art (novels, plays, films) nor anyone else is self-reflective enough to handle hate in art in a modern setting. Miller may have said "attention must be paid" to a salesman, but no one writes with equivalent understanding of those who commit genocide. (There may be an exception for Palestinian terrorists; but even a movie like "Munich" doesn't portray a hater.)]

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