Depicting Depictions
Depicting Depiction 3.28.’06
Further Running Reply
to remarks about my WHRW radio show “TALK AMERICA”
To “depict a sexual act” during the hours 6am-10pm for TV is prohibited by the Federal Communications Commission.
This prohibition is not reasonably applicable to use of “male anal rape” in referring to the type of sexual perversion connected with group-fantasies of the sort Freud diagnoses in the case of Daniel Shreiber (who thought God Almighty was after him at night, for “voluptuosities”. Publishers of Freud’s analysis weren’t publishing obscenity, although it was about topics public discourse generally avoided out of politeness. .
That is how the phrase is used on my program. The site of the program is Harpur College radio Public Affairs talk show Talk America, myself host. The theoretical context is analysis of the dynamic of the unconscious group-fantasies, as they are called, which underlie the contemporary historical process. These are feeling states expressed by “tokens” of communication whose “texts” stand for things a group is obliged to share by the way they are referred to and made to feel about themselves. For example, on Talk America, we might talk about how cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed could be expected to make Muslims feel whose sexuality was bound up with this form of religious sublimation. That would counter Jack Cafferty, or Bill Reilly, on of them, leaning into the TV microphone and spouting smears at “barbaric behavior sparked by cartoon,” as if “we Americans” were beyond that.
Grammatical note: The verb “to depict” is to represent as in pictures, its #1 definition meaning (Webster’s New World Dictionary). Most curious, to myself, obsessed by sign-use, is how cleverly the prefix “de-“ denudes “pictures”, so to speak, thus enabling “depicts” to slide over to its #2 meaning: “to picture in words; describe”. Words, after all, acquire use in mental life after pictures, and the history of this word-compound for that developmental illustrates that! However, it is self-evident that rules for decency applying to pictures do not apply to words, otherwise all literature using sexuality as the gold mine of metaphors would be banished. Reference to the time of day in this case (6 am to 10 pm) is irrelevant, since it concerns protecting children from objectionable TV content. Radio is talk, not pictures, so children could not, in principle, be exposed to anything the rule was meant to prevent, even if they understood the words, and how old and precocious would that require them to be?
a. …Therefore: as a phrase, sans context, “anal rape” is neither “decent” nor “indecent”. Calling it such is a logically improper attribution, a category mistake in Gilbert Ryle’s terms, predicating what is proper to the thing (the act referred to) to the language used to communicate it.
The educational context here, as stated elsewhere, is diagnosis of the use of “terror”, as in the phrase “war on terror”. This is a massive defense of the unconscious group-fantasy of being anally raped. THAT is what is “depicted” at Abu Ghraib. The inordinate obsession on rules, regulations, laws and punishment that occupies minds and institutions across the land and, I suppose, the globe, shows how massive it is.
Terms for emotionally charged things, of course, are properly used with greater care and sensitivity, as in references to body parts, sexual acts, birth, death, sacred remembrances, etc.. In contexts specified educational, however, emotions must be subordinated to the value of communicating objective information.
Two FCC chairmen, Michael Powell (Collin’s son) and Kevin Martin, have iterated that “context is everything” – leaving aside proscription of profanity.
Context is what determines the emotional content of communication, not magical intrinsic properties of word sounds, though these auxilauries are often needed to indicate intended associations, especially when talking about other’s word uses. But even profanity can be used endearingly – not suggesting that I shall. German folk sometimes refer to their kids as “my little shitter”. What’s wrong with that? Similarly, censorship of contexts in which “anal rape” is used for information would obviously be absurd.
It is an absolute principle of free speech that others not be allowed to determine one’s context of communication: “Here is what you are doing -- saying something nasty.” I reject anyone’s claim to such arrogance in principle and will not speak further to them about anything, since nothing prevents them from redefining and twisting anything said to fit their purposes.
POLITICAL MOTIVES FOR CENSORSHIP – Connections between the “war on terror”, and the “Libby Lobby”.
Further Running Reply
to remarks about my WHRW radio show “TALK AMERICA”
To “depict a sexual act” during the hours 6am-10pm for TV is prohibited by the Federal Communications Commission.
This prohibition is not reasonably applicable to use of “male anal rape” in referring to the type of sexual perversion connected with group-fantasies of the sort Freud diagnoses in the case of Daniel Shreiber (who thought God Almighty was after him at night, for “voluptuosities”. Publishers of Freud’s analysis weren’t publishing obscenity, although it was about topics public discourse generally avoided out of politeness. .
That is how the phrase is used on my program. The site of the program is Harpur College radio Public Affairs talk show Talk America, myself host. The theoretical context is analysis of the dynamic of the unconscious group-fantasies, as they are called, which underlie the contemporary historical process. These are feeling states expressed by “tokens” of communication whose “texts” stand for things a group is obliged to share by the way they are referred to and made to feel about themselves. For example, on Talk America, we might talk about how cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed could be expected to make Muslims feel whose sexuality was bound up with this form of religious sublimation. That would counter Jack Cafferty, or Bill Reilly, on of them, leaning into the TV microphone and spouting smears at “barbaric behavior sparked by cartoon,” as if “we Americans” were beyond that.
Grammatical note: The verb “to depict” is to represent as in pictures, its #1 definition meaning (Webster’s New World Dictionary). Most curious, to myself, obsessed by sign-use, is how cleverly the prefix “de-“ denudes “pictures”, so to speak, thus enabling “depicts” to slide over to its #2 meaning: “to picture in words; describe”. Words, after all, acquire use in mental life after pictures, and the history of this word-compound for that developmental illustrates that! However, it is self-evident that rules for decency applying to pictures do not apply to words, otherwise all literature using sexuality as the gold mine of metaphors would be banished. Reference to the time of day in this case (6 am to 10 pm) is irrelevant, since it concerns protecting children from objectionable TV content. Radio is talk, not pictures, so children could not, in principle, be exposed to anything the rule was meant to prevent, even if they understood the words, and how old and precocious would that require them to be?
a. …Therefore: as a phrase, sans context, “anal rape” is neither “decent” nor “indecent”. Calling it such is a logically improper attribution, a category mistake in Gilbert Ryle’s terms, predicating what is proper to the thing (the act referred to) to the language used to communicate it.
The educational context here, as stated elsewhere, is diagnosis of the use of “terror”, as in the phrase “war on terror”. This is a massive defense of the unconscious group-fantasy of being anally raped. THAT is what is “depicted” at Abu Ghraib. The inordinate obsession on rules, regulations, laws and punishment that occupies minds and institutions across the land and, I suppose, the globe, shows how massive it is.
Terms for emotionally charged things, of course, are properly used with greater care and sensitivity, as in references to body parts, sexual acts, birth, death, sacred remembrances, etc.. In contexts specified educational, however, emotions must be subordinated to the value of communicating objective information.
Two FCC chairmen, Michael Powell (Collin’s son) and Kevin Martin, have iterated that “context is everything” – leaving aside proscription of profanity.
Context is what determines the emotional content of communication, not magical intrinsic properties of word sounds, though these auxilauries are often needed to indicate intended associations, especially when talking about other’s word uses. But even profanity can be used endearingly – not suggesting that I shall. German folk sometimes refer to their kids as “my little shitter”. What’s wrong with that? Similarly, censorship of contexts in which “anal rape” is used for information would obviously be absurd.
It is an absolute principle of free speech that others not be allowed to determine one’s context of communication: “Here is what you are doing -- saying something nasty.” I reject anyone’s claim to such arrogance in principle and will not speak further to them about anything, since nothing prevents them from redefining and twisting anything said to fit their purposes.
POLITICAL MOTIVES FOR CENSORSHIP – Connections between the “war on terror”, and the “Libby Lobby”.
posted by Sid Thomas | 4:57 PM
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