>>213883970
It can be unfair how lopsided demands for acerbic introspection are in some parts of culture and the media. Its not fair if one group is encouraged to do so, and other groups, who have plenty to criticize and satirize, don't do so, at least not to the same degree with a comparable tone. But I don't think the answer to that is ripping apart art that has a critical view your group. That's good. In a perfect world that's something every group would engage in readily. That's enlightening. That's part of having curiosity towards yourself and the world. It isn't some quantum marxist para-modern whatever. An honest appraisal of western culture, its cultural heritage, its history, will show that skepticism towards your own groups and societies and your own motivations has been there the whole time and this is a major part of how it emerged and developed all its positive attributes. There is no challenge to tradition now that eclipses the reformation. Shakespeare wasn't some slave to the past, who got where he did through thoughtless obsequious reverence of what came before him. He engaged actively with it, he came to his own conclusions, he made fun of things, he was as much a subversion of what came before as a continuation of it, and the subversion itself part of the process of its continuation.
It is the case that white, middle class America contains and in its sense of propriety often covers up pretty much everything portrayed in Morel Orel, adjusted for the reality of a satirical cartoon. Its not the full picture, but its an artistically justified part of the picture, a way of looking at and framing something of reality that's worthwhile to articulate. Go write a good novel about some Jews being bad people like Morel Orel does with Christians. Post it online if no-one will publish it, and you can complain your contribution to the dialectic of art and reality is being suppressed. But that doesn't mean you should just rage at the art that could get made.
