July 26, 2008
The Science of Satire
Cognition studies clash with 'New Yorker' rationale.
Brilliant comment on the New Yorker cover controversy by 3QD friend Mahzarin Banaji, in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
On the morning of July 14, the Internet was clogged with discussions of the latest New Yorker cover depicting a Muslim Barack Obama and a terrorist Michelle Obama in fist-bumping celebration before a fireplace in which lies a burning American flag, while above it hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden.
Asked by the Huffington Post whether, in retrospect, and in response to the public outcry, he regretted having produced the cover, the image's creator, Barry Blitt, said: "Retrospect? Outcry? The magazine just came out 10 minutes ago, at least give me a few days to decide whether to regret it or not."
If Blitt were aware of the science of social perception, he wouldn't need a few days to decide. If he were cognizant of the facts about how the mind works, the simple associations that typify the brain's ordinary connection-making, he might have thought differently before he sketched the first flame in that fireplace. If he had paid attention to a few of the dozens of experiments available — even in the popular media — that describe how the mind learns and believes, he and his boss wouldn't have responded as they did to the questions posed to them the day after the cover appeared.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 11:12 AM | Permalink
Comments
More of:
The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations
Article by:
Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Frank C. Keil, Joshua Goodstein, Elizabeth Rawson and Jeremy R. Gray
And some of:
Much ado about nothing
By:
You-know-who
Combined...
Actually, Obama benefited from this gaffe
Posted by: Felix E F Larocca MD | Jul 26, 2008 12:48:36 PM
Great, a bright intellectual rationalizes the moral benefits of dumbing down and dresses self-censorship in scientific clothing!
And Banaji then piles on Blitt with all the wolverine unctuosity of of an Orwellian prosecutor: "Accused Blitt, you did not need a few days to decide. You are guilty of the crime of social perception unawareness!
I—who just happen to be fooking more brilliant and way better than you little creep— condemns you to the eternal hell of morally irresponsible artists! Take him away! Next case please!".
At the top of the blog, the author, Mahzarin Banaji, is introduced as "brilliant". After reading her article, i find the whole thing—and its smiling author—not so much brilliant as chillingly monstrous.
Posted by: jean-paul | Jul 26, 2008 5:24:29 PM
There's no good response to being charged with committing irony, is there?
On another note, I have to wonder if there's anyone, anywhere, who was offended by or mistook the meaning of that cover. I wonder if the campaigns' responses weren't a matter of: "This should keep them busy for a while," and "Crap; if we don't pretend we're bothered there'll be trouble- not throwing tantrums makes the news as 'perceived as weak'." As for us common people, I haven't heard any us of say, "I'm surprised the New Yorker, of all magazines, would expose the Obamas' plan on their cover." or "I can't believe the New Yorker joined the conspiracy!" So far, as jean paul pointed out, it's just been our tutors and governesses worried we might try to get in the grown-up intellectual pool when they aren't watching.
Posted by: Michael McCollough | Jul 27, 2008 12:12:50 PM
A prime example of too clever by half.
Posted by: mr.ed | Jul 27, 2008 12:22:29 PM
Don't tell Stephen Colbert!
Posted by: ThinkAfrica | Jul 27, 2008 2:03:46 PM
I'm also having difficulty finding the "brilliance" in this piece. I used to admire Banaji, but she's out of her depth here. Humor--and art--succeed by calling attention to our unconscious associations, rather than exploiting them. That's politics' job. To compare conscious artistic or satirical manipulation of images to Pavlovian conditioning is beyond asinine.
I'm confidant that most readers of The Chronicle Review, or 3QD, reacted, as I did, with an instant shock of recognition when they first saw Blitt's cartoon. We saw in one flash the aggregate of absurd slurs and fearmongering the right has been choking the air with since this campaign began. Blitt did not introduce the Obama=Islamist association; he referenced it, making conscious its ridiculous extremity, as Bogeymen have long been thus defanged.
Michael McCollough is exactly right to ask for some evidence that anyone, anywhere, saw that cartoon and took it at face value, demonstrating the failure of Blitt's "moral responsibility ... to know about how art is received by its intended audience."
As to the question of whether satirical imagery might have some more pernicious lingering effect, it's valid to ask; but it's worth remembering that after almost 300 years, not one Irish child has been sold as food to the English gentry. Somehow our better natures were able to prevail over the "the simple associations that typify the brain's ordinary connection-making and refuse to "transmogrify" babies into breakfast.
We can take some solace in knowing that Dr. Bajani's deeply frightful view of human nature is grounded in something other than science. Perhaps the words in the article's title have been scrambled, and she's having one over on all of us?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Jul 27, 2008 5:53:05 PM
Well, I read her article and I agree with her -- reluctantly, because I'm against every kind of censorship except self-censorship.
As I read, I was searching for an analogous situation from outside the world of political cartooning, so rife with misfires of many kinds. I thought back to the kerfuffle about people letting their children see the first Indiana Jones movie, which was quite violent. Because of the "30's movie" conventions Spielberg employed, much of the violence was plainly tongue-in-cheek, many parents figured it was cartoonish enough in that way not to count. Trouble was, kids under 13 weren't all that fluent in those goofy old conventions, and they saw casually inflicted bloodshed -- same as they would've in a Sam Peckinpah movie -- because that's what was there.
Aww, that's not how Spielberg meant it. Of course it isn't. But so what? We intend one reading, we effect another. As Banaji points out, it all happens very fast.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 27, 2008 8:07:57 PM
This piece was terrible, and any resonable artist ought to ignore it. Banaji basically says:
'I am super smart and a social scientist who recognizes the piece as satire, but most people are too lazy and stupid to keep satire and truth apart .'
Which leads her to conclude:
"it is the moral responsibility of the artist to know about how art is received by its intended audience"
More art pandering to the lowest common denominator!
Posted by: B | Jul 27, 2008 11:17:25 PM
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