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8 responses to “Weird Al responds to Shelley on Twitter”
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I find the apology entirely unsatisfactory. Although Eric seems to have been joking, the fact that Yankovic apologized only for his use of the term ‘spastic’ leads me to believe that he may in fact have seen or been informed about the discussion here which also reduced the question of the offensiveness of the video to the sole use of that word. In fact, there are quite a number of other remarks in the video that are equally and even more deeply offensive, directly and deeply derogatory, inciting disdain for disabled people: for example, “get out the gene pool,” “try not to drool.” The first example advises disabled people that they do not have a right to exist and dehumanizes them. The second example mockingly refers to the fact that some disabled people drool and associates this behaviour with a judgement about their intelligence where this signifies their worth as human beings.
Thus, I remain resolute that these remarks constitute hate speech. Here’s wikipedia’s definition of hate speech: “In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by certain characteristics.[3][4][5][6]” The video meets the criteria to qualify as hate speech insofar as the video promotes prejudice against disabled people, disparages them, and insofar as disabled people are, in most jurisdictions, classified as a “protected group.” (I wouldn’t ordinarily rely on a wikipedia definition, but it’s good enough for a blog comment).
More is at issue here than use of the term ‘spastic.’ What is at issue – at least for me and other disabled people who have objected to this piece of “satire” – is the very concept, that is, the ableist concept that motivates the video and its content, wherein Yankovic deemed that the most effective way to mock and ridicule a certain set of practices and contrived group of people would be to mock and ridicule another group of people, a historically disenfranchised and demeaned group of people – namely, disabled people – and deploy widely-held prejudices about them in order to do so. Yankovic did not apologize for this. Nor did he give any indication that he regrets the fact that the video itself actually produces and reproduces these discriminatory attitudes and representations of disabled people. Taken together, the overall format and motivational assumptions of the video are much more damaging than any one of the offensive words that he chose to use.
In my initial comment on the other post about this horrendous video, I indicated that I hoped the video would be removed from the blog. Jon suggested that rather than remove it, we could take the opportunity to use the video as a teaching tool. And indeed, a “lively” discussion did ensue. In addition to my more general concerns about the way this video reinforces and puts (back) into circulation discriminatory attitudes about disabled people, I am very concerned about its presentation on a blog directed at professional philosophers. My request that the video be removed stemmed my conviction that such a display of bigotry against disabled people exacerbates the hostile climate that I and other disabled philosophers experience in the profession, a climate that compels disabled philosophers to leave philosophy, a climate in which less than 1% of full-time philosophy faculty in Canada are disabled and less than 5% of full-time philosophy faculty in the US are disabled. I don’t think that we should be confronted by this sort of abuse (and yes, I do regard this video as abuse of us) on a blog that services members of our profession and deals with professional issues and concerns. Given what we know about unconscious biases, these derogatory representations of disabled people could have far-reaching implications with respect to (for instance) how and even whether disabled philosophers will be regarded as potential colleagues, whether they will be given due respect in their departments, whether they will be harassed (subtly and not-so-subtly) by their students who read this blog, and so on. I think that no other group both marginalized in the profession and oppressed in society in general would be forced to see such a demeaning display presented here and then endure several days in which members of the profession, regardless of their own social positioning or amount of knowledge about disability, offered their casual opinions on whether the disabled people who objected to the video were justified in doing so. These events have typified epistemic injustice and the withholding of epistemic authority, that is, these events have been characteristic of the way that disabled philosophers and philosophy of disability are discredited and trivialized in the profession and the way that disabled people are dismissed and ignored in society at large. Readers of this comment might be interested to know that Jay Dolmage, who commented in the other thread, is an expert on disability and rhetoric. I have specialized my research on disability for over 20 years.
I should respond to Reinhard and Neil’s appeal to Ian Dury’s use of the term ‘spastic.’ They seem to think that Dury’s use of the term undermines claims that the term is offensive. I don’t remember the incident with Dury, but given the information that Neil and Reinhard have provided, I conclude that they are uninformed about disability politics. The wikipedia entry Neil provided indicates that Dury was challenging the stance that charities held on the term ‘spastic,’ not the position held by disabled people and the disabled people’s movement. The positions on disability advocated by charities (esp. 33 years ago) in the UK are generally regarded as at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the views of the disabled people’s movement. So, charities may have argued that ‘spastic’ should not be used but their arguments would have been paternalistically-driven ones, according to which use of the term is unkind, not sympathetic, etc., rather than grounded in notions of (say) oppression, discrimination, etc., as my objection to the video was. The Telegraph article that Reinhard offered seems to make clear that Dury was “reclaiming” language in his use of the term ‘spastic.’ Many disabled people have engaged in such activity with words such as ‘cripple,’ ‘crip,’ etc. Other marginalized social groups have done this with words such as ‘queer,’ ‘dyke,’ ‘girl,’ and so on. But this “reclaiming” of language by members of stigmatized social groups should not be confused or conflated (as Neil and Reinhard seem to have done) with how the video uses this term. Not at all. There is a huge difference between, on the one hand, calling oneself “a crip” because one wants to shock polite and patronizing elements of society and, on the other, having a comedian call someone a “moron,” “mouthbreather,” and “spastic,” in order to get a few laughs (at the expense of a disenfranchised social group).LikeLike
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Given my remarks above about the detrimental consequences that could accrue to disabled philosophers due to the presentation of the video on this blog, it might be a good time to post links to these articles, both of which examine conceptual, material, institutional, and interpersonal barriers that disabled philosophers confront in the profession:
Disabling Philosophy: https://www.academia.edu/6651947/Disabling_Philosophy
Introducing Feminist Philosophy of Disability: https://www.academia.edu/5812065/Introducing_Feminist_Philosophy_of_DisabilityLikeLike
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Does it make any difference who or what is being satirized? I tend to think that it does, or else satire, as an art form, becomes impossible. Who is being lampooned in this song? People who can’t use proper language, or people who make fun of people based on their pedantic notions of what language ought to be? (Or maybe a little of both?) Yeah, Weird Al makes a lot of really offensive statements in the song. This is nothing new for him. Go back to his “Eat it,” “Fat,” or “Amish Paradise,” and we’ll see Weird Al doing and saying things that are politically incorrect and offensive.
Just because he’s been offensive doesn’t justify hurtful language. But this is where I think that the target of the satire matters. Those people who share Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” because they totally get frustrated by other people’s language mistakes and want to make fun of them, too…well, the joke’s on them. I don’t know how to watch this video and not get the sense that Weird Al is making fun of the extremities of prescriptivist, self-appointed grammarians. The stuff that they say and the way that they react–they’re pompous asshats trying to tell other people what to do and how to behave. Weird Al’s videos have always made fun of self-serving, self-appointed authorities of this sort. The fact that they use this kind of language to which you are objecting is part of what makes these people so ridicule-worthy.
As for Weird Al’s apology, I take this as very tongue-in-cheek. He doesn’t know that lines in his song are offensive? Ummmm…the song is meant to be a deeply offensive parody of a song that is widely accused of being deeply offensive. If Weird Al is apologizing with an “I didn’t know,” he’s having a go at people. I have to think he did know. I have to think the inclusion of this language was very intentional. I have to think that this offensive language is there precisely to play off of the offensiveness of the original song and to underscore how offensive preening grammarians are.
You can disagree with my reading of Weird Al’s parody if you like. But accept for a minute that my take on the song is plausible. If that’s what the song is doing, is inclusion of this language, presented in a negative, satirical light, still wrong? If so, then you are basically saying that nobody ever is allowed to use negative, hurtful, offensive language ever, in any situation, particularly in art. Want to create a school-age character in a novel who is a mean, spiteful bully? O.K., but we can’t have him call anybody “four-eyes” or make fun of the “gimp” or any other language of that sort, even if doing so illustrates what a nasty piece of work this bully is. Want to feature a deeply racist character? O.K., but the character isn’t allowed to use any racial epithets that might be offensive to any racial group. Are there other ways to illustrate these negative qualities about these characters without having them voice such language? Absolutely. But is it wrong for an artist to have a character use that language? I don’t think anyone can or ought to make such a prescriptivist demand on art. I don’t think it’s reasonable to make such a blanket rejection of such language in every possible context. I don’t think that it is possible to make the claim that such language is necessarily immoral in every context.
We’re not going to solve racism by eliminating the n-word. We’re not going to end ableism by driving the r-word out of use. Trying to do so too often just ends up being an attempt to silence people and to stifle dialogue, which is to say that it is its own power play. Your own first post on this topic seems to be aimed at such exercise of power–you demanded that the post with this song be removed. If the objection to such language is that it is an exercise of power that may be hurtful to certain people, then I am deeply skeptical that a further exercise of power is going to make society a better place. To the contrary, it makes society a more dangerous place that is even more rooted in exercises of power.
There is plenty of room to question Weird Al’s song and to criticize its use of language. One can certainly disagree with my take on the song. The song opens up a very fruitful discussion of what actually construes “word crimes.” As such, I think it would be a shame to cast the song out. Just because something is art does not make it moral or immoral, nor does it exclude a thing from moral considerations. We should question the use of language in this song. You raise some legitimate concerns about how the language is used and about how and why Weird Al picks out language of disability to construct his satire. But I’m not finding a compelling argument that all such language ought to be stricken on the basis that it is offensive. To say so seems to me to be a claim that we oughtn’t to represent offensive things in art anymore, which is a boundary that I want no part in constructing.LikeLike
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I am very unsure how to react to Shelley’s comments. I see the force of her comments: that satire involving members of protected groups can reinforce bias against them, especially at an implicit or unconscious level.
But, at the same time, a huge amount of satire and comedy seems to trade in this kind of humor. I am thinking not just of off-color comedy that would make professional philosophers blush, but more “mainstream” forms of comedy, such as the Daily Show, Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live, the Simpsons, etc. Skits often play up stereotypes of women, blacks, Asians, LGBTQ persons, etc. in very overt ways. The thought is–I suppose–that if the comedy is not meant to be offensive, and if the stereotypes the skits invoke are already deeply ingrained in most people’s psyches anyway, then it is not deeply morally problematic to make jokes using them.
I make this post in good faith, willing to question my assumptions. Is the view Shelly is proposing that these kinds of humor are morally wrong and/or hate speech?LikeLike
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PS – Maybe the relevant issue is whether the stereotypes are being used in a comedy skit that itself is meant to empower people and/or reveal injustice. For example, a skit on the Daily Show invoking black stereotypes but meant to reveal racism against blacks would be OK, but a skit invoking black stereotypes to put down Obama for some policy unrelated to his race would not. This, I suppose, could be a way to save some humor involving stereotypes, while not allow stereotypes of one group to be used for a purpose other than helping decrease injustice against that group. Just a further thought…
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Shelley, my referring to the Ian Dury song was not meant to offer support for Weird Al. I am, as you surmise, not well enough informed about disability politics to venture a view with confidence: I didn’t attempt to do so. I simply wanted to draw the attention of those who did feel they were sufficiently well informed to discuss these matters to an earlier use of the word in a song.
For what it’s worth, your analysis seem plausible to me.LikeLike
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I’m with Chris on being unsure how to react. (This comment is only about the original issue, not other aspects of the lyrics or video.) Per the previous discussion on the original thread (which I just got around to reading today), I find the tone of Tremain’s complaints about WA’s use of “spastic” to reflect a failure of charity, if WA happens to be one of the presumably MILLIONS of American English speakers who don’t know that this is an offensive term, esp. in the UK. I had no idea. (How culpable am I or WA for not knowing this, esp. if the term has its offensive status mainly in UK English?) Tremain’s tone is combative and outraged, when perhaps a much greater part of what needs to occur is some gentle education, not this tone of outrage. Or maybe best methods in teaching now dictate a combative and accusatory tone?
That said, I’m happy to learn that “spastic” has these derogatory connotations and will avoid the word. (As someone mentioned on the original thread, I also recall the term being relatively common when I was younger, but was never led to think that it referred to a disabled group.)LikeLike
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Shelly highlights “prejudicial action” but not “incite”. The latter is not legally idle. No reasonable person would conclude that this song would bring about novel prejudicial action that would not have occurred independently of the song. A hate speech case would be laughed out of court. Speech can be wrong without being hate speech. Hyperbole like this makes progress against actual hate speech more difficult and it is irresponsible to continue making the accusation.
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