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alibi_shopI know it's not super worthwhile to pick on a random opinion piece on a genre entertainment magazine site, but there's something about "This Is Not Fiction" (by Charles Pulliam-Moore on io9) that really grinds my gears, and I'd like to think most people don't share this writer's obtuse point of view.
Basically, Pulliam-Moore is trying to make a point about how we should take politics seriously and not use things like Star Wars as metaphors, which... OK, I agree with the first part at least. But he's trying to make it by, among other things, dwelling on how one of Alexandra Petri's humor columns—the one about the Stormtrooper denouncing the bad guys at the very last minute as the Death Star is about to blow up—is "notably uninspired" and is "an attempt at humor masquerading as opinion"(??) and that Petri (or the Washington Post editorial department, since Pulliam-Moore seems to think this is a devious scheme by the Post to sneak "humor" onto a page where no one will recognize it, even though this is Petri's regular gig and she's fairly well known for such pieces) is trying to convince us that, since the Death Star is about to be blown up, the bad guys are defeated forever and all our problems are solved. He harps on this repeatedly and says jokes like this are "smoothing over the ugly realities."
Now, if the author just doesn't approve of humor in general, or thinks humor might be OK but not during a crisis when it's our duty to read nothing but cold hard facts, or doesn't like Petri, or thinks she should have made a more sophisticated joke... whatever. But I've rarely seen a better example of totally missing the point of a joke while attacking it. I can't believe anyone would have to explain this, but the point of that joke absolutely isn't "the bad guys are defeated forever, because that's what happened to the Death Star." That's not even true in the Star Wars movies: the bad guys come back again and again! And in the context of current reality, the point VERY OBVIOUSLY is along the lines of: "Look at the balls on these schmucks, putting out their last-minute denunciations as they flee the sinking ship. Anyone from the administration who says they weren't really a Trumpist at this point, when it's obviously just to cover their asses, should be laughed at and considered just as dirty as the rest of them." And the reason that's a point worth making—either in joke form, or in some other form that this guy would be OK with—is that we're well aware that our problems aren't over, that the rats didn't go down with the ship, and it'd be a really good idea not to just hire them onto other ships after a token affirmation that they meant well. Which is something we've seen happen many times before.
I know Pulliam-Moore understands that point because he makes it too in this very article ("One can't be certain what will become of the countless career politicians who willingly hitched their wagon to Trump's ... few of them will face any real repercussions")—while simultaneously insisting that a satire piece about exactly that same issue is bad because it distracts us from thinking about exactly that same issue. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work unless the idea is that fantasy stories are so stultifying, so inherently an opiate of the people, that they can't possibly convey a real point through satire and metaphor—that the kind of silly people who enjoy such entertainment will just go "Hey, Star Wars, fun!" and ignore the real-life implications. I wouldn't be surprised to see such an argument from some David Brooks-style moral scold with no interest in or understanding of any kind of fiction. But from someone who writes genre entertainment criticism it's more than a bit weird.
Basically, Pulliam-Moore is trying to make a point about how we should take politics seriously and not use things like Star Wars as metaphors, which... OK, I agree with the first part at least. But he's trying to make it by, among other things, dwelling on how one of Alexandra Petri's humor columns—the one about the Stormtrooper denouncing the bad guys at the very last minute as the Death Star is about to blow up—is "notably uninspired" and is "an attempt at humor masquerading as opinion"(??) and that Petri (or the Washington Post editorial department, since Pulliam-Moore seems to think this is a devious scheme by the Post to sneak "humor" onto a page where no one will recognize it, even though this is Petri's regular gig and she's fairly well known for such pieces) is trying to convince us that, since the Death Star is about to be blown up, the bad guys are defeated forever and all our problems are solved. He harps on this repeatedly and says jokes like this are "smoothing over the ugly realities."
Now, if the author just doesn't approve of humor in general, or thinks humor might be OK but not during a crisis when it's our duty to read nothing but cold hard facts, or doesn't like Petri, or thinks she should have made a more sophisticated joke... whatever. But I've rarely seen a better example of totally missing the point of a joke while attacking it. I can't believe anyone would have to explain this, but the point of that joke absolutely isn't "the bad guys are defeated forever, because that's what happened to the Death Star." That's not even true in the Star Wars movies: the bad guys come back again and again! And in the context of current reality, the point VERY OBVIOUSLY is along the lines of: "Look at the balls on these schmucks, putting out their last-minute denunciations as they flee the sinking ship. Anyone from the administration who says they weren't really a Trumpist at this point, when it's obviously just to cover their asses, should be laughed at and considered just as dirty as the rest of them." And the reason that's a point worth making—either in joke form, or in some other form that this guy would be OK with—is that we're well aware that our problems aren't over, that the rats didn't go down with the ship, and it'd be a really good idea not to just hire them onto other ships after a token affirmation that they meant well. Which is something we've seen happen many times before.
I know Pulliam-Moore understands that point because he makes it too in this very article ("One can't be certain what will become of the countless career politicians who willingly hitched their wagon to Trump's ... few of them will face any real repercussions")—while simultaneously insisting that a satire piece about exactly that same issue is bad because it distracts us from thinking about exactly that same issue. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work unless the idea is that fantasy stories are so stultifying, so inherently an opiate of the people, that they can't possibly convey a real point through satire and metaphor—that the kind of silly people who enjoy such entertainment will just go "Hey, Star Wars, fun!" and ignore the real-life implications. I wouldn't be surprised to see such an argument from some David Brooks-style moral scold with no interest in or understanding of any kind of fiction. But from someone who writes genre entertainment criticism it's more than a bit weird.
