this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
300 points (93.6% liked)
Today I Learned
17792 readers
4 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I heard something like this on...Reddit? Maybe. A while ago. They said something akin to while Dahl was racist he didn't let it encroach upon his writting like Lovecraft. I don't really read Lovecraft (haven't since a long, long time ago) but I do have a compillation of Dahl's writings. And I liked them. Didn't feel put off by them, outside of the fact that he can write some gross stuff. I am not sure what else to say on the subject other than it stinks.
I loved his books as a child. As an adult I read them to my kids and I'm strick by a lot of inappropriate language, normal for the time. Racism, fat shaming, child abuse.
Its problematic, and if I was black, I dont know that I'd be comfortable reading descriptions of oompa loompas to my child in a world full of racists. It made me wonder if I should not have read it to munchokd, who would not understand the stereotypes used, nor the allegory to slavery.
Yeah he was fun for his time but is painfully out dated now
I mean kinda, I had fun reading his adult stuff as an adult. But to each their own. Also this was a handful of years back. So I've got the jist of what I read but can't give you a thorough play by play. But I will say as an individual who is a minority, of a minority, of a minority (the lazy way of saying I have some intersectionality going on here) that I don't remember being outright terribly sad face offended. Which when that happens, I tend to put down whatever I am reading/doing/going to and never pick it back up.
I know lovecraft was racist in his personal writings, but I can't recall any specific exams of it inside his fiction.
He wrote so many stories, I would guess it must have somewhere, but I don't remember any and I've read almost all of lovecraft.
I should fill in the gaps with Lovecraft actually and finish the rest of it.
That's great you got a collection of Roald Dahl, I've definitely read all of his books multiple times, they are great.
I don't see evidence of racism inside Dahl's works either, except for like the oompa loompa is coming from Africa, being African pygmies?
The glaring example."The Rats in The Walls" had a cat called "removed Man".
And of course admins censor the N word. Jesus Christ this world we live in is fucking scuffed.
Ah, thanks, I'll look at that
There's quite a few less obvious examples in how he explains black people like animals. He also does the same with Asians. Dude was a man of the times lol
Leaving aside his poetry and his collaborative works, here are some other examples of racism in Lovecraft stories.
"The Rats in the Walls" features a cat named "N----- Man"
"The Horror at Red Hook" refers to a villain as "an Arab with a hatefully negroid mouth"
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: "the wife [had] a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood."
Herbert West: Reanimator contains a particularly problematic bit of description:
The negro had been knocked out, and a moment’s examination shewed us that he would permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life—but the world holds many ugly things.
Edit: this is entirely copy pasta
Mm, I believe it, I am was so into the eldritch descriptions I must have glossed over the racist shit, lovecraft country is what brought it to my attention originally.
And I haven't read his does rice that show aired.
I didn't realize it was based off a book, I want to read that, now
Lovecraft country was so good. Shame about majors.
I will argue though what I love about Lovecraft country is probably not what most people did.