The White Peril 白禍

One sign of an advanced society is the TLC with which it treats artifacts of profound cultural significance.

Bruce Bawer has an article up at Reason about PC genuflection toward Islamofascism in Europe. (I can't help wondering, given the way hardee-har-har humor has taken over at that place over the last few years, whether that subhead isn't a good-natured-but-dopey allusion to Bawer's sexuality.) Anyway, there are plenty of chilling passages to choose from, but I think this is my, uh, favorite:

For some Europeans in the expression business, government limits haven't been necessary: they've opted for self-censorship. After being "warned by Muslim friends" shortly after van Gogh's murder, Dutch movie director Albert Ter Heerdt decided to "postpone" a sequel to his "multicultural comedy" Shouf Shouf Habibi! And in January producer Gijs van de Westelaken canceled a screening of Submission at the Rotterdam Film Festival, whose theme was "censored films." (Instead, the audience saw two pictures sympathetic to suicide bombers.)

Banning existing works is bad enough; as long as they aren't destroyed, they have to potential to survive until they can be safely appreciated. But when art is stillborn because of political pressure, that's an entirely different matter.

It's not, BTW, that I think the world needs more Piss Christs. Art that challenges religious preconceptions is as important as any other kind, but there are altogether too many people who think that blasphemy is, in and of itself, somehow boldly artistic and meaningful. (I'm thinking of blasphemy as it or the equivalent concept happens to be defined by whatever religion is being used for material.) It seems to me that just stomping on things requires minimal inspiration and, in a free society, minimal risk. It's often not even done with much technical or compositional flair. There's a difference, however, between not creating something because you realize the idea animating it was a puerile, empty one and not creating something because you're cowed by people playing the multi-culti card. That's very chilling.

Added on 4 December: Rondi Adamson notes a hopeful sign from Norway. It's not related to art, but it is related to multiculti distortions of how protections on speech should function:

Norway has an "Equality Minister," which, normally, would be something I would mock. But at least this person is trying to do something useful: Pull state funding from mosques that encourage wife-beating. Yes, you read that correctly.

The article she links is here.

She also has a post about women Islamofascists that, I'm guessing, will resonate with the womenfolk who read here (and the men who love them):

A Belgian woman tried to detonate a bunch of explosives she had strapped to herself, in an attempt to kill American soldiers in Iraq. She failed at the latter, thank God, but did manage to kill herself. Good. One less of them.

Smarmily, CNN is reporting she was "brainwashed" by her Arab hubby. Really? Why is it when women do these hideous things we need to believe they were brainwashed by a man? Maybe she was just an awful person, with awful ideas, all on her own. Maybe that's why she liked her husband--because his ideology mirrored hers.

It's fine to say that women are, on average and as a component of motherhood, biologically more disposed toward being empaths and soft conflict resolution and stuff. But it robs them of their autonomy and dignity as adults to talk as if no woman could ever have a nasty thought in her head without being overmastered by some nefarious daddy/husband figure. Free moral agency implies the freedom to be an evil bitch.

I was going to post about the Nikkei's acid editorial on the latest developments in the "trinity reforms," but then I came across Camille's Salon review of the new Madonna album. The restructuring of the Japanese government can wait.

Paglia's paradoxical reaction is funny--in effect: "This CD is such a trivial non-event that it's moved me to write three pages and reexamine my entire collection of dance records on vinyl." I've certainly expended energy over the last few weeks listening to Madonna's hokey lyrics and her producers' ripped-off rhythm tracks and thinking, This song should really be annoying me. Why am I not annoyed? Why am I SINGING ALONG? I don't know that I'd go in the direction Paglia does in this climactic passage, though:

Last summer, Madonna described her forthcoming CD as "future disco" — which raised the hopes of all die-hard disco fans that "Confessions on a Dance Floor" would be a masterpiece, a return to roots but also a visionary breakthrough.

That's not what we got — though you'd never know it from the gushing reviews, which applauded the CD for achieving Madonna's purported aim of making people dance. My blood boiled at this insulting reduction of dance music to gymnastics — mere recreational aerobics. I for one do not dance to dance music; disco for me is a lofty metaphysical mode that induces contemplation. (Of course, this may partly descend from my Agnes Gooch marginalization in the old bar scene, where I was — as Nora Ephron would say — a wallflower at the orgy.) Giorgio Moroder's albums, which I listened to obsessively on headphones, were an enormous inspiration to me throughout the writing of "Sexual Personae" in the 1970s and '80s. Disco at its best is a neurological event, a shamanistic vehicle of space-time travel.

I'm not sure what Agnes is doing in that paragraph. Her issue was that she needed to pull herself together and stop being a wrung-out ninny. Not a problem I can ever imagine Camille's having. Anyway, maybe it's because I've never felt marginalized at bars, but I don't see why dancing at a club is to be dismissed as "mere recreational aerobics" because Camille couldn't get a date thirty years ago.

I wish Confessions on a Dance Floor had had more songs that are good just to listen to, too, the way Madonna's un-remixed classic singles are. Straight-ahead pop melodies do come up, but only in the second half; the album is front-loaded with songs in which the choruses are connected by lots of chopped-up phrases instead of real verses. But whatever. Surely, having done all she's done for dance pop, Madonna's entitled to devote one album to giving the fags something to dance to, even if it's not another Lasting Contribution to art. At least here in Tokyo, "Hung Up," for all its flaws, is the first song since Kylie's "Can't Get You out of My Head" that makes all the guys of every age in a bar look up and react when it comes on. Some of the reactions, granted, are on the order of "This bitch never could sing and I wish she'd finally GO AWAY!" (Kylie got that, too.) But no one's indifferent. There's something very winning about Madonna's sheer ability to keep convincing you you have to listen and watch.

A few minor points: by the time Teena Marie made "Lover Girl," her collaboration with Rick James was long over. And in her rush to credit Giorgio Moroder for everything good that Confessions on a Dance Floor rips off, Paglia seems completely unaware of the half-dozen early New Order rhythm tracks that Price has nicked. I can easily imagine her dismissing New Order as not warm and sensual and "visceral" enough to be truly Dionysian, or what have you, but the fact is that they've had just about as much influence on dance music over the last twenty years as Madonna has. (Not that they were always original themselves. The drum break at the beginning of "Blue Monday" is stolen directly from Donna Summer's "Our Love.") Given all the arm-windmilling Paglia does about Madonna's lazily snagging ideas from obvious sources, you'd have thought NO would come up somewhere.

Added on 3 December: Ann Althouse posted about the above passage, too; as always, some of her commenters are hilarious.

Virginia Postrel has more about how cheaper, more accessible fashion goods are realigning the way people think about clothes. It's always nice to read someone who doesn't see style as a mere stalking horse for status-seeking or in-group formation. In Tokyo, especially along the swath from Shibuya/Harajuku/Shinjuku, everyone acknowledges pretty openly that those elements exist. But no one talks about them as if they made aesthetic pleasure somehow inauthentic.

I'm not so sure, BTW, that the article she cites is correct in saying that Target was the pioneer in making clothing by high-end designers more accessible. Regular old diffusion lines have been around for ages--though unlike Target, they don't put the lower-cost products of high-end manufacturers in stores where Americans who aren't rich are likely to shop often. (Burberry, BTW, took advantage of its late-90s efflorescence in popularity in Asia by creating two more casual youth-targeted lines: Burberry Black Label and Burberry Blue Label. I expect to hear of a tie-in with Johnnie Walker any day now. Let's plaid and enjoy unique Scotch taste!)