International Blog Against Racism Week: A HIGHLY uncomfortable post about the Holocaust & safe space

[cimorene]

I've been wanting to make a post for International Blog Against Racism Week. I know what I want to post about, too. A post on this subject has been in my mind for a year. It's hard to know how to make it, though. I'm not sure what to say, but I think that's part of why it's important to say it - because it's not a coincidence that it's hard. It's an internalised censor from culture at large silencing the minority's voice, so I'm going to struggle through making this post anyway. I'm not sure if I can expect it to be articulate.

About a year ago, something went down on my friendslist under friendlock. An lj friend posted some really upsetting humour about the Holocaust under a filter. The post said on it that it was filtered, and the content was cut with a warning that it was tasteless. I remember that word because of how ridiculous a misnomer it appeared to me after I looked at the post.

The content was a series of macros, images with lolcat-style misspelled captions referring to a current fandom pairing war. The intent was to ridicule shippers who were considered to be acting entitled by claiming to be oppressed. As such, the captions were things like "My fandom really has it bad" and "My fandom is so oppressed", that sort of thing - superimposed on actual black and white Holocaust photos.

As you scrolled down the entry, a horrifying line of graphic images of emaciation, starvation, chained prisoners, burial trenches, and dead bodies unrolled before your eyes with these captions. Then there was a laughing apology, reiterating the OP's belief that the images were really in bad taste. Most of the comments in the post were laughing.

Although the original post was horrifying to me, I think what made the incident stick was the comment exchanges. There were cheerful comments like "LOLAUSCHWITZ! Ahaha, I'm going to hell." And then there was the first thread where a commenter wanted to call the OP on the post. She apologised for her intrusion and said that she found the content upsetting - obviously struggling, I think, with the same sense of shame at taking offense that I've been battling in trying to compose this post. It's not that the responses weren't polite. The creator of the images asked that the OP not be blamed - she had practically forced her to post them, she said.

The OP said she was sorry that anyone had been offended and that wasn't her intent. She didn't apologise for the images themselves, though, or indicate second thoughts about the jokes themselves or the issues involved. Instead, she said that different people have different thresholds for humour, between what is offensive and what is funny. Essentially, she said that whether the graphic Holocaust images as a metaphor for fandom kerfluffles were funny shock humour or not was simply a matter of taste or opinion which she and the people offended happened to disagree about. After a lot of thinking about it - a year, you know? - I think that what bothers me so much about this exchange, though it's hard to place my finger on it, is that sidestep away from guilt or apology. It appeared as if the comment hadn't caused her to think any more about it or to change her opinion. And though something she said indicated she would make a follow up post, I waited for one for months before giving up and defriending.

You'll notice that I'm conspicuously not naming names. I've thought a lot about that issue. On the one hand, it seems no malice was behind this, but on the other, the issue seems huge to me, and I feel that a friendslock is providing a basic shield from the kind of public scrutiny that that behaviour would usually be subject to in fandom. Although I think that accountability is a good thing and that racism isn't okay in private at all - in the end, I simply have to respect the privacy of friendslock, so I have to ask that no one do anything to endanger or breach that privacy in my journal.

Finally, I have to apologise for how I haven't really been able to move beyond just... relating the facts and into conceiving a coherent essay or bringing this to some sort of point. I'd love to be able to dissect it and discuss it - appropriation, how the race issues in the Holocaust can sometimes become invisible to some people; my own and other people's backgrounds and whether they can or should make any difference to how they experience this; safe spaces and how safe they actually are (I think this conflict shocked people on both sides with how the space they thought was safe was not); the line between "thresholds" involved in shock humour, and irony, and how this relates to, say, Tarantino movies. I... probably can't talk about those things in any significant way just now, though. I'm still bewildered and hurt by it. It's possible I won't respond to any comments on this post, either, because it's still mildly triggery. I apologise for that, too.

Comments

[shotboxer.livejournal.com]

My first thought is that, as much as this has to do with racism, and shock humor, and safe spaces, and all the other things you mention, it also has to do with the power of the image. I think that if someone had made a post expressing a similar joke *in words*, with no pictures, just drawing a comparison between people saying they were oppressed in a fandom flame war and the Jews (and other groups) that were killed and tortured during the Holocaust, people wouldn't have had such a strong response. It's the images that pushed it into a whole other realm. Not only that the 'humor' was conveyed using images, but that the images used were (I assume) ones of real Holocaust victims, rather than, for example, a cartoon from Mauss or a still from Life is Beautiful or some other image depicting the Holocaust but not actually showing the real Holocaust, as do photographs of the actual events and victims. There is also a added layer of shock and emotional response because of the cultural place of the Holocaust in the larger society, people's personal identities, family histories, etc., that would possibly not be there is someone had posted something similar using images of the victims of a well-known serial rapist and murderer, for example, even if that rapist-murderer was known to have specifically targeted Jewish women and carved swastikas into their bodies, or something. There is something about the Holocaust itself, its magnitude, the cultural dialogs that have grown up around it, the questions about responsibility and who can/would be a perpetrator in similar circumstances that discussion of it provoke, that puts this whole incident into another realm again. Not sure how I feel about that, not that the Holocaust gets this reaction, but that the other heinous crimes and genocides would not, I believe, provoke a similar level of discomfort in people. I suspect there might have been some latent gender dynamics as well, since the majority of well known Holocaust victim pictures show men, and, in Western culture, images of victimized, 'weak' men are much, much rarer than images of victimized women, so that when they do appear they get a stronger response because we are not as inured to what they depict. Of course, I have no idea if any of the above speculating helps you sort through your thoughts and feelings at all, but I really admire you for making the effort, in private and in public. I hope you are able to eventually find some sort of, if not peace, then quiet around this issue.

[norah.livejournal.com]

I clicked, too. I haven't been able to read that person's journal since. I don't think they're a bad person, I don't dislike them, I just never, ever want to see something like that again. It was so far beyond the pale (IMHO) that I don't even know how to talk about it. Like you, I defriended - I couldn't understand how that could be funny. I didn't even want to get into it, I just wanted to get far, far AWAY from it.

I feel weird saying this, but it wasn't personal, in a really weird way. I guess it's like when someone you love holds an opinion you hate - you don't stop loving them, but you still hate their opinion and you're sorry they have it. And you really, really don't ever want to discuss it with them. Gah.

(Though, for the record, Tarantino movies don't appeal to me much and I found the ending of the Kill Bill trilogy so incredibly misogynistic I couldn't believe it had been filmed in this decade. WTF. So maybe my thresholds are not as other people's thresholds, I mean, obviously they're not. I'm okay with where they are, though.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I don't really mind movie violence in most cases, even in cases like Tarantino where the effect of the violence is humour, which is what made me think of the parallel. But the movie violence is funny because what it comments on is violence, or indirectly, on media genres and their past portrayals of violence - and sometimes 'funny' isn't exactly the word, Tarantino films are certainly referentially rich, very conscious of the genres they emulate/duplicate/pay tribute to/parodise/all at once. Even in a celebration of a violent genre, there's a consciousness of the clear separation between the movie violence and real violence. I have to guess, here, but I think that accounts for the reason that I find Tarantino hilarious while humour in general of THIS type sickens me - because I definitely wouldn't be amused by or okay with such jokes about actual examples of real-life serial killers either.

I can't say for certain where my "threshold" is. I didn't think I was particularly sensitive - I kind of thought I was less than normally sensitive, in fact. The idea, itself, that this issue simply boils down to a difference of "threshold" and that that constitutes a difference of opinion with no normalising implications for the behaviour of one group or the other - that doesn't sit right with me. That feels wrong, but I can't pinpoint why; and after all, what if it only feels wrong to me because, in fact, I am (as backhandedly accused by a comment that was intended to be polite, but which unintentionally had a very condescending effect on me) over-sensitive, and therefore at fault myself? I don't think that I am. But it's been almost impossible to quash that feeling. It almost prevented me from making the post.

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

I still feel guilty for urging you to talk about this, that one time, because it clearly made you very uncomfortable.

Personally I'm stuck with feeling futile rage for all the unthinking stupidity in the world. :(

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

I think that two things about the Holocaust, in addition to its sheer magnitude, set it apart from other examples of wholesale murder and genocide. These two things make it even more beyond the pale and making jokes about serial killers or other instances of mass killing. (For the record, I think many people don't think any jokes about serial killers or other mass murderers and their victims are funny and I think those people have a point.) But the two other factors are (1) that the Holocaust was so well organized, systematic, and impersonal and (2) that so many people were involved. Some of these people had shown no real tendency towards violence and racial hostility before. So it simultaneously makes us look like helpless cogs in a machine and unwilling participants in some possible future genocide. Anyone could become part of something as evil as the not see Holocaust machine and that's why we don't want to treat it lightly. Or at least, that's one reason.

[ida-pea.livejournal.com]

Essentially, she said that whether the graphic Holocaust images as a metaphor for fandom kerfluffles were funny shock humour or not was simply a matter of taste or opinion which she and the people offended happened to disagree about.

Really? She really said that? What a stupid, ignorant bitch. I'm glad I don't know who this person is. Ugh.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I don't know who this person is. Ugh. I think I'm glad that no one has to experience what could happen if this issue were talked about publically in fandom with their name attached. But at the same time, I can't stand that there's no accountability for it, that people don't have access to the information when forming their opinions and that people who were involved are still out there, thinking it's okay, thinking that behaviour doesn't earn opposition or any sort of outrage.

[thesewordselope.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I remember that.

[copracat]

Well, there's difference of opinion and there's socially inept and unable to empathise or even use your imagination.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I remember that, and - well. At the time, what I wanted to say, and did not was, roughly speaking, this:

It's been said that humor is a tragedy happening a long way away to people you don't know. And in that sense, I guess I can see, intellectually, that those images could somehow become funny for someone who is privileged enough to be far removed, insulated and protected, from all that they represent. But my family was fractured beyond repair in the Holocaust. We lost whole branches. Seventy years on, we're still dealing with the fallout. I spent one summer transcribing the diaries of a family member who was in a concentration camp, and it was an almost sureally painful experience. So I am not far enough removed from the tragedy of the Holocaust to find any part of those images funny, no matter what the context, and it's painful for me to think of someone using them for the purpose that poster did. And I really didn't want to see those images in any context, let alone that one. A warning for tastelessness - look, that's not the word I would use, and it didn't serve the purpose warnings normally serve (to warn and thus protect people who cannot handle the content in question), and if a deficiency of taste is the only aspect of that that you can see that might be potentially problematic, perhaps you are not looking closely enough.

But I didn't say that, and I didn't defriend the person in question, either, although I avoided her posts for a while and still flinch when I see her name and remember that post. Which is why I'm very glad you posted this. When I saw that post, the only comments were positive ones, and I took from that a) that no one else was troubled by the post and b) my sick, hurt feelings were obviously my problem, my issue, my fault. I mean, if I'd articulated that, I'd have known it was stupid, but it wasn't a conscious thought, just an instant conclusion. So thank you for this. (And I'm so glad to learn I'm not alone in still being distressed and actively thinking about it all this time afterward.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

It's not only her name which I can't stand to see around now - and I think I could never have kept reading her posts (which also applies to her fiction unfortunately) - but also the names of the people I recognised making those positive comments. I still feel ill thinking about a friend of mine - not in the lj friend sense - who was there. I'd never know how to talk to her about it, so I can't talk to her about anything else either. Perhaps your explanation really covers the whole difference of experience there, but I can't help thinking that nobody alive in the United States today can be that insulated by priviledge, can they? It wasn't so many generations ago. They must have contacts with jews, with people from the countries most touched by the Holocaust, with people who lived through the war. How many degrees of separation can possibly exist? How could that be enough? It strikes me as, like the arguments about slavery being in the past, shocking - shocking that that illusion of distance could even begin to exist for anyone. And I guess I'm just really unable to compartmentalise this issue in any way - maybe I just suck in general at compartmentalisation.

[franzeska]

Humor is how some people deal with horror. Perhaps that's not the case with this particular example, perhaps it was just thoughtless in addition to being tasteless, but Holocaust humor is a staple of Jewish comedians in the US. I don't think it's about compartmentalization: I think it's just a cultural difference in acceptable uses of humor.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I really don't think so, since I'm also American. It would be a miracle if I had somehow managed to grow up separate from American cultural ideas about humour, which I'm hardly unaware of. As for this instance, it's abundantly clear from the context that it had nothing to do with "dealing with horror", unless you consider the whining of slash fandom teenies involved in shipping wars particularly horrible.

[vass]

Thank you for posting this.

[acari.livejournal.com]

I really hope people on my flist would know me well enough to never ever filter me in on posts like that. I don't know what I would do.

There is inappropriate humour, and then there is this.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, people have funky ideas of what's amusing, especially fandom people. After all, look at the common fandom phrase: "Winning a fandom fight is like winning the Special Olympics - you're still a retard." Accompanied by a picture of someone with Down's Syndrome when it's in macro form. As someone who has worked with the mentally challenged (including lovely people with Down Syndrome), I find that extremely degrading, and I think it enables a certain attitude towards the disabled.

Thing is, people who are mocking are trying for the shock factor, and some of them think it is necessary to cross the line. I personally don't - I've mocked plenty of times without going the route of Bad Taste, and I've read a lot of amusing mockery and parody that wasn't of Bad Taste. But jokes about victims of genocide and the disabled qualify as bad taste, "sry 2 say".

[mirandafox.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, people have funky ideas of what's amusing, especially fandom people. After all, look at the common fandom phrase: "Winning a fandom fight is like winning the Special Olympics - you're still a retard." Accompanied by a picture of someone with Down's Syndrome when it's in macro form. As someone who has worked with the mentally challenged (including lovely people with Down Syndrome), I find that extremely degrading, and I think it enables a certain attitude towards the disabled.

Sorry, you don't know me but I'm just glad I'm not the only who finds that bloody macro beyond stupid. Not just because it's offensive but because it's inaccurate, since the Special Olympics isn't just for those with mental disabilities.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

I was linked here from elsewhere, and it's raised some good issues. It seems like macros have become an 'acceptable' (note air quotes) way for people on the internet to be incredibly insensitive or offensive. I used to have a macro community on my flist, because I thought it'd be funny. An influx of macros featuring a wrestler and loads of 'choke a bitch'-type jokes came up on it once, and seeing as I didn't know who this wrestler was, I googled him. Turns out he strangled members of his family to death. Really hilarious. I defriended the community after that.

I know I have a very warped sense of humour myself, and often feel guilty at laughing at things I shouldn't. Perhaps I should think a bit harder about what exactly I'm laughing at in future. Thanks for the eye-opener.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

Would you--god, I honestly don't know how to phrase this without sounding like a total jerk, which I swear is not my intention--would you then want people to censor themselves, in the privacy of their own heads? To force themselves to not find some aspect of the Holocaust funny? Assume for a moment that I do know it was a horrendous tragedy and that people are still affected by it etc. Some of us just have fucked-up senses of humour; it's a tendency to detach and observe from afar. It doesn't connote a lack of caring, just...the ability to step back. A lot.

To get a few things out of the way: anyone being offended should have priority, i.e. no, I'm not arguing for people's right to make jokes publically despite it being hurtful to others; yes, "tasteless" was probably insufficient warning unless y'all knew her very very well; no, no one should ever be made to feel bad about pointing out that this offends/triggers'em.

But in a private setting, in a highly-filtered post, or perhaps amongst just one or two friends, or even in the privacy of someone's own mind, basically in a place where it's contained and could not hurt anyone...would you insist that they should stop finding it funny?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I don't think your question really makes sense in this context, because there was nothing there to find funny until she made the joke. The context was a shipping war. It didn't have anything to do with the Holocaust inherently. It's not a case of ridiculing exaggerated comparisons by the oppressed to the Holocaust a la Godwin's law. The Holocaust comparison was original to the joke; "God, we're so oppressed" doesn't have anything to do with the Holocaust.

Furthermore, what you say has nothing to do with what you find funny - the latter is a matter of what you hear, see or think, and is generally something that can't be helped, besides having no effect on other people if you don't say anything about it. So yes, I definitely think that people should "censor" themselves in what they say in any sort of wider setting - the fact that people were in the filter who were hurt and offended shows that the filter wasn't made with any sort of knowledge that the people involved would not feel that the Holocaust affected them closely. I think that if you want to make a joke on a triggery subject, you should absolutely be sure of your audience.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

Eh. Those last two sentences answer my question well enough.

[isilya]

would you then want people to censor themselves, in the privacy of their own heads? To force themselves to not find some aspect of the Holocaust funny?

No, I don't want them to censor themselves -- I want them to be better people. And there's just no way to be a better person if you're still gathering with your buddies, sniggering in corners over lynching jokes, or being a disgusting sexist lecher, or giggling over pictures of emaciated torture victims.

But in a private setting, in a highly-filtered post, or perhaps amongst just one or two friends, or even in the privacy of someone's own mind, basically in a place where it's contained and could not hurt anyone...would you insist that they should stop finding it funny?

The content of your character is formed by what you do in private. I don't care about the thin veneer you paste on in public; if you're giggling in private over real life instances of human beings being hurt, then it HURTS YOU. It makes you a toxic person. It chips away at your humanity and your ability to empathise.

Let's give a real world example shall we?

I had a friendly acquaintance with on of my neighbours. I took him cookies and other freshly baked goods. He carried heavy items for me. We chatted when we met in the stairwell. I had a fond regard for him and we exchanged spare keys.

One day, I discovered that when in the sole company of white men, this neighbour made jokes along the lines of "coons and gooks are good to fuck".

When I found out, I felt like vomiting. Thankfully, he moved out soon after.

However, my trust that people are who they present themselves as and are not just covering their inner loathsomeness with a bit of civility has been damaged forever.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

My ability to empathise is not one bit damaged by my ability to sit back, detach, and be amused, and then come back to self. I think the Holocaust is an awful awful thing and its (continued) victims have all my sympathy and support, but I'm fucked in the head and can laugh at anything. I will probably be making jokes at my parents' funerals (*thumping on wood*), put it that way.

I asked the question as to whether people would want me to stop finding it funny because I can make my amusement at it go away. I don't think I will, because I don't see the point, but I wanted to know what other people would say. I didn't mean censor in the conventional sense of hiding it so as not to offend public decency; I meant it more in the sense of treat it like thoughtcrime, in their own heads. Note the emphasis.

However, my trust that people are who they present themselves as and are not just covering their inner loathsomeness with a bit of civility has been damaged forever.

Mm. Most everybody pretends, in some way, shape, or form. All that differs is what they're hiding.

[franzeska]

Instead, she said that different people have different thresholds for humour, between what is offensive and what is funny. Essentially, she said that whether the graphic Holocaust images as a metaphor for fandom kerfluffles were funny shock humour or not was simply a matter of taste or opinion which she and the people offended happened to disagree about.

I'm afraid I'm completely in sympathy with that opinion. (Of course, she obviously misjudged her audience, and she should have placed clearer warnings on the post or filtered it better.) Then again, I love Sarah Silverman.