The CCP has no idea how much they will miss this incarnation of the DL when he’s gone, because the 14th incarnation is their Arafat.
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The CCP has no idea how much they will miss this incarnation of the DL when he’s gone, because the 14th incarnation is their Arafat. When faced with an artifact which contradicts accepted narratives, China reacts one of two ways, both of which are similar to how CBS is handling Charlie Sheen. It’s amazing what people will choose to care about. As yet another CCP film/wankfest (“Red Army Expedition East”) commences production, the actor selected to play the role of heroic, young-ish Mao is causing a bit of a stir. Zhang Tielin, the 53-year old actor perhaps most well-known for playing various and sundry Manchus, has been deemed insufficiently Chinese to play the role of the Great Helmsman-in-training because Zhang is a British citizen. Oh, the horrors. As usual, the nationalist nitwit brigade has been in a tizzy over this scandalous situation. Peter Foster reports on the uproar in the Telegraph: “It’s an insult to Chairman Mao. I strongly protest and suggest that the relevant State Administration authorities intervene,” said one contributor to ifeng.com, the news website of China’s Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV. “It is not enough to resemble Mao in outlook and temperament,” said another on a site called the Voice of China, “the actor must be politically qualified in terms of identity. Otherwise it will be a blasphemy to Mao and will hurt the feelings of billions of Chinese.” Leaving aside that there are only one billion (and change) of Chinese, does it really matter? After all, looking at the |
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Copyright © 2012 Jottings from the Granite Studio - All Rights Reserved
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Criticism, Critical Analysis, and Hurt Feelings
Reading about a new book by Stefan Collini: That’s Offensive! Criticism, Identity, Respect.
Professor Collini is a professor of intellectual history and English literature at Cambridge University, and in this, his latest book, he looks at the very meaning of criticism, what it means to criticize, and distinguishes the most common understanding of the term (“fault-finding”) with it’s more academic usage, that is the close analysis of a particular subject or text.
Scott McLemee’s short review for Inside Higher Education notes, quite correctly, that in an increasingly poisonous and rancorous atmosphere for the public debate of important topics, understanding the goals and rhetoric of criticism is an important first step to overcoming the resistance to listening to a critical analysis of our own cherished ideas and views. (In the Levensonian language of Modern China, not to let ideas about “what is mine” prevent me from hearing “what might be true.”)
Of course, thinking of this through Levenson, it’s hard not to recall the rather prickly response on the part of the Modern Chinese state (and their supporters and advocates) to recent criticism of their handling of the Nobel Prize. In a recent Global Times masterpiece with the whimsical title of