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Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

nytimes.com

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Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#171

Post by gotchange »

13thLetter wrote: post #167
frenchman_in_ny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The producers also admire the hack. From the show's creator & executive producer: "We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air. However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.” [0] [0] http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homeland... (edited for clarity)

> The producers also admire the hack. The producers know that if they publicly complained they would be torn apart on social media and in the press.

If life gives you lemons, ...

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#172

Post by oh_sigh »

gotchange wrote: post #168
oh_sigh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's courageous to graffiti anti-establishment messages under despotic regimes....it's not courageous to hide a message in a western TV show that you were hired to do work for.

If you want to debate this from an ethical standpoint, you could argue that the artists might have breached the producers' trust when they bombed the location with opposing and negative messages about the show. In an ideal scenario, these artists are encouraged to return the compensation they received if any because they should not benefit financially from their political opponents esp. when the contract was on a bon…

Yes, they breached trust, but it was not courageous, because there is basically zero chance of any kind of negative consequence for the individual, and any possible negative consequence would be extremely minimal.

My point about the courageousness of doing something like that under a despotic regime was not to say that is the only way to be courageous - my main point was that, if your bacon isn't on the line, it probably isn't courageous. For an example within the american system, even though I don't quite agree with all his choices, what Snowden did was courageous, because he had to literally flee the country for what he did.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#173

Post by draw_down »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #157
draw_down wrote: post #108

I thought this was funny, and striking: https://twitter.com/sandman_leb/status/579021886845243392

It's funny, but not very striking. Ask an LA native how LA gets depicted in tv shows and movies. Or NYC. Or Belfast.

Well, the point isn't exactly that they film in a different location than the setting. Never seen LA with dirt roads.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#174

Post by drdeca »

dragonwriter wrote: post #152
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] the belief that race exists. (Which it manifestly does, as a cultural construct.) That's like saying that aliens exist as a cultural construct. Let's not mix reality and widely shared fantasies. How would you call the unscientific belief that races exist in the human species, if not "racism"? > a lot of time "racism" is used broadly to refer to bigotry based on race, ethnicity, or nationality True, just like…

> That's like saying that aliens exist as a cultural construct. No, its not. Its more like saying color exists as a product of perception. Races are a categorization, categorizations do not inherently exist at all, they exist as products of mind only. > How would you call the unscientific belief that races exist in the human species, if not "racism"? If by that you mean the unscientific belief that the cultural perce…

I'm not sure that categories don't exist outside of the mind of a person.

I think sets (for example) probably have a real existence, in a sense.

some of the categories we choose might not have anything special about them to mark them as any more real than other categories that we would see as arbitrary, but that wouldn't mean that they aren't real, just that they aren't more real.

But maybe the ontology of abstract objects isn't very relevant here.

Also, I don't mean to say that the categories we use are all arbitrary, just that even the ones which are arbitrary (if any) I think still exist.

Also, I don't right now present any argument for why I believe what I do about abstract objects. I'm just stating beliefs that I have, and which your post seemed(?) to assume something that contradicts.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#175

Post by draw_down »

Archio wrote: post #2

I haven't seen Homeland past the first season - but can someone who has seen more shed light on the alleged "racism" of the show? Is the show actually racist in its depiction of Arab-speaking characters, or is this simply a manifestation of Hanlon's Razor - "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"?

Racism is stupidity. Hanlon's Razor says nothing about the kind of stupidity in play.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#176

Post by ArkyBeagle »

vijayr wrote: post #61
unknownzero wrote: post #21

This is the best hack I've seen on Hacker News in months and it doesn't even involve a computer. Great job to everyone involved in pulling it off, even if the casual viewers didn't notice.

I am conflicted - on one hand it is a great hack, no doubt. But they also screwed over the producers, who trusted them and paid them for their work.

I can't speak for the producers, but this would not offend me were I one of them. I'd be quite happy with it.

If I were a producer of the show I might go so far as to actually discuss this issue with the (graffiti) artists on camera, so long as they agreed to be reasonable and collegial about it.

One of the great opportunities for the producers is to shine a light on the show not being particularly racist, but that characters might be - a little.

Having said that, it sounds difficult.

I think the best example of this is The Americans, which stops just short of making the FBI look stupid while kind of raising its eyebrows at the then-prominent "evil empire" narratives. The ...constraints of Soviet political culture are also shown well.

But the craft level of "The Americans" is extremely high.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#177

Post by ArkyBeagle »

arbitrage wrote: post #68
vijayr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am conflicted - on one hand it is a great hack, no doubt. But they also screwed over the producers, who trusted them and paid them for their work.

If the producers asked for graffiti, then they certainly got what they paid for. Graffiti has been used as a form of protest and criticism for as long as there has been both paint and walls.

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#178

Post by xsmasher »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #41
hackuser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homeland isn't a documentary ... True, but I don't feel it's not enough for Homeland's producers, or anyone, to say 'it's not our problem'. We all live in a community and are responsible for taking care of it and for the consequences of what we do. "No man is an island." People absorb their views of the world from TV, in part. With widespread prejudice against people who believe in Islam, portraying stereotypes of…

>many people, seeing only stereotypes, come to believe them. Seems like the local education system has failed if people can't think critically or rationally. Blaming the arts is wrong and only treats the symptom. Do you believe that all information needs to be carefully controlled so that people don't get the wrong ideas? If so, what are you doing on an open/liberal/libertarian forum like HN then? Anyone can post any…

> Do you believe that all information needs to be carefully controlled

No, but nor should it be free from criticism.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#179

Post by stefantalpalaru »

dragonwriter wrote: post #152
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] the belief that race exists. (Which it manifestly does, as a cultural construct.) That's like saying that aliens exist as a cultural construct. Let's not mix reality and widely shared fantasies. How would you call the unscientific belief that races exist in the human species, if not "racism"? > a lot of time "racism" is used broadly to refer to bigotry based on race, ethnicity, or nationality True, just like…

> That's like saying that aliens exist as a cultural construct. No, its not. Its more like saying color exists as a product of perception. Races are a categorization, categorizations do not inherently exist at all, they exist as products of mind only. > How would you call the unscientific belief that races exist in the human species, if not "racism"? If by that you mean the unscientific belief that the cultural perce…

> categorizations do not inherently exist at all

They do, after you define objective criteria for clustering the objects in a set. For biological race, the main criterium would reveal a genotype-level clustering that matches the phenotype differences - and we see this in dogs, but not in humans.

Re: Graffiti on ‘Homeland,’ Unnoticed by Producers, Calls Show Racist

#180

Post by omonra »

pessimizer wrote: post #89
Archio wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty telling that what? The show is racist? I think there might be more nuance involved.

As racist as it would be if there were a US show based on how the French are scary, and no one involved with the show spoke French. It means that they are likely exclusively trading in stereotypes and Western orientialist imagery and tropes. I've never seen the show.

"exclusively trading in stereotypes and Western orientialist imagery and tropes"

To be fair, they could also be simply trading on whatever happens to be in the news. If you open a newspaper / watch the news, most of what you will see about the region can be summed up by 'crazy islamists killing people, threaten America with annihilation'.

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