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The Weekly Squib*
- squib /skwɪb/ noun: squib 1. a small firework that issues a hissing sound before exploding into a short piece of satirical writing.
¿Parles? ¡No!
The Catalan translation of the poem by American writer Amanda Gorman, which she read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, has been turned down because Barcelona translator Victor Obiols has the wrong ‘profile’.
The poem is ‘slam poetry’, performance poetry that combines the elements of performance, writing, competition, and audience participation. It is performed at events called poetry slams, or simply slams.
Obiols countered the idiocy of this obsessive wokeness by saying: ‘It is a very complicated subject that cannot be treated with frivolity. But if I cannot translate a poet because she is a woman, young, black, an American of the 21st century, neither can I translate Homer because I am not a Greek of the eighth century BC. Or could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-century Englishman.’
After Obiols had completed the translation, he was told by the publisher that it had been told that the word from the United States was that he ‘was not the right person’.
Obiols said: ‘They told me that I am not suitable to translate it. They did not question my abilities, but they were looking for a different profile, which had to be a woman, young, activist and preferably black.’
Twenty-three-year-old Gorman’s poem, The Hill We Climb, was inspired by the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, and contains the idea that democracy ‘can never be permanently defeated’.
Gorman is the youngest poet to have recited a work at a presidential inauguration.
Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld withdrew from translating Gorman’s work following criticism that a black writer was not chosen.
In the Republic, Plato argued that, by virtue of mirroring the messy temporal world rather than the ideal one of metaphysical Forms, poetry drew human eyes away from contemplating the Good. Plato thought they should be banned from his ideal republic.
That idea could have saved everyone a lot of time and effort.
Wrong check, mate!
The television series The Queen’s Gambit is a world-wide hit, made all the more astounding because it’s about chess.
The series won the 2021 Golden Globe for the best television mini-series, and Anya Taylor-Joy won the Golden Globe for best actress.
However, Variety, America’s famous weekly entertainment magazine for entertainment executives, showed how stereotyping and not checking the facts, can prove to be a rude ‘awokening’.
Variety gushed with delight that a non-white person achieved prominence in Hollywood. According to Variety it was very important that a non-white person won a Golden Globe.
The weekly noted that a woman of colour hadn’t won the award in 13 years and that Taylor-Joy was only the fifth woman of colour to win overall since 1982, when the category was introduced.
The problem? Anya Taylor-Joy is very white and very blonde. One can only surmise that the writer may have thought her name ‘sounded black’.
Also did no one from Variety watch the series?
Taylor-Joy spoilt the moment of racial self-congratulatory virtue signalling by promising that she wouldn’t dye her hair black for any future role since that would be ‘not fair’ to more deserving people of colour who should get work instead of her. But maybe she was just rubbing it in.
‘And now, the award for the most embarrassing moment of racial stereotyping goes to ….’
Dr. Seuss, the Progressive
In the unseemly race to be more woke than woke in the Dr. Seuss saga, little has been said about the political underpinnings of his work.
In The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, the Cat may represent colonial or absolute dictatorial power. The Cat tries to clean up a mess he made with a dress that was not his, but ends up making things worse. When the Cat realises that he can’t do it all by himself, he brings in helpers, which, it is suggested, may represent the working public, the underclass, or the democratic citizenry. When the Cat recognises the potential of the working people, he sees the need for democracy.
Horton Hears a Who! is said to have been written as a kind of atonement for his anti-Japanese editorial cartoons during World War II. Seuss visited Japan in 1953 and viewed the aftermath of the atomic bombs; he wrote this book the next year, dedicating it to a Japanese friend.
Dr. Seuss also addresses other social issues, such as conformity. Throughout the book, Horton stands out from the rest of the jungle animals. He is very different, and Horton refuses to conform. The key political struggle in Dr. Seuss’s lifetime was the struggle against fascism, where strict conformity was a cultural and political requisite.
Yertle the Turtle, which was published in 1958, has numerous allusions to the rise and fall of Hitler. The book is about how all creatures should be free. Ultimately the dictatorial leader falls. The book was removed from many schools for being ‘too political’.
The quote from the book, ‘I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here on the bottom, we, too, should have rights’, was one of the lines identified as a reason for removal of the book from schools, purportedly to protect the children.
So, who’s progressive now? Huh? Huh?
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