screwtape wrote:Just brought my intelligent and highly-qualified spouse up to date on the Charlie Hebdo issue (she has been absorbed by a motor vehicle accident causing a head injury to one of her kids in her orphanage in Kenya). Her estimate as a psychiatrist is that only 20% of a population will get the 'meta' meaning of satire, and she evinces no surprise that most people, when confronted with a Charlie Hebdo cover, will take away only the superficial inference that they are racist, sexist, classist, elitist etc. If so, shall we be kind to the idiots who see the magazine as having those qualities and try to educate them, or shall we rub their miserable misshapen noses in the stuff they do not begin to understand?
I never thought of satire as an intelligence test, but perhaps I'm simply displaying my brain privilege.
I think you need to be familiar with the source of the satire. I mean, look at us here: there are jokes referencing jokes that reference jokes. If you don't know the background you aren't going to understand, say, the joke a while back about women as toilets. If you are new here and you see the words 'fuck you into the ground with a rusty porcupine' that's going to look like a threat if you don't know what it's sending up.
Myers problem is he's a fucking hick who thinks he doesn't need to learn about other cultures, hence his inability to recognise 'twat' means 'idiot' in the UK.
It's not so much about general intelligence (IQ) but about language skills. It's about understanding that language isn't just a formal system, it's a means of communication which depends for a large part on understanding
intent. Language is a social skill. It requires a theory of mind; that's why many autistics have problems with irony.
In spoken language there are usually non-verbal cues that indicate someone is taking the piss; and again autism makes it difficult to pick up on tone or expressions that clue you into the
intent of the speaker.
The Horde don't recognise
intent. They're contaminated with Pomo notions about the 'death of the author'. Interpretation is about bending meaning to suit your purposes, not asking what meaning the speaker is
trying to convey. Understanding intent would involve trying to imagine what's actually going on in someone's mind.
I have Aspergers so I have to work at interpretation of
intent, especially in spoken conversation where I'm largely oblivious to non-verbal cues; not so much a problem in print where I'm on more of a level playing field.
I despair when people who ostensibly
dont have autism treat intent as irrelevant; it's
acting autistic. It's as offensive as pretending to be deaf.
Fuckin' cultural appropriation.
Shatterface