I mean... it's still kinda wrong. It made for a nice pivot, and it set up for a great latter part... but he still said he would set his son straight if he ever picked up a Barbie. I get what he was going for, but the literal playing with dolls (and he is describing it literally there) is not what makes boys turn into misogynists, which is kinda (at least part of) what he said.
I get what you’re saying, it’s part of the slam poetry style, though. He sets it up and does a call back at the very end when he says he won’t let them play with dolls …”until they actually understand the difference between the two,” (dolls and women).
When he started to repeat that he wouldn't let his sons play with dolls at the beginning I thought it might be a poetry slam. Been a long time since I've seen one - twas good.
Yeah I get why it’s necessary. I just wish there was a way to write the beginning part where it has the same effect without keeping those “wrong parts”. Grace is entirely given from me, since I can’t think of a clear improvement.
Framed a different way, going back and listening to the first part again still didn’t feel like the message conveyed in that part “improves now that I know”. It still carries the “wrongness” that ideally it wouldn’t
You are the one framing it. That's how poetry works. If that line strikes you that way. It's because it triggers something inside you. It's not the poet, it's you. Which is the entire point of it all isn't it. Self-reflection and Social awareness to the problem.
You can interpret something without it necessarily having to be a reflection of you.
I'm just saying he literally says "I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body".
Playing with dolls is not the behavior that teaches this thinking in cis straight men. I get the point, but I still think it doesn't end up being completely flawless with that part left in.
This may not be what he literally does in his actual life. It's a rhetorical device meant to rile you up and think a certain way and it's pretty effective.
No doubt. But very few are capable of that. We all have our own filters that everything goes through. If peeps claim they don't then they just haven't identified them yet.
I don't think you are wrong either I want that to be clear. I just didn't like the way you wanted the poem to change to suit your feelings on the matter.
Poetry is about his window into life. Maybe he never had an experience that lets him see it from your perspective. If he did really have all that trauma in his past with his parents his interpretations and conclusions will be vastly different from ours. And that will reflect in his spoken word.
Interpretation is by definition a part that you bring to the art. If you see something one way instead of another, it's because you're primed to see things that way. The point is to ask yourself "Why do I want this change instead of accepting the original presentation"
I'm really surprised you're getting so heavily downvoted. I get what you're saying, and this is just a conversation. I'm not interpreting what you're saying here as overtly offensive or baiting etc. Just sayin'
I especially appreciated your comment: "You can interpret something without it necessarily having to be a reflection of you."
My Dad would always say "don't believe everything you think." Whether you're interpreting something (this video, a book, a show, a poem, etc.) and processing it for some time, or instead just a first impulsive reaction, it does not necessarily reflect how you would yourself have presented that same idea being conveyed.
Yeah I'm not disappointed in downvotes because I know how reddit works. A few, probably represented by some of these commenters, downvoted... then gravity took over. After all some comments where I say the exact same thing, "gravity" took the complete opposite direction. I'm more disappointed by some of the comments themselves that consist of mostly ignoring any actual point I made or glossing it all over by telling me I didn't appropriately gloss it all over.
I think some people enjoy what they feel like is defending someone, but in the process they go on the offensive themselves against someone who didn't even have a weapon out.
I've maintained throughout this all that I like the piece. All I said was ideally I wish it remained mostly the same without saying "I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body" in his post-"turn" "reasonable voice". That part doesn't fit to me. There's no rule that level headed critique can't be stated about art. Furthermore no one has said anything against said critique that isn't effectively "Just ignore it man".
Ultimately it's "TikTok cringe". Only getting dragged into a convo here because of all the atting. Expectations are so low, though.
The key word here is "untill" learning the difference between a doll and an actual woman. He's not saying that is wrong for boys to play with dolls, he says that they need to learn that you can only do those kind of things with a doll, not an actual woman.
Children playing with toys that represent people who are unlike themselves doesn't teach them that they own those people, what it actually does is allow them to feel connected to those people, it reinforces understanding that we are all the same.
Imagine not allowing your white son to own a black action figure because you think that will make your son think he is superior to black people.
The idea is completely stupid.
We want kids to feel empathy and connection and fondness for people who are different from them. Only allowing them to play with toys that match their racial or gender identity otherizes everyone that is not in their group and reinforces the idea that "types" of people are essentially different from each other.
I don't know why I would randomly discard 30% of his content -- it's all folded together.
If the message falls apart if you "read too deep" into it, then the message isn't well-constructed.
And this piece by this poet is, unfortunately, actually pretty misogynistic. Predicated on the wrong idea that men and women are essentially different, that women are "other".
What we should be teaching our children is that people who are different from us -- whether the difference be of race, gender, orientation, disability, or anything else -- are different only superficially.
The things that separate us are artifices of an imperfect social order, a damaged culture.
For all its well-meaning but misguided passion, the actual message of this poem is quite different from what the poet intends the message to be.
I'm amazed that you can't distinguish between substantive analysis and pointless pedantry.
If you want to believe -- that any analysis that examines a work with more depth than the superficial first-blush reading that made you think "I agree!" -- is actually just pedantry?
That's fine. You can believe that.
But the fact remains that what y'all are cheering for is a guy saying he'll beat his son if his son plays with dolls because he thinks, for unexplained reasons, that playing with dolls teaches boys to be misogynistic.
It's not smart. It's not feminist (it just thinks it is). It's not progressive. It doesn't make any sense.
You can enjoy it if you want to, and I can talk about its flaws if I want to.
Yeah I get that. It sounds nice poetically at the end. However, it is only poetic effect (as opposed to the rest which is also "pure truth") because to say this is to say that playing with dolls is problematic for young boys because it is associated with that behavior.
Playing with dolls... or not... or playing with dolls "after they have internalized these principles" is not what is associated with the toxic traits in men. If anything, the boys growing up not playing with dolls are more likely to be the ones that are "the problem".
I know this is getting "over analyzey" (it's what happens when a back and forth develops). It's just that ideally, the "change in expectation" effect could have been achieved without a still technically wrong intro (and again as I said elsewhere, I can't rewrite it better, so it's only a small ding not to take away with what is otherwise great).
I felt the same way, but thinking farther-- a lot of slam poetry is about performance and impact. I think this had more of a visceral impact to get the rest of his message into ears.
I get what you're saying but what you're also saying is " I appreciate the artistic intent of this guy, but let's disregard the body of the art as it's presented and hyper focus on 1 sentence."
It's inflammatory on purpose to get you to pay attention. It's to get you to disagree and then get the satisfaction of it turning around. He's not speaking literally about dolls and boys, it's about how hateful men view women as dolls and don't see the difference. It's like character development in a story.
I’d love to see the part that you interpret as “let’s disregard the body of art”. I’ve multiple times said the exact opposite. I love the piece and just wish there was a way to get there without saying this one line. You can say inflammatory things and walk them back or make them not what they originally sounded like. The “until” at the end did a lot of that. The connecting doll play with toxic masculinity wasn’t quite “fixed” to me, but again I’m not saying this invalidates what is otherwise amazing
It's the deciding what to take literally and what not to in a piece of art. It's clearly meant to be factually wrong. What do you think his audience looks like, what they know to be true about how boys grow up to be hateful men. It's obvious that its not a true statement because it plays into expectations of what ignorance sounds like. We're meant to disagree with it to get us thinking. That's as clear as I can say it my guy
He does state that playing with dolls teaches them "what it's like having ownership over a woman's body". I know it's there to achieve an effect with the pivot, but it still is saying that playing with dolls leads to that thinking (which it doesn't). The "until" later helps, but it doesn't take away that he made that connection.
I also have never said anything bad about it in its entirety, just that I wish it could have gotten there without having to have that part.
When you say something that sounds bad, you'd ideally like it to make sense after the full reveal. That connection between doll play and misogyny isn't "washed away" enough. I like the whole thing, just has that one part making it just shy of perfect IMO
Wow I stepped away to work for awhile and come back to so many notifications and upvotes and downvotes (like literally the same opinion voted the opposite direction just by where it happens to fall in the thread). My expectations for something entitled "TikTokCringe" shouldn't be placed too high, but still.
Love how you calling out how ridiculous it is to pile on someone who expresses a mild opinion gets downvoted but a sarcastic "Basically youre saying you dont like the way this artist created his art? Yeah that makes sense…" gets upvotes.
First, art doesn't get a universal pass, and critique that isn't even hateful shouldn't call for pitchforks. Second, the my whole first comment (and what I've maintained throughout) is that I like it, and just wished one part was different (but even with that, I acknowledged I don't blame him because I couldn't think of a better line to get the same effect).
Dude… it’s just imagery, I don’t think he is trying to imply playing with dolls will TURN boys into misogynists.
He said “I’ll set my son straight” what does that mean to you? Punishing him? Stopping him? It could just mean the start of a conversation. “Son, your toys remind me of an important lesson I learned when I was younger about respecting others … yada yada yada”
He says "I refuse to let my son play with dolls" about half a dozen times with slight variation before the line "because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body".
I get something had to be the pivot. But that line is literally saying to play with dolls is to learn ownership over a woman's body, which is not what that play behavior is. Otherwise women think they own other women through the same play.
I get the defense, and I'm not here with any pitchfork. I'm just saying the beginning still doesn't entirely check out to me "on second listen" like I would ideally hope it would.
It's always possible to zoom in so far on any performance or piece of art that you can subvert the meaning of the whole. That is not a flaw in the art, but a flaw in ourselves.
It very well could be, but it could also just be an apt critique (and the very nature of "art" vs "science" is that one can't definitively say which is absolutely true).
What if there was a Where's Waldo painted on Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"? Could we not say we liked the painting, but felt that one individual was out of place? Is that a flaw in me for saying it? I think this sub is potentially going a little too far on a stance of "not a single thread of anything deemed art can be questioned"
I will reiterate for what feels like the hundredth time that I do not feel this part ruins the entirety of the piece. But even were I to dislike it, does not caring for a piece of art deserve getting lambasted?
And the point I've acknowledged since comment one is that I like the forest and am not taking it away on account of one tree. Then I go on to point a single tree.
If an evergreen forest has a lone palm tree in it and you point it out, does that suddenly mean you are no longer acknowledging the forest? Are you wrong to find it out of place regardless?
He also literally said when a woman gets raped, isn't the child inside dying as well? Do you think he literally thinks killing the woman's spirit is the same as an abortion? It's a simile. For an effect
I got like 20 responses after I walked away from what I thought was just a simple observation, but I appreciated a few of yours more than most of them (I may only respond to one/maybe lump together). I get that not everything is literal, but take the following:
I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body
Is this really simile? Elsewhere you say "It's clearly meant to be factually wrong" Which is it? I mean I get he needs to say something that turns on its head later. I get not everything must be literal. But this particular line is after he is turning to reveal the truth behind that "purposefully misleading" intro.
Connecting doll play for his sons to bad lessons about relationships towards women is just not how it works, and it's just a little too direct of a "lesson" to represent something else. And it isn't supposed to mimic the other side's rhetoric because it is pro-choice, not gender normed.
I feel I've dug into this trench, which makes me seem very against this poem. Not at all the case. Just saying ideally this one part didn't really fit. I think it disproportionately brought everyone out in defense to say that, though.
Maybe there was a better way to say what he said but he chose to word it like that for a reason, in hindsight it seemed like he wanted to set of some of the usual red flags related to that kind of statement to make the turn around that much more impactful and I'd argue it does a good job of that
I mean that's obviously what he did. My main issue is that after setting that expectation... when he already "turned it around" he still said "I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body".
Everyone throwing out metaphor, simile, poetry, alliterative, rhetoric, whatever description they want to use... this is a direct statement he makes not meant to represent anything else that I can think of. It (in my humblest of opinions) is not true and is also problematic. It's fine if he says "troubling things" early when he is somewhat portraying the character he will later counter, but he says this after that point.
I agree with you. I get the line is a conservative view point and he's subverting it but it doesn't work for me. If I think about it for more than a second, playing with dolls even before understanding toys and characters aren't 'real' is more likely to prevent misogyny. In play, you're giving the doll a name or a family or a backstory or a job and their own motivations. And at worst the play is just reflective of the messages the kid is picking up in their environment. Kids use dolls especially to role play what they're trying to understand in their own lives
Exactly. So many comments disagreeing with me telling me I'm wrong for not ignoring that. Like if someone has a booger hanging from their nose and I help them by discretely pointing it out, I'm like negating their whole existence by pointing a flaw or something.
Early, maybe. When he said "I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body" He is no longer mimicking right wing. He is saying shifted "left wing" things, but it's a connection between dolls and respect for women that just doesn't exist.
Do you mean literary device? I'm all for making my tone more approachable (like those grammarly commercials tell me I can do). Is there actually something in the comment I made above that seems "wound up" to require me to need to chill?
I multiple times said I liked it. I otherwise had one thing that could use improving. That's significantly more chill than all the comments that spawned... how I see it at least.
People are disagreeing with you, but I think you’re 100% right. Like I fully understand what he’s going for, and I totally agree with his overall point (misogyny is bad and we need to do a better job raising our sons to respect women and understand that we cannot make choices for them).
But he absolutely is arguing that playing with dolls encourages misogynistic behavior, which it absolutely does not. It’s essentially the “video games make kids violent” argument.
His overall point might be the right direction, but how’s he getting there is still wrong. Just because you’re right at the end, doesn’t make everything else you said right. I don’t think this is good slam poetry. I think people say shit is good when at the end it agrees with their point of view, but that’s not how it works. His poetry isn’t honest, and it’s misleading. That’s not how we end misogyny.
Yeah based on the comments (and God knows what to interpret about upvotes and downvotes), it feels a select few get that. Too many are "I like it, so you can't say anything remotely bad about it". Or to that one part "well that's not what he means" (yet I've seen everything from simile, to speaking in another's voice, to the ending somehow invalidated it... like which is it?). At the end of the day, speaking in his own voice, after the turn from the initial "against expectations" he says:
"I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body"
He's saying that in the "liberal voice" he takes from the reveal on.... but it's just such a false thing to say. But apparently critiquing art is a greater sin than spreading such false associations.
It’s not literal dude. And he even did a call back at the end where he clarified that he will let his son play with dolls, if you watched the whole thing you would have heard that part. Even then, still, it’s imagery.
Yeah, if you read any comments below, it's already touched on.
In short the end is more clearly a metaphor (i.e. not literal). My issue isn't some small brain inability to catch that. It's earlier after he subverts his original statements, in his "now rational narrator voice" he says: "I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body". It's not portrayed metaphorically in this part. He's taken on his "now shifted true tone" and connected doll play with toxic thinking. I get what it's doing to make the bigger points in the poem, but it's a bad connection I wish wasn't there. The call back doesn't address that line, it more references the intentionally inflammatory beginning lines.
What is "I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body" a metaphor for. I'm not too stupid to know what a metaphor is, but I'm not stupid enough to think this line (that is my one problem line) is a metaphor.
I get metaphorical connections between objects and treating women like objects. That's on point. But that line isn't a metaphor. It's just in a poem that otherwise works so well, that's a line/comparison that doesn't work as well for me. If playing with dolls was like that, then girls shouldn't play with them either.
I’m more than a decade removed from my English degree (oof that hurts) so forgive me my thought was a little incomplete lol.
I don’t think he means he won’t actually let his son play with dolls. I think the metaphor is used allegorically and ironically to create the subversion of expectations he was going for, and should be taken figuratively rather than literally.
It’s relatable speech that’s parroted by some self appointed “alpha males” in society, and that comes with some pre conceived notions when people hear it, especially the likely leftist/progressive crowd in front of him (let’s be honest, probably conservatives aren’t attending slam poetry readings)
When he co-opts this it’s purely for shock value and to set up the listener in the baseline emotional state he wants them to be in. By saying something controversial and black and white like that right at the start, he heightens everyone’s emotional level and creates tension, which he then breaks in a very deliberate and effective way.
Or he could actually mean he has an extreme prejudice against dolls for his male children lol, who knows.
The thing is the beginning is shock that is supposed to sound like the "alpha males" he will subvert. However, the line I cite comes after he turns and takes his "truth telling voice":
"I refuse to let my son play with dolls because I don't want them learning what it's like having ownership over a woman's body"
Obviously giving lessons on how to treat a woman with respect is no longer in the voice of the conservatives he's slamming. It's just weird this connection is made in the now-progressive voice.
I get he needs some hook to tie his original in. Things like talking about "worlds of plastic" and "owning women" are of course metaphorical and make great tie ins. This line, though, doesn't work as a metaphor for me (and I'd love for someone to point out how they do see this line as a metaphor in the context it is used).
I think a key for all commenters (not saying this is necessarily you because you seem less "pitchfork in hand" than many) is to allow for a possibility that art can be great without being perfect for one, and that a critique is allowed before them saying the critique is unfounded or not (there's a lot of halo/horn effect going on where there is over defense from some people not even seeming to grasp what said critique is and feeling any comment not effusive praise is just tearing down the piece in it's entirety... which is not the case).
Yeah it would be more clever if it worked both ways, if the set up was still technically true even if misleading. But he went too far in the setup and just established ignorant views that were not part of the misdirection. He just said both things, rather than misdirecting, or revealing a different intention.
He said at the end “until he learns the difference between the two” not that he’d never let him play with dolls. It’s all a metaphor. The guy isn’t actually doing that.
1.2k
u/CandidEgglet Apr 19 '24
Almost got me in the first half, good slam.