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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2279292" data-attributes="member: 4937">Fine.  People can hold that opinion for good and valid reasons.  You however don't seem to be willing to come up with them.  You think I can't turn around and argue against my own theory?  I know where it gets shaky.  You however dont, but you sure are damn sure of yourself.Are you saying that racism didn't exist before people invented a particular term for it?  Are you saying that until people invented for racism, that people couldn't be offended by and opposed to the sort of behavior that today we call racism?  Because that sure sounds like what you are saying.  Look, the man was the son of a prominent Republican abolutionist who detested the racial biases that we now call 'racism'.  But I have already addressed this point.And again, I have already addressed this point.  I heard you the first time.  I refuted the point.  I don't and never have expected you to accept what I have to say, but I do expect that if you are going to continue to debate me that you would offer some counterpoint to my rebuttle.  So again, Edgar Rice Burroughs is not a racist.  Edgar Rice Burroughs is a culturist who believes in the superiority of a culture.  So when Edgar Rice Burroughs paints a particular group as savage or barbaric, he does not think that they are savage or barbaric because of thier membership in a race.  He thinks that they are savage and barbaric as a result of being the products of a barbaric and savage culture.  He thinks that if you remove that person from his culture and raise him in a more enlightened one, that you get a enlightened person regardless of his racial identity.  Now, of course, if you think that culturalism is just another form of racism, then you'll have to prove to me that it is.  But I think that there is a subtle but very important distinction.  And I think that I could if I had the time and inclination do the research and show to you with the man's own words that that is exactly what he believes, but I have neither time nor inclination so I'll stick to what I do know - which is the text of the man's fiction.On Barsoom, the role of the racial savages is played by the Green Martians.  These are the Martian equivalent of primitive savages which people his stories elsewhere.  But, if we read the text, what does the author say is the reason for their barbarism?  It's because they are ugly green skinned bug eyed monsters?  No, because we find in the text characters like Sola and Tars Tarkas who by the special circumstances of thier upbringing - ei they were raised in what the author finds to be a more civilized fashion become fast and honorable friends.He then later goes on to introduce a green Martian hero, Sola, who according to the character, "hated cruelty and barbarity; I was confident that I could depend upon her..."  We soon learn the reason she is different from all the other Green Martians - it's her upbringing which has caused her to transcend her culture.Or consider the speach of Dejah Thorus to the Tharks, is this the speach of someone that believes the Green Men of Mars are irrecovably dumb brutes by nature, or as the result of thier natural inferiority?Would a racist proclaim common ancestory with a brute?  No, Dejih Thorus is a culturist extending the hand of enlightment to a people she believes are here brethern.It is a patriarchal and condescending view by our standards which reeks even to me of 'white man's burden', but such a view point does not at all perclude believing that ideas like racial hatred, racial supremacy, racial arrogance, and most especially those things taken to (what the author would regard) as a radical extreme are things which are wrong and to be strongly denounced - which he follows his father in doing but in life and in his texts.  Yes, this is a complex arguement.  You have to hold a nuanced view of ERB, because his personal feelings to Arabs, Africans, and Indians and all such (to his mind) disadvantaged people is as complex as his character's feelings toward the Green Martian people.  Read the damn books and stop pretending to yourself that there is nothing in there.No, you don't do you?  Yes, ERB's anti-racist agenda and his anti-religious agenda are just part of his themes, but they are hardly footnotes in the work.  We could if I was a mind to go on and on and on in this vein, but its hardly the main point I want to get across.Well then, how do you know I'm getting it wrong?Thank you.  I'm not sure the folks down in the literature department would agree with you, but I'm giving it the old college try.  It's not really my field, and I thank to one whose field it is that it shows.  But, I guess that's irrelevant since as far as you seem to be concerned the fact that I'm using anything like it at all seems to immediately disqualify my opinion.He has, but he's not been important to it.  I'm just waiting for you to trot out all these things I'm reading into the text that the author didn't intend.  Why do you think your understanding of what the author intended is so superior to mine?It's hyperbole alright, but it isn't my hyperbole but Jordan's.  There isn't one thing about the assertion that Rand Al'Thor is the eternally reincarnating savior of the world that isn't straight out of the text, and I'm not talking about symbolism here.  The text says that he's the eternally reincarnating savior fated to shed his blood for the world.  You don't have to read it into the text; it's there.  That's why you seem so blind to the text to me.  I'm not asserting symbolism here.  It would be like me saying, "In the context of the story, the aliens in Clarke's 'Childhoods End' aren't symbols for devils (quite the contrary), they are devils", and then you accusing me of hyperbole and reading things into the text.  (Sorry for ruining one of the twists for you out there that haven't read the text.)I had to look for that.  What I said was that in a particular case something was 'deeply steeped' (as in soaking like a tea bag) religious imagery.  That is nowhere near saying that something is 'deep' in the since of heady intellectualism or whatever sense you mean it, much less implying that something had to be 'deep' to fit my theory ('deeper' maybe).How is this ironic?  The claim that what the author intended is in general unnecessary to fit my larger theory is not at all incompatible with the claim that so far we haven't had one author under discussion where I've had to resort to the weaker claim that the author wasn't intentionally doing things that met my theory.  And even you admit, right back up at the top of your post, "It is interesting how often they appear.", so don't pretend to disagree now.  Again, show me one example of me fitting stuff into the text that isn't there?  How are you so certain that its not there?Boy is that going to come back to haunt you.</blockquote>

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