googly eyed ?

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Postby xsicbastardx » Sun Nov 15, 2009 8:52 am

Looks like this board has finally become polarized.
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Postby Jeff » Sun Nov 15, 2009 10:19 am

xsicbastardx wrote:Looks like this board has finally become polarized.


I blame the Lady Gaga thread.
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Postby Cosmic Cowbell » Sun Nov 15, 2009 11:05 am

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"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." ~ A.N. Whitehead
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Postby JackRiddler » Sun Nov 15, 2009 1:40 pm

compared2what? wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:For whatever it's worth, I didn't know googly-eyed had that meaning. Until now I've only heard it to mean "in love," as in, "they're googly eyed about each other."


Again, I do take questions. I also admit errors. So if you'd happened on the thread earlier, and your unfamiliarity with the usage to which I was referring had left you in a state of confusion too great to be assuaged by dint of search terms such as "blackface" and "googly eyed" or "minstrel show" and "googly eyed" or whatever, you would have had nothing to lose by asking me wtf I was talking about and why I had posted a picture of Al Jolson.

NB


Do chill. Implicitly, I was saying, "thanks for the informative posts, c2w?" Which I should not have thought goes without saying. Also, that until now I might have used the phrase naively, not knowing this. Which may be what happened in the first place, but shouldn't happen again, now that you've provided the research.
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Postby JackRiddler » Sun Nov 15, 2009 1:41 pm

Jeff wrote:
xsicbastardx wrote:Looks like this board has finally become polarized.


I blame the Lady Gaga thread.


Oh, so now she's like Eve ruining Da Lord's paradise? Always the women, eh?
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Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Nov 15, 2009 1:45 pm

I had no idea "googly eyed" was even remotely racist.

And to be frank, it's too fucking stupid sounding to actually BE racist.

Food for thought: It doesn't even refer to an actual racial characteristic, but to the over-stated facial expressions of white stage actors. Right? Al Jolson was googly-eyed. Black folks...not so much.
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Postby norton ash » Sun Nov 15, 2009 1:49 pm

Wow. I'm getting googly-eyed just reading all this.
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Postby compared2what? » Sun Nov 15, 2009 2:12 pm

xsicbastardx wrote:Looks like this board has finally become polarized.


What makes you say so? This has been a comparatively genteel thread, with no vicious name-calling, on a subject of medium general interest. The majority view as expressed so far is: "I didn't know "googly-eyed" had that connotation." And nobody's disputing that those who didn't...didn't. I was being kind of a drama queen in my response to JackRiddler, and even more of one in my response to 82_28 on the locked thread. elfismiles thinks that Jeff is hyper-sensitive or that I'm hyper-sensitive or that we're both hyper-sensitive or that we're all hyper-sensitive. I think elfismiles was too quick to reach that conclusion. You and Percival think that we're all doomed, doomed.

How is that not a typical day in the neighborhood?
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Postby Maddy » Sun Nov 15, 2009 2:25 pm

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Postby compared2what? » Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:12 pm

Wombaticus Rex wrote:I had no idea "googly eyed" was even remotely racist.


It isn't at all racist in most contexts. Nor is it necessarily racist in intention when it's used to describe persons of color. It would have obvious racist connotations to people who are familiar with the typical attributes of cartoonish racist caricatures and the language used to describe them. In the present, in my observation and also as a matter of common sense, those would mostly either be:

(a) people who have a greater-than-average interest in the historical expression of various kinds of class-, race, ethnic- or gender-based bigotry as it was manifested in commonly accepted broad caricatures of members of the discriminated-against groups in mainstream popular culture; or

(b) racists. You still see darkie-style caricatures being used in some parts of the south out in the open, for example. Although more often surreptitiously. And I've definitely seen them used in depictions of Obama in the very recent past, for another example, although I'm going to have to look for examples later and put them in on edit, due to time constraints now.

And to be frank, it's too fucking stupid sounding to actually BE racist.


To you. Because you're not a racist. Incidentally, although it's probably no longer the contemporary argot-of-choice, when I lived in the middle east as a small child, the general phrase then used to convey not-entirely-unjustified Arab contempt for the Western European race was "stupid frank." Except in Arabic. So your "And to be frank" made me smile, and I don't really have a larger point. I'm just passing along some trivia that falls roughly within OT boundaries.

Food for thought: It doesn't even refer to an actual racial characteristic, but to the over-stated facial expressions of white stage actors. Right?


Right. That's why the make-up and facial expressions of white stage performers in blackface have racist connotations, in fact. They're overstated. You could say grossly overstated. You could even say grossly distorted, as if to suggest that the people who had those features in their non-overstated and natural version weren't just of a different race than the white performers and their white audiences, but from some kind of less evolved sub-species.

Al Jolson was googly-eyed. Black folks...not so much.


You kind of lost me somewhere in there. What part of that is food for thought, and what thought is it food for? Are you suggesting that the phrase "googly-eyed Muslims" actually has implicit connotations that equate Muslims with white cinema stars from the early days of talking pictures? Or what?
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Postby compared2what? » Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:22 pm



Maddy! What are you suggesting?

Remember yourself!
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Postby Peregrine » Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:22 pm

compared2what? wrote:On the other hand, by way of loose analogy, that does at least serve as yet another reminder to me of what a blessing it is for the entire world that I don't drive. Because I'd have racked up more kills than a video game by now if I did. Eek. I don't even like to think about it. It's not funny cause it's true.



Heh. I hear ya. There's a reason I gave up driving a year & a half ago. I woulda ended up turning into this guy

I quite happily take public transit now. :D
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Postby Alaya » Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:24 pm

Yeah but Barney Google with his goo goo googly eyes was white,
no?

Maybe this air is too rarified for some of us to breathe?

It'll take me a decade to figure this place out, that is, if I can manage the air.
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Postby compared2what? » Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:53 pm

Alaya wrote:Yeah but Barney Google with his goo goo googly eyes was white,
no?

Maybe this air is too rarified for some of us to breathe?

It'll take me a decade to figure this place out, that is, if I can manage the air.


It's a phrase with more than one usage, more than one definition, and more than one set of attached connotations. As as many, many words and phrases. Typically, people manage to communicate without confusion despite this mind-boggling fact by inferring the intended meaning from the context in which the usage occurs. Or so I've always assumed. I'm not, like, a forensic anthropological linguist or anything.
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Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:17 pm

compared2what? wrote:You kind of lost me somewhere in there. What part of that is food for thought, and what thought is it food for?


"Googly Eyed" is supposed to be "racist" -- referring to black people. Yet the phrase is derived from, and refers to, something white people did. Created. Perpetuated. My point is that it's a weird loop, where it never actually referred to black people at any point, but today we're here calling it "racist" out of deference to -- what exactly?

The memory and feelings of Al Jolson and 10,000 other minstrel dipshits wearing blackface in Heaven right now?
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