Jamie babbles about art and politics... again...
Diary: Week of 25/06: Dissertation, Dungeon, and London
I think I'm still failing to apply myself properly; spent a couple of days staring into space this week (or rather, staring into the monitor of my computer). Was supposed to have made a couple of visits to see university friends, but failed abysmally.
After having not slept the night before, I went into university to pick up my Dissertation on Monday, mostly out of curiosity to see what had been written upon it. Here's the blurred pencil-written comment written on it:
"This is a very ambitious project which engages with very difficult texts and one of the most difficult issues that these texts raise. There are some insightful discussions here but also crucial sections that are very hard to follow (e.g. pp 20-27), your notion of noumenal awareness is discussed only very briefly and having acquired a bit of a feel for what your interpretation of the N/P distinction is at the (indecipherable) point of the dissertation, it seems much less clear by the end.
Presentation is somewhat careless and bibliography should be in alphabetical order. The discussion often wanders from the main topic and could have been much better disciplined."
Probably not unfair, but there's something ironic about me having to mostly guess what most of the words were due to the handwriting being so appalling and yet finding that they seem to criticise my presentation :o)
I also don';t think ordering my bibliography (only a page long) by the relevance of the text to the essay rather than alphabetically really much of an issue. No one has complained before...
Ahh well, whatever... went to sleep at about six, and woke up again at twelve so as to catch the latter half of Frankenstein on television. Having read the book I can honestly say the film is very much an improvement on the text, which is no particular complement but the movie is rather good all the same :o)
Wednesday I saw X-men 3 (and thought as little of it as the others) before heading down Dungeon in hopes of lacuna_raze being there, which unfortunately was not to be :o( Still worked out as I said hello to a couple of people who I'd spoken to online but never in person, principally Haretrinity and some of her (rather drunk) friends. She was also kind enough to let me sleep on the couch around hers, which saved me taxi money home :o)
Watched 'The Island' on Friday, which was good, although somewhat plain and predictable.
Saturday I had the pleasure of travelling to London to see sweetcyanide down London, where I also made a failed attempt to find some new boots (the one pair I convinced myself to like they didn't have in my size). After drinking in the Devonshire Arms I spent the rest of the weekend at hers (which included watching part of The Secretary, part of The Hunger, and much Black Books) :o)
Had a drunk 'I used to be Punk' guy at the station spot my Siouxsie tshirt and lecture me repeatedly on how Siouxsie was a wanker or some such, and unfortunately come to sit down next to me for part of my journey home. :o(
Seeing my tshirt he became convinced (for some reason...) that I was a punk rocker (which became the name he would know me as) and kept quizzing me about punk bands. For some reason I couldn't manage to convince him that the extent of any interest in punk rock that I have ends at Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure.
It also took until we were on a train and talking for a bit for him to realise I was male :o/ I'm not sure if it was that he'd managed to realise at this point that I don't have a woman's voice, or whether it was the stubble on the face I hadn't shaved for over 24 hours.
Naturally, having realised I wasn't female, he assumed I was a 'bender' instead. Fortunately this seemed to bother him less as we already seem to have bonded over the fact that I wore the image of a punk rocker that he seemed to hate, and as long as he constantly made a point of telling me that he wasn't interested in me and I couldn't have sex with him he seemed okay with his realisation of me being homosexual...
:o/
I think I might have to kill myself if I ever find myself delivering the line 'I used to be a Goth...' to any poor youngster who obviously couldn't care less... :o(
Also; have been reading one of my old Warhammer novels. Might re-read the rest and acquire some more, might encourage me to write some fan-fiction :o)
Thoughts: 'When in Rome' and other attacks on liberty
'When in Rome' is one of those phrases that is said often enough that everyone pretty much knows what it means. It seems reasonable enough; when in other cultures try to show respect to the traditions and ways of that culture.
For instance, when British/Western tourists go to parts of the world where it's hot enough to sunbath, including topless sunbathing, but don't care that this offends the more body-conservative locals. There is naturally a certain room for politeness.
What worries me about the phrase is how often it's raised politically, where it does not really belong. I hear it most often in the wake of terrorist attacks particularly. I also remember during the veil controversy that Tony Blair spoke about the importance of 'cultural integration', which essentially appeals to the same sentiment.
I wrote a fairly extensive essay on the veil and British society in a previous entry ( linky). Essentially I wrote that there were some good reasons for requiring a woman not to wear a veil, such as security reasons or practical reasons in employment, but also there were bad reasons, and the bad reasons were those of 'cultural integration'.
Why do I have so much against this concept? Well, it's simple.
What the phrase 'Do as the Romans do when in Rome' amounts to when brought into reality is 'When in Britain do as normative British culture tells you to do; do as the average British person does'.
What we are talking about is plain and simple Conservative social policy, wherein law and social policy are about enforcing mainstream British values on everyone. It's the sort of policy that justifies religious laws, and sexual laws such as those against homosexuality.
Most people in this culture don't like homosexuals? Well, then you're not allowed. Most people in this country are Christian? Well, you'd best convert or get out.
Naturally, this line of thinking is the opposite of liberal political ideology, which focuses on people having the freedom and liberty to make these kinds of choices themselves. In liberalism there is no requirement that the individual do as the masses do, which is what 'When in Rome' thinking amounts to. ( more on why Liberalism is a rational political ideology here)
So why is the phrase so popular? Well, because we like to think we're speaking of outsiders, and it doesn't imply to us. It's the non-Romans that need to do as the Romans do, not the Romans themselves.
Which simply means we need to wake up and stop assuming Muslims aren't British. Many of them are born here, and carry British citizenship. Some of them are white. 'Muslim' does not mean 'non-British'.
So, here's the real important question for anyone who says the words 'When in Rome'; if I were to convert to Islam, should I be required to leave this 'Christian Nation' of ours and head to a Muslim one? Or should I have the freedom to be not conform to British culture?
Heck, let's bring this closer to home. If the majority of British people don't like alternative fashion, should I stop dressing this way? If the majority of people find my polyamorous romantic lifestyle immoral, should I be obligated to have only monogamous relationships? Given that we in fact do live under a Christian state and the majority of people are Christian, should people be obligated to 'Do as the British do' and convert to Christianity?
Or rather, should we only require people to obey basic laws founded on basic principles like not harming other people or violating their liberty?
Thoughts: Lj Mojo
Somehow I missed this all when it happened...
lj memes as a vector of attack
Lj mojo seemed a harmless, if very silly, meme. It asked you who you dated, and then somehow calculated a set of scores for you for different aspects of your life and personality, and make a little chart out of them. Cute and pointless, just like most Internet memes.
Then at some point all the charts were replaced with the Gotsee image (and image of a man extending his anus with his hands) and a new link was added. This time you could type in anyone's username and see who they claimed to have dated, and who has claimed to date them.
In a way, somewhat clever. Had it been done with more style it would actually have been rather respectable. It certainly illustrates something...
"Q: What's the easiest way to find out personal information about someone on the Internet?
A: You ask them for it."
(from the above link)
I remember thepussykat saying something similar about those long pointless questionariess people often fill out. Perhaps people ought to be more carefull about who they give thier information out to.
Although in this case it mostly wasn't going to be anything damaging.
Looking at the results I'm a bit confused by people; it seems clear that many people on my friendslists have differing ideas of who has dated who.
Do people just lie on these things? And to what purpose?
Perhaps some of this can be resolved in the ambiguity of 'date'. Does that mean 'been on a date' with them; does a one night stand count? Or does 'have you dated this person?' suggest a more continuous on-going relationship? I assumed the latter, at least one person who claims to have dated me must have assumed the former.
I'm fairly sure that doesn't explain all the ambiguities though.
Review: Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist
Took me longer to read this than I thought it would, given that I ended up reading it off and on, but I have just finished, and am glad I did. I wasn't sure at first because the use of language is so strained sometimes, and I was a bit wary of finding it to be like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein where the over-laboured language and plot tend to distract from the merit's of the book, but the truth seems to be that Dickens is a much better writer (I guess that was to be expected).
Part of that is because the use of language actually enhances Dicken's use of satire. I didn't really expect the book to be so dryly satirical, but it's quick to notice that a great deal of the book is written in mock praise of those that least deserve it, and hence pretentious use of language does it little harm.
The plot meanwhile is only over-laboured at certain points, and offers a lot that I hadn't seen in any film production. Naturally, just upon observing that the book was some five-hundred pages long I knew the musical version must have shortened the plot significantly, but I wasn't sure what to expect besides. I had seen an extended BBC mini-series version of the book that I had enjoyed very much, but wasn't sure how much of it was invention (not so much apparently) and I could not remember it well besides.
An odd thing about the book, which naturally I could not appreciate properly, was that the book is written so that you find out the true story as time goes on. Many of the characters appear without any knowledge of who they are, or their background, which is not so true in the dramatisations that I have seen. I suppose in dramatisations they are going to expect people to have seen the musical, hence trying to 'surprise' people with revelations about Oliver's parentage is not going to work very well :o)
One thing that might be a stain on the book, although is actually very interesting, is the somewhat anti-Semitic attitudes that can be found. Before reading the book it had never occurred to me that Fagin was Jewish, and further, appears to form some kind of Victorian Jewish caricature. Interestingly, I can see how this has been preserved into the films, given the typical facial structures of actors who play Fagin, I just hadn't recognised it before.
Fagin is tight-fisted, Machiavellian, callous and amoral, and also distinctly lower working class and deviant. Of course, it is possible that for a significant number of Jews in London during this period that this was often only a slight exaggeration, given that the extreme weight of prejudice and stigma for Jews must have pushed them down into the underclass, which naturally results in increased deviancy.
So, I can't fault Dicken's for use of the archetype; it presumably reflects reality and it would be nonsense for Dicken's to not draw from real experiences. In the same way there would be nothing necessarily wrong with drawing from black criminality for films, as long as it got appropriate treatment.
But that's just it, there's a good and a bad way to approach black criminality, and there must be something similar true of Jewish criminality. One of the most striking things about Dicken's is how reading it can leave you with the sense that Fagin doesn't just represent Jewish criminality, but Jewishness itself.
Throughout the book Fagin is less often referred to as Fagin, but rather 'The Jew'. Only his peers during dialogue call him Fagin, whilst Dickens will, nine times out of ten, refer to him as the Jew, and his 'social betters', including Oliver, do the same. There's only so much of reading 'The Jew smiled hideously' or 'The Jew sneered' and other loathsome descriptions attached to 'The Jew' before one can get the feeling that Dickens doesn't think that much of Jews... But then I should imagine few people do of the time. In any case, constantly referring to a Jewish character as 'The Jew' is much like referring to a black character constantly as 'The Negro', and indeed the role that 'The Negro' plays as a racial caricature in some modern films seems rather similar to the role Fagin plays.
Fagin is not the only Jew in the storyline, there are some other minor characters that are Jewish, for instance one of the characters encounters a younger Jew in a disreputable bar:
"There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, with his elbows on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared very hard at Noah, and Noah stared very hard at him."
Quite the first introduction, naturally. Interestingly, not any of the other non-Jewish characters get descriptions that labour their loathsomeness in any such way; not Fagin's boys, certainly not the Artful Dodger, nor even Bill Sikes (except later in the book where there are extenuating circumstances).
The only defence I can possible see would be this reference late in the book when we read of Fagin:
"At one time he raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray besides him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them off"
Which presumably refers to Jewish rabbis, and for them Dickens seems to carry some respect.
In any case, well worth a read. It's a nicely dark portrayal of Victorian England, although probably not as dark as the reality (I should imagine the reality is that if a character like Fagin was keeping boys, they'd be for prostituting not for stealing)
---
Having just been looking through wikipedia articles I discovered this extract:
"Anti-Semitism
Fagin is noted for being one of the few Jewish characters of 19th century literature, let alone any of Dickens' pieces. Fagin has been the subject of much debate over anti-Semitism. In an introduction to a 1981 Bantam Books reissue of Oliver Twist, for example, Irving Howe wrote that Fagin was considered an "archetypical Jewish villain." Howe reports that a Jewish woman had written a complaint to Dickens that the character was too negatively stereotypical. Dickens wrote back to her, saying, "Fagin is a Jew because it is unfortunately true, of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was Jewish."
In later editions of the book printed during his lifetime, Dickens excised many (but not all) of the references to Fagin's Jewishness.[1] In his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, he included a favourable Jewish character, Mr. Riah.
The comic book creator Will Eisner, disturbed by the anti-Semitism in the typical depiction of the character, created a graphic novel in 2003 titled Fagin the Jew. In this book, the back story of the character and events of Oliver Twist are depicted from his point of view." (linky)
Vanity: My pictures... linky
Link: Iron Bru Goth Advert
Link: All the Dr Whos
Link: Parents refused right to name child '4real'
Link: Effects of LSD on cats
Plans: Dungeon this Wednesday? Anyone?
I think I'm still failing to apply myself properly; spent a couple of days staring into space this week (or rather, staring into the monitor of my computer). Was supposed to have made a couple of visits to see university friends, but failed abysmally.
After having not slept the night before, I went into university to pick up my Dissertation on Monday, mostly out of curiosity to see what had been written upon it. Here's the blurred pencil-written comment written on it:
"This is a very ambitious project which engages with very difficult texts and one of the most difficult issues that these texts raise. There are some insightful discussions here but also crucial sections that are very hard to follow (e.g. pp 20-27), your notion of noumenal awareness is discussed only very briefly and having acquired a bit of a feel for what your interpretation of the N/P distinction is at the (indecipherable) point of the dissertation, it seems much less clear by the end.
Presentation is somewhat careless and bibliography should be in alphabetical order. The discussion often wanders from the main topic and could have been much better disciplined."
Probably not unfair, but there's something ironic about me having to mostly guess what most of the words were due to the handwriting being so appalling and yet finding that they seem to criticise my presentation :o)
I also don';t think ordering my bibliography (only a page long) by the relevance of the text to the essay rather than alphabetically really much of an issue. No one has complained before...
Ahh well, whatever... went to sleep at about six, and woke up again at twelve so as to catch the latter half of Frankenstein on television. Having read the book I can honestly say the film is very much an improvement on the text, which is no particular complement but the movie is rather good all the same :o)
Wednesday I saw X-men 3 (and thought as little of it as the others) before heading down Dungeon in hopes of lacuna_raze being there, which unfortunately was not to be :o( Still worked out as I said hello to a couple of people who I'd spoken to online but never in person, principally Haretrinity and some of her (rather drunk) friends. She was also kind enough to let me sleep on the couch around hers, which saved me taxi money home :o)
Watched 'The Island' on Friday, which was good, although somewhat plain and predictable.
Saturday I had the pleasure of travelling to London to see sweetcyanide down London, where I also made a failed attempt to find some new boots (the one pair I convinced myself to like they didn't have in my size). After drinking in the Devonshire Arms I spent the rest of the weekend at hers (which included watching part of The Secretary, part of The Hunger, and much Black Books) :o)
Had a drunk 'I used to be Punk' guy at the station spot my Siouxsie tshirt and lecture me repeatedly on how Siouxsie was a wanker or some such, and unfortunately come to sit down next to me for part of my journey home. :o(
Seeing my tshirt he became convinced (for some reason...) that I was a punk rocker (which became the name he would know me as) and kept quizzing me about punk bands. For some reason I couldn't manage to convince him that the extent of any interest in punk rock that I have ends at Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure.
It also took until we were on a train and talking for a bit for him to realise I was male :o/ I'm not sure if it was that he'd managed to realise at this point that I don't have a woman's voice, or whether it was the stubble on the face I hadn't shaved for over 24 hours.
Naturally, having realised I wasn't female, he assumed I was a 'bender' instead. Fortunately this seemed to bother him less as we already seem to have bonded over the fact that I wore the image of a punk rocker that he seemed to hate, and as long as he constantly made a point of telling me that he wasn't interested in me and I couldn't have sex with him he seemed okay with his realisation of me being homosexual...
:o/
I think I might have to kill myself if I ever find myself delivering the line 'I used to be a Goth...' to any poor youngster who obviously couldn't care less... :o(
Also; have been reading one of my old Warhammer novels. Might re-read the rest and acquire some more, might encourage me to write some fan-fiction :o)
Thoughts: 'When in Rome' and other attacks on liberty
'When in Rome' is one of those phrases that is said often enough that everyone pretty much knows what it means. It seems reasonable enough; when in other cultures try to show respect to the traditions and ways of that culture.
For instance, when British/Western tourists go to parts of the world where it's hot enough to sunbath, including topless sunbathing, but don't care that this offends the more body-conservative locals. There is naturally a certain room for politeness.
What worries me about the phrase is how often it's raised politically, where it does not really belong. I hear it most often in the wake of terrorist attacks particularly. I also remember during the veil controversy that Tony Blair spoke about the importance of 'cultural integration', which essentially appeals to the same sentiment.
I wrote a fairly extensive essay on the veil and British society in a previous entry ( linky). Essentially I wrote that there were some good reasons for requiring a woman not to wear a veil, such as security reasons or practical reasons in employment, but also there were bad reasons, and the bad reasons were those of 'cultural integration'.
Why do I have so much against this concept? Well, it's simple.
What the phrase 'Do as the Romans do when in Rome' amounts to when brought into reality is 'When in Britain do as normative British culture tells you to do; do as the average British person does'.
What we are talking about is plain and simple Conservative social policy, wherein law and social policy are about enforcing mainstream British values on everyone. It's the sort of policy that justifies religious laws, and sexual laws such as those against homosexuality.
Most people in this culture don't like homosexuals? Well, then you're not allowed. Most people in this country are Christian? Well, you'd best convert or get out.
Naturally, this line of thinking is the opposite of liberal political ideology, which focuses on people having the freedom and liberty to make these kinds of choices themselves. In liberalism there is no requirement that the individual do as the masses do, which is what 'When in Rome' thinking amounts to. ( more on why Liberalism is a rational political ideology here)
So why is the phrase so popular? Well, because we like to think we're speaking of outsiders, and it doesn't imply to us. It's the non-Romans that need to do as the Romans do, not the Romans themselves.
Which simply means we need to wake up and stop assuming Muslims aren't British. Many of them are born here, and carry British citizenship. Some of them are white. 'Muslim' does not mean 'non-British'.
So, here's the real important question for anyone who says the words 'When in Rome'; if I were to convert to Islam, should I be required to leave this 'Christian Nation' of ours and head to a Muslim one? Or should I have the freedom to be not conform to British culture?
Heck, let's bring this closer to home. If the majority of British people don't like alternative fashion, should I stop dressing this way? If the majority of people find my polyamorous romantic lifestyle immoral, should I be obligated to have only monogamous relationships? Given that we in fact do live under a Christian state and the majority of people are Christian, should people be obligated to 'Do as the British do' and convert to Christianity?
Or rather, should we only require people to obey basic laws founded on basic principles like not harming other people or violating their liberty?
Thoughts: Lj Mojo
Somehow I missed this all when it happened...
lj memes as a vector of attack
Lj mojo seemed a harmless, if very silly, meme. It asked you who you dated, and then somehow calculated a set of scores for you for different aspects of your life and personality, and make a little chart out of them. Cute and pointless, just like most Internet memes.
Then at some point all the charts were replaced with the Gotsee image (and image of a man extending his anus with his hands) and a new link was added. This time you could type in anyone's username and see who they claimed to have dated, and who has claimed to date them.
In a way, somewhat clever. Had it been done with more style it would actually have been rather respectable. It certainly illustrates something...
"Q: What's the easiest way to find out personal information about someone on the Internet?
A: You ask them for it."
(from the above link)
I remember thepussykat saying something similar about those long pointless questionariess people often fill out. Perhaps people ought to be more carefull about who they give thier information out to.
Although in this case it mostly wasn't going to be anything damaging.
Looking at the results I'm a bit confused by people; it seems clear that many people on my friendslists have differing ideas of who has dated who.
Do people just lie on these things? And to what purpose?
Perhaps some of this can be resolved in the ambiguity of 'date'. Does that mean 'been on a date' with them; does a one night stand count? Or does 'have you dated this person?' suggest a more continuous on-going relationship? I assumed the latter, at least one person who claims to have dated me must have assumed the former.
I'm fairly sure that doesn't explain all the ambiguities though.
Review: Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist
Took me longer to read this than I thought it would, given that I ended up reading it off and on, but I have just finished, and am glad I did. I wasn't sure at first because the use of language is so strained sometimes, and I was a bit wary of finding it to be like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein where the over-laboured language and plot tend to distract from the merit's of the book, but the truth seems to be that Dickens is a much better writer (I guess that was to be expected).
Part of that is because the use of language actually enhances Dicken's use of satire. I didn't really expect the book to be so dryly satirical, but it's quick to notice that a great deal of the book is written in mock praise of those that least deserve it, and hence pretentious use of language does it little harm.
The plot meanwhile is only over-laboured at certain points, and offers a lot that I hadn't seen in any film production. Naturally, just upon observing that the book was some five-hundred pages long I knew the musical version must have shortened the plot significantly, but I wasn't sure what to expect besides. I had seen an extended BBC mini-series version of the book that I had enjoyed very much, but wasn't sure how much of it was invention (not so much apparently) and I could not remember it well besides.
An odd thing about the book, which naturally I could not appreciate properly, was that the book is written so that you find out the true story as time goes on. Many of the characters appear without any knowledge of who they are, or their background, which is not so true in the dramatisations that I have seen. I suppose in dramatisations they are going to expect people to have seen the musical, hence trying to 'surprise' people with revelations about Oliver's parentage is not going to work very well :o)
One thing that might be a stain on the book, although is actually very interesting, is the somewhat anti-Semitic attitudes that can be found. Before reading the book it had never occurred to me that Fagin was Jewish, and further, appears to form some kind of Victorian Jewish caricature. Interestingly, I can see how this has been preserved into the films, given the typical facial structures of actors who play Fagin, I just hadn't recognised it before.
Fagin is tight-fisted, Machiavellian, callous and amoral, and also distinctly lower working class and deviant. Of course, it is possible that for a significant number of Jews in London during this period that this was often only a slight exaggeration, given that the extreme weight of prejudice and stigma for Jews must have pushed them down into the underclass, which naturally results in increased deviancy.
So, I can't fault Dicken's for use of the archetype; it presumably reflects reality and it would be nonsense for Dicken's to not draw from real experiences. In the same way there would be nothing necessarily wrong with drawing from black criminality for films, as long as it got appropriate treatment.
But that's just it, there's a good and a bad way to approach black criminality, and there must be something similar true of Jewish criminality. One of the most striking things about Dicken's is how reading it can leave you with the sense that Fagin doesn't just represent Jewish criminality, but Jewishness itself.
Throughout the book Fagin is less often referred to as Fagin, but rather 'The Jew'. Only his peers during dialogue call him Fagin, whilst Dickens will, nine times out of ten, refer to him as the Jew, and his 'social betters', including Oliver, do the same. There's only so much of reading 'The Jew smiled hideously' or 'The Jew sneered' and other loathsome descriptions attached to 'The Jew' before one can get the feeling that Dickens doesn't think that much of Jews... But then I should imagine few people do of the time. In any case, constantly referring to a Jewish character as 'The Jew' is much like referring to a black character constantly as 'The Negro', and indeed the role that 'The Negro' plays as a racial caricature in some modern films seems rather similar to the role Fagin plays.
Fagin is not the only Jew in the storyline, there are some other minor characters that are Jewish, for instance one of the characters encounters a younger Jew in a disreputable bar:
"There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, with his elbows on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared very hard at Noah, and Noah stared very hard at him."
Quite the first introduction, naturally. Interestingly, not any of the other non-Jewish characters get descriptions that labour their loathsomeness in any such way; not Fagin's boys, certainly not the Artful Dodger, nor even Bill Sikes (except later in the book where there are extenuating circumstances).
The only defence I can possible see would be this reference late in the book when we read of Fagin:
"At one time he raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray besides him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them off"
Which presumably refers to Jewish rabbis, and for them Dickens seems to carry some respect.
In any case, well worth a read. It's a nicely dark portrayal of Victorian England, although probably not as dark as the reality (I should imagine the reality is that if a character like Fagin was keeping boys, they'd be for prostituting not for stealing)
---
Having just been looking through wikipedia articles I discovered this extract:
"Anti-Semitism
Fagin is noted for being one of the few Jewish characters of 19th century literature, let alone any of Dickens' pieces. Fagin has been the subject of much debate over anti-Semitism. In an introduction to a 1981 Bantam Books reissue of Oliver Twist, for example, Irving Howe wrote that Fagin was considered an "archetypical Jewish villain." Howe reports that a Jewish woman had written a complaint to Dickens that the character was too negatively stereotypical. Dickens wrote back to her, saying, "Fagin is a Jew because it is unfortunately true, of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was Jewish."
In later editions of the book printed during his lifetime, Dickens excised many (but not all) of the references to Fagin's Jewishness.[1] In his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, he included a favourable Jewish character, Mr. Riah.
The comic book creator Will Eisner, disturbed by the anti-Semitism in the typical depiction of the character, created a graphic novel in 2003 titled Fagin the Jew. In this book, the back story of the character and events of Oliver Twist are depicted from his point of view." (linky)
Vanity: My pictures... linky
Link: Iron Bru Goth Advert
Link: All the Dr Whos
Link: Parents refused right to name child '4real'
Link: Effects of LSD on cats
Plans: Dungeon this Wednesday? Anyone?