A member of the British Royal Family has been calling a British-Asian "friend" of his "Sooty" for years. Some suggest this is racist, others that "political correctness has gone too far". What does someone mean by calling a friend - however affectionately - such a name? Why the disquiet? I think it comes from what the act of using such words implies - a statement of difference - a difference which needn't be remarked upon, in the first place. However, and this is not a justification - I think the Princes are wrong to speak and act as they do - nicknames have always been problematic. They are, often, gently mocking, with the gentleness really mixed with aggression - "shorty", "Little John", "lefty" - and so on - all implying a noticed quality of differentiation, which the friend then chooses to take as the "name" of the person he befriends. This act of renaming is an imaginative imperialism - a taking over from the naming that the parents presumably first enacted, which, in itself, is a curious violence, but one we cannot do without (though some parents, as we know, use such offensive or silly names that the law has to change them). Who has the right to one's name? Only the person himself. To be called "Sooty" is maybe permitted, but with how much shame, even if secret? To refuse such a name is awkward - and, given the royal position - socially impossible. It is the assumption of effortless and natural enjoyment of total power over others that is offensive. It is hardly "politically correct" then, to question royalty's use of painful language - it is, more directly, political. Britain, still, needs to slowly but surely disentangle itself from such awkward relationships with the monarchy, and all the linguistic twists and turns it bestows. I am still perplexed that there is a Sir Hoy, and not a Dame Adlington, for instance. At the heart of these accusations of political correctness gone mad is always the idea that words don't mean what they say or sound like. The British sometimes mean by this humour, or irony - but note that humour, as Freud argued - can hide aggression - or simply be aggressive. Too often, humour is called black, or sick, as if that defends it from its base negativity. When racist language is used - or sexist - or ageist - a question does need to be posed - if it is all just fun and games - why do it? I recall a BBC interview last year with a famous novelist who bemoaned how "PC" meant he couldn't make villains "foreign anymore" - which was a shame, because making epithets about foreigners was such "fun". Some colonial fun and games have gone on too long. Time for the soot to be wiped away.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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