[FRIAM] Effigification

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

Excellent self-examination of your meaning of effigification and
effigy.  I like the point of "reflective" models.  It actually carries
some of the qualities in my version of "straw man" which is
*deliberately* weak, not so it can be torn down easily, but so nobody is
offended if it gets radically reconfigured, in fact the author is
naturally rooting for it being replaced/plated over with something more
better.   I sense that when people speak in pre-emptively
self-deprecating ways... offering up their faults en-caricature so that
others will either accept those faults as acknowledged or even argue
against their sharpest edges on their behalf.   "oh no, no, no, you are
not THAT bad!".

I do think the business of caricature in cartoons is useful in this
way...  both to make fun of (through caricature) "inconsequential
things" (say like Obama's ears or his hesitant/measured style of speech"
and to point at more important features but in a way that allows some
plausable deniability to the caricaturist and the caricatured.   I think
this is part of the point you make about Hebdo, et al.    Unfortunately,
one culture's "inconsequential" may be "fighting words" to another.... 
I for example don't think I can even *guess* what the British Royal
Family is hyper-sensitive to (even though I did watch "The Crown") or
more aptly, what  commoners like Diana or Meghan might be sensitive to
(not just words but treatment) coming *from* the Royal Family.

- Steve


On 4/9/21 8:16 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> Yes, I definitely consider them effigies. But I don't focus on the antipathy so much as some sort of canon or prototype. You can do with it what you will once you have that analog. 
>
> People often have a problem separating their *self* from their arguments. All the lip service we give to avoiding ad hominem gets completely lost almost all the time. If you make the same argument a thousand times, you begin to identify with it. So even if someone attacks the argument in a reasonable way, the person who made it feels attacked.
>
> Effigies help, especially political and religious ones. We see this most interestingly in video playbacks of athletes and horribly with body dysmorphia. If your coach burns you down with "You're soft! You need to be more aggressive!", it's difficult to depersonalize that criticism. But if she shows you your effigy and burns *that* down instead, then it allows you to think more objectively about your behavior and how it might be improved.
>
> Effigies are not merely models. They're reflective models. When GW Bush watches his effigy <https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-burn-an-effigy-of-us-president-george-w-bush-news-photo/80440447>, he should be *comforted* that they're not burning *him* down. But with the act, he has the opportunity to not be offended and to tease apart what he symbolizes. The same would be true of blasphemous images of Mohommed or Meghan Markle <https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/14/europe/charlie-hebdo-meghan-intl-scli-gbr/index.html>.
>
> It's useful to ask oneself how you'd feel if a group of people got together to burn your effigy? Would you react with fear? Anger? Accuse them of being stupid savages? Or perhaps wonder if you've done something seriously criticizable but provided the criticizers no refined way of criticizing?
>
>
> On 4/8/21 11:04 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
>>
>> But (mildly?)_ obscured (to me) is whether you consider the
>> straw<->steel man continuum to in fact be *effigies*?
>>
>> My connotation of "effigy" includes the business implied by "to burn in
>> effigy" which in fact *does* apply well to the more flammable end of the
>> spectrum (i.e. straw), but I don't know if you intend that aspect.  
>> Straw-Steel men *are* models, and perhaps caricatures in some sense.  
>>
>> I'm not deliberately splitting hairs to undermine your argument, but
>> rather to understand more better what all might be implied by your use
>> of the straw-steel idiom.   I'm late to the party, having only recently
>> (months) let go of my archaic mapping which was roughly opposite
>> yours... in that "straw-good because it is designed to be discardable or
>> an armature to plaster over into a more elaborate model" vs "steel-bad
>> because it  likely represents premature binding".
>