canpakes wrote:Do you believe that the response described is unexpected, or unreasonable, or both, as regards observers reacting more to what they believe are particular recent societal trends in behavior, regardless of whatever extent the Covington kids may or may not had explicitly been trying to act in the same manner?
Setting aside the question of if it's unexpected to focus on if it is reasonable, I would first argue it's important to consider how symbols work in communication.
If a symbol is an object that represents something more complex, then it would be functioning properly when the person receiving the symbol decodes it and adds back in much of the detail and nuance into the thing being represented with the recognition the symbol is not the thing itself.
Children doing early drawings are often conveying symbols that can be revealing in their own way where, for example, they recognize a face can be conveyed as two dots, a squiggle, and an arc. The sun is conveyed through a circle with lines coming off of it to represent light. A mountain is conveyed via a triangle with maybe a squiggle to show a snow line.
More elegant examples can come from an artist who has distilled something of the essence of a thing into a few lines such as this "symbol" for a horse:
Our modern world is full of glyphs that serve to tell us quickly what may be found if we click on a symbol on a screen or go to a certain place indicated in a document.
Relying on symbols to communicate is both reasonable and expected.
But it's not reasonable for someone to let the symbol take the place of the reality it is meant to be communicating. We shouldn't allow the stereotypes or symbolic aspects of a thing become the thing itself. We should unpack the symbol but not imagine that takes the place of reality.
In the case of the viral video, that the symbolism of the kid in the MAGA hat as a bully smugly staring down an elderly Native American gentleman was interpreted a certain way initially is understandable. Is it reasonable? I don't think reason is involved at that point so we'll have to say no. That's not to say it is bad, just that reason isn't at work with symbolism here.
If, in unpacking the symbolism of the video, we imagine we have uncovered something about the reality of what took place in that space at that time, then we are not being reasonable. It conveyed an idea, but it is not a substitute for reality. And if we allow the symbol to BE the thing it is supposed to be symbolizing, we're using them wrong.
It's difficult to say we should expect we would choose to be unreasonable at that point and not be saying we have low expectations of ourselves in so doing.
Essentially, I don't think it's excusable to let the symbol define for us what really happened.
ETA: I should add, one of the reasons most of us find Trump so disgusting and reprehensible is that he does this very thing all the time. Part of the symbolism taken from the viral video is rooted in the reputation Trump has of diminishing minorities and stereotyping them. Dennis Prager does this in his online university "lectures" all the time as well, reducing complex subjects into 6 minute lessons on how a person should recognize the symbolism of complex things so that it becomes easy to view the world in the way Prager wants his audience to see it. Like a Mormon missionary telling an investigator their feeling of warmth and comfort is the holy ghost telling them Joseph Smith was a prophet and there really were Nephites, it's a way of hacking a person's ability to engage the world by defining for them what symbolism should be assigned to something that may be much more complex and not as black-and-white as we prefer. And people choose to participate in doing this because the world really is complex and nuanced, and it would be so much easier if someone could reduce it down.
