There is a lot that I could say about Bob Ross. I could tell you about his past in the U.S. Army, the origins of his "wet-on-wet" painting technique, or the Alaskan inspiration behind his roughly 30,000 landscapes. However, you can find all those things on his wikipedia page, and what I want to discuss here is sincerity. Sincerity in general, and Mr. Ross' peculiar brand of earnestness in particular. Sincerity is not cool. Not only is it uncool, but it also leaves the speaker vulnerable, a double-whammy in a society in which the citizens constantly feel weighed, measured, and found wanting. When you speak something true and it is ridiculed, there is often no way out. So instead we hedge our bets; we make declarations we half-believe so that we can agree with whatever response they garner. Alternatively, we employ irony and sarcasm to make sure no one can really be sure of the intention behind our statements in the first place. Not so with Bob. When Bob Ross wishes you "happy painting, and God bless" at the end of every episode, he could not be more earnest. There is no inkling that a generation after the shows were taped, Millennials would be laughing at him. This - I believe - is what protects him. As I mentioned earlier, there are a few people whom I have already forced into The Joy of Painting-watching sessions, and the reactions are almost invariably the same: 1. Amusement at this odd man's afro. 2. Jokes made at the expense of some aspect of Mr. Ross' character, or his painting technique. (2a. Squeaks at the adorable-ness of the baby squirrels/other wildlife the Rosses are taking care of - not every episode.) 3. Confusion. 4. Silenced awe at the magical universe Bob is conjuring. After this, the show ends with Bob's encouragement to join him next time and reminder that everyone - yes, even you - can paint. Then Youtube or Netflix lines up the next episode and no one stops it. The only exception to this response was my own mother, another creature with the beautiful quality of being free from irony, who was enthralled for the full 27 minutes. As much as something within us wants to laugh at Bob Ross (he is the face of one of my all-time favourite memes, after all), he is seemingly protected from humiliation by this undeniably open-hearted earnestness he is cloaked in. We want to curse him for being so completely lacking in self-awareness, but in video this quality is translated to perfect self- contentment. Perhaps this is what is so magical about The Joy of Painting, a show that should not work at all, but does. It is mesmerising for people - especially in my generation - to watch an afro’d white man do something so simple, and so unimaginably difficult to us; smile un- ironically and paint his “happy little clouds”.
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And why it's the wrong thing to strive for. You're walking a mile, and it's a long one. The scenery is unfamiliar and the shoes you're wearing are too small, or too big. Either way, they are chafing in all the most sensitive spots and you know you're going to be popping blisters three days from now. Just to top it all off, the weather's bad. Maybe it's hot and sticky, maybe hot and dry and you're getting a nose bleed. Or maybe it's raining. I don't know - whatever you don't want it to be, it's that.
You're not sure where you're going - or even if you're going anywhere in particular. You just know that people keep telling you to try walking a mile in their shoes. Well, you're trying it, and it sucks. The heels are high and the streets are filled with predators, and now you finally understand why raping women is wrong/why killing gay people is wrong/why expelling undocumented immigrants is wrong. Good job, you got there. All it took was you to experience a moment of discomfort yourself. But sometimes, that's not good enough. Sometime's there's a monster out there attacking people whose shoes you'll never get to walk around in. And it's not fast enough to wait until that monster comes after someone you love to stop him. This brings two things to mind for me - one is Trevor Noah's response to Republican outrage over Ivanka's Dad's sexual assault comments. To paraphrase The Daily Show's host, "you shouldn't be offended for the women in your lives, you should be offended as a human." The other is a powerful poem by Martin Neilmoller, "First They Came", about German complicity in the Holocaust. Niemoller was a Christian pastor with a nasty streak (later repented) anti-Semitism. After staying quiet while more and more groups were being taken, the Nazis eventually took him, and he found there was no one left to speak out for him. It was impossible for Niemoller to have real empathy for the Socialists, and the trade unionists, and the Jews, because he was not one of them. What may have been possible - and what is still possible for us - is to acknowledge that taking people from their homes, or denying people access to basic resources, or sexually assaulting people, is not ok. It is not ok to grab peoples' pussies, regardless of whether or not you are the one with the pussy. It is not ok to deny people access to a bathroom, regardless of whether or not those people are different from you. |
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