It’s an underdog story about classism in which the folk hero (Johnny) is confronted by a powerful man (the Devil) who tries to exploit the hero’s perceived ignorance and inferiority by offering a great reward with impossible odds. Although Johnny warns him that looks can be deceiving, and that he’s going to regret the dare because Johnny is the “best there’s ever been”, the devil is blinded by his greed and arrogance.
The devil creates an awful cacophony of technically excellent fiddle playing that would be impossible for Johnny to replicate. It’s a trick.
But Johnny just grins at him and starts to play “simple” classic country fiddling songs - Fire On The Mountain, House Of The Rising Sun, and Daddy Cut Her Bill Off. He doesn’t rise to beat the Devil - he simply creates his own music from his home, in the style that he knows, and his love of it and the familiarity of the music make his “backwoods” fiddling more perfect than the Devil could ever achieve.
It is thus the devil’s pride, not Johnny’s, that allows Johnny to Bugs Bunny his way into a golden fiddle.
(In that sense, I do agree that it is the most American song: in a land of prejudice and inequities, great power lies - dormant but ever-present - in those we underestimate and attempt to exploit.)
Also people initially react to the devil’s part like “holy shit that’s badass” because he’s got electric guitar and bass and a whole backing band to make him sound good. Of course he sounds amazing. But if you drill down to the actual fiddling – and this is straight from Charlie Daniels – it’s not as technically difficult as what Johnny does. It’s fast? But it’s mostly just going up and down scales.
Here’s a good performance – the devil’s part starts around 2:00. Check out how long Daniels just stands there holding his fiddle while the guitar and piano carry the weight. I love that piano bassline but fiddling it ain’t.
It’s still an American narrative: if you can afford to hire a bunch of more talented people, you, too, can look like a genius. Doesn’t make you one.
(If you learned more than one, pick the one you learned the most or took for the longest time or enjoyed the most or whatever. Pick the one most meaningful to you.)
I’ve watched 5 minutes of the first ever episode of the Eric Andre show and already there are 2 parts I want to analyze and dissect until they aren’t actually funny anymore
Fain wouldst I analyze this japery and uncover deeper truths within these bits
I’ve watched 5 minutes of the first ever episode of the Eric Andre show and already there are 2 parts I want to analyze and dissect until they aren’t actually funny anymore
my stupid fucking aunt loraine bought us an air friar for our wedding present 🤦♀️ the apartments barely big enough for the two of us now weve got this dumb asshole flying around preaching at us … every time i get a migraine he tries to give me herbs and poultices 🙄
The thing is, I have nothing against socialism or communism as a political ideology; trust me, I’m as anti-capitalist as they come. The leftism is really not the problem here.
The problem is when in their leftism, people – Americans, really, and western Europeans – use the ussr as this sort of goal, this complete antithesis to the modern capitalist society, this almost-utopian place to live. They use hammer and sickle symbol, the ussr anthem; sometimes, as a joke, sometimes, not so much.
Not only that clearly shows that they know absolutely nothing about the ussr – it’s also spreading russian propaganda, whether it’s on purpose or not, which is especially insidious now, when russia is literally committing a genocide.
The ussr wasn’t a socialist utopia where everyone is equal. It was a totalitarian dictatorship, responsible for colonisation and genocide of multiple people and cultures. Just like the russian Empire before it. Just like modern russia continues to do now.
For many Eastern European and Central Asian people, hammer and sickle is not just a symbol of a political ideology. It’s the symbol, under which people were starved to death, imprisoned or executed for daring to write in their own language; in which cultures were erased, people – forcefully assimilated, stripped of their own national identity.
It’s the propaganda of being “the same people, the same nation” that russians love to use; that westerners love to believe, for the sole reason of the oppressed daring to look similar to the oppressor; for the sole reason of Americans being unable to look past their own history and realize oppression comes in many shapes and forms.
By using the ussr symbols in your political movement, you’re denying the atrocities commited under that symbol and spreading russian propaganda, whether it’s on purpose or not.
It’s not “progressive” to wave around a hate symbol.
Do your research.
To the people in replies equating the hammer & sickle to the reclamation of ‘queer’:
No.
The word queer was created by queer people, and though it was appropriated as a slur for a while, it has been reclaimed as a self identifier for generations. The only people we hurt by calling ourselves by name is, perhaps, ourselves. Even if the term had originated as a slur, it would have been targetting queer people as victims, meaning we are the people to listen to about its reclamation.
US and W Euro communists did not create the hammer and sickle. It was not used to symbolize genocide against W Europeans and US Americans.
It is a military symbol of an empire that attempted, even occasionally succeeded at, genocide. The survivors of those attempts are the people harmed by its use.
We have no business 'reclaiming’ the hammer and sickle; they aren’t ours. The victims of USSR genocide alone determine who gets to reclaim it.
The rest of us would do well to defer to them, just like so many people deferred about the swastika after it was used as a symbol of genocide, too.
For a full century, use of the symbol was voluntarily deferred by Buddhists, Navajo, and other groups that used it. It is only being slowly re-adopted as the direct survivors of that genocide die of old age.
Meanwhile, the most recent USSR genocides were occurring during my own childhood and I’m a fucking millennial.
The only people who get to have an opinion about 'reclaiming’ this symbol are the survivors of the genocides it represents.
We already have a simple, easy to use symbol for labour rights and equality that came out of our own history as W Euro and American communists. And it wasn’t even used to justify mass murder!!
Shut the fuck up, put on your big kid panties, and use Bread and Roses. 🥖 🌹
The USSR was a brutal, genocidal, totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the Eastern Bloc was no better. In the last century, the second most common cause of death in my family (after Nazis) was “torture and murder by the communist government”.
I have family members whose NAMES I don’t even know, because the government thoroughly unpersoned them. (This is not a TikTok euphemism, btw. It’s from Orwell’s 1984.) Many of my family members were still terrified of speaking out against the government, even twenty years after the communist regime fell, even in private.
I don’t even know what to talk about, really, to get people to see my point. The multiple genocides that the Soviet Union did, in an attempt to leave only the good Russians? The way that Jewish and Muslim communities were targeted far, far more than Christian ones? The mass surveillance and propaganda campaigns that left the populace a nervous and confused wreck? The KGB?
I mean, I get it. Y'all grew up in the West, all you’ve known your whole life is the crushing boot of Christianity and capitalism. You learned the word “propaganda” and you learned how the west lied and subverted and waged war and you decided that if the west was bad then the governments they opposed, such as the USSR, must be good, and that all the horror stories are propaganda.
They’re not. The reality of Eastern European communism, as told to me by my family and by my country’s historians, is WORSE than whatever you learned in history class.
And you, Western leftists, are not the inheritors of that trauma, and you don’t get to claim it’s symbols.
Stop using the hammer and sickle. Stop calling people “comrade”. Stop talking about the glory of the Soviet Union. And for fuck’s sake STOP PLASTERING IMAGES OF LENIN AND STALIN EVERYWHERE, my god, why the fuck is this even a thing I need to say.
[image ID: first image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 8 with a starting bid of $100 and titled, “Bidding begins July 27 – Personalized Video from the Office Ladies.” Attached is a photo of actresses Angela Kinsey and Jenna Fischer, aka Angela and Pam from The Office.
second image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 14 with a starting bid of $100 and titled, “Bidding begins July 27: Elementary props from Robert Wolfe. @writergeekrhw Image is of a man holding props.
third image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 18 with a starting bid of $100 and titled "Enigma Machine prop from Bones.” Image is of the Enigma Machine from the TV show Bones.
fourth image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 24 with a starting bid of $50 and titled, “Lisa Hanawalt Handpainted Bojack Horseman strike sign.” Attached is an image of Bojack Horseman with the text “Give us a fair deal or suck a dick dumbshits!”
fifth image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 37 with a starting bid of $100 and titled, “Better Call Saul Crew Gifts.” Attached is an image of BCS logo beer steins, a bag, and a mug.
sixth image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 42 with a starting bid of $100 and titled, “What We Do In The Shadows - Colin Robinson’s notebook.” Image is of a composition book prop from WWDITS.
seventh image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 41 with a starting bid of $50 and titled, “What We Do In The Shadows signed poster (1 of 12 printed).” Attached is the WWDITS poster.
eighth image is a screenshot from the WGA Garage Sale Auction page. Item is listed as Package 46 with a starting bid of $50 and titled, “Connor Roy For President Hat.” Image is of a baseball cap from the show Succession that says Connor Roy For President. end ID.]
Support the WGA strike and bid on some cool items from your favorite writers, creators, and film/TV shows! Link to auction site here.
Lots more stuff on the website, with more auction items added frequently!
As a rape survivor, I understand the need for safe space together – free from sexist harassment and potential violence. But fear of gender variance also can’t be allowed to deceptively cloak itself as a women’s safety issue. I can’t think of a better example than my own, and my butch friends’, first-hand experiences in public women’s toilets. Of course women need to feel safe in a public restroom; that’s a serious issue. So when a man walks in, women immediately examine the situation to see if the man looks flustered and embarrassed, or if he seems threatening; they draw on the skills they learned as young girls in this society to read body language for safety or danger.
Now, what happens when butches walk into the women’s bathroom? Women nudge each other with elbows, or roll their eyes, and say mockingly, “Do you know which bathroom you’re in?” Thats not how women behave when they really believe there’s a man in the bathroom. This scenario is not about women’s safety – its an example of gender-phobia.
And ask yourself, if you were in the women’s bathroom, and there were two teenage drag queens putting on lipstick in front of the mirror, would you be in danger? If you called security or the cops, or forced those drag queens to use the men’s room, would they be safe?
If the segregation of bathrooms is really about more than just genitals, then maybe the signs ought to read “Men” and “Sexually and Gender Oppressed,” because we all need a safe place to go to the bathroom. Or even better, let’s fight for clean individual bathrooms with signs on the doors that read “Restroom.”
And defending the inclusion of transsexual sisters in women’s space does not threaten the safety of any woman. The AIDS movement, for example, battled against the right-wing characterization of gay men as a “high-risk group.” We won an understanding that there is no high-risk group – there are high-risk behaviors. Therefore, creating safety in women’s space means we have to define unsafe behavior – like racist behavior by white women towards women of color, or dangerous insensitivity to disabilities.
Transsexual sisters are not a Trojan horse trying to infiltrate women’s space. There have always been transsexual women helping to build the women’s movement – they are part of virtually every large gathering of women. They want to be welcomed into women’s space for the same reason every woman does – to feel safe.
Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Marsha P. Johnson and Beyond
ALT
