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In reply to the discussion: What are your feelings about the song "Dixie?" [View all]Igel
(35,522 posts)Too many layers of irony, sarcasm, rewrites, and revisionism to have just one impression.
What do I think about it in various contexts? Used at different points in time?
It's one thing if it's satire, another if it's used in a Confederate battle, another if it's used in a dippy period movie. Humming it as you wander through a restored Southern plantation house is one thing; humming it as you look at the slave quarters associated with that plantation house is another--assuming that you even stop to think about the words and layers of meaning that they're credited to have.
It's become a symbol, and symbols have no inherent meaning. They only have meanings that individuals and groups attribute to them. When different meanings are attributed to a symbol, that's fine as along as everybody says, "Ah, well, they mean something different."
Problems arise when we believe only our meaning is the symbol's real meaning. Or when we don't like the meaning others attribute to it.
The most confused variant is when we assume another group is attributing a meaning to the symbol that they don't think they are. In this kind of argument, those doing the attributing have the upper hand. They know what they mean, one assumes. The only possible counterargument is that they're lying or being deceitful, in which case the entire argument stops being rooted in logic and is mostly rooted in suspicion and ill-will. Often it devolves into, "Well, they may think they're telling the truth, but they're really deceiving themselves." Q.E.D.
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