Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film production I can't believe it was even made.

One day I looked up the soundtrack at the local record store and bought it..."Composer Wendy Carlos" huh, never heard of her and couldn't find anything really other than contributions to Clockwork Orange and Hooked on Bach and not much else. I moved on.

Later, when there was more Internet to be had, I decided to look up Wendy and was shocked to learn she was trans. It started me down a journey of reflection, challenging my upbringing, and reexamining many "truths" that I had been taught. Along that journey I learned about the tragedy of Alan Turing and other stories.

Wendy's music planted a seed that significantly transformed my inner life, much for the better. It helped me develop significantly in my thoughts on freedom, empathy, justice and the kind of future world I'd like to live in and leave behind.

In 1982 it took a lot of daring for a Disney exec to green light bringing her music to their audience. This was during an age of great an unjust moral panic on a variety of topics.

for reference: I remember my mother receiving a letter from her pastor outlining why "Back to the Future Part II" was the work of Satan and they should never allow it in their household. The central argument was a table that counted the number of time the seven dirty swear words were mentioned in the movie, challenged its rating, and attributed the low rating (PG I think) to a conspiracy by Satan worshipers to corrupt God's youth. This was 1989.

Thanks for sharing. I think for some, that could have been a very uncomfortable story to share, but it's just so important that stories like this are spoken out loud. We all have capacity for such growth.

Regarding the BTTF 2 is a work of Satan anecdote: it's so convenient that any time the actions of any authority are at odds with how a group expects/wants things to work, instead of challenging their own priors ("why did the majority steer so far from our beliefs?"), they just declare it a conspiracy by Satan. This is exactly what we see in politics these days as well.

It's exceedingly difficult for one to completely up-end their foundation of understanding, culture, and being. It's easier to do absolutely ridiculous things like declare a contrary outcome as a conspiracy by Satan or the Deep State or whatnot. I think that overcoming that ontological inertia speaks volumes to your individual strength as a person, and the power Carlos' brilliant work.

Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" is a great read; it puts into many important words the capacity that we all possess for growth and large mindset changes, which you mention in your first paragraph

It's quite strange that someone clearly nuts like that pastor can be considered sane, wise, and morally authoritative. While in the same circles a trans person like Carlos is considered inherently deviant and somehow immensely threatening - even though all they have to offer is a life-long list of creative achievements, and absolutely no evidence of harm to anyone.

My conversations with my deeply religious grandmother left me with the impression that religion is a very dirty game: it inserts itself into your psyche in a way that it can become nearly impossible to distance yourself from it without massively breaking open what you consider to be your identity. This makes what the OP did all that much stronger, to be able to overcome that conditioning.

My grandmother never managed to, but, to her considerable credit, she did realize that some of her views were no longer supported by the evidence available, she was just too rooted in her ways to change.

It's foolish to think that lack of religion makes you experience any less of a dirty game.

That may be so, but religion seems to go out of its way to embed itself in the psyche of its subjects to the point that they experience severe identity crisis when trying to break free of it.

There are other groups that employ the same mechanisms.

I agree with your observation, but I don’t think religion is uniquely notable along those lines.

Ideology comes to mind as a pretty clean analog.

But looming in my mind is culture. Terminally, it seems indistinguishable from religion: it’s arbitrary, self-perpetuating, operates by getting deep psychological hooks into people and relies on (often blunt) communal enforcement.

And further, it seems “culture” has been elevated to the exalted, sacred status religion once commanded in society. In my view, this shift happened over the latter half of the 20th… cemented by 2010.

You are probably right, but because until very recently here religion was so strongly intertwined with culture that it is hard to see the difference and that the bulk of the people that stepped out of it haven't had time enough to establish a real culture of their own other than some common labels it is hard to make the distinction (for me, at least). This is probably yet another example of such conditioning. And in the meantime Islam has made an appearance and is gaining a lot of strength, to the point that it is only a matter of time before it will be the dominant religion, and given the cultural distance this is likely only going to cause even more issues.

I was a huge fan of Switched-On Bach. My dad bought the album for me and it said "Walter Carlos". Many years later I was in a music store and saw the CD and it said "Wendy Carlos". I thought it was a typo and would be worth lots of money so I bought it.

Years later I learned the real story.

I'm still glad for my purchase and Wendy Carlos has made my life just a little bit better because of her art.

Thanks for the recollection, it is a nice testimony to how prejudiced we can become due to our environment, and props to you for recognizing it for what it was and dealing with it the way you did.

I've been a fan of Wendy Carlos for a few years now and had no idea she was trans until reading your comment just now.

Create art about whatever you want but if you bind it with your identity and sexuality you're more an idealogue than a craftsman.

Prince, Beyonce, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe are ... ideologues? Their identity and sexuality is right up front in their art.

Or when it's straight and cis you don't feel the same way?

Ridiculous assertion. You're guilty of engaging in ideology just by suggesting it.

You seem to think that an artist by default creates art that is purely impersonal and unconnected from who they are and then manipulatively goes back to add stuff that you don't like. But it's the other way around. If the work is divorced from who they are in favor of consumer needs, it's just craft. Art is inevitably personal.

So what I think you're really asking for is for people to hide who they are if you don't like parts of them.

This is a bad take both on the nature of art and Wendy Carlos.

Art encompasses all aspects of the human experience. How could this not include identity and sexuality, and yes, the treatment one lives through as an aspect of those things. Also wrong is the supposition that a ideological art is somehow a lesser form of creativity. Some of the greatest works in history were made by "ideologues", and made specifically as tracts for their beliefs, either expressly or subtextually. To demand that art be politically inert and sanitized of the identity of its creator is to demand art that says nothing to the viewer and means nothing to the artist. It is to chide a mural for not being a wallpaper.

But even then: Wendy Carlos is perhaps one of the weakest examples of someone doing this, as the article itself makes abundantly clear. Her identity as a transgender woman was something she had to hide for over a decade, and even then the social stigma has driven her into seclusion ever since. Rather, the story of Wendy Carlos is one that massively underscores the sheer importance of having the loud-and-proud expressions of people's identity and experiences that we're (and I am) fortunate enough to have today. If you don't like that, well, maybe you can be the one to close your blinds this time.

Bingo, you get it exactly. It's Wendy's reluctance to "flaunt" it that makes her all the more appealing as a person. I understand that she regrets her time in seclusion, but it makes her unassailable as somebody who was "throwing it in your face."

There is nothing more closely tied to your identity (and consequently, your sexuality, which is strongly intertwined with your identity) than art.

In fact, that is the one thing that sets art and craft apart. So for 'ideologue' insert artist. A bricklayer is a craftsman.

I’ve known about her for years and didn’t know she was trans until reading these comments. It’s not really part of her music in anyway.

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