Art and Politics

[Alexiev]

Here's and article from The Atlantic about the problem with political art. The problem appears to be multi-fold: political art often devolves into virtue signaling; politics is general and non-personal while literature is specific and personal; the extent to which "it’s possible—it’s necessary—for a progressive to be able to value Conrad or Naipaul and a conservative to love Márquez or Morrison" is problematic.

The article discusses Viet Than Nguyen, whose "the Sympathizer" I've read. Of course politics is part of life, and cannot be avoided by novelists. But need the Kipling's of the world be avoided because we despise their politics? Aren't literary and artistic values distinct from political and social ones?

https://web.archive.org/web/20231115190 ... 2y/676005/

[Impenitent]

values overlap and are as numerous as there are observers who posit such...

Imp

[Walker]

GB Shaw said that in Ireland a novelist is a failed conversationalist. Anything can inspire art but when it’s politics it must be about life and death, most effectively expressed as the personal effects of war ... because politics and politicians make the wars.

For example: Picasso’s Guernica, Goya’s Third of May 1808, David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women.

In literature, Catch-22 qualifies as art concerning the satirical yet deadly need to rationalize the irrationality of war at a personal level, in order to appease the pilots’ precision-orientied expectations of sanity behind the shifting goalposts of mission quota.

[Alexiev]

GB Shaw said that in Ireland a novelist is a failed conversationalist. Anything can inspire art but when it’s politics it must be about life and death, most effectively expressed as the personal effects of war ... because politics and politicians make the wars.

For example: Picasso’s Guernica, Goya’s Third of May 1808, David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women.

In literature, Catch-22 qualifies as art concerning the satirical yet deadly need to rationalize the irrationality of war at a personal level, in order to appease the pilots’ precision-orientied expectations of sanity behind the shifting goalposts of mission quota.

I have a print of the David painting in my house I also saw the movie Napoleon recently, and the coronation scene was borrowed from a David painting. War and Peace comes to mind -- often feted as the greatest of novels.

[Walker]

GB Shaw said that in Ireland a novelist is a failed conversationalist. Anything can inspire art but when it’s politics it must be about life and death, most effectively expressed as the personal effects of war ... because politics and politicians make the wars.

For example: Picasso’s Guernica, Goya’s Third of May 1808, David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women.

In literature, Catch-22 qualifies as art concerning the satirical yet deadly need to rationalize the irrationality of war at a personal level, in order to appease the pilots’ precision-orientied expectations of sanity behind the shifting goalposts of mission quota.

I have a print of the David painting in my house I also saw the movie Napoleon recently, and the coronation scene was borrowed from a David painting. War and Peace comes to mind -- often feted as the greatest of novels.

How was that movie Napoleon? I heard some opinions at the last get together but haven't seen it.

[Alexiev]

How was that movie Napoleon? I heard some opinions at the last get together but haven't seen it.

The battle scenes were good (as one would expect from Ridley Scott). Napoleon was portrayed as a sort of emotionless stoic -- although one infatuated with Josephine. It wasn''t a great movie, but I enjoyed it. If you have a choice, see Pslm d'Or winner "Anatomy of a Fall" instead.

[Iwannaplato]

Here's and article from The Atlantic about the problem with political art. The problem appears to be multi-fold: political art often devolves into virtue signaling; politics is general and non-personal while literature is specific and personal; the extent to which "it’s possible—it’s necessary—for a progressive to be able to value Conrad or Naipaul and a conservative to love Márquez or Morrison" is problematic.

The article discusses Viet Than Nguyen, whose "the Sympathizer" I've read. Of course politics is part of life, and cannot be avoided by novelists. But need the Kipling's of the world be avoided because we despise their politics? Aren't literary and artistic values distinct from political and social ones?

https://web.archive.org/web/20231115190 ... 2y/676005/

I think the problems come in when the politics of the artist oversimplify or cramp the world or the novel or work of art. But I have no trouble enjoyiny for example the four novelists you mention. There is a problem to be overcome and many manage. And if, say, a novelist is not thinking about politics at all, there's probably politics assumed in there anyway.

[Walker]

Totalitarian subjugation, in two minutes.


POSSESSED CHILD -- 2 Minute Twilight Zone -- It's A Good Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuAzvb38PyI

[Walker]

If life ever imitates this kind of art …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQmBXEZEYtg

*

… then you know you’re either in a cult or a totalitarian state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6OckRdD1C8

No doubt in the second link, there are some true believers in this crowd who were made that way by doublethink and/or youthful idealism.

In the US such joy is expressed in religion but not The Party, not yet. In the US, The Party only shows joy at the defeat of their enemies, which is any other party ... or whatever the minions are told to hate, such as a foreign democracy defending itself.

For those folks in this video, the expressed joyful enthusiasm is motivated by the secondary condition of implicit threat combined with the survival imperative, a combination that serves to activate the worship gene into manifestation, as the totalitarian masters well know.

[Walker]

Napoleon was portrayed as a sort of emotionless stoic --

That's interesting. Perhaps with today's audiences, that meets the expectation set up by David's portrait of Napolean, which of course is static.

On that note, folks might figure that Buddha was always sitting around like a stone statue.

[Alexiev]

If life ever imitates this kind of art …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQmBXEZEYtg

*

… then you know you’re either in a cult or a totalitarian state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6OckRdD1C8

No doubt in the second link, there are some true believers in this crowd who were made that way by doublethink and/or youthful idealism.

In the US such joy is expressed in religion but not The Party, not yet. In the US, The Party only shows joy at the defeat of their enemies, which is any other party ... or whatever the minions are told to hate, such as a foreign democracy defending itself.

For those folks in this video, the expressed joyful enthusiasm is motivated by the secondary condition of implicit threat combined with the survival imperative, a combination that serves to activate the worship gene into manifestation, as the totalitarian masters well know.

The first video depicts the MAGA vision of an America that never existed. The second, featuring Trump's good buddy as lead singer, shows the "patriotism" that revolves around one "dear leader". It is this patriotism that Trump hopes to inspire.

[Walker]

And you were doing so well before you veered off the tracks and into pure fantasy unrelated to reality.

[Alexiev]

And you were doing so well before you veered off the tracks and into pure fantasy unrelated to reality.

I'm currently reading In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park. It's the story of how a girl escaped North Korea. I haven't got to the escape yet, but the start reads like an anti-North Korea propaganda piece (although I'm sure the attitude is justified). The "cult of personality" embraced (indeed, demanded) by Kim Sung and Kim Yong Nam (heads of state during the author's childhood) is, of course, a feature of autocracy.

Clearly Donald Trump admires autocrats, promotes a cult of personality, and his attempt to overturn the election shows his lack of respect for the voters and the rule of democratic law. Whatever your political preferences, surely you don't support autocracy. Or do you?

[Walker]

Clearly Trump knows how to deal with autocrats, to the advantage of the United States.

He knows how to bully them.
He knows how to flatter them.
He knows how to threaten them.
He knows the language that will make them listen.

That's why, despite all the illegal crap distractions created by The Left, his adminstration was a time of peace and prosperity.

[Walker]

... promotes a cult of personality

His personality is not the issue. Your relationship with his personality is the issue. The reason people don't like Trump is because of his style, but they go searching for ostensible reasons because that reason sounds so shallow.