Yesterday I made the mistake of watching random comedians on youtube. One guy I saw had an audience of thousands of people in Australia, and he told nothing except painfully racist anti-China jokes. (Yes, it might have been the algorithm being like: "You like China? Well, howabout a comedian advocating genocide on China?") Everyone on hexbear knows that this is typical for comedians because the audiences at comedy shows tend to be drunk bourgeois scum, etc., etc.
But it's not just comedy. How many movies have you seen or books have you read where any of the characters, at any point, says something incredibly basic like: "capitalism bad, communism good." I'm not even sure Soviet or Chinese movies go that far (with the notable exception of Eisenstein's films...which were made before 1945). Plenty of works of art might imply that there is something corrupt about the military, police, or the powers-that-be, but they will never say that the system is the problem and that a better system exists. One very rare exception I can think of is The Battle of Algiers.
Also think about the dogshit novels Americans have to read in school: Animal Farm or To Kill A Mockingbird. The moral of both stories is basically: "Opposing the system is futile. Accept the system." Nabokov is hailed as the greatest novelist of the latter half of the 20th century, but he's basically a highbrow version of Ayn Rand, and repeatedly condemns communism by name in his books. We also know that the CIA had (and has) its fingers in every pie, and that the PMC also knows that it's not allowed to "get political," i.e., provide context. Even when it comes to classical Russian literature, Dostoevsky is probably the most popular in the USA, and the guy is a reactionary Christian monarchist who recycles the openings to his novels and is apparently nowhere near as popular in Russia.
I've just also been thinking about the greatest works of Statesian literature, how they are few and far between, how they were all written before 1945, and how they rarely were recognized for their greatness until long after their authors were dead. Steinbeck is one exception. The Grapes of Wrath is great (it was also written before 1945), but doesn't advocate for a better system. Poe and Melville are as good as the best writers from any other country, and Melville specifically inveighs against colonialism in his earlier novels, but both of these dudes were dead before they were recognized as titans. (Melville enjoyed some early success but then faded into obscurity long before he finished Moby Dick.) Are any post-1945 Statesian writers as good as Poe or Melville? Maybe just Octavia Butler, who was dead before she was a household name AFAIK. She advocates for communism in Parable of the Sower, but has to hide it behind mystical language ("God is change"). Sorry To Bother You is one possible cinematic exception, but it never goes beyond saying that the system sucks.
I'm wrapping up a trilogy of novels at the moment, and they are blatantly pro-communist, and I'm just preparing myself for the fact that they are almost certainly not going to be a success, not just because of the numbers involved (millions of books published every year), but because of the passionate anti-communism in western countries. These books don't have people saying "capitalism bad, communism good." But they do have workers and peasants forming Soviets (even though they aren't called Soviets), and I know from experience that even if as a writer you never turn to the camera and say "capitalism bad, communism good," readers will still pick up on the fact that something is wrong, from a capitalist perspective—that workers aren't capable of doing anything on our own, we need guidance from our enlightened masters, "human nature" is futile to oppose. I think there's just a dialectical materialist style of writing that liberals and fascists pick up on without necessarily knowing that they're picking up on it (because they spend their entire lives asleep).
Also I thought about this because I just saw and liked Trumbo, even though I was like: the blacklist never ended lol, where is my biopic about Paul Robeson, a Black colossus who never backed down from praising Stalin? Even if your job is dog shit picker upper (which I have done), you’ll lose that job if you praise Stalin.
And yes, this is a Arby's.
Man, the book is set in a realistic 1920s Alabama. The entire point of Atticus and the entire trial is that Tom Robinson was falsely accused of miscegenation and SA, and that the whole town is too racist to care, except for a lawyer willing to defend a client the town is willing to lynch. It exists both to show Scout that racism is bad (not a common idea in fucking early 1900s Alabama, let alone 1960 when the book was published), and to be a frank depiction of how godawful America was in the 20s, published when America was equally awful (60s).
I don't even recall the book having Atticus use white saviour language regarding the case. He takes it because he sincerely believes in what would pass for equality in that era. What the fuck were you looking for, him to start going John Wick on the town for being racist? Is any white lawyer who works for a black client a white saviour?
yes lol the book would have been so much better then.
But that's not what happened and the book is meant to be autobiographical, a reflection of the authors actual lived experience. Yes a alt-history story where Atticus becomes a communist guerrilla may have been cooler but Harper was trying to paint an accurate picture of what life in the depression south was like.
But as I said, it’s not even accurate. Whenever liberals write books, they act as though communists either don’t exist or are Nazis.
Do we know if communists were active in the specific town Harper Lee grew up in? Also the story is told from the perspective of a child, even if they were she may have not been exposed to them.
No, but there is literally a book called Hammer and Hoe which is about CPUSA activity in Alabama during the period in which To Kill A Mockingbird takes place.
Cool, you can read that book and To Kill a Mockingbird. Should give you a good perspective on life in the depression era south from two different perspectives.
Yes, a communist perspective and a liberal perspective.
Historical and social perspective of adult activists trying to improve society Vs the personal and subjective perspective of a child having their naive view of the world shattered by witnessing the gross injustice of society.
I love how all the responses you're getting boil down to "don't you know this book was radical in 1920"
It's like, ok and? Today it's a shitty book that let's white people think their smart for figuring out racism is bad
I thought the book was lackluster and defeatist when I read it in high school because I'm not white and easily impressed by every racism bad take made 75 years ago
lmao I still remember how bummed our white high school English teacher got because nobody in a majority non-white class in the year 2012 was super electrified for a book about a little white girl figuring out racism is bad
This whole dumb mini-struggle session seems to revolve around the idea that a story has to be a piece of radical propaganda to be good. To Kill a Mocking Bird isn't meant to be a political manifesto, it's meant to be a portrayal of life in the depression era south, both good and bad. That doesn't mean it can't say anything about society or inspire people, it just does so through a different means, it's not a manifesto but a story.
If the book want to use vicious racism as a literary vehicle than it needs to do more than center the story around a little white girl discovering racism exists, why the fuck would anyone find that remotely interesting, entertaining, enlightening or any other adjective we use to describe "good literature"
Cause I'm telling you nobody in my class thought it was interesting and in fact quite a few were peeved at the random way racism was used when the plot needed to be advanced
It's just a boring banal book
I mean I think it does do more than that personally.
If it didn't connect with you that's fine, and what you've made here is a far more substantive criticism than most of the discourse going on it elsewhere in this thread. I just found a lot of the lazier dismals grating.
what a mistake they made thinking a post about "post-1945" media was actually about how progressive media was in 2023 specifically. what a bunch of buffoons
Not really a matter about how progressive or not-progressive a work happens to be at any given time
It's about who the audience the book is intended for, and I assure you it was not intended for a classroom of non-white Americans in the year 2012 to say the least lmao
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