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.
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.
Except her view wasn't shattered at all because even after To Kill A Mockingbird's success she continued to live quietly as a lib.
I haven't read Go and Set a Watchman so idk what canonically happens to Scout after, the book itself doesn't really say what happens to the character of Scout after. As for Harper Lee, yeah she doesn't become a communist, but that doesn't mean nothing meaningful can't be gleaned from her life experiences. Nobody in 100 Years of Solitude becomes a communist but it still has a lot to say about Latin American history.