Liberals, fascists, and communists all tend to have different artistic preferences. Fascists like Duck Dynasty, liberals like Harry Potter, communists like Parasite. I know people are going to jump down my throat with that last one and there are subjective exceptions but I think you know what I mean. I loved the movie Us, for example, but a lib friend of mine said he "didn't get it." I felt the same after I watched the movie Snowpiercer back when I was a lib. The obvious class politics in that movie repelled me. (I haven't seen it since.)
I also have another idea I want to test out here. I think that the farther you get from the imperial core, the less interested people are in Star Trek / Star Wars. Both of these are basically outgrowths of the Western, so it probably applies to superhero movies too, since these are also just westerns with different costumes. The bad guys in cowboy movies are always the indigenous, and the indigenous are the ones who live in the Global South. Living in South Korea, I was fascinated at the seeming total lack of interest people there had in Star Wars and Star Trek. They also have no interest in Kurosawa movies, at least in my experience, since they aren't really too fond of samurai (and I know Kurosawa didn't just make samurai movies).
I'm out of time, so I'll just reiterate my question: are artistic preferences just another expression of politics / class? If you like or dislike a work of art, is that entirely because of your class or are there other factors?
ive never heard a beatles song so that means my politics are good
my gut reaction is that theres definitely other factors but it would be really interesting to read more about this
another thing to say is that i was reading this absolutely dogshit book from 1949 talking about classical influence in european literature and he just takes it for granted that independent literary traditions (his first example is Beowulf) are just trash because they aren't like what people wrote in late republican/early imperial rome or classical athens because these are the benchmarks of aesthetic value. extremely common to see when reading old classics scholarship
so in this way it absolutely reflects unexamined cultural assumptions (i don't think most people spend a ton of time thinking about why they like the art they like; i sure don't do that) but i don't know that all those cultural assumptions can be tied back to class alone
"A Federation viewpoint if I'd ever heard one!"
This is actually a good example though because as a lib I loved the Beatles but now I can’t stand them.
update i heard a beatles song a couple hours after posting this.