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Idk how you could possibly come to this conclusion about what they said when they very specifically made a point to say that art can and does change people’s minds, but that’s not something that art has to do, and people trying to make every single movie or tv show that comes out a new front in the culture war are the ones being dumb
If you wanna get extremely angry at podcast hosts whom you have never and will never meet then at least get mad at something they actually said lol
Hey hey hey there pal. I don’t know where you think you are, but this is chapo dot chat. We are here to shit on the podcast and hold our volcel pledges.
Personally, That belief that art is supposed to change people's minds sounds like such a fucking Lib take. So according to your opinion artists are like NGO's; out there to fix the wrongs of the system; Does this mean that by the same logic bad art causes these wrongs? This is the mindset that has us deep in this hellworld in the first place! This American obsession with art and entertainment as propaganda or art as some magical way to spark political action. In the end it just becomes another manufactured consumer identity: "Oh i listen to Zack de la Rocha so i'm very fucking revolutionary" "Hey man i'm morally upright because i watch all the morally upright saturday morning cartoons!" PfffT! I don't care about your fandoms!
This is the mindset that makes people in careers like liberal arts end up so damn bitter: They spend their whole lives making art thinking that they are sparking political action without ever really organizing any real political action; until they realize that the groups of power they are rising against are the ones funding them. I even remember a quote from Contemporary artist Betsabèe Romero: "if the groups in power felt challenged by political art, they would not be the patrons of leftist political art." The failed sons of millionaires love that shit too; They spend a lot of money in their manufactured identities! Leftist Political Contemporary art is a Fandom for Rich consumers!
This is my number one critique to contemporary political art as a matter of fact! Everybody focuses on the fact that it's not high skilled paintings, or marble sculptures... If chuds really wanted to strike a killing blow into leftist contemporary art; They merely have to point out that it has been failing It's mission since the 60's and that the people they are rising against are their most rabid fanboys and that the most academic segment of it, just ends up being a very incomplete illustration of the theory it's trying to educate it's audience on. It gets worse, when political art steals the spotlight from real political action; or when blaming the media is convenient enough to ignore the truer, more difficult to solve systemic issues. Conservatives have been doing that since the sixties it works!
(But that's waayy too nuanced a critique for a CHUD. Or for most people. Working class people don't go to museums, it's a rich person's fandom.)
And what about pop art? What about illustration, comics, videogames and media? I remember a long tradition of people that consume very leftist leaning media and just disregard or distort the message. Fuck it, i like a lot of very Chud media myself and couldn't care less about the message; S. Craig Zahler makes some right leaning movies that rebel in this idea of the "politically incorrect" And i feel it's almost childishly cute that he might think a normal person will watch them and instantly go: "maann maybe Mexicans are Drug dealers and rapists!" Do Americans even need to hear that in a movie? Both Biden and Trump have said that! i hear that slipped in chat conversations in Cy Tube Channels all the time, and believe me they are not talking about the movie. Americans don't like their Jingoism because their movies said so; Their system effectively uses jingoism for profit! Always had! Jingoistic art is just the byproduct of the culture; if there's any hope today in changing anything it's not because Black Panther is a Black Superhero; It's because shit is so bad today, people are starting to take action! And i feel the only circumstances that make people consistently take action or even question the way they live is when shit gets bad.
I've heard countless takes like the one the chapos did on Avatar, or Starship Troopers or Robocop. And it's always the same schlock: "No really, the movie is actually about this leftist message. It's a movie against fascism, or against capitalism!" And most people just don't care. The average consumer doesn't read that deep, or reads what they want to hear. Some very refined art costumers just focus on the parts of the product they like. There's people that buy movies for the cinematography alone even if they hate the script for example! And just look at Jordan Peterson with his house full of communist propaganda posters!
This heavy politicization of pop art only started because politics is just another fandom now. It's another manufactured identity. People are ready to rave about the guys on their side of politics, but they are not ready to hold them to standard. For most: It's about being a fan and a fan wants to consume products; they want to spend money on art that confirms their biases, that has their logo on it, that signals their lifestyle.
And that's cool if you are into it.
But again. I personally don't care about your fandom.
Do you think your take changes when it's art produced under a Socialist system. I mean, the Soviets were pretty big on the "Classical" arts, and Chinese Revolutionary Ballets are actually pretty good, and Everyone knew them. Avant Garde artists like Brecht thrived with politically charged art.
Is it possible that working class people don't go to museums because they've been told it isn't their museum?
Well If you look at art history; It is consistent that the dominant culture manufactures it's own aesthetics; I think this goes in line with what Felix Guattari Talks about in his Book "Cartographies of desire" In that a dominant system manufactures Its own "subjectivity" or "Ideology" (if you prefer your Slavoj Zizekisms) And art could be see as part of this Subjectivity or ideology itself. But it doesn't go the other way around, it is rare that art manufactures the system, it's supportive, runs in parallel just like ideology.
BUUUT There's a big but. Guattari also mentions in the same book, that an emergent revolutionary ideology can spawn emergent art. this is also consistent with the times where big political shifts or even bloody revolutions spawned new ways to understand art: Just look at how Academic "Rococo" painting Made way for very political french realism, and later expressionism as aristocrats lost power to the bourgeoisie.
But my take still stands; in these examples the shift is not spawned on the arts themselves but in the political action that organizes political systems. The art is a byproduct of the overall ideology; There are examples in art history where an artist is so far ahead ideologically speaking that they get ignored. Nobody likes them at their time and they later get rescued by history and enjoyed by later generations. It's really sad, but the thing about "being in the right place in the right time" also stands for being "on par with the dominant ideology" Even if that ideology is a coming revolution. The stories about artists from failed revolutions are very sad! And it's good to read on them, even just to become aware of our Survivorship bias.
The issue with art and media on contemporary capitalistic systems is that their control over their aesthetics is different from regimes such as the Soviet Union: There is no state sponsored aesthetics (mostly), but instead the illusion of the invisible hand of capitalism is pushed. People call this "freedom" but it's just more subtle control. Capital diverts funds to co-opt and control the creative forces of the system; aesthetics are "assimilated," "disneyfied," "neutered." Turned into consumer products and rendered as ideologically neutral as possible, with the exception of course that it should be accessory to capitalistic ideology. There are no dangerous arts in capitalism, only "niche products" I feel censorship in the arts and media under capitalism tends to follow different criteria than in past states.
But what happens when people try to find alternative ways to organize and survive? What happens when people get together and try to live under new ideology, new ways to live and this makes way for mechanisms to allow them to manufacture their own subjectivity? That's a very real threat! I think a lot of people here knows that when people search for real practical alternatives, they mysteriously get snuffed out immediately. (Are you reading this CIA?)
I am almost certain, that if one of those new systems are allowed to flourish; they would create new different art that we have never seen before. Because their creativity is nourished by entirely different values.
In this sense i don't think that art is entirely useless; To imagine new things has the potential to create new things, But it won't be the spark, it's just part of the cultural movement, My main worry would be, we have a lot of products today, but very little "movement"
We also have very little new "philosophy"
I agree that art is not something that drives changes in foundational material conditions.
I do think art has a role in creating and stabilising/destabilising cultural superstructure downstream of the material conflict though, if it didn't there would be no point to "Disneyfying" it.
And of course there's a role for art as a spark for tactical praxis, the Belgian Revolution being sparked by the Night at the Opera, for example.
This struggle session is so young, and so beautiful. We must stoke the fire.
I dunno. I had flashbacks to college and getting my BFA and this undercurrent of the concept of Social Practices was running through everything at the advanced level of the school.
That art had some level for social consciousness made for some interesting pieces, but often times the conceptual through-line to a piece of art had to be added by either the title, a small essay explaining the concepts, or if you’re really lucky, asking the artist.
Now I’m pretty rooted in my working class immigrant background, when I did any assignment pieces I kept thinking “okay, but what would someone like my grandma think of this”. Lobster Phone might be a silly looking piece, but knowledge that it’s a statement as a Dada piece about the ridiculousness of the art world and the gallery scene is lost on anyone without the education. They may not see it is the piece of junk the artist intended you to see it as, as a bit the gallery or museum isnt in on.
So my own experiences talk about how difficult it is for art to speak for itself. Ideas in it are basically a Rorschach Test who ever views it, and people walk away with different interpretations, basically “death of the author”. My takeaway isnt to NOT TRY, but that it isnt the perfect method of self expression with it’s ability to be misinterpreted.
Propaganda on the other hand is tailor made to be interpreted only in it’s intended way. It’s meant to be read for what it is, to share the idea it’s made for.
A podcast, a newspaper, a poorly xeroxed pamphlet, it’s all propaganda and to treat it as art strips it of it’s ability to express it’s intended idea. If your local marxist newpaper was taken off the street, pinned to a wall at an art gallery, i defy any of you to tell me it was done to get people to read it. When someone looks at art they either ask questions as soon as they pop into their heads or they compartmentalize a part of their brain to contain all their thoughts on the matter and either store it away or flush them all down the toilet when they move on to the next piece. The first method is far more interesting in my opinion, but as art pieces get into decades or a century old there’s no one around to answer their questions except scholars and amateurs, neither of which can get you an answer from the original artist.
This is the problem with a band like Rage Against The Machine, people can either compartmentalize their thoughts on it, or can let the whole experience wash over them and keep the parts they like or remember, and possibly never look into it. This could be because of a social detachment, RATM isnt there to answer any questions you may have, especially if you didnt buy the album. Mtv or the Radio, or your older sibling or spotify isnt there to answer your questions on why Bulls on Parade slaps so hard or what it’s about.
I used to believe anything can be considered art, i now believe it’s is cruelly damning to consider anything art as it dresses it down, like propaganda, into aesthetic and decorative elements to be looked at separately and never to be reassembled. Like that pink goo or mechanically separated meat, after you shredded everything you cant put it back together into a chicken again.
So chapo trap house isnt art, it is propaganda for leftism, for the detached nihilism you need to cope with a cruel world, and a record of the awful people who run it.
tl;dr: schniff
I'm reminded of 17th century Operas, where the spirit of music comes out, sits the audience down, and fucking tells them the allegorical themes of what they're about to see and how to interpret them, in painstaking recitative.
Or earlier. "Two houses, both alike in dignity..."
This is because they were both art and propaganda, quite deliberately. The entire first century of Ballet is a propaganda move by Louis XIV.
They're reacting to a series of moral panics and dumb ways of examining art that have become prevalent on the internet, where art and movies and entertainment are only perceived to have value if they consciously impart the correct morals and messages.
I keep seeing people say this but I've never seen a leftist legitimately go after another leftist for enjoying Justice League or whatever.
It's generally not leftists who do it, but liberal culture warriors do. Or maybe quasi-left radlibs at most.
May need to listen again but it seemed less like they were saying art can't or isn't supposed to change/shape minds or opinions and it was more that because so many people have had their minds and opinions shaped by art, and because culture has totally supplanted politics, they have difficulty reconciling the idea that people can watch and correctly interpret a piece of art without forming that same attachment or experience with it. Hence: (paraphrasing)"Yes, Obama watched and liked the Boys and interprets it in the same way you did...and no it did not magically spur him to turn over a new leaf and reject his imperialist legacy. That's not how it works. Grow up."
It's crazy for a pod that has spent time on Sorkin to say that art doesn't change people's minds. I mean yes, The West Wing won't turn a NASCAR dad into someone from Marin County. But it undeniably had an impact on the culture of politics. Art not being able to brainwash people in a specific way doesn't mean art doesn't seriously affect people in a broader sense. And while Matt at least made the point about propaganda, and seems to recognize that point, I'm not sure Will does. When half of Obama's staff wrote memoirs about how much a fucking TV show influenced them, it's time to fold that into your worldview rather than eschew it. Even if they're lying or even if they would have become those people anyways, the TV show was still a reflection of something that would happen years later and therefore pretty fucking relevant. Really it seems like a feedback loop. This is something Dave Anthony and Josh Olsen have delved into as artists/writers. They uncovered a relationship between what's on TV and what's in people's minds.
They didn't say it doesn't influence people, they said it doesn't reliably cause a complete change in someone's views. Millions of Germans saw and loved the Threepenny Opera, and then three years later they went and voted for Literally Hitler.
But that's what I'm saying. They're using one specific thing to make a larger point about how people are too pearl-clutchy about media. There is no reliable way to completely change someone's views with anything, including drugs. But using that to say people are too concerned with drugs changing people's personalities is disingenuous. Who cares if media doesn't turn a coal miner into a college-educated Hillary supporter? Who, outside of the most brain-dead libs that make up a small percentage of all libs, even thinks that? It's entirely a different point from "This movie should have more black people because everyone seeing more black people in positive roles, or roles in general, will change things culturally". Which is what they're railing against. They're railing against the expectation that media does that. It's like a reverse Motte & Bailey. They retreat to the most indefensible argument from the most reasonable one.
IIRC, Will specifically compared it to hypnotism and how it was found that you can't hypnotize someone to go against their moral character/entire identity.
Yeah obviously hypodermic needle theory has been bunk for decades. But media still has an influence.
My point of view is, if your art isn’t saying anything, it’s probably not worth anyone’s time.
You're correct.
Media is capable of shaping people's attitudes - there's plenty of empirical evidence demonstrating this. Art can function as propaganda and propaganda works. Citations Needed talks about this a lot.
There's a reason why the Pentagon is so heavily involved in the film industry.
Good art should just make you feel something. Good or bad, distinct or vague. If the extent to which it affects you is rooted in social context, so be it.
Seems like they're getting more and more disconnected from "real people" as time goes on. Money is a hell of a drug.
c/podcasts please. If we must discuss this kind of lib trash can we at least keep it sandboxed away from main?
and yes I agree with you somewhat
