In the world of popular culture, the motives of capitalists are routinely portrayed as suspicious if not openly antagonistic to the public good, culminating in the cliché of the evil billionaire or businessman.Like have you ever seen Citizen Kane? Total Alinskyite smear job. But --
At long last, the free marketeers are fighting back and attempting to reclaim an equal part of the moral high ground, but the challenges that they face are not insignificant.Sounds promising! So whattaya got?
Fred Smith, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, hopes to help salvage the reputations of businesspeople by disputing the bad rap with which they’ve been unfairly saddled and proudly pointing to the wealth that they create as a moral good in itself.If he's not proudly pointing while coated in silver paint, standing on a milk crate in Times Square, and doing the robot, I don't see this catching on with a large audience.
But give Fred a break, look what he's up against:
...the arts have a profound effect on influencing people’s moral dispositions and ultimately their worldviews. The “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that it is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past. If we are to adequately challenge this prevailing “commerce as a questionably-necessary evil” narrative, it makes sense to take stock of how our cultural narratives became so skewed in the first place.
Ludwig von Mises, similarly assessing the cultural situation of his time, was intrigued by the overwhelming tendency for members of the “creative class” to adopt anti-capitalistic worldviews in their lives and crafts. In The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Mises offers one explanation for this trend: artists, especially good ones, face constant frustration in a market that is notoriously fraught with that destructive combination of conspicuous consumption and poor taste.I began to nod off at "Ludwig von Mises," too, but I must say, as a simple observation of human behavior, this, while incomplete, is not totally divorced from reality -- which may be why Castillo rushes to dispute it:
Despite the handful of type II errors in artistic appreciation that have occurred, in most cases, great artists have found success within their lifetimes, and mass culture expands both the quantity and diversity of commercially-viable forms of expression.Then, one is tempted to ask, why you crying? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Why not just enjoy the expansive quantity and diversity of all this mass culture which the market has delivered unto you?
Longtime readers will have figured it out already: With culture warriors the "culture" is never as important as the "war." If the market produces wrongthink popular entertainment, the market, otherwise infallible, is wrong, and its protectors must set things right.
And Castillo's got some acts that'll do the job: The Moving Pictures Institute, for example, with "a youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates," and Emergent Order, which "made quite a splash with their humorous rap battles starring the modern doppelgängers of larger-than-life economists John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek."
But even when you have steak, you need sizzle to sell it, and here's the promo copy Castillo has filed for this package tour:
The videos that have been produced thus far have been captivating precisely because of the sincerity and accuracy of their messages, a quality that is generally difficult to produce when one is merely clocking in. Contra Mises, it could be that not all artists fall prey to the short-sighted despair that follows a disappointing opening night or release. For some of them, the uncontrolled but orderly beauty of free exchange and association is their muse."The sincerity and accuracy of their message," "the uncontrolled but orderly beauty of free exchange and association" -- you think maybe these people are new to show business? Or to the planet?
Look, kids, I'll do this pro bono: Full page ad in Variety: "SUCK ON THIS, MOOCHERS!" Then tell your boys at Emergent Whatever that we need some chicks in thongs and a profane rapping granny. Thereafter, one word: Payola. I know your backers got it -- they just have to start spending it where it counts. By the way: Have you ever thought about why they don't?
UPDATE. Commenters are bearish on Castillo et alia. "Deal: you capitalists get rid of the nefarious executives, we'll get rid of the trope," says whetstone. mortimer informs us that "Emergent Order is a project of the Mercatus Center at (but not supported by) George Mason University, which gets most of its funding from those bankrolling gadflies of right-wing über-libertarianism, the Koch Family, with a little help from the likes of Exxon Mobil. Mercatus is also directed by Kevin Drum's favorite libertarian, Tyler Cowen..." Inbreeding will tell!
it makes sense to take stock of how our cultural narratives became so skewed in the first place.
ReplyDeleteIn my case, holding that skewed perception of executives comes - in part - from having a pack of those bastards announce layoffs for me and a bunch of my coworkers and then laugh about it afterwards over conspicuously expensive cognac.
These morons simply refuse to accept that art imitates life, don't they?
ReplyDeleteGrapes of Wrath reflected life. It didn't invent the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.
Hey, Fred, wanna know where else the "nefarious executive" trope is so firmly established? In the Business section of the fucking newspaper, every fucking day. Only instead of a trope, it's da troof.
ReplyDeleteDo these people ever read anything but their own entrails?
The young, scrappy, hipster scholars at the Mercatus Center are getting right on that whole "Art Imitates Life" thing, and they are confident that, with just a few more Koch Foundation grants, they'll make significant strides in flipping it around.
ReplyDeleteThe “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that
ReplyDeleteit is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past.
Excellent...
Conservatives - especially those of the silverbug libertarian leanings - sound so goddamn dorky when they're talking about "the market." It's like a Baptist youth pastor saying shit like, "Jesus is my bro! Are you hip to God's love? See? I can relate to today's youth!"
ReplyDeleteIs this another one of those begging-for-funding things, where the conservative goes on and on about how The Right needs to engage the lamestream liberal culturethink on some usually-neglected front, and the best way to do that is to boost a bunch of newly-founded groups (that just happen to be run by my friends and me)? Because it's been a while since we've seen one of those.
ReplyDeleteMe, I prefer the classic "Young conservative writers agree: The best way to appeal to the crucial youth vote is to first hire lots and lots of young conservative writers" version of the panhandle.
You know, it's a pity that some people have gotten an undergraduate education which allows them to dress up their awful ideas. Trope of the evil capitalist or whatever. Deary me, how erudite.
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is to restore a really snobbish attitude high class attitude toward business as not really the most wonderful thing people do. Sure, everyone needs to make a buck, often in some business pursuit, but this is not necessarily noble, just necessary. Let's get back to sneering at the Philistines!
so, i'll just leave this here.
ReplyDeleteThe videos that have been produced thus far have been captivating precisely because of the sincerity and accuracy of their messages, a quality that is generally difficult to produce when one is merely clocking in.
ReplyDeleteHarold Bloom (of all people), paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, had these bozos down cold: All bad poetry is sincere.
The Moving Pictures Institute, for example, with "a youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates,"
ReplyDeleteOther exciting products from $79.99 and up:
A riveting motion picture feature that informs radicals how necessary the gold standard is for the world economy to function.
A wry, humorous expose that tips off trendsetters to the dangers of the underfunded USPS pension plan.
A state-of-the-art puppet show production that forewarns bohemians of the danger of letting the Taiwan Relations Act expire.
A diarrhea-smeared piece of paper stationary that signals to the flower children that economic self-sufficiency is the ultimate answer to the challenges confronting Indian country.
The domain unskewedart.com is still available. Ka-ching! i mean, bellisimo!
ReplyDeleteWhat's funny is that they admit that works done for profit are likely to be insincere and inaccurate.
ReplyDeleteIf so much of what is ideologically inspired today weren't talentless shit marketed to the tasteless, the neocons might have had a bit better luck seizing the culture from the artists, whom they generally loathe as fifth columnists, anyway.
ReplyDeleteAt a time when even scientific studies are confirming that, yes, the rich are different from the rest of us and, no, they are not nice people, these idiots are in the business of convincing the public that the rich are necessary, likeable and that "the free marketeers are fighting back and attempting to reclaim an equal part of the moral high ground."
Pardon? What moral high ground would that be? The same one that impoverished a notable part of the world's populace in order to save a bunch of monstrous dickheaded banksters? Is this a conscious effort to elevate public opinion of people who would buy shares in the raping of children and the infirm if there were derivative fees to be made out of it? People who invade other countries and kill hundreds of thousands for personal political and financial gain? People who would eviscerate environmental enforcement for a 2% increase in profits? Who have corrupted the entire political system with money to make more money?
That moral high ground, Fred?
OK, let's take this from an English-majory, narrative-building standpoint. Stories are about conflict, conflict is about power vs. power, and the main source of power in modern society is money. A protagonist with power (money) wailing on a helpless antagonist tends to make for flat and redundant stories, no matter how righteous the protagonist is. Stories about a powerless protagonist triumphing against the odds over a powerful antagonist are more interesting to read. Have these guys ever actually read a book not by a right-wing philosopher in their lives.
ReplyDeleteAs to why lots of artists are hostile towards capitalism, go up to any freelance artist and ask them about clients who stiffed them. That's why.
"a youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates,"
ReplyDeleteMost hipsters I know have no problem with artificially low interest rates, as long as they have an effect on their credit card balance.
Doüchebag. Say, The Umlat does add something to the culture.
ReplyDelete[a] youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates
ReplyDeleteGuess who tracked it down and watched it?
You ever seen one of those fake music videos, the kind that showed up in movies and sitcoms from the late 80's/early 90's to poke fun at MTV? They always featured garish colors, cheesy special effects, nonsensical visuals and other bits that characterized the early days of the music video. That's pretty much what "Fast Cash" is like. It's a video produced by someone who hasn't seen one since "Money For Nothing" and still hates the entire concept.
Oh, and the video - which has been out for over three months - has barely 500 views. I think I have an old Mandarin instructional video that has about as many hits.
Have these people never been to YouTube? The answer, of course, is yes, but only in the same sense that they "watch" films and "listen" to music. They study culture in the same way that one might "study" a small animal with a hunting knife.
The tell, of course, is that first adjective, "youthful." It's some old white marketing man's panegyric, the same sort of glorified impulse that tried to sell AMC Gremlins with a catchy name and denim seatcovers.
ReplyDeleteIt never, ever occurs to them that the result would be a perverse mash-up of Boy's Life and Forbes, or of "A Chorus Line" and "Panic in Needle Park."
Nor does it ever occur to them that trying to sell right-wing economics in the guise of popular art always results in stuff that only Ayn Rand could love. You can't make art if you've got the soul of Goebbels and the heart of Charlie Koch.
Call me an evil bastard if you will, but every time I see something like the Moving Pictures Institute come up, all I can think about is all the ways I could grift them by convincing them that one of my perpetually unfunded projects was a triumph of conservatism.
ReplyDeleteIt'd never work, of course - this kind of thing is pure wingnut welfare, destined to go to the wastrel son of some fellow traveler. Still, a boy can dream.
"Soul" is key. You can absolutely make propaganda that's art, but it has to be art first. These guys are never going to figure that out, because they have no concept of enjoying something absent of politics.
ReplyDeleteI'd pitch them the script of "Bob Roberts" as an instructional film.
ReplyDeleteNot just "youthful" - the cited gem of outreach to hipsters is a MUSIC VIDEO. You know, 1982's hottest, most cutting edge media format. Do hipsters even watch music videos? Does anyone?
ReplyDeleteA protagonist with power (money) wailing on a helpless antagonist tends
ReplyDeleteto make for flat and redundant stories, no matter how righteous the
protagonist is.
Ahem. Batman.
But you're right. One of the theses I heard over and over again in various Greek literature classes was that tragedies derive their power from the tension found in a struggle of good against good rather than good against evil. This is a pretty elementary observation in a number of ways (and it's as true of Breaking Bad as it is of Antigone), but the idea would seem to be foreign (if not heretical) to the current crop of conservative culture commentators. For them, good art means good propaganda and propaganda doesn't have much room for the conflict of goods.
Perish the thought! They make their own. The obvious conclusion is the members of the CEI doing the Harlem Shake and then explaining afterwards why it's an indictment of social welfare spending.
ReplyDelete"the bad rap with which they've been unfairly saddled" --
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of Jack Welch on his hands and knees wearing MC Hammer's "Addams Groove".
We are all riding. All of us.
Setting aside that MTV largely abandoned music videos years ago, this concept also seems to miss the point that you start with a song, then come up with the concept for the video of it. If you're doing it the other way around, you're either in the business of musicals or propaganda.
ReplyDeleteJust how far back are they willing to go to "take stock of how our cultural narratives became so skewed in the first place."?
ReplyDeleteIt's not like the dirty hippies got into Hollywood and began skewering the rich starting with Meatball's portayal of Camp Mohawk.
For the curious, the Moving Picture Institute website.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I'm rather flummoxed, Poe's law-wise. The "Fast Cash" video gives us 2002-vintage electroclash, girls dressed like the girls on "Girls", a better-than-decent singer doing some kind of Megan McArdle version of Schoolhouse Rock, and the world's most primitive green screen effects. I have to wonder if the whole gang set themselves up to hoax conservatives out of their money. If so they may be expending more effort than they need to.
I watched that, and my eyes just glazed over. Not that it hasn't been obvious all along, but wingers really, really don't understand what "art" means. They really expect to achieve some sort of cultural hegemony by cramming indigestible chunks of economic boilerplate into vaguely song-like form? Have they ever actually SEEN any of the allegedly librul culture that they're at war with? I may not be one of the Rad Young Dudes anymore, but I'm pretty sure that the music they listen to does not, by and large, consist of didactic recitations of political talking points. I might take them more seriously if they evinced any evidence of understanding what culture is or how it works.
ReplyDeleteNo I wouldn't; that was obviously a lie. But I would still recommend that they make an effort; this sort of ghastly flailing around is just unseemly.
Not to mention that the obvious alternative to cheap credit is higher wages across the board. You know, the other Great Satan.
ReplyDeleteSo the same droolers who told The Dixie Chicks to SUAS are now trying to get political in their art? There are two reasons to be glad about this 1) Political involvement is a good thing, even for people such as this who will make Leni Riefenstahl look subtle and 2) it'll be hilariously bad, imagine Zap Rowsdower with the script pages randomised.
ReplyDeleteNobody explain that artists, being to a man (and woman) awkward, difficult bastards, are more likely to endorse countercultural or transgressive ideologies, which in our brave neoliberal world usually means some form of anticapitalist radicalism.
ReplyDeleteIn the USSR, as an example, you were most likely to find pro-capitalist dissidents in the arts, whilst the engineers were usually orthodox Marxist-Leninists.
As if it needs to be said, Republican hatred of low interest rates was among their many lifelong principles first discovered on January 20, 2009: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Federal_Funds_Rate_1954_thru_2009_effective.svg
ReplyDeleteOne of the quickest and most efficient ways to spot the looney in any discussion about economics is to look for people who think interest rates 'should' always be high (or low) as if it's some sort of moral imperative. It makes literally as much sense as thinking mathematicians should always multiply more often than divide, regardless of what equation they're trying to solve.
Ahem. Batman.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is a problem inherent to almost any superhero, whether they're fantastically rich or imbued with superhuman powers.
But yes, I think the wealth angle introduces problems of its own, which is why the Iron Man and Dark Knight movies both seem to have a barely-concealed fascistic side if you're willing to dig for it. But truthfully I can't be arsed.
At long last, the free marketeers are fighting back
ReplyDeleteThis ... I don't expect anybody else to get the joke here, it's kinda personal ... my parents, now in their 90s, used to have a little hobby of going to swap meets with stuff they found at garage sales, and my dad, who was a master of the lame-o joke, had cards made up: The Flea Marketeers. As soon as I read this... well, at least my dad never held himself up as a financial genius and ripped off anybody, though I suppose he might have overpriced some of the junque.
I have to wonder if the whole gang set themselves up to hoax conservatives out of their money
ReplyDeleteThat's the beauty of conservatism - you don't need either/or! It's entirely possible that they're entirely sincere and trying to hoax their fellow conservatives out of their money. Surely we haven't forgotten the amazing Breitbart painting with prints selling for up to $4,000 until it was revealed as a glorified Photoshop.
Well, I can't speak for Iron Man, but a big part of all three Nolan Batman movies was that his money can't save him-that his enemies will find ways to hurt him in spite of it. And he also uses his money to protect the innocent even though he's not obligated to (the third movie makes this extremely explicit.) Actual Fascist Batman would depose Gotham's government and install himself as a dictator. Objectivist Batman would fly off to Galt's Gulch until the government cut his taxes enough to let him stop the Joker.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the character's also been interpreted in a more fascist way (Holy Terror and the like) but I think people have gotten just a little too carried away with the 'superheroes = fascists' criticism a lot of times.
"... I'm pretty sure that the music they listen to does not, by and large,
ReplyDeleteconsist of didactic recitations of political talking points."
Ah, well, they certainly are trying to co-opt every artist they can think of that isn't an outright lefty. Otherwise, they wouldn't be slagging their latest "100 Most Conservative Songs" lists at every opportunity.
Even they must tire of endless repetitions of "The Horst Wessel Lied."
This is a good opportunity for those who are not familiar with the laughingly named "Competitive Enterprise Institute" to learn something about it. It seems to have spent its early years spreading lies about tobacco, before switching to doing everything it can to spread disinformation about global warming. You can learn more here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute
I just had a momentary vision of Richard Viguerie, doing a Sam Kinison "oh, oh, oh, they see right through me" routine... and then laughing his ass off.
ReplyDeletein most cases, great artists have found success within their lifetimes
ReplyDeleteI know of no undiscovered great artists, therefore they do not exist.
Good point. Complaints of "bad rap" do not sit well when they come from someone promoting such acts as Emergent Order.
ReplyDeleteIf he's not proudly pointing while coated in silver paint, standing on a milk crate in Times Square, and doing the robot
ReplyDeleteGiven that he has also been unfairly saddled, a Pony-Boy act might be more in order.
All valid points, but the fact remains that Batman is a millionaire who devotes much of his time and energy to beating the living shit out of people who have less money than he does.
ReplyDelete"a youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates,"I had to look at the original to see if she actually said that. Yep.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking more on the lines of Schoolhouse ROck.
ReplyDeleteThat observation probably has Van Gogh stalking Thomas Kinkade in the afterlife.
ReplyDeletebuy shares in the raping of children and the infirm
ReplyDeleteIs Pope Francis floating the church?
No doubt they might have need to raise a little operating cash after, umm, recent legal setbacks. Lard knows they've got collateral, fungible assets, intelligence info and, umm, friends in high places.
ReplyDeleteYou might figure that these geniuses would notice that sales of their kulture kampf products are almost nonexistent. Could it be that the market has spoken clearly and said "YOU SUCK!"? Of course not!
ReplyDeleteThe problem as they see it is that the unwashed masses have been too indoctrinated in the leftist notion that entertainment should be entertaining.
...hopes to help salvage the reputations of businesspeople by disputing the bad rap with which they’ve been unfairly saddled and proudly pointing to the wealth that they create as a moral good in itself.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the motives, we should love these people because the shit trail they leave behind them might have some unintentional "moral good"?
This mindboggling inability to understand that normal people DO NOT
If there's one guy I go to when I want to see what contemporary youth culture wants, it's Ludwig von Mises.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm just confused. Every odd piece of wingnut trash I read informs me that this list of songs/TV shows/movies is SEKRITLY KUNSERVATIVE. And every other piece of wingnut trash informs me that meanie dumbhead Hollyweird won't make any good wholesome conservative, Wolveriny entertainment. When these dumbfucks get their message together, maybe I'll bother listening to them. But probably not.
ReplyDeleteI want to take this comment and paint it like one of my French models.
ReplyDeleteThrow in, for good measure, Christian abhorrence of usury and the pursuit of Mammon, and a couple of penis envy jokes.
ReplyDeleteThey are legion. If I could draw, I'd make one of those 19th Century illustrations of a giant multi-headed hydras to represent modern conservatives. Each ugly, ravenous head would be labelled with one of their contradictory "beliefs", while the fat, bloated body that connects them all would be labelled "Hate" and "Fear" as the common motivation of them all. Standing in the shadows behind this gigantic beast slavering at the vulnerable-looking Lady Liberty, would be a bunch of pigs dressed as Gilded Age industrialists (along with one that looks just like Rush Limbaugh), prodding this beast into action while coins and paper currency fall out of their pockets.
ReplyDeleteMister, we could use a man like Richard Wagner again. . .
ReplyDeleteCatch 22: becoming a Libertarian requires a sincere belief in, and dedication to, "Competitive Enterprise"; selling the idea to normal people requires you to understand the joke.
ReplyDeleteThese are the same people who, when looking at any abstract painting, say, "My five-year old could do that."
ReplyDeleteI kind of like the Keynes and Hayek rap battle videos. Now that they're being claimed by my political opponents, I guess I'll have to... change basically nothing because art quality is not affected by politics.
ReplyDeleteNow, if I put that on YouTube as a repeating mp3, and disguised it with a looping video of Reagan nodding in approval, surrounded by bright flashing colours, maybe I could get somewhere?
Probably not.
Do these people ever read anything but their own entrails?
ReplyDeleteHell, I'd pay good money if they would start reading their own entrails in their entirety. The gene pool would swiftly improve, and for the first time they wouldn't be completely full of shit.
In fairness, (1) just about everyone has less money than he does; and (2) beating the crap out of a millionaire day trader for doing legal-but-immoral things really doesn't fit the Batman œuvre. You'd need Green Arrow, the millionaire vigilante who sometimes beats up people with approximately the same amount of money as he has.
ReplyDeleteIt is ever thus, and that is why good artists will never be reliable propagandists for the power structure. The wealthy and powerful have to settle for third-tier hacks.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure they've decided that no good movies were made after "Birth of a Nation", so about 1915 or thereabouts.
ReplyDeleteTriple approved comment. Culture warriors look at pop culture the exact same way fundies look at it - as something to separate one's self from completely, or something used as a tool for evangelization. I expect these guys to be wearing Gold's Gym knock-off T-shirts - "Rand's Gym" with a disheveled Russian pop philosopher carrying a dollar sign.
ReplyDeleteAt long last, the free marketeers are fighting back
ReplyDeleteLook, everyone! The free marketeers, plucky underdogs that they are, are fighting back against their marginalization! Maybe someday they'll finally be able to achieve the success that has so far been denied them.
As to why lots of artists are hostile towards capitalism, go up to any
ReplyDeletefreelance artist and ask them about clients who stiffed them
This. I am a self-employed professional, and the clients who have stiffed me the most frequently and for the most money have invariably been rich assholes who live in much bigger houses and drive much fancier cars than I will ever own in my life.
Gone With the Wind gets a pass, of course, as does The Passion of the Christ.
ReplyDeleteWhatever their ethical and moral shortcomings are, the Koch brothers are not idiots, so I'm thinking that very soon they'll realize that endowing hip, scrappy young conservative scholars to revamp their brand through a cultural public relations approach is chucking money into a black hole, and that their money will be better spent on high pressure hose equipped tanker trucks full of insecticide and air freshener.
ReplyDeleteAs Roy has demonstrated time and again, art is propaganda for these folks. This stuff goes even further: they apparently think that propaganda is art, or what passes for art. At EmergentOrder's EconStories site, besides music videos there are links to fucking novels about such dramatic conflicts as free trade vs. protectionism. But who pays for these things? Prepare for a shock. Emergent Order is a project of the Mercatus Center at (but not supported by) George Mason University, which gets most of its funding from those bankrolling gadflies of right-wing über-libertarianism, the Koch Family, with a little help from the likes of Exxon Mobil. Mercatus is also directed by Kevin Drum's favorite libertarian, Tyler Cowen, who consistently proves Upton Sinclair's dictum, It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
ReplyDeleteMoving Pictures Institute, producer of the exciting FA$T CA$H: Easy Credit and the Economic Crash music video is funded by the Koch, Bradley, and DeVos Foundations, among others. They produce wads of "pro-freedom" videos and documentaries against environmentalists, unions, taxes, liberals, etc., and operate behind the façade of a network of "civil liberties" organizations, which are purely libertarian propaganda machines.
They really do need to follow Roy's advice and go with some young bodies wearing thongs. Maybe they could get InBev to fund a Spring Break flick: Market Consolidation: Beer Daddy Knows Best
You could even say that back when Frank Miller was nominally sane, he came up with a version of Batman who took on people who had power parity with him, if not superiority, in Batman: Year One (Gotham's power elite) and The Dark Knight Returns (the same, along with Superman). See also his Daredevil: Born Again, in which Kingpin, the mountainous mobster who has always had much more than Matt Murdock, takes away almost everything that Murdock has--which, this being a comics hero's journey, ultimately helps him get his mojo back.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of something that I think Barbara Tuchman said in The March of Folly re: the British aristocracy--that they regularly stiffed tradespeople on their bills, but heaven help them if they didn't pay up a gambling debt to a peer.
ReplyDeleteClearly, Charles Dickens was an Alinsky-ite liberal propagandist.
ReplyDeleteWell, the women in men's clothing -- and mustaches! -- were pretty hot. Hot, at least, compared to the women in women's clothing.
ReplyDeleteI keep telling them, and they never do wipe their tears away with all that money.
ReplyDelete"Fred Smith, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute." Say, where have I heard that name recently? Oh, right:
ReplyDeleteOn Thursday evening at CPAC, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is a sponsor of CPAC, held a panel called Rainbow on the Right, which featured only conservatives who favor equality for gays. (!!!!!!!111!!!!111!!!) CEI founder, Fred L. Smith, Jr., told me in a phone conversation a few days ago that he sits on the American Conservative Union’s board and he was surprised this year that GOProud had not applied to be a sponsor. Since sponsors are allowed to have seminars on the topics of their own choosing with panel members of their own choosing, the idea just naturally came up at CEI that they ought to dedicate one of their seminars to the subject of gay equality and include GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia. The rest of the panel was comprised of Fred, Republican campaign strategist Liz Mair, Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, author and CNN political contributor Margaret Hoover and author, Fox News commentator and National Review Online editor-at-large, Jonah Goldberg.
Wow, what a line-up. Here's Fred's CV. I wonder just how "surprised" he really was that GOProud was given the cold shoulder.
So you say. What about the moon landing???
ReplyDeleteHaven't they already essentially pitched the plot of The Producers to Mitt Romney as their Campaign plan?
ReplyDeleteArt imitates life imitates art:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KLREZAYEIM
Mr. Aimai, who asked where you were during the conclave, by the way, laughed so hard when I read him this comment that I thought he would collapse and I'd have to call an ambulance (again). You have to understand that I read Alicublog and its comments out loud to him in the morning when he is excercising, in order to prevent him from listening to Jethro Tull.
ReplyDeleteYah, I don't think its exactly fair to Batman to accuse him of being, essentially, some kind of masked vigilante out rolling drunks and setting fire to homeless guys for kicks. HIs original raison d'etre was to get revenge on the kind of petty criminal whose pettiness doesn't prevent him from wreaking havoc on innocent victims and their families. His parents were, if I remember the canon and its pix from back in the day, were killed by a mugger in an alley. If he takes on muggers and other petty criminals its not (merely) because they are petty and so no threat to him. Its not that he rejoices in maintaining a hierarchy of cruelty in which the upper class vents its spleen on the lower class--its that his noblesse oblige causes him to take up for people who don't have the clout or the ability to defend themselves. Plus plus the Joker and the Penguin etc... weren't defined by their lack of money but by their crazy criminality and their cruelty.
ReplyDeleteMamet. That is all.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started on Jesus.
ReplyDeleteSays the C.E.O. of Stomp Tokyo, Inc.!!!
ReplyDelete~
What's funny is that they still think that they need to camoflage Advertising as Art when, in reality, ever since the 50's our society has been quite determined to reduce Art to advertising.
ReplyDeleteWhy bother with music videos when if theyw anted teh Koch Brothers could simply run advertising on TV shows touting the benefits of whatever. They do that during political campaigns, don't they? Is it that they are suffering from some kind of art envy in which they think that calling something art, or music, slips it into the audience's mind in a subliminal and culturally approved way so that the obvious message is somehow redeemed by the imagined sincerity of its author?
What's the goal here: to finally get the right wing millionaires some real artists to patronize who will suck up to them, a la Pretty Woman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT5rMvo3Clc ("Stores are never nice to people, they are nice to Credit Cards.")? Or to create a more successful form of mass hypnotism in which the fundamentals of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are slipped, like a mickey, into your teenager's breakfast cereal--I mean more than they already are?
Christ, better laissex faire ideologues please. What happened to the glory days of "hain't I got the power?" when the good book and Darwin were all the justification a robber baron needed. Now we've got to go to a bunch of Krauts with "von" in front of their names for apologetics? Unamerican!
ReplyDelete"We've gotta have a great show, with a million laughs... and color... and a lot of lights to make it sparkle. And songs - wonderful songs. And after we get the people in that hall, we've gotta start em in blaming the left, right away. Oh, can't you just see it... ?"
ReplyDeleteJudy Garland - "Babes Bearing Arms", 1939.
In other words these guys are still burning from Victoria referring to businessmen as being "In Trade."
ReplyDeleteWhy all the marketing angst? In a free market, doesn't the best win anyway?
ReplyDeleteFrank Miller seems to be enamored with the concept of Batman as a fascist figure. See Dark Knight Returns, which ends with Batman rallying Gotham's street gangs into his own personal army to take over the city. There's nothing close to that in the Nolan films - quite the opposite, as you've pointed out. I never did understand all the liberal hand-wringing over those films, though it does prove that "politics first, art second" is not restricted to the right.
ReplyDeleteDrawing its inspiration from economist Steve Horwitz's Parable of the Broken Traffic Lights, MPI fellow Dorian Electra's Fa$t Ca$h: Easy Credit and the Economic Crash reveals the disastrous effects that monetary easing has had on our economy.
ReplyDeleteNormally songs take their inspiration from like, other music, but okay.
Mrs. Wonderful doesn't care what I listen to, as long as it isn't Bowie, Eno, or XTC. Women!
ReplyDeleteHis best work seems to be well behind him.
ReplyDeleteThe “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that it is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past.
ReplyDeleteDeal: you capitalists get rid of the nefarious executives, we'll get rid of the trope.
I ask again: what sunny wonderland do these people work in? I worked in one company that was bought with too much debt by an idiot; it went bankrupt. I got a new job at a company that was already bankrupt because it was bought with too much debt (one of the creditors is a CEO of part of the company from 15 years ago; he's still floating on his golden parachute). Currently the Kochs and Rupert Murdoch are rumored buyers.
True, but it's because something abides in them that's anterior to even politics: resentment. At what? As Brando (the Fifties' Hollywood idea of Unruly Youth) said, "Whattaya got?"
ReplyDeleteOther people's sexual success, for starters. Then they turn 16 or 17, find each other, and discover the pleasures and satisfactions of clustering around copies of Anthem and sniggering at the world.
It's not a scam. Most of their movies have high technical quality and are competently, even professionally produced - they still suck, but it's for a completely different set of reasons. "Fast Cash" is, I think, meant to be a fun little project, and Castillo chose to highlight it in his post because . . . I don't know, maybe he's crazy enough to like it. Honestly, if putting something silly on YouTube = "scam," then the Feds must be on the verge of the largest fraud probe of all time.
ReplyDeleteThey're actually pretty good--well produced and pretty funny. But they're also not propaganda; they're just as respectful to Keynes as Hayek. They're also not all that funny if you don't already have some familiarity with the subject; they're a nice digestif if you're into that sort of thing, but they're not going to sell The Kids on the dismal science.
ReplyDeleteWho was it who said, Of the argument with others, we get rhetoric, and of the argument with ourselves, we get poetry? Something like that.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Batman's wealth was not his "power." The best example of THAT I can think of is an old SCTV sketch about Dan Money (Joe Flaherty), a detective or a cop, who literally bribed everyone he met in order to solve a case. If he had to ask a lady in a supermarket the time, first he'd slip her a couple of bucks.
These guys have a problem with pop culture in general, but anything associated with "the youth" really throws them. You think that any of these goobers ever browse YouTube? Of course not. They take notice of any meme-y video popular enough to make the straight news, and then do the same thing they do to television shows and films - dissect them for useful content. They can understand the pieces but not how they fit together, so they fill in the gaps with their own politics, and next thing you know you're making an 80's throwback video.
ReplyDeleteI actually know some wanna-be "Internet personalities" who do the same thing - imitate to compensate for their lack of creativity or understanding. But then again, most of them are teenagers with no money or experience. These guys presumably had a budget, and that's just sad.
There are people who don't like Bowie? Huh. You learn something new every day.
ReplyDeleteSo, on the one hand, the market, if left alone, will objectively and correctly cater to every individual's equally-valid desire, according to basic laws of supply and demand. On the other, anyone who disagrees with us has been brainwashed, and our only recourse is to counter-brainwash (okay; "educate") them.
ReplyDelete"Crazy" doesn't begin to describe it. This isn't a political movement. It's the tribe of walking schizoids.
I think this is a nice point, actually--Iron man's power is his wealth, at least in the movies. Batman's power is, what? His shiny tights?
ReplyDeleteI think hipster is more Millennial. We GenXers aren't young anymore.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add that "fascitic leanings" is a little misleading or maybe I mean too wide. The problem for democratic society is the same whether posed by Batman or Shane--its the problem of the loner/ubermensch who is necessary to fix society's problems but who can never stay behind and do so democratically or by organizing politically.
ReplyDeleteThis is a problem primarily because of the way the ubermensch has been conceived--if he's Jesus and he serves humbly and then is killed that's one solution. If he's Frankenstein's monster he's a botched job and the creator has to try to kill him before he runs amok. If he's a Nietszhean (sp damn it) superman or a character from the Incredibles all the rest of us can do is stand around and gawp at his greatness.
Moi Seul/I alone is just not a good model for democratic society because it divides society into criminals, victims, and heroes. (Needless to say there are lots of ways around this conundrum of what do you do with those helpless victims when they aren't being victimized. sometimes they are given jobs as grateful flower throwers. Sometimes they serve as the recreation of the warrior.
That, and the only mode of enjoyment they understand is schadenfreude. Which is fun and all, but not a very healthy thing to have as your only source of kicks.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm looking forward to Chuck Norris's star turn at The Donald in "Trumpelstiltskin," in which a magical entrepreneur spins bullshit into gold.
ReplyDeletePrezackly.
ReplyDeleteThese folks need to consult me. In my latest piece, a celebration of capitalism, the heroine lifts herself up by her own balloon-straps. She proves that simply believing in the invisible hand can lift one up out of poverty and life as a humble koi farmer.
ReplyDeleteI firmly believe that Clay Aiken never really broke through (outside of Vegas) because he didn't sing any songs about interest rates.
ReplyDeleteMaybe walking dead? I enjoy "Walking Dead" a crazy amount now, but if I imagine the zombies as wingnuts, I suspect I won't look away as much when they meet their respective ends.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm going to find all sorts of parallels between zombies and wingnuts--I just know it.
You can't make art if you've got the soul of Goebbels and the heart of Charlie Koch
ReplyDeleteThis observation is penetrating yet pithy enough that it deserves its own Cafepress page. I'll take one mug, please!
You can't make art if you've got the soul of Goebbels and the heart of Charlie Koch
ReplyDeleteThis observation is penetrating - and it's pithy enough that it deserves its own Cafepress page. I'd like to order one mug, please!
" imagine Zap Rowsdower with the script pages randomised."
ReplyDeleteSir, I am very much interest in your newsletter and any upcoming projects that may need funding.
Wow. That guy is really talented. The vid is clever...and he has a lovely singing voice.
ReplyDeleteSometimes when I get down, being reminded that there are so many clever, funny, talented, creative people in the world really perks me up.
Thanks for this.
ReplyDeleteToo scary for me. I couldn't get past the god damned introductory credits when I tried it. I'm watching Life, about the Zen detective right now and I'm going to try the french series "spiral" to help my french.
ReplyDeleteThe “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that it is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past.
ReplyDeleteWell, so is the "misguided rich guy/executive humanized by the end," the "hero with a secret identity as a rich guy," the "decent person who doesn't really care about all their money," etc. Anyhoo, why not just mock it and laugh it off? These duffers are always complaining how even the tiniest mocking is why nobody listens to them, why not turn the tables instead of just whining about how unfair it all is?
The Nolan Dark Knight movies can (like any good movie) be read in multiple ways, but I don't think that they're as unambiguously lefty as many lefties want them to be. But of course when I said I couldn't be arsed to dig into that in my original comment, I meant that I personally don't care about whether or not it conforms to my political worldview or not, because it's a piece of entertainment.
ReplyDeleteIron Man, if I were inclined to read it politically, would be far more unambiguously right-wing, but again, it doesn't stop me from enjoying it.
That's what kills me. I'm a big fan of some of Mamet's plays, such as American Buffalo. He was a great writer. But when I read his political commentary these days, he doesn't read like anybody particularly well-spoken or intelligent. He reads like a typical third-rate rightblogger, frankly. He doesn't have anything novel or insightful to bring to being a third-rate rightblogger; he just spouts the same tired talking points.
ReplyDeleteI guess that's what happens when you sacrifice your intellectual integrity for the sake of ideology? *shrug*
Oh, it's the wealth that "they" create is it?
ReplyDeleteYou know, maybe if these lazy fat assed businessmen could turn a screw or tighten a bolt or at a minimum give the respect due to those that can then they might make some headway in burnishing a public image rightly tarnished by decades of cartoon-evil greed and ridiculous and buffoonish self-aggrandizement.
Assholes.
Tim Robbins refused to release the soundtrack to "Bob Roberts" because he didn't want the songs adopted in earnest by wingnuts.
ReplyDelete"And it was like for a moment, O my brothers, some great bird had flown into the milkbar and I felt all the malenky little hairs on my plott standing endwise and the shivers crawling up like slow malenky lizards and then down again. Because I knew what she spoke. It was a bit from the glorious Human Action, by Ludwig von M."
ReplyDelete- Clockwork Outrage
Grеat pοst. ӏ will bе going thrοugh а few of thesе
ReplyDeleteissueѕ as ωell..
Stop by my blοg ... same day loans
As opposed to the non-fiction version, in which he spins gold into bullshit.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit of a horror aficionado so it doesn't scare me too much--just enough. ;)
ReplyDeleteproudly pointing to the wealth that they create as a moral good in itself.
ReplyDeleteLook at this pile of gold I have! Isn't it great? It's worth oh-so-many bowls of soup for the homeless that I would never offer!
Pop-culture depictions of the wealthy sans nefarious-itude:
ReplyDelete- Bogart's character in SABRINA
- nearly every iteration of BATMAN and THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
- a sizable percentage of "rich guy" characters in classic screwball comedies
And that's off the top of my head. Haven't these dimwits watched or read anything?
It's actually worse than that. The pile of gold represents value, and the expenditure of the value the gold represents, barring an adequate return, is immoral. Therefore the pile of gold is worth exactly the number of bowls of soup for the poor which are not purchased with it. Wealth as a moral good in itself is libertarian talk — it doesn't jibe with the way social conservatives think — so when Castillo uses this phrase she's revealing Randroid roots. (Libertarians have thought of themselves as arty philosophic types ever since Ayn Rand introduced Howard Roark as the righteous man's alternative to Frank Lloyd Wright and introduced herself as the greatest philosopher since Aristotle.)Social conservatives think of wealth, not as a good thing in itself, but as a good thing for keeping stinkin' hippies in line, and verifiably rich people think of wealth as good to the extent that their own wealth benefits them. Neither a socially conservative rightie nor a Koch brother would ever look upon a pile of cash as possessed of a mana divorced from its function, but libertarians do it all the time. I really think they may have introduced a higher type of miserliness, and for that, I have to say, I envy them, because they have distinction of a kind by doing so.
ReplyDeleteYou want to cover it all over in Klein International Blue?
ReplyDeletethe pile of gold is worth exactly the number of bowls of soup for the poor which are not purchased with it.
ReplyDeleteThat, and they didn't dig up the gold in the first place, they took it from the folks who don't get soup.
Let's just say I want to admire its pert roundels.
ReplyDeleteproudly pointing to the wealth that they create as a moral good in itself.
ReplyDeleteI hope you followed the link trail, it really is that bad. Also the author really likes exclamation points!
Truly virtue is its own reward.
ReplyDeleteHow do you think they got those houses and cars? By treating everyone else as an equal?
ReplyDeleteIn my other life I was a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. The descriptions and quotes Roy so thoughtfully provides above strike me as straight from the mouth of Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's postwar arbiter of culture. Zhdanov in 1948 asserted that the proper type of art for good conservatives communists contained three main elements (translated roughly):
ReplyDelete1. Ideological content
2. Popular accessibility
3. Hewing to the party line
The conservative Kulturkämpfer (yes, umlauts do make things better) seem to be trying to copy the successful Soviet formula.
1. Ideological content - check
2. Popular accessibility - sure, if the 1980s are the definition of the high point of pop culture (though maybe it is, since that was the decade of St. Reagan [blessed be his name!])
3. Hewing to the party line - check (at least for the libertarian set)
Yes, art can be political, and political art can be good. But it has to be art first and foremost.
I think it shows that having a good ear for dialogue and maybe the good sense to leave some things up to the auditor to figure out is actually divorced from good sense or political acumen. I loved American Buffallo and I liked Glen Garry Glen Ross, and snippets of his dialogue in other things. But he's no great shakes otherwise, is he?
ReplyDeleteI always worry when Roy points out that the people he reads are Zhdanovites because I'm a bit that way myself. I mean, its not that I can't and don't enjoy lots of things--from icecream to theater--without reference to its political content--but I do actually enjoy political content and cultural implications of things and see politics and culture as highly intertwined.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the correct stance to take on Pretty Woman? If I enjoy watching it and then feel ashamed of myself because of the political implications of its class and sex stuff is that ok or not ok?
At first I thought you meant Rand Paul's gym. The one next to Joe's Dirt Cheap Curly Toupees.
ReplyDeleteShe's banned Bowie, Eno, and Partridge/Moulding? Man, what's the point of even having ears?
ReplyDeleteRand Paul's gym
ReplyDeleteAll equipment certified* MRSA-free!
*Certification not necessarily recognized by the Dep't of Health.
Yeah, while most of Batman's enemies don't have his bankroll (Penguin in the comics could well be the biggest exception) that doesn't mean they don't have other resources that can make him sweat. Things like Ras' unquestioning followers secreted everywhere, or the Joker's complete unpredictability.
ReplyDeleteAs far as fascism and superheroes goes I read a quote from Alan Moore in Comics Journal once, which doesn't seem to have been transcribed onto the intertubes anywhere. It was after Watchmen and a little before his break with mainstream comics. Someone asked about the series as it relates to fascism, and Moore said, "The Comedian's not a fascist, he's a psychopath. Rorschach's not a fascist, he's a basket case." And so on. It wasn't that he was denying any political subtext, which was obviously there. Rather he was asserting that you can critique superheroes without going to the "jackbooted thug" well.
Mamet's political commentary is more insulting than offensive. He had some kind of Road to Damascus moment and became an ultracon, fine, whatever. But he doesn't put any effort into stating his point of view, which indicates a lack of respect for the reader.
ReplyDeleteA is Au
ReplyDeleteAlso, which "arts" are they referring to? I recently visited Seagrove, NC, land of a thousand potters, and not a single piece depicted a Massey Energy executive cackling over mountaintop removal. Perusing the poetry selections of The New Yorker reveals exactly zero demands for the reimposition of Glass-Steagall. And I still await the denuciation of BP's Gulf spill via interpretive dance.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I know he's talking exclusively about movies and TV, the only "arts" he can comprehend without moving his lips. But here's the thing: there's only 21, 43, or 120 minutes to tell that story. That's it. You've got to take the occasional shortcut. After you use the evil drug lord, the insanely jealous (ex-)husband, the corrupt government official, and the means-justify-the-ends guy as antagonists, who's left? Everyone understands the nefarious executive. Most executives aren't nefarious. Most drug dealers aren't evil cackling bastards, either: they just want to sell enough dope to cover their car payment and their girlfriend's new boobs. Hard to grind 43 minutes of dramatic tension out of that, though.
Once again, in their petulant whining about popular culture, nothing has been more starkly revealed than their total failure to perceive it.
I can attest to this.
ReplyDeleteApparently we are all Bertolt Brecht.
ReplyDeleteThe term "Emergent" has been permanently Godwinned in the mind of anyone who reads Vernor Vinge. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteHey, how can the Moving Picture Institute miss with upcoming epics like Inside the Mind of Ayn Rand? They'll be queuing round the block.
ReplyDeleteDennis Miller.
ReplyDeleteThe absolute best thing about that pile of gold bars? After you have a bottle of wine, put on some mood music, and make sweet, sweet love to your heap of filthy lucre, you can just toss the sticky, crusty ingots into the dishwasher. Try that with your fiat paper currency, pinko.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware that Josh Trevino had a memoir out.
ReplyDeleteI just threw up on my visual cortex.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't feel dirty afterwards you weren't doing it right? Or was that another topic entirely?
ReplyDeleteGreat weblog here! Also your site a lot up fast! What web host are you using?
ReplyDeleteCan I get your associate link in your host? I want my site loaded
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"In the world of popular culture, the motives of capitalists are routinely portrayed as suspicious if not openly antagonistic to the public good, culminating in the cliché of the evil billionaire or businessman."
ReplyDeleteModern Americans have been subjected to more propaganda than anyone ever, in the form of advertising and public relations. Little to none of it is anti-corporate or anti-capitalist, for obvious reasons. Of course there's almost no theme that can't be exploited to sell something. If vaguely leftist sentiments sell more Coke, so be it. A capitalist can depict the competition as evil, out-of-touch fatcats. But the consumerist core is never challenged, the economic system is never challenged. The only problems acknowledged are bad companies, bad products, and unfulfilled desires.
People on the Right have been sampling the product so long that they're addicted in earnest. They can't sell it for lack of perspective. For one thing, if you don't "get it" already, they despise you for ruining everything ...
Because whining about it being unfair is the object of it all. While everyone else is sitting there puzzling over whether the whiners have a point, the people paying the whiners to whine are stealing everything that's not nailed down, and much of what is.
ReplyDeleteWho pays Fred Smith to whine?
Okay, guest, stop glomming onto trex's shit.
ReplyDelete...in order to prevent him from listening to Jethro Tull.
ReplyDeleteWow. That's love for sure.
I like it. Money laundering, made literal.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I would expect that a real Scrooge MacCool would not stock the dishwasher him/herself but would have the servants do it.
A wealth creator!
ReplyDeleteNo. This has been another edition of SATSQ.
ReplyDeleteI had to check for myself to see if they're serious about calling themselves The Umlaut. They are. Talk about the subtext becoming the text.
ReplyDeleteIt's a vampire movie, right?
ReplyDeleteI visited several web pages but the audio quality for audio songs current at this web
ReplyDeletesite is in fact wonderful.
Look at my site; next
At Rand Paul's gym, spot lifting is explicitly forbidden. If you drop a barbell on your throat, you should have planned better, moocher!
ReplyDelete"Retake America" was one of the songs. You would not have been able to escape it at CPAC.
ReplyDeleteNah, it's a love story. Ayn Rand learns to fall in love with her own brilliant mind, and so does everyone else. On pain of death!
ReplyDeleteOh, fuck, that's even scarier....
ReplyDeleteMy own opinion (and it is just an opinion; I could be wrong) is that fiction is fiction and reality is reality and the former doesn't affect the latter as much as many people think. Your watching of whatever doesn't hurt feminism. It's just a movie.
ReplyDeleteOr at least, there's a difference between recognizing the assumptions and biases that go into a piece of art and actively forbidding yourself from consuming any of the 'bad' ones.
His essays have always been those of an asshole. I like his writing (esp. The Untouchables), but once he starts to "express himself" he becomes like any other pompous jerk. One expects more but one is (as one so often is) disappointed.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting. The rich labor to endow their riches with moral value (Ayn Rand being the premier pornographer of this), whereas everyone else just wants what they can get, because you've got to try to get SOMETHING in order to survive. The richest Hollywood or rock 'n' roll dickhead doesn't point to his/her millions and say, "This is a moral good and attests to my human worthiness." They say, "I know--innit cool?"
ReplyDeleteProbably this tendency increases as the tradition of noblesse oblige decreases. You'll note its extreme absence in this, what Spiro Agnew once called "the greatest country in the nation." So of course they strive, not just to justify it, but burnish it, with moral praiseworthiness.
It may not hurt feminism, but this feminist has decided that she will seek out and support art that doesn't just fall into lazy, patriarchal patterns in pursuit of a prized customer base that doesn't include me. Which doesn't mean I put up with propaganda, but I do want to see and experience good art that happens to focus on the experiences of women or other groups whose stories don't often get told. I've left enjoyable books on the subway when we finally get to the female protagonist, and she's a prostitute or stripper for no discernible reason other than that means that the author can put a sex scene into historical fiction.
ReplyDeleteI mean, the Bechdel Test* is a really, really low bar, but it's shocking how many films, even great ones, just can't meet it. After a while, is it rational to keep supporting art that has decided that you don't count except as an accessory to men?
* The Bechdel Test, for those unfamiliar, requires that a film:
1. Have at least two female characters
2. Who are named; and
3. Who talk to each other;
4. About something other than men.
Oddly enough, it's a test Quentin Tarantino has had little trouble with in some films, but by no means all.
Well, it's a complex issue and I was probably too glib about it. One thing I should probably start out with is that I'm a straight white guy who's not exactly poor (i.e. Hollywood's favorite audience) and I probably can't feel what you feel on an emotional level even when I do try to understand it (and I try to, though not always successfully.)
ReplyDeleteI think one of my own reasons for thinking this way is that I spend most of my entertainment-leisure time on the internet. Liberal people my generation are really interested in talking about privilege and patriarchy and heteronormativity and it can get a bit overwhelming. So my personal manifesto is that if a work is made with skill and craft and has talented people working on it (and meets some minimum level of human decency-I'm not going around praising the production values of Neo-Nazi snuff porn) and, explicitly or not, knows that it's just one take on the world, not an infallible screed, I'll take it on its own terms, no matter its politics. Doesn't mean I feel obligated to like everything The disconnect, I think, is that mainstream Hollywood and TV and publishing isn't even close to this level. Like you said, the amount of stuff that just totally ignores women, POC's, etc. is mind-boggling, and like I said it's something that's not going to jump out at me right away. It totally makes sense that you'd want to actively search for something different. And there should be more cultural variety in pop culture, just because variety is interesting.
What I don't like is people taking something as only political, when it clearly isn't, people implying that someone is a traitor to the cause for liking X, and just general overreaction on whether something is biased or bigoted or not*, although that's obviously very subjective territory.
Re: the Bechdel test, which I've always found interesting, what do you think of the idea that it should distinguish between the women talking about men in sexual and non-sexual contexts? I personally think there's a difference between "Mark will think I look so hot in this dress" and a conversation between two female scientists about a project their male colleague is working with them on is big enough that it ought to be distinguished.
*-I said 'liberal people' up above for a reason. It's no secret that there are just not many conservatives you can have a reasonable conversation with about this stuff without them being totally repulsive or trying to turn the whole thing to a pro-Republican spiel. I don't blame feminists for assuming that a guy who says they're overreacting about gender politics in a movie is really a sexist and is just trying to hide it. They turn out to be right fairly often. I just wish they didn't have to.
I'm assuming you said that in a Monty Burns voice...
ReplyDeleteDaddy Warbucks.
ReplyDeleteArthur.
Good question, and I think one has to go back to the so-called Powell manifesto for some sort of answer. For forty years now, the really insane right-wingers--the ones with serious money--have funded their private foundations in order to pump money into an ever-expanding number of "think tanks," speakers' bureaus, PR shops, big business associations and astroturf operations, and that money has paid for one thing--promote the interests of the very, very wealthy and acquisitive in this country. There's an endless stream of these bag men for the rich on the news, the Sunday talk shows, and particularly, Fox News.
ReplyDeleteThey've been enormously successful in changing opinion in this country. Proof of that is that the Capitol building is still standing after a succession of wars of choice, a series of financial meltdowns that have ruined the middle class and forced the poor into a permanent underclass, decimated unions and even now, there are no riots in the streets over Democrats proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
But, what they do not have at the moment is the sort of success they envisioned. Environmental laws are yet to be repealed (non-enforcement just isn't enough for them). Wage and hour laws are still in place (although still widely violated in the employment of the bottom 20%). Bank and securities regulations are still in effect, though nominally limited to clawing back small percentages of ill-gotten gains. The National Parks are still there. They still can't openly bribe public officials and legislators to get what they want.
In other words, they are still not quite running the country as they did from about 1875-1905. To them, 'freedom' has a narrow and distinct meaning: that they are absolutely free to do as they please in pursuit of profit and power. To this end, they also need the entire populace to be either in love with them, or afraid of them.
They have no small number of the former now, but not nearly enough of the latter, and they are worried that there's a new generation (the newly-graduated that are now both dispossessed and over-burdened by debt) that is highly suspicious of them and their motives, which is why this idiot, Fred Smith, is prattling on about "youthful" pop music videos to sell Hayek. They're losing a generation, and they can't have that, just as they are on the cusp of realizing the dream of destroying the government that has, to some small extent, stood in the way of them having it all for themselves. Yes, they're trying to do some subtle brainwashing--because it worked for two generations--but, they're also trying to discourage the appearance of the next generation of Ida Tarbells and Upton Sinclairs and Lincoln Steffens.
That's how they get them and that's how they keep them.
ReplyDeleteI can't really explain why, but I got started watching The Following, and it's a great piece of wingnut propaganda. First off, the point is made that there are over three hundred serial killers currently at large in the U.S. ( so buy as many guns as you can carry, because they're killing people in broad daylight by the scads, and YOU MIGHT BE NEXT!!!). The co-central character is a charismatic psychopath who has attracted a cult of mindless followers who think he's God and will do his bidding whatever it is and whatever the cost, just like the Kenyan Usurper and his minions. And the other co-character is a brave FBI agent dedicated to bringing him down so that the rest of us can sleep free and safe (an amalgamation of every wingnut culture warrior you can think of). All the show needs is zombies, which I guess would be the rest of as bystanders who watch but do nothing as victims are brutally murdered in front of us. You're welcome, Charles and David. And no, I won't take a check...
ReplyDeleteThen they'll lobby to get the laws changed to exclude any new entrants.
ReplyDeleteI have some old Cowsills records she might like.
ReplyDeleteHow to Be a Fan of Problematic Things (aka Guilt and Getting Your Game of Thrones On).
ReplyDeleteThe “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that it is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past.
ReplyDeleteYeah, because the virtuous, honorable business man that cares about all his employees makes for such engaging story telling.
Bender: "Nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand." (Referring to the contents of the sewers in the 31st century.)
ReplyDeleteI fear that future archaeologists are going to assume that everyone in the 21st century was a loony libertarian, given all of the unwatched movies and unread books from Regnery and other detritus from places like the Mercatus Center occupying space in our landfills.
Re: the Bechdel test, which I've always found interesting, what do you think of the idea that it should distinguish between the women talking about men in sexual and non-sexual contexts? I personally think there's a difference between "Mark will think I look so hot in this dress" and a conversation between two female scientists about a project their male colleague is working with them on is big enough that it ought to be distinguished.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the distinction is very useful. The implication of the Bechdel test isn't simply that women often serve merely as love interests and such. If the women in a movie/book/etc. have nothing to say to each other that doesn't involve a man, it's usually because the man is the agent and the driver of the story, and the women have no such agency of their own.
It's also indicative of how fleshed out male characters often are compared to female characters. If the female characters have no hobbies, interests, skills, passions, concerns, fears, hopes, dreams, etc. that don't directly relate to the goals of the (often male) protagonist, then of course they're not going to have anything else to talk about.
It's not necessarily damning when one single work fails the test (the fact that everyone in Spider-Man is talking about Spider-Man is no big surprise), though it can be depending on circumstances, but it's more of a critique of our cultural norms that so many works fail it.
Now, see, I thought Mr Fezziwig seemed pretty interesting. But "good boss" is actually a common enough trope, just usually as a supporting character rather than the main. Of course, that's usually true of the "nefarious executive," too. I'll be writing about this in my new online magazine fighting the culture war from the left, Verbal Diaeresis.
ReplyDeleteRe: the Bechdel test, which I've always found interesting, what do you
ReplyDeletethink of the idea that it should distinguish between the women talking
about men in sexual and non-sexual contexts? I personally think there's a
difference between "Mark will think I look so hot in this dress" and a
conversation between two female scientists about a project their male
colleague is working with them on is big enough that it ought to be
distinguished.
But, see, if that's the only conversation they have together, it doesn't pass. Then they're only together to talk about the hero and advance his plot, because female characters exist to promote male leads for studio profits. Screenwriters are taught NOT to pass the Bechdel test. From a UCLA-trained scriptwriter:
Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).
At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation from an industry pro: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”
“Not even if it advances the story?” I asked. That’s rule number one in screenwriting, though you’d never know it from watching most movies: every moment in a script should reveal another chunk of the story and keep it moving.
He just looked embarrassed and said, “I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it.”
Right. A bunch of self-back-slapping professed liberals wouldn’t want you to think they routinely dismiss women in between writing checks to Greenpeace. Gosh, no – it was they. The audience. Those unsophisticated jackasses we effectively worked for when we made films. They were making us do this awful thing. They, the man behind the screen. They, the six-foot-tall invisible rabbit. We knew they
existed because there were spreadsheets with numbers, and no matter how the numbers computed, they never added up to, “Oh, hey, look – men and boys are totally watching Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley like it’s no big
deal they’re chicks instead of guys.” They always somehow added up to “Oh, hey, look – those effects/that Arnold’s so awesome, men and boys saw this movie despite some chick in a lead role.”
According to Hollywood, if two women came on screen and started talking, the target male audience’s brain would glaze over and assume the women were talking about nail polish or shoes or something that didn’t pertain to the story. Only if they heard the name of a man in the story would they tune back in. By having women talk to each other about something other than men, I was “losing the audience.”
And it's not just movies -- Jo Rowling rather famously went by her initials and ensured she had a male protagonist for her books because of the belief that boys wouldn't read about a girl (though Katniss Everdeen would like a word).
You'll forgive me if I decide that for me, I just can't keep supporting the kind of art that renders me invisible, irrelevant, or worse -- a prize to be awarded the hero. And now that I'm over 40, it's that much worse. I don't even have the problem of being a POC or low-income, which would just make it worse.
Shit, where did my comment go?
ReplyDeleteShort answer: no, it doesn't count if the only conversation two named female characters have is about the hero and is done solely to advance the hero's plot. That's still a case of female characters existing to promote the male lead in order to profit the studio. Am I supposed to be grateful that the characters aren't talking about sexytimes if they're still supporting the male character's agency vs. showing some of their own?
Incidentally, it's not an accident that so many films don't pass the Bechdel Test. They're designed not to. Movie studios believe their prized audience -- people like you -- will simply tune out if women are shown talking to each other. Publishers labor under this same misconception, which is why we have Harry instead of Hermione as the protagonist written by J.K. rather than Jo.
But in the U.S., the umlat is unironically used by heavy-metal bands to come across as German, and therefore sinister: Or ironically, for the lulz.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit to having no idea at all as to why they went with "Umlaut" (I know I spelled it wrong above) for any reason at all, textural or sub. That said, this from McSweeneys, surely written long ago, with no knowledge of any right-wing culture concern, pretty much nails what I think about it as a symbol.
ReplyDeleteThey study culture in the same way that one might "study" a small animal with a hunting knife.
ReplyDeleteWell put!
Yeah, Roy has namechecked Zhdanov a few times. These people certainly give him enough opportunity.
ReplyDeleteJimmy James from NewsRadio, at least once you get to know him.
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that the male scientist in the example is not the protagonist. Maybe I wasn't clear on that.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what to think about someone who claims that her opinion on something is the only good opinion on that thing. "Tolerant and accepting" isn't the first phrase that comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to bring in other art forms you should remember that statuary is heavily conservative.
ReplyDeleteThere's just gotta be a way to work cockade into this riff...
ReplyDeleteWhy can't they just talk about their shared work? Why does their experience have to be filtered through a male agent?
ReplyDeleteOK, say it's a project the three of them are working on together.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit to being bad at feminism, which is why I'm asking these questions and trying to be honest about my own notions. One argument that I've heard, from Amanda Marcotte and others, is that feminism is as much getting equal rights that women deserve as it is about breaking down gender binaries in general. So in this case, they're all equals, they're all competent professionals, they're working together. Isn't that kind of the goal?
Again, though, is this their only conversation in the movie? Do they have developed personalities and characters, or are they there as plot devices or prizes to to prop up the male characters? Why do they have to work with a man at all, if the man is not the main character?
ReplyDeleteAs Triplanetary said, men in movies get agency. They do things. They say things and people listen. Women in movies are isolated, surrounded by men, often don't have lives outside of their involvement in the men, and even when there is more than one woman in a film, they often don't have any scenes together. The male protagonist will have a full life full of friends, coworkers, antagonists, family. The female protagonist will talk mostly to the male protagonist (or the male antagonist) and will mostly talk about the male protagonist, even to other women.
You want to learn more about feminism? Great. How about starting with the posts at The Hathor Legacy I posted above?