Republican realism and art's bad old days

[BobcatJH]

It's important to remember what Republicans really want out of art. This was part one of a two-part examination of Hollywood and the Republican Party.

History repeats itself. Lessons go unlearned, warnings unheeded.

If you missed conservative film critic Michael Medved's tour-de-force performance on "Scarborough Country" recently, you missed a man claiming to have the best interests of Americans in mind. Appearing to discuss the Hollywood "agenda," Medved, as he is wont to do, criticized an industry he sees as out-of-touch with the average citizen, one that pushes a radical philosophy.

In doing so, Medved echoed the sentiments of other conservatives who, whether they like it or not, are promoting a standard of art that the world has seen before. A standard marrying a style with a political attitude. A standard used to keep an ill-informed public brainwashed. A standard adopted by Communists and Nazis.

Medved, over the course of his career, has made it his crusade to castigate Hollywood for what he feels is the industry's departure from mainstream American values. Medved, in championing three 2004 movies - "The Incredibles," "National Treasure," "Christmas with the Kranks" - praised films that "affirmed traditional, unifying values of family, service and patriotism with no discernable political agenda." But if you really dig deeper into Medved's criticisms, you will find a desire for movies that do espouse a "discernable political agenda" - his.

In the same article, Medved derided Hollywood's "continued detachment" from "the underlying attitudes of the 51% of Americans who rejected Hollywood's advice on Election Day." When he appeared on "Scarborough Country," Medved denounced the Golden Globes for rewarding movies "that advocate a gay agenda." Such movies, he contends, fly in the face of an America that voted in large part to reject same-sex marriage in 2004. "In other words," he wrote then, "in the real world, (including blue states as well as red ones) committed churchgoers outnumber homosexuals by a ratio of more than 10-to-1. It therefore makes no sense, as a means of either reflecting reality or connecting with a mass audience, that gay characters feature so much more prominently (and sympathetically) than religious people in movies and TV shows."

Though an "observant" Jew himself, Medved offers criticisms of Hollywood that reveal an anti-Semitic prejudice seen in the not-so-distant past. His recent review of Steven Spielberg's "Munich" includes slights at the director and his "Marxist" screenwriter, Tony Kushner. The "Hollywood Jews" who "embrace a leftist message movie such as Munich," he says, "indicates that it's utopian liberalism, rather than any form of Jewish commitment, represents the reigning faith of the entertainment elite." Medved's use of "Hollywood Jews," like others using "New York Jews" or "international bankers," for instance, is an all-too-familiar practice better left in the past.

Hollywood's current focus, according to Medved, is responsible for declining box-office revenues. Medved believes that dark, pessimistic films should give way to more optimistic, life-affirming pieces, movies he thinks average Americans want to see. What he's ignoring, of course, is that mainstream American moviemaking isn't driven by the desire to make good movies. It's driven by the desire to make good money. Studios hope for a big opening weekend, a solid DVD release and little else. That - not because they advocate any agenda - is why most cineplex offerings are terrible. And when Hollywood or an independent does produce an engaging, thought-provoking film, Medved is first in line to say that it didn't make half the money "Last Holiday" did, as though a movie's worth is tied directly to its box-office receipts. To that end, Medved's Hollywood would continue to suffer, as conservative control over filmmaking would result in more bland, unwatchable failures, not less.

If Medved has a brother-in-arms, it is conservative economist Larry Kudlow, who in late 2004 praised his wife's paintings as "conservative art." His wife Judith Pond Kudlow's work, he said, comes from "the classical tradition of beauty and truth. In other words, these are paintings of landscapes, still lives, portraits, and figures you can look at and enjoy." Here's the thrust of Kudlow's art criticism:

Judith and her associates, especially Andrea Smith from the Florence Academy, are leading lights in the return to classical painting. Sometimes it's called natural realism. I just call it conservative art. Let me tell you what it's not - it's not modernistic, abstract, self-centered expressionism. It's not just throwing paint at a canvas. It doesn't tear down art, or the rest of the world, for that matter. It's not the negative pessimistic crap that too often passes for art in blue states like New York and, well, you know where else. These are just beautiful, calm, pleasant pictures. Stuff you can enjoy looking at, which is what I think art should be.

Her work, he added, is "counter-revolutionary to all the weird paintings that have been floating around for the last 40 or 50 years." It "represents the force of light and right and good in an art world, which, too often, lapses into darkness."

Art from a "tradition of beauty and truth." That represents the "force of light and right and good." That "you can enjoy looking at." Movies that affirm "traditional, unifying values of family, service and patriotism." That "reflect, or at least respect, the underlying values" of the average American. That don't embrace "very radical messages." We've been here before. While Kudlow and Medved claim to be coming from the conservative viewpoint, their philosophy of art more mirrors those of Communists and Nazis, dating back to the first half of the 20th Century.

What Medved praises and Kudlow refers to as "natural realism" or "conservative art," historians call "heroic realism" or "heroic art." Heroic realism, in its most infamous form, took two perspectives - one promoted by Stalin, the other promoted by Hitler. The former, also referred to as socialist realism, rejected modernity in art, instead embracing a "truthful, historically concrete" final product that, much like Medved and Kudlow's preferred art, the great masses could enjoy with little confusion. It was art that, in the state's eyes, wasn't elitist. It elevated the common man in the hopes of educating the masses in the ways of Communism.

The latter, also referred to as Nazi heroic realism, took the Soviet Union's lead and infused the philosophy with a racist strain. Also adopting the Romantic ideal, Hitler's heroic realism used a simple, conventional style to best represent the German race. In the Nazi mind, modern art deviated from this standard, whereas racially pure artists could do what racially impure artists could not - produce heroic art. These deviations were categorized as Entartete Kunst, or degenerate art. Art that Kudlow seems to be referring to as "the negative pessimistic crap that too often passes for art in blue states like New York and, well, you know where else."

Heroic realism - either of the Soviet or Nazi strain - exemplified what Medved and Kudlow suggest: Art that rejects modernism, that appeals to the unwashed masses, that represents their truths, that marries style with politics. And anything that doesn't meet that standard is, both then and now, degenerate. It doesn't speak to what people want to hear. It is the work of an inferior elite, a select few out of touch with everyday values.

This Republican realism rears its head when obscenity charges are brought against the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director for exhibiting the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. When conservative groups pressure the government to slash the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. When "concerned citizens" seek to ban books, censor radio and television and protest movies like "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Kinsey" and "Brokeback Mountain." When Thomas Kinkade becomes a publicly traded commodity. When good art becomes "pessimistic crap." When good movies become vehicles for the "gay agenda."

Republican realism - like its predecessors - is a pervasive, insidious philosophy that threatens the very notion of what art is, and what it's not. It polarizes. It stigmatizes. It discriminates. It dumbs down art in the name of mass appeal. It represents a tactic that has long been used by regimes to propagandize to its citizens. And it embodies a way of thinking anathema to our American system.

The whispers of America's creeping slide toward totalitarianism are growing louder, and for good reason. For centuries, societies have confronted challenging times by expressing the creative spirit, producing some of the world's most famous artwork. But when a society's creative spirit is compromised, can the society itself be far behind?

[C_U_L8R]

1. I've got no qualms

calling them Nazis

for they are in every way
and worse.

[Skinner]

2. That's a great read. Well done.

"The Incredibles" was a great movie, I'll agree with Medved there. But "National Treasure"? What a piece of crap. (And, how exactly does a movie about stealing the Declaration of Independence so you can enrich yourself with treasure affirm "traditional, unifying values of family, service and patriotism"?)

Call me an elitist, but I prefer that my movie critics champion movies that aren't the same old warmed-over, cookie-cutter Hollywood fare. If I want to find out what this week's big budget blockbuster is (and don't get me wrong, I love a good blockbuster as much as the next guy), all I have to do is turn on the TV. But if I want to find something different, I depend on critics to help me find it.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. First,

Bobcat, welcome to DU. This is a great thought-provoking post. I am an artist and an art teacher of 34 years. My first reaction is to agree with you that this can be interpretted as a "whisper of America's creeping slide toward totalitarianism." The concept is indeed frightening and evocative of Stalin and Hitler.

But then I have second thoughts, at least as far as the visual arts are concerned. Most post-modern art is simply not very accessible to everyday folks. It is usually based in protest, often in-your-face, and probably not something most people want in their living rooms. Your term "dumbed down" is appropriate. Both Soviet and Nazi art (visual) embodied the principles those regimes espoused, with portraits of muscular men and women engaging in hard physical labor. I don't think we are quite there yet. There have always been and always will be artists like Thomas Kinkaide who paint pure schmaltz. Think Hallmark. It's only been since the invention of the camera that artists have been free to pursue other avenues.

People have different notions of the purpose of art. Not too long ago, art was always realistic. If you paid an artist to paint granny, you didn't want three eyes and two noses. Artists were craftsmen, much like carpenters. Creativity was not valued. Only within the last century or so has studio art taken on a more emotional, sometimes political tone.

The way I see it, there are basically two types of art today: decorative and emotional. Decorative art looks good over the sofa, and emotional usually doesn't. And I will have to admit that even as long ago as when I was in my BFA program, shock got you way better grades than craftsmanship. I didn't learn to paint in school. But I sure learned to gross people out effectively. (think dead rats frozen in huge ice blocks) When I got out of college and had to support myself painting portraits, I had to self-teach the skills I needed. I personally would not be sad to see the shock quotient removed from the equation because I think it cheapens art. But it is also very lucrative in the galleries in NYC and people pay enormous sums for some of this stuff.

Where I get my back up is with the term "conversative art." Blech. I think perhaps this is just the pendulum swinging right after Maplethorpe and his genre. Art in a capitalistic country is driven by the wallet. Let the fundies protest all they want, and let them vote with their pocketbooks. As long as they don't try to legislate it, I'm okay with it. I think there is enough of a thinking fringe out there that will always celebrate innovation. God, I hope so.
.

[Cobalt Violet]

4. K & R.

As an artist, I've always felt repuke hatred for everything I hold dear and my very existance.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Some of the "Libertarian Art" is good

Notice, though, that I said some. They tend to be "neo-Romantics" and like to paint attractive young women reading books of philosophy and/or smoking, like a certain Russian expat refugee from Lenin they worship.

(Well, maybe not the attractive or young part ... "Hmmm, is Kant right on the value of Abstract Virtue, or is Aristotle?" you can almost hear her pondering; "No matter; if I want to get laid by a Manly Man who shares the values of Liberty, Reason, and Selfishness that I posess, and before the Objectivist Circle meeting, I'd better get my horny ass down to Dirty Frank's and pick up an engineering student. Now, where'd I leave my Camel Lites?"

Some of it is quite good, but it tends to be the works that aren't strictly ideological.

There is a LOT of self-consciously "leftist" art that is just crap, too -- unfortunately. In the early 1990s, I must have seen over fifty student works at Philadelphia College of Art and Moore School of Art that featured a) cuts of meat; b) Uncle Sam raping a pregnant woman with her belly painted as the Earth; and/or c) crying, poor, starving, "Third World" babies, with an "ironic twist", the best of which showed a package of Sno-Balls placed in front of the baby. (I laughed. I cried. I almost joined the Peace Corps.)

It's not even Sturgeon's Revelation that "90% of anything is crap". It's tough to make great art, but it's even tougher for a culture warrior. I strongly believe that great works of art require a great love for Humanity -- even if that love has been spurned or gone unrequited. Politics isn't always the best indicator, though when flaming ninnies like Horowitz and Medved are elevated to the stature of art critics, all bets are off.

--p!
"I love humanity.
It's the damn people I can't stand."
Udge of Mudge, the Seventeenth Klizant-zoon of Pon-Farr.