Re: Art and Left Politics

["Jason Fantus" <jfantus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I want to raise as a hypothesis at least worth exploring that the
> political effect of a movie, a poem, a painting, a commerical, a musical
> performance depends *not* on the content or style of the work but on the
> political context in which it is received. That in periods of great
> leftist political activity even the most reactionary art will be
> interpreted by large sectors of the audience in progressive terms and
> have a progressive impact, while in periods of relative quiescence of
> the working class and progressive political activity even the most
> progressive/revolutionary art will be perceived as conservative and will
> tend to have a conservative influence. Within what sort of a framework
> did the bulk of the audience that saw The Matrix perceive that film?

That sounds pretty true, the period of time and the social conditions that
exist in that time will probably determine how a piece/painting/song would
be viewed by the general crowd. On the Matrix (again, a movie I didn't
see..), from people I know it was simply described as "cool" because it
involved some hyper-tech form of the Internet and virtual reality, tossed in
with your typical action film antics. Because the whole point in this epoch
of reaction and political un-knowledge would probably prevent all but a few
people of even thinking of it in other terms than the basic "good or bad,
cool or sucky" arena. And those who do will most likely just call it a
dystopian story, because history could never be that way (to them, at
least.). So I think you could add a third category of the reception of
artwork : What is it viewed as when poltics, to the broad masses of people ,
are either just a trivial thing or something they are completely removed
from?

Err, forgot to "introduce" myself , my name is Jason Fantus and I'm 18. I
live in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA, USA. If you keep up with some other
lists you might know me from there (marxist list on egroups, etc.). I'd
consider myself a non-sectarian Trotskyist (gasp! horror!) politically.