I am reading Red Star over Hollywood and I am baffled by the doltish slavery to a repressive system by artists. Artist stock in trade is free expression and I do not understand the seduction of a system that is founded on censorship. Then again being fed a pipe dream of Art for the people could inflate ones ego. However the America Capitalist Barnes brought art to the people without pain or gulags.
The truth is that some people who claim to be secular still yearn for the utopias promised by religion. Thus they create a secular hell where man is god and life is cheap Killing Fields, Gulags are all due to mans attempt to play God.
The lives destroyed are sacrafices much like those of the ancient Aztecs. Yet for all the rivers of blood not one person ever achieves or glimpses this utopia. Utopia is a falacy and all who think they can establish it in this world are fools.
The book also shows how Commies act in secret and form front organizations. They are manned by fellow travelers who provide cover and submarines secret party members. This is how the party conducts business today. Code Pink, ANSWER, UPJ are classic communist front groups and their presence and leadership of the anti war movement speaks vollumes. They deserve the same disrespect and outrage as Nazis.
Sadly, there were also artists and intellectuals who were seduced by Nazism as well.
Totalitarianism makes zero sense but some need to feed their egos. Others quest for power as they feel entitled to Lord over the rest of you peasants. Lastly, there are those that need to belong to anything.
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4 comments:
They just want the government to be daddy and mommy.
Beak,
The truth is that some people who claim to be secular still yearn for the utopias promised by religion. Thus they create a secular hell where man is god and life is cheap Killing Fields, Gulags are all due to mans attempt to play God.
All totalitarian ideologies, religious and secular, are attempts at God-playing. God-playing inevitably leads to megalomania, IMO.
Many Hollywood types are pathetic God-players as well.
Hey beak, what's shakin? Staying warm?
Kyle's right, there can, and probably have been, dissertations and books written on the topic.
First, there's "artists," and there's "Hollywood." Sometimes Art happens in Hollywood. But it is also an industry and an extremely powerful one, not necessarily in terms of economics but certainly in terms of media control. I like to look at Hollywood not as "good/bad" but as a mirror of our values: the best and the worst of them. Our most noble aspirations, our most crass materialism, etc.
There's a romance of the Old Left in perpetuated in Hollywood that is really rooted in the heyday of labor unions, and unions frankly did many people a lot of good in those days. They put food on people's table, gave them security, allowed them to support their families. Some people were simply content to have a union protecting their job, and some wondered "What if...?" when they sense the power that can be wrested through organization. It's the "What if...?" ya gotta worry about. The lure of power, plain and simple.
The attraction of Communism in particular is just that it provides easy, pat, utopian-sounding answers to difficult questions: How can we ease the burden of the poor? How do you provide certain services for a large number of people? What is the will of an individual measured against the will of a corporation? And sometimes these are questions Capitalism can't or won't answer. It goes without saying that communism is the intellectually lazy way out and that Capitalism for all its flaws is the preferable system. Like you guys, I'm infuriated by the "romancing" of communism. You'd think we should all know better by now! Thanks, professors!
Now, Art: They say everything's political, but Art, when it's done right, leaves it to the viewer/reader/listener to decide if it conveys a political message. Overtly political art is mere propaganda by definition. So--to do it right, you almost have to ride a razor's edge and preserve some ambiguity. Ambiguity and polemics do not mix. Whatever their personal views, I think many artists' work is unfairly criticized because it dares to bring up questions that make some people uncomfortable.
Take the leftist idea of art: You can smear your own turds on your naked body, but it isn't art unless the government is paying for it. Leftist art seeks validation from government sanction, while their dupes will either revel in the backlash ("He has a First Amendment right to smear shit on himself for a living, how dare you cut his funding!") or perpetuate it as haute couture ("The way he streaks his abdomen with his own poop suggests a somber acceptance of fate like Camus' The Plague).
The rest of us see a guy smearing shit on himself and aren't suprised to find the Commie inclinations.
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