If I wanted to read about the intersection of politics and art, I would look at Camile Paglia’s latest column.

I kid! I kid!

Bravo. I’m glad you mentioned the NRO’s 50 “conservative” rock songs. I felt much more comfortable when right wing cranks were railing against rock and roll and art as decadent and satanic. I find it more sinister that they are trying to OWN rock and roll and art. Seriously, the only thing wingnuts know about rock and roll or and art, is how to make it less cool, less fun, and less interesting.

I heard Jar Jar Binks was originally going to be voiced by James Caan.

Y’know how some people seem to be “self-loathing Jews” or “self-loathing gays”, members of a negatively-stereotyped group who nonetheless support the stereotype?

Paglia is a self-loathing hippie.

Plus, she apparently knows dick about science fiction.

TAP link takes me to an article whose entire text is just a single vertical bar character

Oh I say, you’ve gone legit. And to say I knew you back when you were making fun of minnows like Pastor Swank.

Wait … you mean The Hon. Dr. St. Rev. Bradley S. Rocket, Esq, PhD, MD, isn’t your real name?

I don’t know what to believe anymore.

The fact that she thinks Star Wars is Kubrickian (and not ripped off from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, for which Lucas atoned by financing the American release of Kagemusha) means that… well, I won’t say don’t read her, because she at least name drops Alain Resnais.

As for art films in the last 35 years: Soderbergh’s early films spring to mind. Nicholas Roeg, definitely. Tom Twyker. Maybe she’s just old.

Movies with philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution since 1972:

The Wicker Man (original, from 1973)
The Conversation (1974)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Lord of the Rings cycle (2001-2003)

Just off the top of my head….

Actually, I did watch Transformers, and I thought exactly the same thing. They had to have gotten money from the Army for that movie.

First, the US is attacked, not in the US, but in the Middle East – cuz I guess it is all American territory now. The Arabs are straight out of Edward Said. Not the terrorist stereotype though, the primitive, slightly effeminate, in need a big brawny hunk of American beefcake in uniform to protect them type.

Also, they live in ancient ruins that skirt a comically large mosque. Because I guess they haven’t learned how to build new houses in the last 1,000 years. Fortunately they all speak accented English, so no need to pick up Arabic.

Look Righties, you’ve got Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent and Red Dawn and that’s it. That’s the the entire conservative artistic achievement. Get over it.

Bah. There’s plenty of great right-wing art.

Deny the greatness of this if you dare.

The Arabs are straight out of Edward Said.
Bernard Lewis. Or perhaps T.H. Lawrence. But definitely not Edward Said.
Otherwise, spot on, bro.

David Lynch is arguably right wing, odd as that sounds.
Apparently he thinks Nancy Reagan is a great gal.
My point is artists, be they filmmakers or whatever, become great artists because they are able to combine in themselves what everyone else finds contradictory, and thus find new, revealing angles.

And 1972? How arbitrary is that date?
I guess she didn’t like Apocalypse Now.

Oh, n great article bradrocket, but c’mon. Paglia was Ann Althouse while AA was still just taking pics of her boobs and sending them to Clinton.

Chreebus. I don’t think Paglia knows what words mean.
“My pagan brand of atheism is predicated on worship of both nature and art.”
Why the fuck is this woman published?

I was going to mention David Lynch as well, brad. Though he’s a conservative by Hollywood standards, which is a little different. Mark Helprin writes some good comic novels. Even throwing out a wide net, the catch is sadly sparse.

And Jeff, you said about Paglia that “she apparently knows dick about science fiction.” I would add that she what she knows about dicks is science fiction.

Anyone who calls the Godfather series “gritty social realism” is throwing out terms she overheard somewhere that sounded intellectual. She’s a total phony.

“Bernard Lewis. Or perhaps T.H. Lawrence. But definitely not Edward Said.
Otherwise, spot on, bro.”

Oh come on, you’re telling me the pretty little water boy or whatever he was with the adoring eyes and the girlish hips couldn’t have been on the cover of Orientalism?

I meant that it fit Edward Said’s descriptions of traditional Western views: ie, “orientals” are either so pretty and fragile that they need to be protected, or so stupid and ruthless that they have to be dealt with forcefully, cuz its all they understand. Transformers did both, but at least the second role was filled by suicide-bombing robots, not towel heads.

But you are right, Bernard Lewis epitomizes that view with his “Arabs are too primitive for democracy” shit. Thank Allah they stopped putting that fucker on CNN every day.

And thanks 🙂

Oh, come on. There are plenty of conservatives who make good, even great, art, movies, rock music, all kinds of culture.
Movies: David Lynch
Rock: Johnny Ramone, Ted Nugent
Music: Wagner
Literature: Nabokov, Tom Wolfe

And that’s just off the top of my head. Don’t get hung up on the whole, “we’re hipper than the conservatives” idea. It’s untrue and pointless.

Nicely done, Mr. Rocket!

Paglia, on the other hand, is a total bullshit artist.

Paglia’s problem is that she never got over the early 90’s culture-war academic rock-star phenomenon that gave her, among other things, a profile on 60 Minutes.
She can’t grasp the fact that it’s over. No one wants to hear a preening Harold Bloom epigone drone on about how Nietzsche would have endorsed the reverse cow-girl position as long as the woman wears leather and anal stimulation is involved. She’s the public intellectual equivalent of a Snapple ad.

This isn’t about which great artist is on what “team”. It’s about producing art. Ezra Pound was a fuck. He also was a genius. A poet, not a politician. If you can separate the fact that he was quite mad and quite horrible with the fact that his poetry puts our souls in a different place, well, what do you take away? The art or the person?

Now, some art is inherently political there’s nothing at all wrong with that either. One doesn’t mistake the politics that scream through Guernica. And too, there is implicit politics in a lot of art, screenplays, movies, music, etc. Then you should ask yourself; were you entertained? moved?

But teasing out preferred narratives to fit your preconceived agenda in criticism…Well, it was boring when the Marxists did it and it’s boring now.

Don’t get hung up on the whole, “we’re hipper than the conservatives” idea. It’s untrue and pointless.

Some truth to that, atheist. But let’s not go nuts. The GOP has as much real hipness as a Boca Raton physical therapist’s office.

Write Your Own Paglia Column!

Have you ever wanted to be a “contrarian” deep-thinker? Do you consider yourself a liberal, despite hating almost everything about being a liberal? Well your days of dreaming about becoming a self-important egomaniac are over! In just a few easy steps you too can hold, and articulate ideas so “new” and “counter-intuitive” that someone will just have to give you a column to share your half-baked, self promotion that can be easily disguised as intellectual concern in a few simple steps.

Want to write a Paglia column? Just start off by saying something obvious and following it up with a statement that completely contradicts what you just said, something like, “the war is Iraq has been a disaster because of unfettered Republican rule and we are clearly less safe as a result” then just simply invert to, “clearly the Democrats will lose this next election because they haven’t mastered the art of geopolitics and don’t take terrorism seriously.” Presto! Now you sound like real thinking “liberal!” Nothing like all of those other unthinking, un-serious liberals. (Note: it helps to ignore large, immediate, and substantive issues of policy. Instead of discussing real-life or the actual effect of foreign or domestic policy, you can talk about something you read on drudge or a candidate’s physical appearance and choice of clothes.)

Next apply the same principal to take a completely untenable and self-negating position on some hot cultural topic, try “As an atheist I’m appalled by other atheists rejection of religion.” See, now you’ve effectively staked out a position so mind-numbingly ridiculous, that no one can really argue with you and thus you gain the appearance of being a “free-thinker” who isn’t burdened by things like “meaning.” You can even make up a term to describe an intellectual position that only you hold like “Pagan atheist”, “arsonist fire-fighter” or possibly “pro-life abortionist.”

Having fun yet, or do you just want to kill yourself? Another time-honored trick is to take a big shit on some well-known and respected artist, while glorifying something most other people consider low-brow pop drivel. It helps if you can call people who don’t share the same enthusiasm for the exact same things you do “narcissists.”

Remember, just always do the opposite of what others expect, no matter how foolish it sounds, and you will always appear fresh and vital.

Warning: Despite being a liberal, this method will only gain you admiration and respect from self-confessed conservatives and right-wing republicans who will then hold you up as an example of what liberals should be like. If this doesn’t bother you, then you’re already on your way to mastering the art of drivel! Good luck, what beauty and glamour awaits you!

Oh, come on. There are plenty of conservatives who make good, even great, art, movies, rock music, all kinds of culture.

The difference is between “art created by conservatives” and “art created in the service of conservative ideology”. Consider the difference between, say, “Blitzkrieg Bop” by The Ramones and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” by Toby Keith.

The right by definition cannot be “hip,” because hipness involves seeing through the lies and phony (ie, false, hypocritical) values of institutions. The right can at best be “conservative” in the service of pointing out which babies should not be thrown out with which bathwater–I say “at best” because what we have today, of course, is not a conservative right but a theo-corporatist right whose only concern about “values” is how best to manipulate others in their name.

Paglia, meanwhile, is the loony spinster auntie of the left, who used to be interesting and has devolved into “colorful,” nattering on nonsensically and still under the impression that she can, as they used to say in the Sixties, “talk to the kids.” She still thinks she’s epater-ing the bourgeoisie, but what you get is a goofy mix of Freud and Wiccan that thinks it’s bravely pioneering some cultural Third Way.

Wagner was a revolutionary. Shaw says so.

Some truth to that, atheist. But let’s not go nuts. The GOP has as much real hipness as a Boca Raton physical therapist’s office.

You have a point, Thunder. I overspoke.

Jason missed it on Harry altogether.

Harry and the DA are the netroots, the Ministry of Magic is the DLC, muggles represent the average Joe Six-pack (R or D), and the Death Eaters are the Bushites.

md

Somebody show Camille a Wim Wenders film stat!

And for Kibo’s sake give her some good scifi… Aronofsky’s Pi or Carpenter’s The Thing or Scott’s Blade Runner or Cox’s Repo Man or Proyas’s Dark City or any damn thing Terry Gilliam has ever made… I mean Star Wars!?!? Somebody find out what that woman has been smoking and have an ounce of it sent to my quarters immediately!

Despite my peaceful nature, if someone were to slip something into my bowl that made me think any of the Star Wars movies were great art I’d fuck him up. The only good that came out of those movies was the opportunity to laugh at hard core fans.Especially when they’re wielding light sabers at their weddings.

The right by definition cannot be “hip,” because hipness involves seeing through the lies and phony (ie, false, hypocritical) values of institutions.

Ah, but the right can seem hip to the politically unwise.

Remember that the fascists initially saw themselves as daring adventurers who were boldly overthrowing the false, weak old order. And some talented people made the fatal mistake of buying into it… the Futurists, for example.

Why has nobody mentioned Dostoevsky?

OK, as an aspiring film geek, I can somewhat defend the original Star Wars films on their technical merits: they utilized the best special effects techniques of their period, and the filmmaking techniques used came to dominate the genre’. The use of static models and moving cameras wasn’t used before Lucas, and was the only thing used after Lucas until CGI caught on. There’s a reason why the only Oscars won by Star Wars were technical awards…

Paglia isn’t worth reading. Now, the responses to Paglia on the other hand…

… and not ripped off from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, for which Lucas atoned by financing the American release of Kagemusha

Hey hey hey … financing Kagemusha gets Lucas to the atoning table, he ain’t even BEGUN to atone yet.

After all, he wrote that great riff to “Voyage to the Center of the Mind” 40 years ago!

Huxley: That just represented the atonement until 1980, the last three movies are basically his way of saying he’s gone sociopathic and doesn’t care anymore.

thanks for the article, brad!

“The bottom line is that Harry’s readying his troops for war here. The word ‘war’ is even used. They’re going to fight evil even if the Democ– er … Ministry of Magic won’t.”

I love the old “Democrats won’t fight” canard. Right, FDR and Truman?

It’s a really great piece.

“The fact that she thinks Star Wars is Kubrickian (and not ripped off from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, for which Lucas atoned by financing the American release of Kagemusha) means that… well, I won’t say don’t read her, because she at least name drops Alain Resnais.

As for art films in the last 35 years: Soderbergh’s early films spring to mind. Nicholas Roeg, definitely. Tom Twyker. Maybe she’s just old.”

The way the exteriors are shot and the way the first part of the movie has almost zero dialogue is very much like 2001.

“I heard Jar Jar Binks was originally going to be voiced by James Caan.”

Actually, it was going to be Jennifer Tilly.

For a look at George Lucas’ real influences as a filmmaker:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/lucas.html

Bashing Lucas is getting old. It was a lame fad in 1999, just like Mambo Number Five, and gets lamer with age. Speaking of things that become more tedious as time goes by:

While she’s right that Star Wars is probably the only film of the last three decades to tell a story as compelling as The Seventh Seal, Paglia is full of shit. So much so, she has to spew it at Salon. She really is nothing more than a name-dropping poser -Dennis Miller with a smaller vagina.

…just a single vertical bar character

That pretty much sums up my life, thanks…

Yeah, it’s true. I’m working for Paglia now, holding her sentences together. I got sick of being VDHanson’s general grammatical dogsbody, so I just walked out on him, got this new job. OK, I don’t mind doing the odd bit of over-time, but Hanson was always “their existence is predicated on this”, “their lives are predicated on that” — four or five times in one article! What did he think I was, a goddamned copula?

We’ll see how the job with Paglia goes. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll move on.

Sorry, was I supposed to say something about Brad’s article?

Co-author Roy E. linked to this impenetrable piece by Cammy (rhynes w/ Pammy) @ some site called “Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics.” I’ll excerpt the best line from it, if I can find it (Found it!):
For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people’s faiths is boring and adolescent. The New Age movement, to which I belong, was a distillation of the 1960s’ multicultural attraction to world religions, but it has failed thus far to produce important work in the visual arts. The search for spiritual meaning has been registering in popular culture instead through science fiction, as in George Lucas’ six-film Star Wars saga, with its evocative master myth of the “Force.” But technology for its own sake is never enough. It will always require supplementation through cultivation in the arts.

Sweet Blood of Jeezis, absolutely nothing she says makes any sense!! Hell, it has no meaning. Though, as I so cleverly posted @ alicublog, in reference to:

The New Age movement, to which I belong, was a distillation of the 1960s’ multicultural attraction to world religions, but it has failed thus far to produce important work in the visual arts.
No shit! Have you ever seen the covers of any of those books?

The rest of the piece is some vague history of “art” in the U. S., & some religious crap or something. I’m a fast enough reader that I’ll put up w/ almost anything, even if it’s just to feel superior to the author, but this was, as I said, impenetrable.
Also, Fronts NYC: Well typed!! You sum her up perfectly, especially the third paragraph.

Where can a fellow get some “Tarkovsky” around here?
Way to be, Fronts NYC.