I have been enjoying the thread on Moore, like I have been revelling in what has become a great list and a space to debate and mull over a huge range of issues. In the case of Moore I am inclined to side with Lou in all this with one or two small reservations. Also although it made me gag with envy Doug's account of his encounter with Remy and Moore did raise some interesting questions about the role of the artist and his intended audience.
Well to begin with some common ground, his response to Moore is IMO primarily aesthetic. He laughs at the _Big One_. Now of course it is a reflection on the cultural standing of the Left that one should have to defend laughter and say that there is nothing wrong with it. But some of the Socratic Philistines that I have met on the Left do need to be reminded that laughter is not evil. Indeed Lou is correct to point out how powerful a thing laughter is and how little of it there is on the Left. Lou also has what I believe to be a moral response to Moore. He admires the fact that Moore attacks the rich and the powerful. There are very few artists doing that with such vehemence and to such effect.
Now where do I disagree with Lou? Well for me Yoshie's criticism of Moore goes to the heart of the matter. This concerns his portrayal of the working class. I agree with her reservations here. I read Yoshie as saying that in _Roger and Me_ the working class are portrayed as
"a passive mass, unable to help itself and not even showing (making) any attempt at striving to help itself. All attempts to drag it out of its torpid misery come from without, from above". (Engels to Margaret Harkness, April 1988)
I have used this quotation from Engels because it is I think the embryo of much Socialist Realist criticism and practice. As such it one could argue that it has a lot of to answer for, but Engels point is still a true one. The working class is not the class that simply suffers, it also resists.
People like Kopple and Moore, in a time when the labour movement is being defeated, tend though to depict the working class in this way. The difference between them is that Kopple in the _American Dream_is drawn from the contemplation of the working class suffering to an attempt at religious healing and transcendence. Moore takes a different tack. He substitutes his own feisty militancy and individuality for the absent agent of history.
Here the petty bourgeois artist intellectual is like Chesterton's Don Juan
The last knight of Europe Takes weapons from the wall. The last and lingering troubadour To whom the bird has sung That once went singing southward When all the world was young.
In the time that we are going through I cannot help loving Moore for his hatred of the rich and the powerful. I also admire in a way his heroic substitutionism. But then I always did admire those old anarchist bomb throwers.
However there is another and a darker side to Moore's portrayal of the working class that goes beyond the construction of the working class as the class that suffers. In my essay on the labor documentarians I drew on John Corner's comment that Moore is drawn to the grotesque in his portrayal of the 'rabbit' and the 'colours' women in _Roger and Me_. In brief I do not believe that it aids the cause of the emancipation of the working-class to portray them as weird and grotesque.
Now Lou may disagree with this way of putting it, but he would I think concur that in this section of _Roger and Me_, Moore is standing outside the working class. Moreover he has moved from being a sympathetic observer of the working class to a not so gentle mocker. Here the clown/jester in Moore has turned aside from mocking the king and has had a go at the commoners. And as always the direction of the laughter, its target, is crucial. When laughter is aimed at the rich and the powerful, as in Moore's best work, it is emancipatory. When it is aimed at the marginalised it is profoundly reactionary.
Now what of Lou's point that Moore has been able to reach a working class audience in a way that the Left has not? Again this is true. But the fact that a large number of workers will turn up and watch Moore in itself is not that much of a claim. If I mention the names Oprah, Ricki and Sally perhaps my point will be made.
This group of charlatans has repeatedly demonstrated that workers will go along and switch on in their millions to enjoy the experience of feeling superior to other workers. They will get up and condemn someone whose life is more fucked up than theirs. They will eagerly leap at the chance to be judge for a day.
People like Ricki have made fortunes out of this need of the working class for the consolation of feeling a little superior. Just so in _Roger and Me_ I can watch the rabbit lady and laugh at her craziness and feel a bit saner myself. However as has been pointed out on the list we need to ask what the Rabbit Lady might have felt when watching Moore's depiction of her.
The correct and socialist way to depict the rabbit lady is either to show that she had been driven to these extremes by the situation that capital has placed her in or that is, as I suspect, suffering from a mental illness. In either case she and we are what Schopenhauer termed 'compagnons de miseres". He goes on to say
"However strange this may sound it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes."
So how to sum up Moore? He is without doubt a great artist. But his lack of socialist politics means that IMHO he is no Brecht. But I will end this contemplation of what we should ask of the artist by returning to Engels. The latter has had no doubt a bad press for a very long time. But the claims that he was not a subtle thinker are much exaggerated. Here is what he had to say about what we should ask of the artist.
"Thus the socialist problem novel in my opinion fully carries out its mission if by a faithful portrayal of the real conditions it dispels the dominant conventional illusions concerning them, shakes the optimism of the bourgeois world, and inevitably instils doubt as to the eternal validity of that which exists, without itself offering a direct solution of the problem involved, even without at times ostensibly taking sides." (Letter to Minna Kautsky, November 26, 1885)
Moore does not shape up too badly if we apply these criteria.
2. Seinfeld
Lou's disparaging remarks about the Seinfeld Show have set me thinking. The characters are indeed unattractive in their egotism and selfishness. But what is the appeal of this series? This is a hard question to answer. Seinfeld is a big favourite in our house. It functions in some ways as an antidote to the horror of this world.
Yet I feel watching it is an exercise in self mockery. The underlying assumption is that humanity is une merde- a piece of shit beyond redemption. However this is a series which instead of grieving over this seems to revel in that realisation.
But it is also so carefully written. The "satire" such as it is never strays beyond a very narrow range. Most shows, as the show itself has pointed out, are about almost nothing. It is the very trivial nature of the show, its minimalism, its adherence to the micro-structures of feelings that ensure it does not alienate any significant number of people while making fun of all of them.
The absolute key for me is that this is a very modern version of nihilism. This is the petty bourgeoisie trapped between the classes with no way forward. Its response is a determination to cling to the notion that nothing matters. Everything is to be made fun of.
Recently I saw Martin Ritt's film The Front and watching Zero Mostel in action I thought that this was an interesting benchmark by which to judge the Seinfeld show. Mostel was a truly great artist and by all accounts a brave man. I have been told stories of how he used to roll his eyes up so that only the white would show and he would then go up and down the underground pretending to be a blind beggar.
By comparison with Mostel, Jerry Seinfeld is profoundly shallow and we are still trapped in the era when that is marketable. Nevertheless we are inexorably approaching a time when the serious issues of life and the possibility of human flourishing will be back on the agenda and the very awfulness of most television, its remorseless trivialisation of life, will be apparent to all. Then when some clown goes "Yada, yada, yada" he or she will be just so uncool.