David Lynch

[Dennis]

> > Call me an aesthete and a formalist, but freshly beautiful use of
> > language, and emotional and/or intellectual complexity. What makes so
> > much "political" art bad is that it recycles cliches - that it's
> > painfully earnest and straightforward. Tell the truth, but tell it
> > slant, as Emily Dickinson said.
> >
> > Doug
>
> Or, as my poetry profs like Henry Carlyle like to say, "If you've
> got a message, send it Western Union".  Red propaganda dressed up in
> tired cliches is not art.
>
> Miles

Wasn't it Stendahl who said that politics in art is like a pistol shot at a
concert? Depends on the concert and who's doing the shooting, I suppose. For
my money nothing beats the films and music released during the Cultural
Revolution -- agitprop a go-go, all praising the Great Lard Forward. If
anyone knows how to get ahold of "The East is Red," a Maoist musical, sort
of a Red Guards version of "Oklahoma," let me know.

DP