Chuck G writes:
> My current hope is that by unravelling the underlying
philosophy, its flaws, and its social and psychological
processes, that somewhere at least a better insight on
how to change will fall out.
There is also the hope that the increasing gap of negative dissonance between reality as experienced and reality as related in official words and actions will finally create a chasm wide and deep enough to be noticed.
> If you want to really persuade people through the arts,
you have to make the art stunning. What makes it stunning
could be beauty, horror, violence, ugliness, grace, lyricism ---
anything as long as it has strong psychological impact ---
the exact opposite of Brecht's theory.
But the danger of creating stunning art was neatly summarized by Dewey who warned against allowing art to become the "beauty parlor of civilization."
As for psychological impact -- that is the LAST thing great art needs. The craving for psychological art started at the turn of the century with Uncle Sigmund and the rising white middle class which wanted to see themselves depicted and validated on stage. Eugene O'Neill rose to fame on his ability to create "believable" psychological portraits on stage which complimented bourgeois tastes in two ways:
1) They could view themselves as "complex" psychological beings through identification with the characters they were being presented with.
2) The audience's ability to understand these characters reflects well on their capacity to understand psychological depth and nuance, indicating a high degree of sophistication and intelligence on their part.
> The audience doesn't have to identify with a character or
condition, as long as their aesthetic registers are pinned on
Full.
This is not clear to me. Can you elaborate please.
> In my mythological world the Right is completely incapable
of creating beauty, especially dangerous and sensual beauty.
Beauty can arise anywhere, anytime. We must never confuse the art product with the art experience. There is no permanent, Platonic ideal of "beauty" against which art products can be measured. In fact, the same art product may at different points in a person's life produce an aesthetic experience at one time and not at another.
> Displays of sensuality and disturbing beauty make the Right
crazy. They make fools of themselves denouncing it.
Mapplethorpe can also be seen as an imperialist image maker, exploiting the black male body and, therefore, disturbing to the Left.
> If you can't persuade people through facts, you can at least
destroy the creditability of the Right and its bogus value schemes
through the arts of ridicule, mockery, satire, and farce.
But don't these aesthetic styles play best to those who already agree with you? We are a long way removed from the age of Dean Swift when he could state without irony that the purpose of his writing was "to mend the world." We have had the sad intervention of Romanticism and its individualistic and dreary aesthetic dogmas.
> After enough mockery and derision, evidentially the foolishness
of the Rightwing is laid bare.
All well and good. But what I do not see is a strategy that moves from this denuding of rightwing idiocy to an understanding among a majority of the American citizenry to the ultimate goal of decisive action.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister