>(BTW, please explain why 'socialist'
> is, apparently, a term of derision for you).
It's not generally, and I mostly identify as one (though I think communist is better). But there are aspects of socialist politics, especially in their social-democratic and (sorry to offend) Leninist permutations, that are highly conservative and moralistic; Walsh's constant references to "greed" and "criminality," for instance, show an unquestioning faith in the categories and institutions that ground the capitalist order he despises.
> I'm delighted that he discusses one of my favorite movies, 1941's
> 'High Sierra" (perhaps the ur Noir). From my point of view, Mr. Walsh
> is criticizing and critiquing the current retreat (with noteworthy
> exceptions) from structural explorations by appealing to the work
> H'wood did in the past.
Oh man, I love High Sierra. I like most of the movies Walsh praises, and many that he doesn't: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, the Warner Bros. gangster movies, and lots more. But it's not enough to say a movie is radical simply because it's about John Reed or labor unions, which is exactly what Walsh does. You have to ask what a movie does and how it works, which Walsh forsakes in his quest for committed filmmakers. This is consistent with wsws--I'm trying not to say Trotskyist--politics: the heroic person with an enlightened consciousness can overcome the commodity form.
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 4:41 PM, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
> You gotta explain what your post has to do with mine. You quote from the
> top of my post, but I was quoting an article Doug posted. Those are not
> my words. My answer to them went in an entirely different direction,
> from what your post implies.
Yeah, sorry. I meant to change the attribution but forgot. I was responding only to the part of the article you quoted, not to what you wrote, which took the thread in a direction I liked.
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> I pretty much agree with both of Eric's posts on this, but I think,
> Eric, that you really don'tneed to keep digging up ancient history by
> ending with references to "Trots." I don't think much of that tradition,
> either, but can't we let it lie.
I would be lying if I said I was using "Trot" only as a shorthand for a particular political and aesthetic outlook and not in any sectarian way. But I was. Mostly.
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 9:31 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Eric could clear up any confusion by citing those statements in the article which could only be made by someone writing from a Trotskyist perspective.
>
> On second thought, he need not bother. It's evident from poor Eric's comments that that >"Trotskyist" is a proxy for "socialist", and that the criticism of contemporary culture >presented in the article, so he believes, is "a reason why no one likes socialism any more."
That the masses need education and direction. That representation, in all its meanings, is a neutral and necessary mediation, one best executed by a class-conscious group of artists and intellectuals. That the only problem with democracy is that there's not enough of it. That the capitalist state is totalizing in its control. All this stuff you know is there.
I sometimes wonder if I'm being ridiculous for thinking that such politics still exists and that people still believe in it, like I'm arguing against something that died 70 years ago. But then I read articles like these and I remember that I'm not being ridiculous.