Conservatives, pop culture, and the language of the right
So an old post at my now-basically-defunct solo politics blog about conservatives and pop culture has accidentally sparked off a pretty interesting symposium at Acculturated – a conservative blog about pop culture and society. There’s a lot of interesting entries from people like James Poulos, Lee Siegel, and Ed Driscoll (to name a few) under the stewardship of blog editor Emily Esfahani Smith (who I am much obliged to for finding my little blog post in the first place.)
In any case, I round the whole thing off with another piece in the symposium that goes into somewhat greater depth, responding to some of the other members of the symposium. Here’s a taste:
If conservatives insist on the same litmus test for pop culture as they apply to members of the conservative movement, the politicization of art is all but certain. No art can survive this sort of thematic inquisition.
It’s not that conservatives can’t do pop culture, it’s that they’re trying much too hard to enforce the same rules about art as they do about politics. The left has this problem from time to time, but they’ve managed to learn from past mistakes, infusing their pop culture with a broadly left-leaning cultural narrative. Indeed, these days liberals are often better at artfully inserting conservative messages into pop culture than conservatives themselves. In films like Juno, the prolife argument is given as sympathetic a treatment as you’re likely to see, but the film’s writer, Diablo Cody, is hardly known for her conservatism.
If you have any thoughts on the issue I’d love to hear them.
Juno is a good example actually. That’s all I really have to add.Report
Bella by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde is worth a view.Report
Good if there is anythign to add it relates to this snip “The best conservative pop culture often only hints at its own conservatism. Whether that’s a film like The 40-Year-Old Virgin–a potty-mouthed movie about the importance of love and marriage and the emptiness of casual sex–or Gran Torino–a film that extols the twin virtues of tolerance and community in preserving America against violent decline–conservative themes…”
Whether it was your intention or maybe just the way i’m reading it you are suggesting love, marriage, and/ or tolerance and community as somehow conservative values. I think the main problem when people try to make ideological art is they use self-righteous definitions of their own values. So choice or family or love end up being conservative values. Ideologues are just to prone to see all good values as solely and truly theirs. They see their opponents as lacking all those things.Report
you are suggesting love, marriage, and/ or tolerance and community as somehow conservative values
There are certain approaches that are much more “old fashioned at heart” than “progressive”. Now, of course, we all know that “Liberal” could just as easily mean “Classically Liberal” and “old fashioned at heart” could just as easily mean “racist, homophobic, sexist, and a proud member of a union”.
There are some approaches that resonate as “conservative”.
I’d look at Knocked Up for a second and look at the anti-choice vs. pro-woman’s right to choose her own sexual destiny debate. The movie didn’t merely see pregnancy as a good thing (I mean, *EVERYBODY* is pro-life, right? It’s really a debate over whether women should be allowed to make decisions, right?) but it also portrayed abortion (a word it never explicitly used) as a either a severely selfish and immature choice or as a fairly monstrous choice (“now she has a *REAL* baby”).
There are conservative flashes and there are progressive flashes and there’s more going on than merely flashing on something pretty much agreed upon as good and saying “well that’s a conservative/progressive value too!”
That said, the Theocons have done a great deal to say that the only authentic conservativism is theirs. It took me a while to stop believing them.Report
Here is the thing that I find broadly frustrating:
When conservatives (or I) argue that there is a lack of representation of conservative ideas in entertainment, things that are at best marginally conservative are often thrown out there. But when conservatives (not really I) try to claim them, they’re accused of claiming values that they don’t own.
Of course, this might be unfair insofar as the people telling them that they should be satisfied with Juno and the ones telling them to stop claiming Juno are different people just as the conservatives trying to say that Hollywood doesn’t represent conservative values and the ones claiming Juno are different.
But I think this is one of the things that makes it so logistically difficult to talk about. Either people are shifting the threshold of what qualifies to suit their rhetorical interests (with or without actually realizing that’s what’s happening), or there’s not much consensus on what qualifies and what doesn’t, even among people on the same side (of either side).Report
So. Hollywood does make flicks for the *ahem* rural audience. Isn’t it interesting that they don’t get referenced whenever we’re talking about shit like this?Report
I was thinking about this earlier when reading Batman: Year 100 and the “Berlin Batman” which kind of ham-fistedly inserted libertarian boilerplate rhetoric into the narrative in a bit of a jarring way. Year 100 about a too powerful federal government really would’ve gotten it’s message across without making sure to bring up laissez-faire and Locke and Berlin Batman actually had Batman saving Von Mises political writings from being destroyed but then added a schlocky “the Berlin Batman will always stand against increasingly regulatory governments” exposition at the end that was kind of jarring.Report
especially since the Berlin Batman was fighting Nazis and the last thing I think of when I think of Nazis is over-regulatory governmentReport
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/josef-skvorecky-on-the-nazis-control-freak-hatred-of-jazz/250837/
(no cowbell? no wonder they lost)Report
You should un-defunctify that blog.Report
RE: Virtues
On that score, some people class Tony Comstock as a conservative auteur (but I’m not one of them.)Report
!!!Report
(For the record, I think I’m one of them. I mean, as these things go.)Report
Conservatives have erected their own stone sarsens along the cultural road. They pretty much own classical music, classical art and the like. Speaking as a musician and an abiding fan of symphony music, getting new music played at Symphony Hall, even by smallish orchestras, is very difficult. As Edgard Varèse once said (and Frank Zappa quoted him) “The present-day composer refuses to die!”
More people will hear a church choir sing than will ever go to a pop concert.
The Conservatives are getting serious about kulchur these days. Big Hollywood’s out there, ferociously attacking the Left. Fox’s Red Eye is doing land office business. Weekly Standard features a big cultural component. Hollywood has never lacked for Conservatives. Though every intelligent reader these days mourns the death of Ray Bradbury, most of us knew he was a staunch conservative: the subject just never came up.
The artist sets out his nets and trawls through the seas of the world. When he hauls them in and his catch spills out onto the deck, it’s a reflection of where he’s sailed and how deep he trawled. There’s nothing intrinsically conservative or liberal about art, however liberal or conservative the artist might be.Report
Florid.Report
Purply, even. 😉Report
And yet we’ve all read that weird form of conservative art review that faults a work for being insufficiently conservative, as if that were the way one judges art.
Not that liberals don’t do it too, but they seem generally more able to accept the idea that a work might be, say, sexist but also possessed of redeeming artistic qualities.Report
When all mistresses of the nobility were languidly posing on the painters’ chaise longues, those fine nudes were trophy porn and everyone knew it. Those nudes lapsed into respectability.
But when Manet painted Luncheon on the Grass, the Salon gibbered and frothed and ranted.
Perhaps I’m missing the point you’re making here. Today’s Conservative Art is only the revolutionary art of four decades ago.Report
Ever watched a conservative commentator on TV?
If the picture is fuzzy it’s because their views are being broadcast from the 1920s.Report
I’m mostly of the mind that the only place you see a real push for ‘conservative values’ (and i use that term loosely) is in country music. We have already went down that road here.Report
We had the same thought at roughly the same time, Mike. On an unrelated note, I’m off deep in the heart of Texas, wearing a UK shirt today, and a car at a stop sign rolls down its window and shouts, “Go Cards!” and the passenger made one of those silly finger-L things at me.
I had never — and I mean never — been at more of a loss for words. Things were only made worse by the fact that I was, by then, a pedestrian in the middle of the street confusing the hell out of everyone at the intersection in my flabbergastery.Report
Haha… I’ve had something very similar happen to me while wearing a UK shirt in Austin. Who knew there were any Louisville fans south of Munfordsville?Report
That’s hilarious. You won’t even see that happen in Louisville very often. But I have to say I like the finger-Ls.Report
I recently purchased a Tebow jersey.
Every single time I have worn it, complete strangers have come up to me and started conversations. I’m in the bathroom at the airport and a guy starts talking to me about Tebow. What the heck?Report
A shocking breach of decorum. Men are to remain monastically silent when sharing toilet facilities. This man may engage you about Tebow (or any other subject) all he likes the moment you are both across the threshold of the bathroom and once again both in normal airport terminal space. Until then, hold your tongue.
IIRC, your Tebow jersey is out of date.Report
It was on sale!Report
My two abiding questions about “pop culture” (a phrase I admittedly don’t quite grasp, because I, like Allan Bloom, would prefer the civilization that, like Marilynne Robinson, I miss and want back) were made only more intense by reading the responses at Acculturated:
1) Why does no one consider “Top-40” Country in these matters? It has a more abiding presence than, I’d say, The Lady Goo-Goo.
2) Why is non-genre fiction — apparently by definition — separated from “pop” culture — or even “popular” culture and placed into some vacuum-sealed section for “elite” or “high” culture?
Two further points on question (2): MAD MEN, THE SOPRANOS, and THE WIRE all have/had rather small television audiences and appeal(ed) primarily, to a New Yorker/New Republic/Atlantic/NY Times type of demographic — and this demographic also cares for fiction and poetry. (Or at least pretends to.) Also, far too much of contemporary “literary” fiction is mediocrity pretending to highbrow status for me to be content with it being grouped in with a “high” rather than “pop” culture.
I’m just thoroughly confused as to why even the conservatives in this debate are limiting the playing field — and omitting the segment that most muddies the case against a “conservative” “pop culture.”Report
As to number 2, this is to protect the elitism itself.Report
“As to number 2, this is to protect the elitism itself.”
i disagree. this sentiment is the genre fiction/sci fi fan’s 9/11 was an inside job. (i say this as a dashiell hammett adoree)
what do the three tv shows you listed have in common? they are worlds built (largely) outside of the experiences of the audience that the people watching get to live in for a little bit every week. they’re sharply edited. they’re episodic. they are, at least broken into smaller chunks, not a huge investment of time. they’re entertaining, even if they’re by and large not incredibly cheerful.
most importantly, they’re popular. people have heard of them. you can likely have conversations with strangers, co-workers, etc about at least one of those shows.
good luck pulling that off with the latest winner of the national book critics circle awards.** (i had to look it up on wikipedia myself.) or even the nobel prize in literature. they’re simply not that popular. i certainly don’t read most of it, if any.
or as i put it, no one cosplays magical realism. there’s certainly plenty of material to pull from, but it ain’t gonna happen.
i think it’s perceived as elitism because the grouping this comes from has grown up as the last or 2nd to last generation of “nerds” in the classical 80s film sense. games, sci fi, fantasy, etc are all not only acceptable but widely discussed and embraced. the internet has erased some of the sense of shame/marginalization and helped two collectable card battle kids from different parts of the world share what they love about their hobby/call each other homosexual slurs.
but for the earlier generations, the idea that the arbiters of culture are out there, denouncing the trappings of first loves, the dice rolls and ray guns, placing explosives in 7 world trade center, is a powerful draw.
i do far more literary conference document prep than i would care to/is allowed by the constitution – popular culture, genre fiction, etc are all well-represented in major conference. it almost feels like pandering sometimes, but many of these scholars are in their 20s or early 30s, so harry potter or the hunger games are far less incongruous than it would seem from a distance.
*and by that i mean the seemingly thousands of people i’ve had this conversation with – i know a lot of libertarians! and there really does seem to be a huge overlap with investment in sci fi/fantasy, rpg playing, etc – i don’t know if this is a function of thinking about the world as it isn’t leading to alternate explorations of the political world as it could be, or sheer marginalization, or what. i got the minarchist playset without any of the swords and boots in it. and prog rock, thank goodness.
** this may change if hbo makes that jennifer egan book.Report
Good piece, EDK. I’ve been following the symposium but left it for you to write about.
I’ve done some art over the years as a songwriter, and my best stuff isn’t “conservative” by any real measure. By going political, I’d turn off half of any potential audience. In fact, in my younger days, I wrote a few socio-political screeds that leaned left. Rock/folk and self-righteous protest bleat are a perfect emotional match: form meets function. [Aquinas does not shout.]
On the non-playa level, “conservative” art means that of the “conservatory” function, protecting good art [Michelangelo’s Pieta] from bad art or non-art [Serrano’s Piss Christ] and the meme that all art is in the eye of the beholder and therefore somewhow equal.
Serrano is not Michelangelo’s equal.Report
Without the Conservative Bloviators to piss ink on every new art movement, the creative world would grind to a standstill. How did Swift put it? Something about a Confederacy of Dunces?Report
Andres Serrano is not Michelangelo’s equal. Deal with it.Report
Considering that Our Lord died a humiliating death, it seems oddly appropriate to submerge a crucifix in urine. Had he been beheaded, would our churches feature a great axe or sword on the altar? Had he been hanged, would we all wear little nooses around our necks?
The Conservatives are the great artistes of outrage. Perhaps they ought to start writing operas. That sort of howling might sound magnificent if a decent tenor was to declaim it from the stage of the Met.Report
As an atheist, let me say this: Andres Serrano is not Michelangelo’s equal.
He spent a couple of years taking pictures of poop.
Poop.Report
However, we can speculate that something Michelangelo excreted was indeed the equal of Serrano if not superior, perhaps on a daily basis. Maybe ole Mike would say, “Ho l’arte merda migliore di te”.Report
Who is Michelangelo’s equal? Not many artists fit that bill.
Serrano is a well-regarded photographer; Piss Christ is a good-looking photograph. What more do you want?
And don’t knock shooting poop if you haven’t tried it. Philistine.Report
Shooting poop sounds like it would be a swell video game. Ok, maybe not swell but it makes more sense as a game than art. So call me a philistine. PS, I bet my score is higher than yours. 😉Report
Are you shooting AT poop? Or is poop the munition?Report
Again I return to what I said here a week ago or so: the paradox is that, judged as a work of art, Piss Christ is trivial and easily forgotten, but for conservatives it’s the most important artwork of the last thirty years.Report
Rufus-
On a tangent, which side do you think is “worse” when it comes to inadvertently promoting that which they revile by organizing campaigns to abolish something that likely would have been relegated to, or remained in, the forgotten bin otherwise?Report
I’m not sure. I remember the protests outside of Basic Instinct as easily as those outside of Last Temptation of Christ. Actually, both were around the same time, weren’t they? Are those picket lines no longer a thing now?Report
Who protested which? I’m too young to remember either. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie protested. In my lifetime, I’ve seen Marilyn Manson protested and some band that was doing a benefit show to raise money for Mumia protested by the cops.Report
I was living in Salt Lake City when LToC came out. Before it could be shown, someone broke into the theater, stole the film, and slashed the screen. I’ve still never seen it, though I’d read the book back in college. And I continue to think the idea that Christ was tempted, not with some idiotic “you can be the king of the world” fantasy, but with “you can know the love of a wife and family” is lovely.
Of course, what I remember most vividly is Jerry Falwell’s pronouncement that a film from a book written by a Greek Orthodox writer, adapted by someone brought up as a Calvinist, and directed by a Catholic was the Jews’ fault.Report
Well, sure. Andres Serrano is a fine photographer of human shit. Check out this little doozy.
Here’s another fine specimen. “Great Titan of the Invisible Empire”.Report
Serrano could well be the finest photographer of human shit in recorded history.
Stew Martin of Beta Theta Pi (currently a Junior at Ohio University) is the second finest.Report
Any linkies would be appreciated.Report
I cannot find any pictures of human dung that are better than Serrano’s.
Stew’s pictures have not been posted online, to my knowledge. He mostly uses them as shock humor with his broskis.Report
Taking “Piss Christ” out of context is as pointless as taking “Fountain” out of context.
If you don’t understand the mindset and the subtext of the installation, it’s either a mockery or an insult. If you do, it’s a trenchant commentary. The fact that anyone still argues the point makes me have a sad.Report
O voi bestie del peccato
Astenersi, astenersi dalla luce del giorno
Incorniciato da malvagità
E tutte le nuove perversioni
Ritorna, ritorna, alla decenza
E che cosa vi diciamo di fare
Voi figli delle tenebre
Vergognati di novitàReport
I agree entirely that not all art is equal. This is one thing critics have to listen to constantly. Drives me batty.Report
When art is “equal”, generally we call it plagiarism.Report
I must have missed the part in Juno where making abortions illegal is given a sympathetic treatment, otherwise you seem to be attributing “wanting women to make choices about their pregnancy” to a uniquely conservative viewpoint. It’s as silly as those people who claimed that Avatar was a liberal movie because a xenocidal corporation was the bad-guy … when hating on xenocidal corporations obviously transcends political boundaries. Of course, it was also a bit weird to see conservative pundits start lining up to defend the bad guys, but that’s a separate issue.Report
The girl protesting outside the abortion clinic was hardly presented as a villain. Her argument persuaded Juno to choose an adoption. As I said, this is a very sympathetic portrayal of the pro life side. But you seem to be attributing arguments to me that I never made.Report
That’s fair, thinking about it I guess “not a villain” is about as sympathetic a treatment you’ll see of the prolife right in mainstream film. But it still hardly seems like a conservative message to me. Knocked Up seems like a more apt example, where abortion is dismissed out of hand as an awful thing to even consider.Report
Which is interesting as Rupert Everett was downright livid when talking about Juno and Knocked Up as hallmarks of Hollywood’s duplicity. They produced movies where the heroine declares abortion as unthinkable and then tell leading ladies that if they dare get pregenent they’d best “take care of it” if they ever want to work again.
Now, I can’t link the quote (I heard it years ago), and it was, well, years ago…Report
Is it a ‘sympathetic portrayal’ of the pro life side or a simple acknowledgement that abortion is a personal choice?Report
Its certainly a more sympathetic portrayal of anti-abortion protesters than, say, the one in “Weeds”, which seems more common. While its certainly true that some anti-abortion protesters are loonies, its not fair to dismiss them all as such.Report
This is similar to my point about comedy — you can be Funny or you can be Preachy but it’s really hard to be both at the same time. Substitute “entertaining” for “funny” and I think that gets to the core of the issue.Report
I just remembered that I’m watching Fringe.
Episodes such as “White Tulip” are exceptionally pro-theist (join our Bookclub on Mindless Diversions! We’re watching Fringe!) and the show itself is kind of weirdly conservative in the way that Fox shows tend toward weird conservativism.
I’ve never seen a full episode of House, for that matter, but I’ve overheard enough to suspect that a regular feature of the show is something like this: Person does bad thing but keeps it hidden. This gives them a disease. Disease is proportionate to bad thing done. Premarital sex leads to ectopic pregnancy, adultery leads to AIDS. Healing involves telling the truth and repenting.
How off base am I on that?
If I’m somewhere in the ballpark, would it be remiss of me to say that that’s a conservative theme of the show?Report
I haven’t seen every episode, but I’ve seen enough to say that it is a common theme, though definitely not the thrust of every show and maybe falling short of a “dominant” them. But it does indeed happen.Report
The theme of House is supposedly ‘Everyone lies’. They lie about pretty much everything.
But the lying is only a problem in about 1/4th the cases, honestly, although there often will be completely irrelevant lying discovered, and is usually unrelated to the cause of the case. Often, it’s the lie of someone beside the patient. And is usually not some sort of ‘moral’ lie, and is often more of an oversight than a ‘lie’.
The actual premise, at least of House the person, is ‘everyone is a selfish bastard’, of which their lying is just a subset. It has been pointed out that House is _wrong_ on this, even about _himself_, especially his claim that he’s only in it to solve medical mysteries and does not actually care about the outcome. (In fact, among his employees will always be someone whose job is to point this out, although they keep changing it up, and ended the series with employees who had different things to be idealist about.)
I’m not quite sure how any of that’s a conservative premise. If House was right, if he lived in some sort of crapsack Ayn Rand world where everyone was out to get ahead, that would be a ‘conservatism’ premise for sufficiently silly versions of conservative, but he’s really not. He’s just a misanthrope.Report
I have always imagined the relation of conservatives to art to resemble the presence of the critic.
Contributing nothing, pissing on everything, and insisting that anything they don’t like is either the “lame stream media” or otherwise something that needs to be censored.
Come to think of it, that seems to be the real problem. Liberals will still disagree with you while defending to the death your right to say something; Conservatives want to shoot you for saying it.Report
MA-
While I’m not going to make the argument here, because I think your point is facile and I don’t think it is really germane to the conversation, your last comment there has now opened up the floodgates for piling on Muslims, a very small subset of which actually HAVE shot/killed people for making art they didn’t like. But you can’t bash conservatives without cracking a few eggs, eh?Report
I would point out that the subset you refer to is a *highly* conservative group of folks. Severely, one might say.Report
a very small subset of which actually HAVE shot/killed people for making art they didn’t like
And this is related to religion how? Inasmuch as they were highly conservative Muslims, perhaps.
Apparently on your radar highly conservative christian preachers in the US calling for people to physically attack gays – and at least one calling for internment camps – don’t rate similar outrage?
The Catholic League is trying to get John Stewart fired over the “vagina manger” joke. The same group of people who dismissed AIDS as “a self-inflicted wound” and attacked and harassed priest sexual abuse survivors networks as “a menace to the Catholic Church.”
I think my criticism of the worldview in that regard is valid.Report
MA:
Conservative Christians calling for folks to attack gays (if that is indeed happening) is deplorable… but has NOTHING to do with art.
The Catholic League going after John Stewart is within their rights as consumers and getting him fired is very different than calling for him to be shot. There perspective on AIDs, as deplorable as it may be, has nothing to do with this conversation or their right to criticize Stewart (which I also disagree with, mind you).Report
For me, I think it comes down (as it usually does for me) to how we define things. How are we defining pop culture? How are we defining “conservative”?
Using the most basic definitions of each, I think there are plenty of examples of “conservative” pop culture, many of which were quite good, at least by pop culture standards. Yes, you have your shows like “Seinfeld” and “Sexy in the City” that show single folks tramping around New York City. But you also have tons of shows that show happy, normal, stable families. If you are going to call a show like “Friends” liberal, than you have to call a show like “Everybody Loves Raymond” conservative, at least in part. Then you have more obviously conservative shows like “Seventh Heaven”. In the greater New York area there used to be a channel called PAX (it might have been on elsewhere) that showed a lot of Christian programming and other shows that I think one could fairly slide to the conservative side of the ledger… shows like “Walker, Texas Ranger”.
The problem seems to be is that people might be looking for the type of art ED offered in his original piece. And while I’m sure you can find that if you look for it, it is not going to be mainstream, just as much of the same type of liberal stuff isn’t mainstream. “Piss Christ” wasn’t mainstream art and largely came to be known because of its deliberately provocative nature and the backlash to it. But it’s not like folks were rushing out to buy copies or watching the “Real Housewives of Piss Christ”.
Which brings me to a final point… the Real Housewives series and other reality shows. I would venture to guess that conservatives would call that liberal trash art. And trash art it is. But in many cases, the folks featured on it are conservative and are often living the type of general lifestyle that is celebrated by many on the right (for all of its love affair with blue collar America, folks living in gated communities and living an ostentatious high life with money made in the markets is something more embraced by conservatives than liberals, on the whole). This is not to say that those shows or reality TV in general is conservative. Just that applying labels to this type of stuff isn’t always as easy as it seems. In part, again, because we often mean very different things when we use terms like “conservative” and “pop culture art”.Report
It requires some real sleight of hand to use “conservative” to mean “blue collar/working class aesthetic” in one breath and “conservative christian” in the next focusing on where the venn diagram of those sets do *NOT* overlap while, at the same time, trying to make a point about everybody covered by any part of the venn diagram.Report
JB-
I’m not sure I follow. Can you elaborate?Report
Like you said, it’s a definitions game.
People can mean “Conservative (with regards to art)” to mean “Conservative Christian Art” in one breath, they can mean “low-to-middle-brow art” in the next and make a sweeping generalization about both Conservative Christians *AND* the low-to-middle-brow thereby.Report
Do you think I was making such sweeping generalizations?Report
Um… no?
Edit: Oh, I see what happened. I was agreeing with you up there rather than arguing against you.Report
Not a problem. I didn’t assume you were doing one or the other… I was just genuinely confused. Thas’ all!Report
Analyzing this is an exercise in counting the hits and forgetting the misses.
“Conservative” ideals are all around. The Simpsons portrays a relatively strong nuclear family – or at least I did when I watched it. Homer and Marge are together for life, even if they struggle sometimes. They are trying to do their best to raise good kids, even if Bart’s a little hellraiser and Lisa desperately needs socialization. Because of their flaws, Bart and Lisa seem more realistic than Alex P. Keaton. The moral lessons in Simpsons often get missed for the comedic aspect and the occasional jabs at organized religion (“The Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism”) or Fox networks in general.
And Family Ties was a giant propaganda show about how the “young conservative” was far better and more intelligent than his “hippie parents.”
The problem with Conservatives is that they want everything to be exactly within their worldview. At the same time as PAX network – a network devoted to crappy christian shows like “Touched by an Angel” – was dying in the ratings, conservatives were getting the panties their wives didn’t know they were wearing in a wad over Ally McBeal or Murphy Brown. Today if you want “conservative values”, go watch a cop show; if you don’t, go watch Will & Grace reruns or switch over to daytime talk shows like Ellen.
The biggest problem for conservatives right now is that the gay movement is more and more “out”, and not in the flashy sense. More and more people are realizing that gays have family values and are real people. They’re not the “leather man” from the Village People, they’re the people living down the street who have a small house, a barking dog in the yard, drive an SUV… they’re normal. With that realization comes a much, much harder time dismissing them as deviants or “other.”
The same thing goes for art. There’s art all around you. If you want examples of “christian art”, all you have to do is walk into a church, or open up any of thousands of travel books, or visit any museum. The re’s even terrible art like “One Nation Under God”, that promotes the idea that the Constitution is some new addition to the bible handed down to the founding fathers by a shining figure with Kenny G’s hairdo. The problem isn’t that it doesn’t exist, it’s that conservatives want it to be the only art that exists; they don’t want to have to share space and compete for eyes and minds with the other side.Report
And Family Ties was a giant propaganda show about how the “young conservative” was far better and more intelligent than his “hippie parents.”
I watched very little TV as a kid, but I’d been assured (by a far-left college professor, admittedly) that Alex Keaton was supposed to be a joke, and that the joke backfired — people thought of him as admirable, maybe a little flawed but basically in the right place, whereas the writers intended him as a buffoon.
I don’t know enough about the show to evaluate the claim.Report
There are conflicting reports about that. Given that by the 4th episode it was the Alex P. Keaton show, I attribute the changes as much to the “shaking out the formula” issues of starting a new show more than anything else.
Never judge a show by the pilot episode, it’s likely to be nothing like the actual show.Report
So the fact that “Family Matters” was the Steve Urkel show meant that they were celebrating blerd culture?Report
“Family Matters” was a spinoff of the buddy-comedy “Perfect Strangers”, and no, it wasn’t “blerd culture” as the focus – though you’d think that if you only saw a few shows or promotions for it.
It was intended to be a family-comedy similar to the Cosby show, and Urkel wasn’t even introduced until halfway through the first season. Much more than Family Ties, the show degenerated into a revolving line of physical comedy gags and constant catch-phrase humor. In that respect, it might easily be compared to the decline of the Simpsons.Report
MA-
Please provide evidence that conservatives don’t want any art but conservative art to exist. I have no doubt that there are SOME conservatives who feel that way and probably more conservatives who’d like certain types of art to go away and assuredly a whole host of people, conservative and otherwise, who agree that some forms of art are pretty terrible. But the notion that the entirety of conservatism is waging a war on any art more liberal than “Seventh Heaven” is a joke.Report
Conservative art.Report
That might be the poppiest art I’ve seen in a while! It’s reminiscent of Warhol and Lichtenstein.Report
I especially liked the Civil War logo: that’s Nathan Bedford Forrest on horseback there, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Quite a painting, that.
Inspiring, even. Deo vindice, God will vindicate. Suuuuure he will. That was the motto of the Confederacy.
That’s not really Conservative Art. That’s Reactionary Art. Big difference.Report
Hmmn, tough call. The hat is definitely JEB Stuart, and the picture with the bigger beard, excessive plumage and pose suggests Stuart… but can’t quite rule out NBF and I can’t positively google one way or another. But at first glance (even with your comment in mind) I’d guess Stuart. Here’s a link to Hat and Stuart on same page.
Not that it matters overmuch… the blog is pretty spooky (and the author is quite possibly a fan of Forrest anyway). But hey, let’s get the art right.Report
You’re probably right. Good call. I now have my own doubts. NBForrest has also depicted in just such a cavalryman’s hat, though no photographs of either man show such a hat.
I take a dim view of all these paintings of the Revolutionary War and the Glorious Cause. I call these paintings LHAPs, Limited edition Historical Art Prints. Jonah Begone goes into this subject at length, including a little montage of Forrestry. My intensely-religious sister has a large and hideously mawkish reproduction of George Washington praying at Valley Forge on the living room wall. Tell yez where Washington likely did a whole lot more praying, at Morristown, where his troops fared worse than at Valley Forge.
Some of this soi-disant Conservative Art just creeps me out. Reminds me of all that Socialist Realism from the Communists. The Medium is the Massage.Report
This is a good example of the point I made some comments above.Report
You need look no further than the type of people who’d protest a showing of Michelangelo’s David “where kids can see it.” And in conservative-dominated states, good luck finding a public museum that hasn’t been ravaged by state budget cuts in general. They’re even going after public libraries now, and there are regular campaigns to have certain books banned (where I live, we almost had the county ban some of the early Harry Potter books on the grounds they “promote witchcraft to children”).
The latest target right now is the “Shades of Grey” trilogy, which is no worse than any of the other trashy novels out on the market save for including some pretty steamy BDSM scenes in addition to the standard steamy-sex scenes. It doesn’t even have an erotic Fabio-laden cover. Even though the libraries won’t check it out to anyone under 18, there are church groups around the country up in arms again about it. They’re demanding it be discontinued from the library systems entirely on the grounds that a child might pick it up from their mother’s reading stack or something and ask an embarassing question or two of their mother later.Report
MA-
As stated, I don’t doubt that such efforts exist. But how widespread are they? How much traction do they have? How representative are they of conservatives in general?Report
It’s like the Muslims who wanted to kill Rushdie, man. Or riot for the Mohammed cartoons. Or riot because of burning Korans.Report
The thing is, when we talk about pop culture, we often talk about mass media, which is sustained by and constitutes a branch of consumer capitalism. I mean, there are plenty of exceptions- little music cultures that give birth to bands and albums far outside of the industry, independent graphic novels, free websites, etc. But pop culture movies and television shows are very much embedded in the culture of consumer capitalism and sustained by it, and consumer capitalism can’t really survive in some culturally traditionalist or “conservative” form; the “culture” it sells has to be constantly new and different- it has to be this year’s model. You can’t turn a profit by saying, “We have nothing new for you. The old ways are the best.” Not to mention the fact that most traditionalist cultures are defined by the obligations they impose on the individual, while consumer capitalism thrives by appealing to the wishes of the consumer. It has no Thou Shalt Nots. Nor should it.
So, there’s a tension there. You see this tension between traditional cultures and the consumer capitalist culture whenever you talk to older people who came from those traditionalist cultures and have immigrated to America, or the other “western” cultures, and now can’t relate to their kids who are steeped in the values of the mall. You also see it among cultural conservative polemicists, who understand that their world and its values are being eroded, but never seem to understand why. They recognize pop culture as anti-conservative, but imagine it’s the influence of some radical left cabal. MTV is clearly anti-conservative, but it must be because its producers went to Brown! Maybe it’s the influence of Saul Alinsky! We just need conservatives in charge. No- there’s no such thing as culturally-traditionalist capitalism. Sorry. Trying to square the circle by loudly championing consumer capitalism while bemoaning its cultural effects is ridiculous.
Look, I don’t mean this as a polemic against consumer capitalism and I think most conservatives can live perfectly happy lives by compartmentalizing- as many of the respondents seem to have! Also, let’s note something important here- racism and most bigotries also arise as local cultural traditions, and they have been just as thoroughly eroded by the mass media and consumer capitalism as all other local traditions. If it makes no sense to advertise a car for “whites only”, before long a whites-only Presidency will make no sense either. All for the best. I’m not enough of a traditionalist to yearn for all the old cultural landmarks to return, nor enough of a liberal to want change forevermore, baby and bathwater.
But, no, I don’t think there can be conservative pop culture any more than there can be communist pop culture. Here’s the happy news for conservatives though- there can be plenty of conservative art. Some of the most powerful and enduring art ever made was produced by heartbroken conservatives, if not outright reactionaries- Homer, Plato, and Dostoevsky come to mind immediately. Maybe conservatives or traditionalists should focus on imaginatively recreating the world that has been lost as richly as possible and forget about achieving mass acceptance or becoming rock stars. Most of those articles read like people bemoaning the fact that their ideas aren’t “cool”, which is sort of the point of conservatism in the first place.
[When I write these longwinded comments, I am tickled to recognize how much I miss posting here more frequently.]Report
Question: Would Norman Rockwell qualify as ‘conservative art’ given the values he was promoting?Report
This is tricky. On the one hand, I am bothered by the notion that conservatives have a monopoly on values like “family” or “community”, major themes of Rockwell’s art. On the other hand, many liberal leaders have done their damnest to all-but-denounce those things, seemingly ceding those things to conservatives. So, while I love Rockwell and consider myself “conservative” on very few, if any issues, I do identify with the espoused values that, fairly or not, have largely been co-opted by conservatives. I don’t know if conservatives would accept it as such, since I think many see that as the “norm” (or the norm as they want it to be) and consider anything short of the piece ED originally linked to to be non-conservative.Report
“On the one hand, I am bothered by the notion that conservatives have a monopoly on values like “family” or “community”, major themes of Rockwell’s art. On the other hand, many liberal leaders have done their damnest to all-but-denounce those things, seemingly ceding those things to conservatives.”
That’s a good observation and I think an accurate one. On the flip side conservatives have ceded plenty of issues to the Left at our own peril (environmental issues being the best example I can think of).Report
My stepfather, who is staunchly conservative but denies it, makes that argument a lot of time. He says that many outdoorsmen and hunters are heavily conservative and have a much more vested interest in environmental issues than your average city dwelling hippy. He’s an environmental scientist by trade, but got into the field when he was a legit commie-dem.Report
Your stepfather is 100% correct. Outdoorsman, especially hunters, are the most vocal and active friends of the environment we have. We also spend far more money than any other group to preserve the outdoors. Unfortunately the lack of Republican support for certain EPA standards has given the Right a poor reputation.Report
Part of the stupidity is that the right wing is absolutist.
EPA = “stupid government regulation that destroys businesses.” Despite the fact that hunters ought to support strong environmental laws and reasonable restrictions on hunting so as not to wipe out endangered species.
The gun law issues are likewise foolish. Hunters – for environmental reasons – have to get permits and register to hunt, or fish. One would think it’s a very, very short step to requiring some form of rudimentary licensing and training to own guns; after all, we do the same for cars.
Ah, but the right wing’s argument is that the 2nd amendment is absolute, even more than the 1st amendment (which they constantly want to abridge). No citizen can be prevented from owning any weapon they want, except for those filthy, convicted felons who are mostly non-white of course. Because you have to be able to have a fully loaded, .50-caliber fully automatic minigun mounted to the back of your truck in case you want to go duck hunting in the middle of the night. Or the zombie apocalypse happens.Report
“Despite the fact that hunters ought to support strong environmental laws and reasonable restrictions on hunting so as not to wipe out endangered species.”
That’s a non-issue. Hunters DO support restrictions on hunting. You will never hear a responsbile hunter advocate for excessive bag limits or seasons longer than the animal population can support.
As for the gun rights stuff, I don’t want to derail the comment thread. I would encourage you to write a guest post on the subject of gun law though. It would definitely see plenty of traffic.Report
Augusta WI is a hunter and fisherman’s paradise. My g/f’s brother grumbled a bit about a low part of his cornfield being taken over by sandhill cranes. There’s talk of hunting them. The hunters are of two minds on this: they don’t want to take whooping cranes, which remain endangered.
Wisconsin’s wolves have made an astonishing comeback. There’s talk of hunting them, too. Bears have made a fine recovery, they’re hunted now. It’s the hunters who are doing the political legwork to preserve the wild places. These people around here almost worship this land and its bounty.
The American hunter and fisherman is without a doubt the most intelligent conservationist you’ll ever meet. The deer hunters here are deeply concerned: chronic wasting disease has appeared to the northwest of us. Acid rain and nitrate runoff is screwing up our lakes and streams. The EPA isn’t viewed as the enemy here: when a couple of lakes started going toxic from bacteria and algae, nobody screamed about the regulations. What happened in Wisconsin? A movement started to integrate all the watershed information so the farmers could intelligently capture nitrate runoff across property lines. Lots of farmers are now going to a fermentation system for their cattle and hog waste: the process produces methane to run generators.
Kids around here are taught gun safety from the time they learn to walk. You will never find a more militant ecologist than a gun owner.Report
We got a sandhill crane season this past winter. Very few birds killed. Those suckers are hard to hunt but I’ve heard they eat good.Report
The Army drove three things out of me which once I dearly loved: running, camping and hunting. I still fish, though. Just can’t bear to pick up a gun again.Report
Do you see many poachers up your neck of the woods?
As a hiker, I understand that hunters pay to keep our parks open, and our gamelands free. And that nobody knows populations like hunters do.
There’s a reason very very few hunters don’t believe in global warming. They live close enough to the land to see the effects.Report
That’s true about global warming. The last five years of hunting have been very different than the first 20 I spent in the field. Something weird is going on.Report
Heh. Around here, if someone farts, everyone smells it. The Amish are the worst for taking game out of season around here. Funniest thing to see a deer head sticking out the back of an Amish wagon, the bearded driver looking guilty as hell as he tears down Stone Street, headed for the back roads.Report
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/up-and-up-plants-and-animals-migrating-as-climate-changes/2011/08/18/gIQAzlTxNJ_story.html
The bad news is that they aren’t migrating fast enough (particularly plants). We may lose our temperate rainforests before too long.Report
They’re killing it to eat it, though, right?
We tend to see poachers just a couple of days before hunting season.
Not that we say boo to them — they got guns.Report
I’m not opposed to a poor guy in Eastern Kentucky killing a deer to feed his family. I seriously think they should have some sort of special tags for people who live below the poverty line. The big problem we have in Central Kentucky is hunters using guns during bow season or modern rifles during muzzleloader season, etc.Report
Regarding the Amish, are you sure they didn’t just stake claim to a roadkilled deer?Report
Let’s not make excuses for the Amish here. They do poach. They have little battery-operated spotlights and they buy ammunition at the True Value just like everyone else around here. They’re not the only poachers but they’re a significant problem in this regard.Report
The EPA isn’t viewed as the enemy here: when a couple of lakes started going toxic from bacteria and algae, nobody screamed about the regulations.
Your governor views the EPA as needing to be abolished, though? And directed his DNR to fight the EPA’s listings of damaged waterways and lakes in the court system, if I remember correctly.
There’s a disconnect here somewhere.Report
Most people around here think Walker is an idiot. They just think Barrett is a bigger idiot. Part of my new extended family is an executive with Wisconsin DNR fish and wildlife guy, he doesn’t take any shit from those bozos in Madison. He works with the Feds and NOAA and I might be doing some work for him on riparian analysis soon.Report
But, aren’t we both talking about Rockwell being interpreted ideologically after the fact. I don’t want to say that he was apolitical, because he wasn’t. But doesn’t a painting like the gorgeous Thanksgiving dinner scene in Freedom from Want have a different political meaning in, say, 1971, much less 2012, than it did in 1943 when it was painted?Report
Maybe a bit tangentially, I do want to mention the film Tree of Life, which I found deeply religious and a beautiful attempt to make sense of that lost world and its enduring values. As pop art, though, it failed. Most of the audience walked out of the theater when we saw it.Report
Rufus – I think you are exactly correct. So then the question is, does the interpretation change with time and also the ideological slant? Is it fair to say a non-partisan work of art can become conservative (or liberal) many years later?Report
I think it can be reinterpreted as conservative in retrospect, but I don’t know how far I want to separate art from artist’s intent (although plenty of people do make that separation currently). Actually, the question reminds me of the observation many have made that you can often guess the politics of an American by how they feel about the 1950s, which on the face of it seems pretty strange.Report
Conservatives want to live in the 1950’s. Liberals want to work in the 1950’s.Report
The thing which made the 50’s was World War 2 and every other nation being mostly blown away, leaving America on top. That has to be a big factor in why the 50’s were the way they were.Report
At the end of WWII, the US was responsible for 47% of the world’s GNP!Report
” Is it fair to say a non-partisan work of art can become conservative (or liberal) many years later?”
I think you can go farther than that. I think you can say that a liberal piece of art can become conservative of time. All our conservative policies were progressive if you go back far enough.Report
“An eye for an eye” was originally moderating. It meant that penalties should be proportionate: if someone puts your eye out, you shouldn’t kill his whole family. Now it sounds bloodthirsty.
And the New Testament was radical back before people realized that “sell all you have and give the money to the poor” didn’t really mean that.Report
Rufus-
I think the values remain consistent and likely inherent. It is how we ascribe those values that changes.Report
On the other hand, many liberal leaders have done their damnest to all-but-denounce those things, seemingly ceding those things to conservatives.
You’ve got it backwards. The drumbeat as I’ve been listening to “conservative” talk radio – as well as looking back into some of the older stuff from the 80s and onwards – has been about telling their base that “liberals don’t value” this kind of stuff.
Find a married couple who are liberals? Who want to raise their kids together with moral values? Who intend to be together “till death do us part”? That gets tossed away in the “conservative” cherry-picker.
Endemic in Conservatism is the idea of fighting “the other”, and a lot of values are thrown out to get there. Most recently, the list of bona fides or litmus tests is so long I find it hard to believe that any of them can possibly qualify; the whole “etch-a-sketch” Romney candidacy makes it all a farce.
Liberals don’t dislike stable families, they love the idea of stable families; it means kids get raised in a good home, it means society works better, it means stronger social support nets when someone hits rough times. But liberals also don’t care whether the “family” in question is a “traditional one-man-one-woman having sex only for procreation” family. A loving family is a loving family – gay, straight, whatever.
Likewise, “the community” as values – liberals do have community values. But a strong community isn’t solely defined by “who you go to pray to the sky spirit with.” Conservatives have a funny way of defining “community” in such a way that anyone who is “other” can be cheerfully left out of the viewpoint and if possible, driven away completely. I am immensely suspicious of the conservative push to funnel tax money to “faith based organizations” to replace existing social services because I know from demonstrated experience that the next step is to insist that those “faith based organizations”, in the name of “religious freedom”, can then take tax money and engage in filtering who gets it via religiously based standards. Even absent outright discrimination – how many gay people down on their luck who need help are going to go to a church whose doctrine includes rounding up gays to internment camps? How many blacks or hispanics will go to the Church Of Keeping Them Damn Illegals Outta Our God-Fearin’ White State?Report
I said liberal leaders. Not liberals.Report
Which “liberal leaders” do you say have abandoned the values of family or community? And how?Report
Dude, of course liberal leaders hate families and love and apple pie and mom and America.
That’s why they’re socialists.Report
I never know what to make of sarcasm without wit. Anti-conservative art, I guess.Report
It’s boredom, Tom. The absolute boredome of hearing the same thoughtless lines countless times, the same slurs based not in knowledge, experience, or even a microsecond’s thought but out of pure reflex.
Liberal leaders have done their damndest to denounce family, really? REALLY?
How you can, even for a moment, take the person who said that with even an ounce of seriousness is beyond me.
I habitually ignore those who use the term “Rethuglicans” for the exact same reason. Certain verbal tics tell you all you need to know about exactly how the conversation will go. Sarcasm, and the found hope it forces them to try to justify those tics, is about the only way I’ve found to get any headway.Report
Mr. Morat, Brother Kazzy is an unabashed gentleperson of the left, and was trying to make an honest “call ’em as you see ’em.” In this case, the kneejerk antagonisism of the elitist left—“leaders” as Kazzy put it—that would use “Norman Rockwell” derisively, as shorthand for kitsch and the unsophistication of the Great [Conservative] Unwashed.
But once upon a time, FDR and Rockwell and the Democratic Party all fit comfortably at the same dinner table.
You know the picture.
http://www.cavstheblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/rockwell-thanksgiving.jpg
That used to be Anywhere USA. Now it’s Republican kitsch.Report
Tom:
I wouldn’t go that far.Report
And yet he can’t name those elitist left. Leaders, no less!
And neither have you. I’ll wait. You find me some of those leaders on the left and some examples, and we can talk.Report
But Mr. Psycho, I just did go that far, as did Brother Kazzy, who is a denizen of the left himself. It’s a palpable enough phenomenon.
Mr. Morat, you fight too much. Negating is not discussing.Report
TVD,
Yes, if only because the Scotch Irish married Vietnamese wives. And thus get chicken soup with their thanksgiving dinner.Report
What values do you associate with Norman Rockwell? These values?
Freedom of speech = the right to critically question the government and weaken your country like some kind of commie, with undeserved impunity.
Freedom of worship = the right to not say the Pledge of Allegiance because of your weird religion that none of the Founders ever subscribed to.
Freedom from want = culturally and economically corrosive social welfare programs giving food to moochers who don’t deserve it.
Freedom from fear = HOLY CRAP THERE’S A FIRE RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW GET THE KIDS OUT OF BED YOU FOOLS!Report
I don’t know why everybody assumes that Norman Rockwell was a conservative. He wasn’t.Report
His work appeared on the cover of Saturday Evening Post, a comforting bit of Americana. The Saturday Evening Post began to drift to the right and became a great enemy of FDR and his policies. Rockwell did hundreds of covers for the magazine, once a great arbiter of American taste. Though Norman Rockwell was just an illustrator, his work become iconic in its context, rather like the art of Mouse became identified with the Grateful Dead, or Roger Dean with Yes.Report
Freedom of speech = the right to critically question the government and weaken your country like some kind of commie, with undeserved impunity.
And oddly, folks in “communist” (well, really totalitarian-fascist but who’s counting?) countries like the USSR or Red China had/have no right to question the government.
But if you’re the Dixie Chicks and you say something uncomplimentary about a president who’s faking evidence and lying to the public in order to reignite his daddy’s little war, well – you’d better be exiled from music and boycotted henceforth.Report
man, the dixie chicks got some good mileage out of that whole thing.
in american politics, is there anyone valued so highly as the martyr & the victim?Report
Yeah and how come the libertarians didn’t complain about Ted Nugent when Ted Nugent said something about Obama?Report
because it wasn’t one of the dudes from rush?Report
Isn’t Ted Nugent more popular than Jesus now?Report
there’s a lot of christians in south korea; i’m fairly sure he’s less popular there.Report
Google’s being no help. Why do you mention South Korea?Report
because there’s a lot of christians there? and christians are into jesus. but i’m pretty sure they’re not into ted nugent.
so for a significant portion of the world’s population he’s less popular than jesus.
(sorry, this was funnier in my head)
actually i’m surprised anyone goes to see ted nugent. he seems to do a fair amount of fairs and the like, if ticketmaster’s website is any indication.Report
If it ain’t revolutionary, it’s conservative. If someone disagrees that it’s conservative, point out that it’s *AUTHENTICALLY* conservative, rather than the faux conservative that the conservatives have.Report
Incidentally, there’s a lot of noise in the gaming community about this documentary where a woman is doing a video series about gaming “tropes” (that being the early-010’s word for “memes”, which was the mid-2000s term for “themes”) relating to “gender”. (by which she means that the chicks always have huge tits and wear chainmail bikinis, which is certainly true.)
Because, apparently, trolling for flames is OK so long as you’re a girl doing it by saying all men are pigs, and when the men complain it just goes to show how piggy they are.
Which says to me that it’s acceptable to point out creative media’s emphasis on one viewpoint, and the lack of presentation of other viewpoints, so long as they’re the PROPER viewpoints to call out.Report