Besides 💰and 👁️ *
Why doesn’t the left do a propaganda like the Barbie movie or those two White-Supremist country songs?
Imagine Barbie but with class-consciousness. With all the basically free high-production tools and talent on the left, is it not possible?
*Or is it that simple?
Hard to say much besides ownership and censorship by capital. But I can give it a shot.
I was listening to this Plastic Pills podcast about the political mythologies of the left vs right, based on the book Mythologies by Barthes. Mythology being an extension of ideology essentially, where symbols that represent ideas in an ideology become entities themselves in a system of symbols to perpetuate the narrative eg. the character of Captain America symbolizes the US but takes on a role within the Marvel mythos which people handle as a symbol in itself, like maybe dressing up as Captain America at a rally
Anyway what they say is, the right has it easy, since all they need to do is continue the narrative or intensify it. But for the left, we are not stuck in some fantasy realm but must live in the material world: we need to actually work to survive before we can start creating political mythology. Also, our goals also lie in the material world – ultimately revolution can only happen due to material conditions, not people being convinced by a real nice book or movie
There was another interesting point that revolution is the only “anti-myth” ie a myth which actually ends up changing material conditions. I guess they mean The Revolution in the vague sense that leftists refer to, as if it’s the eschaton. It does seem mythological, yet if it really does happen, it is entirely material, unlike any other myth. But this also means that everything leading up to the Revolution and everything after it is not part of the anti-myth
I think since this is more postmodernism and post-structuralism, from the French schools, there is a bit of intellectualism about communism here, that leftists aren’t being real leftists when “working towards” a revolution or once they took achieve control (eg. the USSR, which they mostly critiqued) they do a revisionism. So take that with a grain of salt
To answer your question, it seems like it’s too much work, and it’s not really up our alley as materialists. But I still wonder if it’s worth it as an artist to make leftist art. Not just a disruptive kind of art that pulls you out of the current capitalist, consumerist worldview that most people seem to bring up for the topic, but a more constructive (?) type of art with grander vision or ability to change and create genres. Something like a Lord of the Rings which birthed fantasy, or maybe reaching further back to religious mythology, since I mentioned the eschaton earlier. I might even ask what a post-Revolution leftist mythology would look like…maybe similar to Soviet Realism?
Appreciate your thoughtful response
You bring up some interesting points.
Did you know that the CIA funneled huge amounts of cash into making modern art as a response to Soviet realism?
Did you know that the CIA also had its hand in cultivating the post-Marxist left?
I’m going to respond to OP in a top-level comment soon with some reading recommendations about how modern art is a CIA op or, at the very least, the CIA pushed modern art into the mainstream via massive amounts of monetary support. You might be interested in reading some of the books that I mention.
Ooh I knew that modern art was an op but not about post-Marxism. I’ll check for your comment to read up more. Thanks for sharing!
No worries.
Gabriel Rockhill is a dissident post-poststructuralist (i.e. he is schooled in post-structuralism [by big names such as Derrida, Iragary, Badiou and Balibar no less]) and he has arrived at a place where he is very critical of the movement and its origins.
While I never studied poststructuralism anywhere near as much as he did, I arrived at basically the same conclusions before discovering his stuff so naturally I find his arguments compelling.
You can find more articles by him here and he also has a YouTube channel here which has some good lectures in there if you want to learn more about his takes.
Building on this, Tolkien wrote about part of his intent to be the creation of a new mythological past. A leftist project would run perpendicular in that it would be, for lack of a better term, prophetic. It would seek to instill a unifying vision of the post-revolution future, whereas Tolkien in creating fantasy was trying to create a new mythical past. In the beginning of the Silmarillion, there is the creation myth. Would the prophesied revolution take a similar role in the tale of the future we are building? The revolutionaries as the Ainur in a structure similar to Judges instead of genesis.
I think you’ve touched on a really fascinating topic. I’ll be checking that pod out, it sounds cool.
Yes, exactly what I was thinking! It would more be in the genre of scifi or science fantasy likely since it is future-oriented.
There are some subgenres like solarpunk and hopepunk I know of, but these are more about people post-Revolution rather than stories written by people who live in a post-Revolution society (unless the authors live in AES states). Somewhat of an anthropological interest of mine I guess