December 12th 2006 me, arts and politics >
We argued for the second time about that Billy Wilder's movie "One, Two, Three". I flatly stated that the movie was sheer propaganda of the cold war. Russian are represented with the usual demeaning stereotype of the illiterate, greedy, corrupt thug. Or as naive idealists easy to buy. Nothing very distant from the representation of Russian people in any other western Hollywoodian movie of the last sixty years at that.
"Let's imagine they're not russians, but jews, or black africans," I argued. "Wouldn't you be ashamed and disturbed by it?"
"No. It's a comedy," she defended, "and well done too."
"True. I am not saying you couldn't laugh with it. But There is a comedy which after all starts from the things as they are, even if it ends by overturning reality completely. And a comedy which just destroys reality from the start, without appeal, with commonplaces, burlesque, caricatures. That's even worse than a serious propaganda movie."
"I can appreciate any kind of movie for its artistic values regardless the politics or the propaganda involved in it."
"Me too, mostly", I said. "But at least let's take some points away from the valuation we make of it"
"But why?"
"Because it allowed politics into arts!" I said. "It tried to play tricks on us! That's not good art in my book!"
"Uff, I hate it when you talk politics!"
At the end of this conversation, which could easily apply to the movie 'Borat' too, I wondered a little about my relationship with politics.
I am very sensitive to politics. I am not saying I have a great understanding of it, but I know where it can be found, how it operates. I can recognize it even if it's very well hidden behind different means, pretenses and results.
So what basically happens with politics is that I start talking about it not because I enjoy to, or because I have my idea and I want to be in the arena. I start talking politics simply when I feel attacked by it. When I perceive propaganda hidden behind informations, arts, entertainments. When I perceive aggressive politics against my rights or others' rights. It's more a reflex than everything else, and in fact the results are not very brilliant, since I am the first one who gets bored of arguing about politics.
As with the movie "One, Two, Three", nothing bores me more than seeing a form of art I love prostituted by politics. But what really makes me snap, is to see folks persuaded by it as if the politics or the propaganda were completely absent.
That really puts me in a desperate mood. Because I think there's always a struggle between arts and politics or religion, and in that moment I see the arts losing the battle.
In fact, Ideas always want to enslave Arts, and Arts always have to find new means to disclose their intentions beyond Ideas. This is always a result obtained with Form, because Ideas are not the essence of Arts. The only essence is Form.
An example? Take any religious picture of a master of the renaissance. No matter what any Scholar of Arts will tell you, the most important thing into it are not the allegories, the subjects or the ideas it conveys. The most important thing instead are the colors, the light, the way surfaces juxtapose, the composition, the design, etc.
Another example? What Kundera said of George Orwell's novel 1984 (I paraphrase): 1984 is not a good piece of art, not a good novel, because politics dominate the novel and not the other way around. This is true even if you agree with Orwell's visions and ideas, because it's a formal problem.
The simple intention of seeing a political idea prevailing in a work of art makes the work of art tinkle, like a bad coin.
