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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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The right wing should do patronage of good culture and right wing culture and abandon an ethos of disengagement and libertarian ethos.

Why?

Because if you know artists, they care first and foremost about doing their things and getting money and recognition. The reason the left has been so successful its because it is willing to provide support, and to deprive them for not aligning with them.

Secondly, people who are actually on your side will also act based on incentives.

And thirdly, because the end result is desirable. A culture of just whining, about leftist cultural output is impotent. There is nothing wrong with complaining about what is bad, but you should also promote what is good. We need a society that promotes good art and and good culture. There is more to life than line going up. And if you don't try to fill that vacuum, someone else will.

What this means effectively? A right wing goverment should defund leftist artists and promote rightist artists and allow people to join the side. Soon you will discover that many artists are actually rightists who were afraid to express themselves.

It also means promoting art programs.

Also some kind of art tends to be of a more negative and leftist form like rap and modern art. Not all but more commonly.

Beyond the goverment, right wingers and not leftists should care more about networking to promote art that isn't left wing. It doesn't have to be explicitly political. Lord of the Rings for example qualifies. Just accurate adaptation of great classics of western literature without left wing ideological blinders would also qualify.

Putting regulations in place to make them illegal or underpromote far left racebending art and make them less financially viable, and giving incentives for art that respects the source material for example.

Of course, someone could object to a certain particularly aggressive moves in terms of what you promote and not promote, and in being excessively far to the right and excessively intolerant. And I could even agree with them in some cases.

However, in the current status quo, things are so lopsized in the direction of the left that it is pushing the culture landscape in a more pluralistic phase to have less race bending far left culture being promoted and more right wing.

This means that more right wing patronage of art is good even from a more neutral, pluralistic standpoint. Which is a general pattern of the culture war, even outside art. If someone is fine with leftist domination and escalation then a position in favor of an impotent disengaged right makes sense. We don't have a sufficiently neutral and moderate status quo though for defence of the status quo to be the neutral position.

First, define "good art" because we've been having this conversation for centuries and nobody's got a working definition universally accepted. What is "good" art - technical merit and ability? subject matter? what the public likes versus what educated taste likes? And is "good art" art in "good taste"? What's good taste, then, precious?

Artists are about being transgressive, challenging social and cultural established values and thought, novelty, and all the rest of it. You can't pay them to produce 'conservative' art, and those who do so will be and are derided as sell-outs. Think Thomas Kinkade, who certainly had some measure of talent, deciding to make himself into a brand and churn out product on carefully selected themes that were repeated ad nauseam. "The Painter of Light" who was wildly successful with the public and made a fortune, but he's never going to get the respect of the art world.

Think of Tracey Emin versus the Stuckists.

STUCKISM Founded by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson in 1999, Stuckism is an art movement that is anti-conceptual and champions figurative painting.

Charles Thomson derived the name from an insult by the Young British Artist, Tracey Emin, who told her ex-lover Childish that his art was ‘stuck, stuck, stuck’.

They may have started out championing 'traditional' painting, but they've become another sub-set of the performance/protest artists of modern art.

(T)he group continues its confrontational agenda, demonstrating against events like the Turner Prize or Beck’s Futures which, the movement argues, are among a number of art world events controlled by a small number of art world insiders.

'Good art' is not going to be given that accolade unless it accedes to the values of the liberal and indeed progressive strain of cultural hegemony. "Norman Rockwell type art" is not intended as a compliment. Is Marcel Duchamp's urinal good art? I think Surrealism did produce good art and it did give a shock to the art world, which every new movement needs to do, but as tastes and values evolve, there's no going backwards.

First, define "good art" because we've been having this conversation for centuries and nobody's got a working definition universally accepted. What is "good" art - technical merit and ability? subject matter? what the public likes versus what educated taste likes? And is "good art" art in "good taste"? What's good taste, then, precious?

Everything has been debated forever. There is nuance but generally we could say that:

Good art is aesthetically pleasing. Elevates the human spirit rather than denigrates it. Promotes fundamental truths over lies. Promotes virtues. Is respectful of the original source material, and of the people from which it derrives.

And for the right, also has historical significance. Plenty of it would focus on themes that had been successful in the past, including especially in art before the 20th century.

Everything has nuances but there are also fundamental truths. Among films, The Lord of the Rings adaptation would qualify in a manner than most other adaptations we have seen in recent years don't.

Actually Lord of the Rings did have a character who was demoralized and ready to surrender in Denethor. https://youtube.com/watch?v=b7MCVm4XISc That attitude was treated by the protagonists with contempt which spoke of an important truth. Even greater truth is found in the scene were the advisor Wormtongue who has corrupted king Theoden is banished. Truly magnificent. Also wonderful to see Theoden from a sad shell of a leader returning to a noble king of men. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iQExgALv9wI

Artists are about being transgressive, challenging social and cultural established values and thought, novelty, and all the rest of it. You can't pay them to produce 'conservative' art, and those who do so will be and are derided as sell-outs. Think Thomas Kinkade, who certainly had some measure of talent, deciding to make himself into a brand and churn out product on carefully selected themes that were repeated ad nauseam. "The Painter of Light" who was wildly successful with the public and made a fortune, but he's never going to get the respect of the art world.

How many artists these days are transgressive about the dominant established values of thought? Musicians especially. Do you see them to decry it? Well there are a few who do with some success.

Conservative art was produced for much of history. And based on the weirdo definitions of conservatism I see here, maybe they still are if conserving the status quo is conservatism (it isn't).

Think Thomas Kinkade, who certainly had some measure of talent, deciding to make himself into a brand and churn out product on carefully selected themes that were repeated ad nauseam. "The Painter of Light" who was wildly successful with the public and made a fortune, but he's never going to get the respect of the art world.

Thomas Kinkade is an incredible painter and artist. You can create an environment mroe conducive to allowing artists who really care for their quality of their to create good art. Like Cormac McCarthy whose wives claimed they lived in abject poverty who wasn't a leftist either. Which I am led to believe is actually impossible by some of the comments here.

And you can make it easier for rightists or leftist artists too by creating an environment that promotes more the one, or the other in praise, status, positions to create art.

'Good art' is not going to be given that accolade unless it accedes to the values of the liberal and indeed progressive strain of cultural hegemony. "Norman Rockwell type art" is not intended as a compliment. Is Marcel Duchamp's urinal good art? I think Surrealism did produce good art and it did give a shock to the art world, which every new movement needs to do, but as tastes and values evolve, there's no going backwards.

Yes, and? You are arguing with a strawman. I argue that rightists should fund art magazines, and artists themselves. In fact it is the sane reaction to a polarized environment.

Also, it wasn't always that bad.

but as tastes and values evolve, there's no going backwards.

Says who? Tastes can evolve in various directions. And who says there is no taste for continuous traditions? In actuality old artforms have continuing fans even today.

Actually, there was a film released recently about hunters of pedophiles that was rather popular and was denigrated by most of the media.

Plus, in American television rural tv shows were once all the rage but that ended one day when executives decided to cancel them.

As it happens the public can accept even garbage, although with more dissatisfaction than something better. Where do you gain that great confidence, especially as someone who has claimed to be a conservative that the current dominant strains are the epitome of unchanged sophistication? This faith in the unchallenged and hopeless progressive arc of history is really bewildering.

Actually Lord of the Rings did have a character who was demoralized and ready to surrender in Denethor. https://youtube.com/watch?v=b7MCVm4XISc That attitude was treated by the protagonists with contempt which spoke of an important truth. Even greater truth is found in the scene were the advisor Wormtongue who has corrupted king Theoden is banished. Truly magnificent. Also wonderful to see Theoden from a sad shell of a leader returning to a noble king of men. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iQExgALv9wI

And that work spawned a genre known as "high fantasy". It's called "fantasy" for a reason. In reality, there's no author ensuring the ultimate victory of the protagonists.

How many artists these days are transgressive about the dominant established values of thought?

Essentially none. They often claim to be, but usually they're "transgressing" against the right, which hasn't been transgressive in decades. At most they're doing 50-stalins ultraprogressiveness.

In reality, there's no author ensuring the ultimate victory of the protagonists.

Psalm 68:1, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and indeed most of the world, to this day and since essentially forever would pretty strongly disagree with this proposition.