Art and Morality

IdleRich said:

Bit of an old question I guess but it seems to me that a lot of the time when people give their reason for disliking something it's due to a disagreement with the morality of the film/book/whatever (and presumably that of the artist as well). I'm just wondering if it's always the case that art that promotes something which is immoral will always fail to be good art. Or is it possible to separate these things and to say that one finds the morality reprehensible but still finds the artwork inspiring. I guess an example of this could be On The Waterfront which is generally highly regarded despite being a blatant attempt to justify Kazan's reporting of his colleagues to the Un-American Activities guys by telling a tale of a brave gangster who stands up to the mob by reporting them. (Actually perhaps that's not such a good example as you might be able to say that the film itself is not immoral but that the immoral act is in inviting the comparison between Brando's character and himself).

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You can add Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers to that - classic piece of red-baiting. I suppose it's eaier to overlook the politics of a film when they're made safe by distance and time.

I feel the same about the Flashman books, though I'd be wary of recommending them to others.

Interesting question...I seldom object to art on moral grounds but perhaps that's because if I suspect anything of being morally questionable I just avoid it. Isn't this linked to the PC debate in the sense that the Moral Overlords (and Ladies ) view everything through eyes intent on seeing the moral 'right' and 'wrong' in art, language etc?

I confess to seldom being conscious of the 'morality' issue when, say, watching a film. But thinking about mafia movies, they're all morally questionable in that they entertain us with characters of a morally dubious nature. Even The Sopranos, which attempts to deglamourise The Mob makes us even more sympathtic to the man with his psychological problems - the man with his arch capitalist America values of greed and wealth gained by violence.

I've grown soft over the years and questioned the morality of gangster Rap - christ, next I'll be buying The Daily Mail.

The relatively new Hollywood morality angle on smoking pisses me off if I think about it - only baddies smoke, right?

Dismissing Wagner on grounds of the Hitler connection is obviously bullshit, but I couldn't convince the Jewish guy I used to work with about that one.

funny, i just watched Birth of a Nation this week. i can say it is a great film, despite that the director was promoting some very... decidedly NOT great ideas. you can enjoy art for its formal properties, or even, if you are imaginative, suspend disbelief enough to align yourself with the artist of questionable morality and enjoy the art as the artist intended.

it helps to know that renting Birth of a Nation isn't putting any money in DW Griffith's pocket. i wouldn't, say, buy a Skrewdriver record if it meant it would fund a neo-nazi's set of braces.

slim jenkins said:

The relatively new Hollywood morality angle on smoking pisses me off if I think about it - only baddies smoke, right?

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One of the things I like about old films is that everyone smokes - not that smoking-is-great per se, it's just so refreshing next to today's prudery.

slim jenkins said:

Dismissing Wagner on grounds of the Hitler connection is obviously bullshit, but I couldn't convince the Jewish guy I used to work with about that one.

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I think Wagner was pretty anti-Semetic in his own right, though.

Mr. Tea said:

I think Wagner was pretty anti-Semetic in his own right, though.

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Thats a different question though - whether the opinions and acts of an artist should be taken into consideration when judging their art. I think the answer has to be no, as otherwise youd have an endless list of artists that were out of bounds.

empty mirror said:

funny, i just watched Birth of a Nation this week. i can say it is a great film, despite that the director was promoting some very... decidedly NOT great ideas.

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I wonder if there is a distinction to be made between the expression of immoral 'ideas' and propaganda/historical revisionism, as that film certainly is...

hmmm, complicated subject.

I guess personally I have less of a problem with when serious, high brow "Art" art, (or anything obscure, marginal, or elite, that's only going to be experienced by a small portion of the culture) goes off into moraly-ambivalent-land. It's not that I don't find some of it tasteless*, it's just that it's not being fed to impressionable kids on a daily basis, before they have time to get educated and learn to assess things a bit more.

What I don't particularly care for though, usually takes place on the level of Popular Art/Culture/Media. I guess when certain moral ideas (which could be summed up as "love thy neighbor", or "don't be so self-centered to the point of hurting others") are not just challenged, but supplanted with their cheaper opposite, and not just sold as one , more cynical, option to the larger public, but portrayed as the norm (not that we don't have a selfish, inconsiderate side, but that's the point of morality, to discourage it). Like the Pussycat Dolls and other post-feminist softcore, or nihilistic stupidity like Jackass (which was mainly just dumb, but kinda recklessly invited a bunch of neglected suburban kids from broken homes to go on to make things like Bum Fights), or Desperate Housewives (just what we need, more affairs leading to more broken homes), or Breaking Bad (this shit's the worst... meth is fucking evil. Period. Trying to normalize and portray it in a non-judgemental fashion is pretty fucking reckless)...

I know that the people behind this stuff aren't "evil", but ultimately the motivation of their "art" comes down to promoting, exploiting, and encouraging the more stupid, selfish, and indulgent tendencies in everyone because its become accepted as the easiest way to make profit (I'm not talking about stuff that deals with real-world problems and issues realistically though, I'm talking about exploitation). They or other commentators can speak about it all in amoral terms, say that it's just pragmatism... blabla they don't believe in outdated primitive "values", but rejecting them has culturally-damaging effects, and that's where morality continues to assert itself, not just on a remote, detached level but in the thick of things, in the results.

There's the idea that our popular art is all a reflection, or a symptom, not the cause of selfishness in people, but that's doesn't seem to be the whole truth. It seems like there are a lot of different routes people and culture could take, but in choosing and promoting certain tendencies or ideals , there becomes this kind of escalating, intensifying feedback-loop. The people get dumber and sleazier and the popular art gets dumber and sleazier and it goes on and on. Marxists and the religious could sit back and say "told ya so", and they'd probably be right.

So yeah, I don't necessarily get hung up on subcultural or artistic meditations on the various shades of human-nature (though I still think some qualities, especially now, are less necessary), but when certain negative things are being pushed on people as the norm, when they filter into the mainstream for less than artistic motivations, that's when it seems to become a problem.


*like say, some lame Italian film a friend tried to show me once about a sexual affair between an ex-Nazi concentration camp officer and a Jewish woman who used to be held there, that tried to be all shocking and sexy but was just stomach turning and totally fucking unnessecary. it wasn't even about love breaking down boundaries or whatever, but rather, "oooh, aren't I just provoking the hell out of you?" Shock-value-oriented Trolling isn't always art, or at least, not always as profound or necessary a function of art as it likes to think itself.

Chris said:

*like say, some lame Italian film a friend tried to show me once about a sexual affair between an ex-Nazi concentration camp officer and a Jewish woman who used to be held there, that tried to be all shocking and sexy but was just stomach turning and totally fucking unnessecary. it wasn't even about love breaking down boundaries or whatever, but rather, "oooh, aren't I just provoking the hell out of you?" Shock-value-oriented Trolling isn't always art, or at least, not always as profound or necessary a function of art as it likes to think itself.

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Are you sure this film wasn't actually just Schindler's List? j/k

IdleRich said:

Bit of an old question I guess but it seems to me that a lot of the time when people give their reason for disliking something it's due to a disagreement with the morality of the film/book/whatever (and presumably that of the artist as well). I'm just wondering if it's always the case that art that promotes something which is immoral will always fail to be good art. Or is it possible to separate these things and to say that one finds the morality reprehensible but still finds the artwork inspiring. I guess an example of this could be On The Waterfront which is generally highly regarded despite being a blatant attempt to justify Kazan's reporting of his colleagues to the Un-American Activities guys by telling a tale of a brave gangster who stands up to the mob by reporting them. (Actually perhaps that's not such a good example as you might be able to say that the film itself is not immoral but that the immoral act is in inviting the comparison between Brando's character and himself).
I suppose that there are various ways in which an artwork can (fail to) be moral and I'm interested in discussing any of them really. For example some would consider using extreme violence even for "good" purposes as something that can make a film immoral.
In fact, to be honest, I suppose that you could ask the same question in a more general way and just ask if it's possible to enjoy an artwork when you strongly disagree with what you think it's saying or the methods used to say it but it's just that anecdotally I get the feeling that most people criticise taking a moral stance.

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This may not fit into what you mean, but the first thing I thought of when I read this was Michael Jackson. I remember when that documentary came out and that was more or less the bitter end for him financially.

[NB, MJ has been examined by all kinds of psychiatrists, some of whom were more or less paid by lawyers to say he was a pedophile, and all of them, across the board, said he was not a pedophile of any sort, but in fact, due to physical and emotional abuse during childhood, he'd regressed to an age when he still felt "safe" (as is typical of those with certain personality disorders). Michael Jackson really believes he's a 10-year-old boy. That's why he thinks it's ok to have sleep overs with 10-year-old boys.]

I feel sorry for him.

nomadthesecond said:

are you sure this film wasn't actually just schindler's list? J/k

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LOL, yep... I refused to watch it all the way through, but I think I got the gist of it.

I edited it into the above post, but I guess I should say that I don't think that art that deals with, or reflects, the problems of humanity/life is bad, it's just the exploitative stuff, that's engineered to pander to the worst that gets old. But maybe that's not really art though (think it kind of unintentionally falls into the category though).

Like things start out as honest cultural commentary... but then degenerate into cheap cliches and business strategies.

Chris said:

I edited it into the above post, but I guess I should say that I don't think that art that deals with, or reflects, the problems of humanity/life is bad, it's just the exploitative stuff, that's engineered to pander to the worst that gets old. But maybe that's not really art though (think it kind of unintentionally falls into the category though).

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Totally agree, and to be honest, I felt sickened by Schindler's List at a couple of points because it felt exploitative instead of reflective.

Chris said:

Like things start out as honest cultural commentary... but then degenerate into cheap cliches and business strategies.

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I'm far more cynical than you are. I'd strike all the words from "honest" to "into" from that paragraph.

nomadthesecond said:

[NB, MJ has been examined by all kinds of psychiatrists, some of whom were more or less paid by lawyers to say he was a pedophile, and all of them, across the board, said he was not a pedophile of any sort, but in fact, due to physical and emotional abuse during childhood, he'd regressed to an age when he still felt "safe" (as is typical of those with certain personality disorders). Michael Jackson really believes he's a 10-year-old boy. That's why he thinks it's ok to have sleep overs with 10-year-old boys.]

I feel sorry for him.

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it's a nice thought, but a 10 year old boy doesn't balls pumping out testosterone... adult men have sexual urges... and 10 year old kids play doctor with each other... you do the math...

Mr. Tea said:

One of the things I like about old films is that everyone smokes - not that smoking-is-great per se, it's just so refreshing next to today's prudery.



I think Wagner was pretty anti-Semetic in his own right, though.

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That's a fair cop...vaguely recall reading evidence of that...but when writing I slipped back in time to when I knew nothing about him and engaged in a debate with said person because he was only making the Hitler connection. The obvious point to make here being that, perhaps to my shame, his anti-Semitism does not prevent me enjoying his music.

I recall how much Johnny Rotten seemed to offend public morals all those years ago...now he's so loveable that by advertising a product its sales have gone up
85%. Strikes me that public morality is a fickle thing. It's also prone to breeding attitudes founded on the philisophical school of tabloid headline writing whereby 'rights' and 'wrongs' are rendered simplistic, to say the least.

Chris said:

*like say, some lame Italian film a friend tried to show me once about a sexual affair between an ex-Nazi concentration camp officer and a Jewish woman who used to be held there, that tried to be all shocking and sexy but was just stomach turning and totally fucking unnessecary. it wasn't even about love breaking down boundaries or whatever, but rather, "oooh, aren't I just provoking the hell out of you?" Shock-value-oriented Trolling isn't always art, or at least, not always as profound or necessary a function of art as it likes to think itself.

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That'll be this, yeah?

Nice post, btw. it's good to see people other than Mail-ite reactionaries can still be animated about this stuff.

i think you've wrapped up all the substantive ways Rich, great post (and thread).

i'd like to think i have some aesthetics first ethic going on (e.g. no probs with robustly phrased rap) but that intersection where (what you consider) critical taste and your moral response to something meeting makes it very hard to engage with/defend some things.

this is a truly horrendous example in the way i mean, as they're shit, but Skrewdriver (already cited i know but not in the tedious way i am about to). i don't want to sound Devil's Advocate but of course when a moral distaste for an artwork is added to when you think someone's work is of little value then of course you've got more animus added in to the mix.
IMO, clearly.

should i try and listen to Skrewdriver afresh?

i mustn't be that liberal

Virginia Woolf was aesthetics first IIRC.

obvious point i know but i thought it bore stating. i mean, i don't rate much of Oasis, but of course you can't compare Noel Gallagher's mild Old Labourism with Skrewdriver's views on life, the universe and everything.

i think what Slim, Droid and Chris say in particular i would want to flag up. empty mirror is right, Birth of a Nation is good stuff.

(i think the above post may broach Godwin's Law rules..)

you could entirely unpick my second paragraph above. does what he think is his critical taste is really a trojan horse for his etc etc etc ? ? ?