Art and Morality

Chris

fractured oscillations
Would it be possible to say that artworks which work to propound a message (thus treating their audiences as passive objects to be programmed) are morally objectionable even though they may be felt to be politically "correct" in other ways?

I think there has to be a difference between politics and morality.

I move the the morality of art is more to do with the position it adopts with respect to its audience, then with its message. Personally, what I'm really against is the model of the didactic dictator, but that's another matter.

I would agree that I prefer things more open-ended and less dishonestly slanted. But a slant is inescapable.

Still, I don't know if there's any art that isn't pure abstraction, that deals in the substance and themes of life, no matter how open-ended it's approach, that isn't going to favor or emphasize certain values or perspectives over others. Even a painting of fruit can be formally representing an approach that, from the perspective of it's period and culture, was tied to certain political, philosophical, cultural, or moral currents. Some morality plays might be more blatant, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't implications and themes galore in everything else. That's not to say that all art can be summed up in simple political or moral binaries, or that some aren't so open-ended that they can't be tied to any idea, but if you consider the context of the artist or culture that that created it, there's still a lot of value-packed information. Taking this into mind, one could also make the argument that realizing that art can, even if arbitrarily, put forth certain ideas or qualities which may in turn be adopted or internalized, then maybe it's not always a purely passive, value-free act regardless of intention. Which of course is why movements happen that revise the approach, because the current mode of expression doesn't ring true enough, so they actively revise it. I don't know if I'd tie it to some dictator model, because nothing is purely passive and without consequence or meaning.


and even abstraction or non-linearity can be put forth in a way to suggest (although it doesn't have to mean this) that there is no value, which is a value statement in itself, and one that can be adopted and have it's own possible effects on minds and culture if it's the dominant sentiment. Just presenting that thought as open-endedly and without judgement as possible. ;)
 
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D84

Well-known member
I totally agree, josef k. The best art makes you look at something in a new way - makes you think about something.

Which is why I wouldn't hesitate recommending the Flashman books even though I disagree with Fraser's politics (I never knew until I read the obituaries). There is an attempt at honesty in the books: Flashman knows he's a sinner and a liar but in his "papers" at least he is honest; his version of the history of the British Empire, although not controversial, is hardly glorious. By dramatising it Fraser puts a human face on the horror and lets people decide for themselves (maybe because he doesn't try too hard to change people's minds is why those books are so popular).

I also agree that aesthetics is important. Making art, writing etc are crafts and the people producing art often want to make something beautiful or funny etc more than they want to create something with a consistent moral. It says something about the artist perhaps when it's the other way around.

As for Team America I always thought it was a satire of 80s action movies and all the reactionary ideas behind them. The depiction of Hollywood "liberals" in it is the sort of thing you'd expect from the creators of Red Dawn, say.

I'm not 100% sure what the politics of Parker and Stone are. Judging from some episodes of South Park though they're definitely not conservatives. I recently watched this episode of the show which is probably the most caustic satire of present day US/capitalist values, Post-Iraq Bush's America, etc I've seen in a very long time. Like Team America it's a riff of an 80s hollywood trope, this time the underdog sports movie but the image of America it reflects is unmistakable, esp. considering it was the final episode in a season.

Art/etc is reflective and sometimes there is a moral "message" inside but like any other argument it has to be based on accurate observation and honest (self) criticism (critical thought).

Craner, here's that link for the Penman post you wanted. I wonder what this guy thinks of his beloved neo-cons 6 years later..

Ghostbusters totally rocked my world. I'm gonna have to see it again now..
 
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josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
I don't know if there's any art...that isn't going to favor or emphasize certain values or perspectives over others.

This is surely true - but how do you get from here a message? This doesn't seem to me a simple thing at all. Even in a relatively stupid piece of art, there are always issues of irony and rhetoric, and strategy, which come into play and serve to make things quite complicated. You need a context in order to have messages - and who sets the context?
 
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Chris

fractured oscillations
This is surely true - but how do you get from here a message? This doesn't seem to me a simple thing at all. Even in a relatively stupid piece of art, there are always issues of irony and rhetoric, and strategy, which come into play and serve to make things quite complicated. You need a context in order to have messages - and who sets the context?

good point, a specific, intentional message might not be a part of it, unless one would maybe reduce a more pointed summation of something like an overall politics or sociocultural "message" that it represents memetically or aesthetically. It could be playing a song within some larger opera that it doesn't even realize it's a player in.
 

Chris

fractured oscillations
Art/etc is reflective and sometimes there is a moral "message" inside but like any other argument it has to be based on accurate observation and honest (self) criticism (critical thought).

agreed, I think self-honesty and critical reflection might have a lot to do with the morality of art sometimes. Morality in art doesn't entail censoring things (though it may morally favor better things, and that's of no less value than harsher "realism"), though there are also plenty of cases of immoral things being riffed on in a way that's not as social commentary, but less-than-honest exploitive, business-minded cynicism. And I'm still not totally convinced that exploitation doesn't, at least in a small way, continue to perpetuate and even promote problems. But it's also immoral when a moral message is made cynically, lazily removed from the facts, or as philanthropic gratuity or showiness.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
Which is why I wouldn't hesitate recommending the Flashman books even though I disagree with Fraser's politics (I never knew until I read the obituaries). There is an attempt at honesty in the books: Flashman knows he's a sinner and a liar but in his "papers" at least he is honest; his version of the history of the British Empire, although not controversial, is hardly glorious. By dramatising it Fraser puts a human face on the horror and lets people decide for themselves (maybe because he doesn't try too hard to change people's minds is why those books are so popular).

Well they update the boys own shtick for more cynical times - they wouldn't have sold so well if they hadn't.

But there's an undercurrent of racism in a lot of them and a general sense that the British Empire is A GOod Thing, no matter how many of its administrators and leaders are upper class twits and/or bastards.
 

D84

Well-known member
Well they update the boys own shtick for more cynical times - they wouldn't have sold so well if they hadn't.

True. That's what attracted me: I love a good adventure story..

But there's an undercurrent of racism in a lot of them and a general sense that the British Empire is A GOod Thing, no matter how many of its administrators and leaders are upper class twits and/or bastards.

Perhaps but that is what Flashman would have thought being an upper class Victorian, and the way that the novels are presented as edited papers, historical artifacts to be examined with a critical eye - with footnotes etc - invites us to make up our own minds. No matter what spin the narrator might put on events the facts shine through. The British are shown to just as barbaric as any of the other people he visits.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Perhaps but that is what Flashman would have thought being an upper class Victorian,

True, obviously, but it seeps through into the development of the stories. Also, I'm surprised you say you hadn't twigged fraser's personal politics until the obits appeared - the footnotes are full of sneering references to how it's now "fashionable" to dis Empire.

The British are shown to just as barbaric as any of the other people he visits.

Ttoally disagree. There's no British character who comes close to the sheer savagery of, say, the Madagascan queen (no, not even the rogue slaver). And foreign bad guys are habitually shown as borderline sadists.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"It strikes me that the better the art, the less easy it is to see a clear message in it. What is "the message", for example, of Cezanne's landscapes? And maybe there is a dialectical turn around lurking here somewhere. [rummages in sack, discarding kittens, pieces of junk, spare parts for time machines, bizarre anatomical skeletons] Ah yes. Would it be possible to say that artworks which work to propound a message (thus treating their audiences as passive objects to be programmed) are morally objectionable even though they may be felt to be politically "correct" in other ways?"
I think I'd broadly agree with that up to a point. I mean, I agree that the best art isn't easily summed up in terms of one single (or simple) message but, speaking crudely, I think it's often the case that an artwork can be said to espouse certain viewpoints or even just give a feeling of sympathy with one viewpoint rather than another. Different types of artworks lend themselves more obviously to this kind of thing though and I agree that paintings of nature or still lifes are closer towards the "not easily described" end of the scale than a film such as 300.
Some may argue that the formalist experimentation of Cezanne constituted some kind of politics in itself or at least was evidence of a mind of a certain type and this kind of argument has often been used to ban so-called decadent art which most people nowadays would consider as entirely lacking in any kind of controversial message, or indeed, any message at all. For example, who was the English artist who caused massive controversy within the Royal Academy when he let it be known that he intended to paint an ancient battle scene where the soldiers wore clothes in contravention of the prevailing ideology that all scenes from Ancient Greece should depict only stylised, naked warriors?
 

D84

Well-known member
True, obviously, but it seeps through into the development of the stories. Also, I'm surprised you say you hadn't twigged fraser's personal politics until the obits appeared - the footnotes are full of sneering references to how it's now "fashionable" to dis Empire.

Hmm... I missed that. It kinda is "fashionable" now to dis empire: fashionable and correct! A lot of the history was new to me though and that's what I remember most - as well as the jokes and the swashbuckling etc.


Ttoally disagree. There's no British character who comes close to the sheer savagery of, say, the Madagascan queen (no, not even the rogue slaver). And foreign bad guys are habitually shown as borderline sadists.

Not even Queen Victoria? I vaguely remember Flashman being just as terrified of her (eg. not another mission) - she just has better PR.

How about when Flashman wakes up tied to the front of a British cannon? Or his miserly, puritanical, mill owning father-in-law, the American slave owners, the opium war thing. Flashman's whole attitude: if he had his way he wouldn't be going around the world sticking his head into places it shouldn't be but rather boozing and whoring at home.

Maybe Fraser is having it both ways - selling books to both sides of the fence.

btw I bought Fraser's "Reavers" cheap at a cut-out bookshop. It's terrible. I couldn't get past the first 3 pages. Avoid.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
I think it's often the case that an artwork can be said to espouse certain viewpoints or even just give a feeling of sympathy with one viewpoint rather than another.

This is clearly quite literally true, esp. with regards to a painting, which def. has a viewpoint. But again - how do you get from a viewpoint to a message? This is not at all a rhetorical question - I don't know the answer to this. But I think the semiotic view of the universe, in which man stands at the center of a swirling vortex of codes that are given to him to interpret, is problematic. I mean, it works with menus, but this is like a child's maths problem with the answer already written in chalk on the blackboard.

It strikes me that messages need both envelopes and envoys.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"This is clearly quite literally true, esp. with regards to a painting, which def. has a viewpoint. But again - how do you get from a viewpoint to a message?"
Well I'm not sure you can. Like I said "message" was a crude word to try and express what I meant. I think that certain viewpoints - not necessarily literal ones - can be morally dubious and you might feel the same quality belonged to an art work that seemed to have one of these.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
I certainly thought TA:WP was coming from the right. They may have satirised gung ho America along with liberal Hollywood, but the former was affectionate, the latter vitriolic.

Yeah, I would tend to agree. Didn't stop it being a very funny and inventive movie of course, but ideologically it did leave something of a bad taste.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Well, you must be my age: I saw it at the cinema 3 times aged 7 or 8 (one of those my birthday party, at age 7 or, um, 8) But I must have watched it about 50 times since then. It's the best NY movie. The best Jewish comedy. The best Harold Ramis script. The best Bill Murray movie. The best Dan Akroyd movie. The best Sigoureny Weaver movie. Best Rick Moranis movie. Need I go on?

My boyfriend loves Ghostbusters and told me when he was a kid he wanted to be called Egon (and actually insisted on this) after the scientist character in it...when pressed to explain the fascination, and why I should actually sit through it, he said he really likes the way New York figures in the film almost like a character, and he grew up in Manhattan so for him it's a perfect childhood nostalgia film--NYC in the early 80s.
 
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