Conservatives and Culture
Vox Day makes a great point in re the thread between Joe Carter, the Elder and I from Wednesday.
It's about culture; Carter decried the lack of it on talk radio; I agreed.
Vox adds:
That being said, the one thing that NPR has over talk radio (and that liberals have over conservatives) is in the area of culture and entertainment. Conservatives are simply terrible about giving any credence to this area; the very same people who will lament that there are no Christian or conservative alternatives to the atheist secular hit of the moment will assiduously ignore such alternatives even when they are brought directly to their attention. (And yes, I'm speaking from personal experience here.)
This touches on something I've been gnawing on for a long time.
I like the Laura Ingraham show - partly because she's an interesting (if far from flawless) host, partly because her show is a Pee-Wee's Playhouse of on-the-fly production earcandy that tickles the fancy of this radio geek from a purely technical perspective; her producers and engineers are amazing.
But Ingraham has lent the conservative movement a meme that doesn't serve us well in the long run - the whole "Shut Up And Sing" bit.
Don't get me wrong - I'm no less reticent about telling an artist or a singer where he or she is wrong, wrong, wrong than I am any politician or blogger or academic. And it's a fact - most art, movies, literature, music in this country is written and produced by people who are not conservatives, many of whom have contempt for conservatives. As to the contempt? It's their loss, and let's not worry about that for now.
The problem with too many conservatives is that they take that disagreement as a reason to reject not just the political beliefs of the artists, but art (and the culture it not only represents, but illuminates) itself.
There are three problems with this: Art (broadly defined) is not just a good thing; it is essential to being a human. Art with which you disagree can not only make you a better person, and a better conservative. And Art, being an essential human activity, is too important to leave to the other guys without a fight.
Leo Tolstoii wrote a wonderful essay, "What Is Art". It's long, but it's an essential read - and for my purposes, here's the crux:
#12. Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.
#13. As, thanks to man's capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all humanity before his day, and can in the present, thanks to this capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their activity and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man's capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others.
#14. If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Houser.
#15. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.
#16. And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.
"Art is as important as speech" is a notion that's a hard sell for conservatives; we tend to be 9-to-5 guys and gals, with jobs or businesses and kids and mortgages and taxes to pay. We - all of us - tend to get enmeshed in the here and now. And yet exploring is an essential human need, like food or air or love; without any of them, parts of the human die, literally or mentally. We all can't climb into the Space Shuttle or start clambering up K-2 - but we can explore other people, other times and places and ideas, through art; Bach's rapturous communion with all things holy; Turner's visual time capsule of the Edinburgh Renaissance, and the excitement of one of the great eras of human history practically jumping off the canvas at you; Tolstoii's wonder at the mystical, juxtaposed with his horror at the brutality hidden in man's rejection of it; Eminem's vulgar but dazzling vocal gymnastics; the window into the Slavic soul in Russian monastic chants...and on, and on. Art - high and low - is a ticket to places and thoughts and emotions that don't exist in your world, or to a deeper understanding of the places and thoughts you do have.
"What? Eminem? Mitch, you're nucking futs!" Oh, relax. Bear with me here. If I catch my son talking like Eminem, he gets his mouth washed out with soap and he's grounded. But I'm amazed by his technique in the same way I'm amazed by Turner's use of the color yellow (long story) - and over the years, Eminem has had a song (yes, rap is music) or two that did what all of my absolute favorite art, music, literature, whatever does; reached down into the pit of my gut and found something that made me stand up and think "Damn. He pegged it. That's something I can relate to, that I feel. Maybe not always, but right now, I do. . The Brandenburg Concertos do that; excerpts from War and Peace and Anna Karenina and Tom Wolf's Bonfire of the Vanities and Bruce Springsteen's "The Price You Pay" and "Tunnel of Love" and Alison Krause's "And the Angels Cried" and the Clash's "The Card Cheat" and the old Soviet National Anthem (wierd, huh) and Joe Grushecky's "This Time The Night Won't Save Us" and, yeah, Eminem's "Lose Yourself" all do it. They all hit different places deep down in the pit of my liver, but they all do it.
Art of all kinds can speak to the truths buried deep inside all of us - which is why I'm unabashed in my admiration for the art of so many people who so actively denigrate, well, people like me. I think Garrison Keillor is a condescending, arrogant man and a political idiot - but not only is "A Prairie Home Companion" a wonderland of off-the-main-track art, but Keillor's humor itself has provided many wondrous, fascinating insights into my own rural scandinavian heritage; in and among the facile caricatures, Keillor does indeed have some amazing insights.
Art, as Tolstoii says, is a human essential. Beyond that, it's up to you. Sheila O'Malley, one of my favorite bloggers, said it well: "Two quotes:
"Agreement" is not what I look for, when I respond to art. I don't look to art to ... reflect the world as I wish it was. I don't look to art to do anything political at all. I look for it to entertain me, to move me, to transport me, whatever.
Exactly.
But since we're talking politics...
"But artists are all liberals!". Yes, for the most part they are. O'Malley, an actress and self-described "South Park Republican", wrote an interesting piece about a year ago, The Problem With Conservatives. This was an interesting quote:
Mark Rydell, film director of "On Golden Pond", came to my school and gave a seminar, and he talked about what it was like when he directed John Wayne, a man whose political beliefs were completely opposite from his own. "I thought of him as right-wing, completely against everything that I am for." Rydell described the surprise of Wayne's gentle and gentlemanly personality. And then he said something which I thought was so awesome. Rydell said, looking right out at us, "You know ... a lot of people who agree with me on certain issues ... are total jerks."
The echo chamber is not only self-referential and ultimately deadening. It's worse than that. If you're a tennis player, and only play against players who aren't as good as you, you'll never improve. You should always try to play against people who can beat you - that's how you improve.
And being engaged - as in "doing intellectual battle" - with the sentiments that drive art that both moves you and yet sparks your disagreement is a key facet in ones' personal, intellectual growth - the kind of growth conservatism needs. It's easy to be a dittohead (or, commensurately, one of Kos or Atrios' or Air America's blogs' innumerable comment zombies). About this time two years ago, I got into a kerfuffle with the Fraters' J.B. Doubtless over the response to the death of the Clash's front man, Joe Strummer. I was way into the Clash in high school, and remained a fan as I traversed the continuum from the 16-year-old liberal-with-doubts until I could finally admit I was a full-blown conservative five years later. And being able to explain why I rejected the superheated radicalism of some of the Clash's efforts (especially the hamfisted politicizing of Sandinista and Combat Rock) was a key factor in not only saying I was a conservative, but in being able to explain why I was.
Ditto Springsteen, an artist who's taken a lot of heat from conservatives this past year. His music has always whacked me upside the head; Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River and Born to Run were essential albums for the teenager who was struggling with wanting to strike off into the world on the one hand, deeply torn about hurting his father's feelings with the implied rejection of his path, his town, his choices (to this day, I think he wants me to be a high school teacher) on the other, and becoming aware of the consequences of taking the path of least resistance - there has never been an artist that's reached me like Springsteen has on those parts of my life. Tunnel of Love is (along with Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out The Lights) the best "watching in mute horror as your relationship/marriage crumbles) record of all time. Would my life have been a better place had I rejected the music because of the politics? No - indeed, I can't imagine having survived either of those parts of my life without that art available.
And yeah, he's an overt liberal. But on the other hand, albums like Nebraska and songs like Seeds and Spare Parts are about real people (or people we can recognize, which is even more important) and real ideas - and dealing with those things from the perspective of a conservative is difficult, revelatory and, in the end, very rewarding.
Art, like commerce, shapes our culture. Unlike commerce, art belongs to everyone, without merit or rational means of distribution; we all own it. Trying to engage in the culture war by saying "Shut up and sing" and otherwise ignoring, or rejecting, art is like trying to fight World War II by invading Mexico instead of France. Conservatives - and conservative media - need to realize this, if we want to truly affect our society.
How? By engaging art, not just as a consumer (although being a more critical consumer would go a long way), but as a critic, and ultimately as a creator.
More on this later.
Posted by Mitch at
November 26, 2004 11:37 AM
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Ha. You're funny. Conservatives becoming involved with art and culture will happen when they figure out how to package it, reduce it to the lowest common denominator, and make money from it.
The day conservatives "engage" art and culture is when our entire society turns into WalMart.
The part of a human that can appreciate beauty and transcendance has to die before someone can be a conservative.
Posted by: Joel at November 26, 2004 12:37 PMJoel,
If you actually read Mitch's post, or were familiar with his blog, you might not have made that scurrilous remark. But then again, your irrational, deep-seated hatred for conservatives probably would not allow that.
Posted by: JamesPh. at November 26, 2004 12:51 PMWhy are you limiting "art" to music? I don't think the new stuff, rap, etc., is even music, but that's another subject. I'm not hearing anything about paintings, or architecture, literature. Great art is essentionally conservative, defined as conserving the good and beautiful.
Posted by: Silver at November 26, 2004 01:53 PMSilver: I'm not limiting art to music; I mention Tolstoii and Turner and others. Music is nearest to my heart - I'm a musician, not a painter.
Joel: The existence of the post refutes you.
Posted by: mitch at November 26, 2004 02:00 PMTwo thoughts:
1. (Conservative) Talk Radio is just that: talk radio, nothing more. It does not try to be cultural, artistic, etc. Neither does the NFL, NHL, Comedy Central, etc. To accuse it of not doing what NPR does misses the point, and asks it to do something it is not.
2. As to "the arts", I think that there is an impression in "Red State" America that the arts have been captured by pretentious, untalented, politicized hacks. Angels in America, Piss Christ? Mapelthorpe? The Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung? The arts now seem to want to challenge and offend.
Of course, that generalizes, but that is the art that gets the press. And I think people react accordingly.
Posted by: James Ph. at November 26, 2004 03:59 PMI think, Mitch, you miss the point - which james makes in #2 above. It's not that conservatives reject "art" out of hand; it's that the overwhelming majority of "art" we're asked to "appreciate" is either informed by cultural, aesthetic and moral values we find repellent at worst and unmoving at best, or clubs the audience over the head with its {invariably leftist} political viewpoint. Why bother?
Posted by: hcq at November 26, 2004 07:51 PMhcq: "Why bother?" That, indeed, is the theme of the post - exactly why to bother. Certainly why conservative media needs to cover art and culture more aggressively.
Posted by: mitch at November 26, 2004 07:55 PMMitch,
I think that part of the problem lies with the orientation of the conservative media around poltics. While I don't see it as wrong, its dominant form (commercial talk radio) does not lend itself to covering art and culture very deeply. If, however, you can get yourself subsidized to the point where ratings and revenue are irrelevant (NPR), it would seem that any topic that tickled your fancy would be fair game.
Posted by: mailmanjohn at November 26, 2004 08:47 PMI enjoyed this entire discussion, including this culture facet. It seems an empirical fact that liberals dominate certain fields such as the arts. It is also true that we conservatives readily enjoy much of what they produce. The movie "Dave" is one of my favorites, despite its political viewpoint.
Liberals embrace their cultural creativity as evidence of their general superiority, which must mean their politics are better, too. Conservative thought is based on values, not culture per se, so talk radio is not going to be as cultural as NPR.
Posted by: Rex at November 26, 2004 10:18 PMMitch - you miss the point of Laura I's "shut up and sing" meme. She's not saying to avoid the art - she's saying "do the art and spare us the public pronouncements on politics". It's not anti-culture, only anti the notion that because you are great in the arts, you are thereby an expert in politics.
Besides, I'm not buying your rhetorical trick of lumping Eminem in with great artists. Trash is still trash no matter how well executed. That's no excuse for debasing people or culture. Someone is choosing to support (produce) this kind of "art" and thereby not choosing from myriad other artists, many of whom may not be scummy. Not everything is art just because it claims to be art, and not everything is justified because it is "art". Part of the greatness of art is its ability to communicate within the constraints of its medium, and reasonable standard of decency is not too much of a restriction on art, esp. given the generally low standards of today. Otherwise it degenerates into shock value, spiralling downward. Not that art can't be shocking, but not all that shocks it art, just a cheap play at our animal emotions (flight or fight).
Posted by: AlrightAlready at November 27, 2004 04:25 AMMitch - as ever, thank you for the link. That essay stirred up a lot of controversy originally ... but I am still quite proud of it. Thanks for linking to it.
I make this comment, sitting in an Internet cafe, in Dublin. Just so you know. :)
Posted by: red at November 27, 2004 07:32 AMConservatives generally embrace gernalized, finite, solutions and models with which they filter out the chaos of the world. Art, being particularly infinite and not easily generalize then becomes increasingly difficult to incorporate into a world view that sees things in black and white, right or wrong. For example, economics is based on a host of assumptions that gloss over the fact that the models fail miserably to predict individual human behavior. These assumptions include the idea that people are will rationally maximize wealth and utility. Many conservatives have decided that these assumptions are true facts that always apply. How many times have we heard a conservative repudiate liberals arguments along the lines of "its econ101, supply and demand."
A few years ago I decided to reduce my work schedule as a CPA so I could pursue my artistic interests in drawing and music. I ruined the nice economic models that had told me how to behave. My conservative co-workers and friends could not understand it. I was willingly saying no to tens of thousands of dollars a year. What was wrong with me?
I did it because I love art.
My sister-in-law is completing an art degree this winter. Hasn't she heard that she is acting irrationally? Surely something must be done.
But she too loves art.
I realize it gets messy to incorporate such randomness, such disrespect for the laws of economics and rationality into a world view but that's what is needed to embrace art.
By the way for a great conversation by extreme liberal Kurt Vonnegut regarding "what is art" see
http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/2185.html
Posted by: Nick at November 28, 2004 10:48 AMI was waiting for one of these:
"Conservatives generally embrace gernalized, finite, solutions and models with which they filter out the chaos of the world. Art, being particularly infinite and not easily generalize then becomes increasingly difficult to incorporate into a world view that sees things in black and white, right or wrong."
That's one of those self-congratulatory little tropes that liberals tell themselves to feel superior; it goes back to the neoclassical tradition of the artists considering him/herself above and beyond the petty, venal pursuits of the bourgouisie - which, every good Democrat knows, is what Republicans are.
It's also extremely simplistic.
" For example, economics is based on a host of assumptions that gloss over the fact that the models fail miserably to predict individual human behavior."
As the examples you provide show; indeed, mathematical models don't do so well at predicting individual actions (not one single economic model predicted the fart I just blew, nor especially its pungency; j'accuse!); however, it's both safe to assume most people act in what they perceive to be their best interests - a definition that varies by individual.
" These assumptions include the idea that people are will rationally maximize wealth and utility. Many conservatives have decided that these assumptions are true facts that always apply."
Right. Many people make ironclad assumptions about human behavior; Marx, the economists you mention, and of course you yourself. They're all usually wrong.
" How many times have we heard a conservative repudiate liberals arguments along the lines of "its econ101, supply and demand."
Many. Usually correctly.
"A few years ago I decided to reduce my work schedule as a CPA so I could pursue my artistic interests in drawing and music. I ruined the nice economic models that had told me how to behave. My conservative co-workers and friends could not understand it. I was willingly saying no to tens of thousands of dollars a year. What was wrong with me?
I did it because I love art."
And I'm happy for you. I don't have that option; I'm a single parent, and I need every dollar I can earn, ergo I'm perfectly happy earning as much as I can in my field. Does that mean I not engage in art, to say nothing of appreciate it? Bollocks.
I guess I'd be curious to see what macroeconomic model your career change threw off the rails :-)
"I realize it gets messy to incorporate such randomness, such disrespect for the laws of economics and rationality into a world view but that's what is needed to embrace art."
Here's a bit of messiness for your worldview; the need to reduce the messiness of the world to manageable levels crosses party lines; it's a human, not political, thing; liberals will seek out their union contracts or bureaucratic stasis for the same reasons conservatives reduce intangibles to economic constructs.
Does that make conservatives temperamentally incapable of engaging art?
I think what we have here is a case of false consensus; artists, being (in their institutional setting) mostly liberal, believe conservatism is inimical to art.
Posted by: mitch at November 28, 2004 01:06 PMMitch -
You don't need to respond so angrily. Please re-read my post and you should notice your responses greatly overstate the implications of what I was attempting to articulate.
First of all, I wrote that conservative's "generally" embrace these types of models. This statement does not imply either that all conservatives do or that liberals do not embrace chaos simplifying models. Lliberals tend to subscribe more to social models (descriptive) rather than to economic models (discrete). I simply posited that the models preferred amongst many conservatives appear to be more incongruous with the arts, not with the world in general.
My argument is also not a statement of value. I did not say it was superior to take a less discrete view of the world just that the arts tend to be contradictory and therefore harder to integrate into that type of view.
Mitch, it seems to me you have reconciled your artistic interests with your political views. That is good. Your topic was why conservatives generally aren't as prominent in cultural areas. That is what I was addressing not your personal situation.
By the way - did you read the Vonnegut piece? As a fellow musician I thought you'd like it.
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