Where's conservative art?

Great discussion. I do think "The Queen" counts as conservative storytelling, in that it makes sympathetic a defender of conservative values, forced to bend for at least a moment to popular opinion that is as reflexive as it is unthinking. Popular is not exactly liberal (it's closer to tabloid, really) but it's certainly not conservative.

I personally have no sympathy for the Crown, but after seeing the movie found my views shifting, which was Rod's test. And it's worth mentioning that Peter Morgan, who wrote that movie, is probably as "hot" a writer as there is in serious movies today.

(Now, how do you post a link on this site?) Anyhow...

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604948/

Just glanced at this before shutting down for the night, so I don't have vastly constructive suggestions. Just a couple of points that puzzle me. About the dangers of science . . . whaaa? Isn't science demonized in every movie and thriller ever made? Do you have examples in mind of theater that uncritically glorifies the advances of science? I can't think of any. Ever since Dr. Frankenstein, scientists have been viewed with alarm.

About fidelity: do you really think that only conservatives value faithful love? I can't see that, myself. And I see about as much of it among liberals as I do among conservatives.

I think there may be clues abut the nature of art and political orinetation in the Myers Briggs Type Inventory. I don't think that most conservatives value metaphoric / symbolic expressions. Therefore their artistic preferences tend to be purely representational. See for instance the preference for Norman Rockwell, Grant Wood, Fredrick Remington, even Thomas Kinkade. Even stylized works, like those of Charles Wysocki or Grant Wood are more widely accpeted within the conservative households or collections. Though there may be subtle interpretive qualities to their works (and some of these artists may be appalled at being accepted by conservative collectors), these artists are reknown for thier straight forward depiction of a subject. This does not devalue one artist over another. It simply explains why some works are preferred over others.

In terms of performance art, there would have to be less symbolism and more direct representation, or storytelling. I expect there would be less sex and more violence. And I would expect the film to end positively, without dangling threads or unresolved storylines.

My favorite play of all is conservative. It is the unmatched musical "Fiddler on the Roof."

Somebody needs to do a serious screenplay on the PD James book, "The Children of Men."

I mean, do the book THAT SHE WROTE. The first film took out the entire worldview of the book.

"As a conservative I would argue that "Conservative art" is an oxymoron. Here I am tapping into R. Kirk's notion that conservatism is not an ideology but the rejection of ideology. Conservatives should simply want good art that is true to its own telos as art.

Posted by: fr. Peter | November 13, 2007 7:00 AM"

This is the only conclusion I could come to as well.

The only term I would apply to "ideological art" would be "propaganda".

Hopefully all true art still holds the promise of liberating us from ideological scleroses.

A latter day Corneille. Duty before liberation. A head-on denial of everything the 60s and thereafter hold sacred.
This leads to why Conservatives are weak in the arts. We think all the good stuff was created centuries ago. There's nothing left to be said except the daily agitprop, which is a monopoly of the left which must end.

"Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion", while not espousing a particular political outlook (it would suffer if it did) does present art that takes religious faith seriously and is quite often orthodox in its selections. That alone would make it a contender for "Conservative art." Though I would agree that that label is not quite accurate and certainly clunky.

The above comments about art as the rejection of ideology are right on target. If we cultivate a discerning sensibility within the Great Tradition, we then have a valuable perspective to bring to bear on whatever it is we're reading or perceiving. Otherwise, to borrow from CS Lewis' "Abolition of Man," the waterfall will only seem to be "pretty," never recognized as "sublime." Much wisdom in that little book.

Also glad to see the journal "Image" mentioned - I was delighted to discover the poetry of Scott Cairns therein several years ago.

Regarding the visual, you may not have to go any further than your own cathedral church, whose iconography is really quite sublime!

Y'know, there is a funny matter of perspective (and even ignorance) here. Conservatives feel swamped by art that embodies basically Left dispositions; but if one rises above the ground-floor level where what is close is all one sees, one can perceive that an enormous majority of art is conservative spread out in time and place. Make a list of admitted great works of literary, pictorial, or musical art from before the time of, say, Jane Austen - - and I don't mean just European and American art - - and you will almost always see work that has proceeded from conservative dispositions, even if experimental in form. It almost always celebrates beauty (which is understood, as conservatives understand beauty, as a category of reality and not as a social, evolutionary or psychological epiphenomenon), and it does not aim to shock with the "transgressive," hip, and ugly. Most of this art acknowledges a transcendent, eternal, purposeful dimension. It generally affirms ordinate duty, gratitude, order, modesty, although it may cry out because of suffering (which -- e.g. Dr. Johnson -- it knows is inescapable) and injustice.

The painter Andrew Wyeth I find to be conservative, even though I have no idea what his politics are.

I find his work representational but far from photorealistic, humble in scope, with traditional subject matter imbued with respect, awe, and quiet tragedy.

It has seemed to me that his reputation ought to be that of America's greatest living painter, but his standing in the art world suffers because of what on the surface appears to be an overtly traditional approach.

Perhaps his future heirs feel the same way, as at his most recent traveling exhibition the audio tour went to great lengths to explain how he's really an abstract painter even though he's clearly not.

I can't believe no one so far has mentioned the film Birth of a Nation (1915).

How about the Forty Year Old Virgin? Stripping the crude language aside, you have a movie about a man who remains chaste until his marriage and serves as a role model to a teenage girl.

A lot of what Rod calls for in conservative art already exists in a lot of what he might label liberal art. Because liberals value many of the same things conservatives do, believe it or not.

And a lot of what is now The Canon, and considered conservative, was once new & radical & controversial. The waltz was denounced as lascivious, as was waltz music. The Impressionists were savages, not painters. Dante defied literary convention by writing the Divine Comedy in colloquial Italian rather than Latin. And so on.

Rollo May once compared artists to the DEW (Distant Early Warning) sytem, in that they detected coming changes & new ideas before the majority of the public, and expressed those ideas in new forms. Anything new & different will be suspect, troubling, controversial. But time always winnows out the wheat from the chaff.

recovering ex-Pentecostal: ""the left now offers much easier targets for caricature: "intellectuals" who manage to be pro-gay...""

You didn't finish my sentence. I can see how people can be either pro-gay or pro-Islamic, but not at the same time.

As a very, very small-time and mostly private practitioner (poems, songs, one bad novel), a Catholic, and a political conservative (more or less), I can only say that these are near-meaningless questions to me. Making "conservative" art is the last thing on my mind, and "protecting values" is not far behind. I have a sort of vision that I want to render and communicate. That's it; that's all there is to it. If the result should appear "conservative" or "liberal" to someone, that's probably an historical accident.

I would also echo what Fr. Peter and Major Wooton said.

Erin Manning,

I agree 100% with your "values have we forgotten" list.

However, I don't see the converging of several characters on the rural home of an elderly relative...hav[ing] only the weakest of family ties among them being a good example when only focused on the brats. In fact, this sort of story line is nearly a caricature in our culture.

How about rather telling the hidden part of your story, the "root" of the problem, which is of course is the elderly relative, who has obviously neglected to invest in family and ended up with relatives holding "widly different" values?

I think a much better and more conservative plot would focus on this relative, letting the reader/viewer figure out how exactly how the family ball was dropped for whatever reason (selfishness, career, greed, lust, whatever) and now see the results firsthand. One by one the family returns, and each child is like a reliquary of the adult's sin, returing home where it got its start and really belongs. It could be a great story of conversion and hope for the future, sort of a chance for us to fix all the consequences of our sin before we die, as well as making very subtle social commentary on how and why families are imploding and how our private, personal sin has grave consequences for the future (unlike many liberals believe, take homosexuality or feminism, for example).

And on a sidenote, I don't think real conservative or liberal movies that deal with sin (when done well) are propaganda. I think the good ones are simply a statement of virtue, something most non-corrupt humans (lib or con) can agree with. The reason we need conservative art, of course, is that liberals own the arts (they don't become engineers or cops and so have to do something) and by now have worn us out with their tired gloating over consservative sin. We need more conservative art just to fill the gap and see the whole spectrum.

The most recent episode of Torchwood to be broadcast on BBC America was surprisingly conservative, I thought. Torchwood is the "adult" spin-off from Doctor Who (even the title is an anagram) and the last episode featured a passenger plane that went missing in the 1950's materialising in the present day. The writer admitted in one of the "behind the scenes" spots that they broadcast during the commercial breaks that it was a device to force 21st century people to take a look at themselves and ask whether they can entirely justify some of the decisions our society has made. If you missed the episode on Saturday, you can catch it again tonight at 8pm (I think).

Further thought: for me the question is not "where is the conservative art?" but "why is there so much propagandistic art?" Then comes the question "why is so much of that propaganda of a liberal or leftist bent?" Leftists tend to believe that their presence in the arts is simply another aspect of what makes them so superior. I can think of some other factors: people on the left tend to see politics aesthetically, as a vivid and dramatic thing, full of heroes and villains and the struggles between them. For people on the right, outside of a relatively small number of hardcore political junkies and especially on the traditionalist right, politics is much more mundane, fundamentally tiresome; religion is more likely to be the arena of drama.

Or, same thing from a slightly different angle: the left is more dominated by secularists than the right, but since the religious impulse asserts itself very insistently in the human mind, the left tends to make politics its source of ultimate meaning, and naturally you write about what's most important to you. Secularists on the right do this, too, of course, but they're less dominant--in fact they tend to be the people who are very pragmatic and don't care much about art either way, or see it in the crudest possible way as a tool for getting the message out.

Also, the role of fashion in the art world (sociologically speaking, as opposed to its role in the creation of good art) should not be underestimated. If you want to see a herd of independent minds...

I agree with what somebody said about the National Review search for conservative rock songs etc. Cringe-making.

Check out the work of Sufjan Stevens. Very subversive use of Christian imagery in mainstream indie rock...

Another point regarding the lack of "conservative" art...

If you look back on the past twenty years, many of social conservativism's most trusted/popular thinkers and leaders have found the only acceptable way of engaging popular culture is to take a flamethrower to it, rather than using the marketplace to excercise their own artistic visions and ideas.

I think a great number of conservatives have been brought up to be at least suspicious of, if not outright hostile to, the cultural arts. In and of itself, it is not necessarily a bad thing. But too many times, these hatreds subsitute honest critical thought. [Again, Libertas is the Frankenstein's monster of this belief system. I really do urge posters on this thread to look at this, one of the better known conservative film movements, and get an eyeful of exactly what I am talking about.]

I consider myself a liberal, but I am always open to see artistic interpretations of perspectives different than my own. However, I think this new generation of conservatives will struggle mightily to find a vision that will speak to a larger audience than themselves, because movies, books and plays (certainly plays) are seen merely as ideological ammunition for a culture war most people don't care about.

Wow, this is a lively thread -- I'm so swamped at work now, so no time to comment at length. I just wanted to say that I agree pretty much with Fr. Peter and others -- art is art, and as long as it's truthful and beautiful, it's fine. "Left-wing" and "right-wing" art are more often than not going to be propaganda. Still, I think it's too easy to dismiss the political content of art -- or at least the political implications of a work of art. Left-wing plays exemplify and uphold a set of values, or a worldview, that is generally associated with the political left. And plays that might be described as right-wing explore and embody a worldview generally associated with the political right. Insofar as there is a such thing as a conservative worldview and a liberal worldview, we shouldn't be surprised to see works of art at least tangentially -- and perhaps unintentionally -- upholding these particular values.

Kellen, the interesting thing is, both Lewis & Tolkien are much loved by plenty of people on the liberal/progressive end of the spectrum (I'm one of 'em).

And as much as I'm open to & anticipate new & progressive ideas, I dearly love the majority of traditional art as well. Again, most of that traditional art was new & progressive at some point, and mightily upset the self-appointed guardians of what was tradition up to that point.

Rod, you're quite right about an artist's worldview showing in the work. Tolkien has said that while his epic isn't explicitly, outwardly Catholic, there's no escaping the values & beliefs that shaped him, and thus his creation. I recognized him as a Catholic when I first read "Lord of the Rings" at 13, without knowing a single thing about his life or background. The fact that I eventually became a lapsed Catholic in no way lessens my love & admiration for his work.

I don't share the religious beliefs of, say, Reynolds Price. But that doesn't mean I can't admire his writing, and learn a great deal from it. Any work of art that strives for depth, nuance, complexity, is always welcome; it never has to pass a political or cultural litmus test for me.

Octopus, I second your nomination of "The Road." In a setting of bleak, forsaken nothingness, we see this father-son relationship honed and sanctified to a level approaching divinity, full of ritual and beauty and sacrifice. Absolutely stunning... and yes, I'd say conservative. (Though I doubt that was the author's intention!)

Rod, there's a TV show set in your neck of the woods called "Friday Night Lights," and I think it's as fine a work of conservative art as one will find on the tube. Set in a small Texas town that revolves around its high school football team, this series is full of rich, complicated characters and human drama of near-Greek proportions. It's so rare to see the small-town South portrayed as anything other than a lowbrow joke OR a "quaint, quirky" artifact. In this show, the landscape is barren and characters deeply flawed, but the creators mine so much poetry from their subject, treating the characters (and their lives) with dignity and respect. Oh, these characters get up to in all sorts of liberal-sanctioned mischief (adultery, drugs, teen sex, etc.), but not without consequences. And at the center of it all if Coach Taylor and his wife, a playfully loving, though totally realistic, married couple struggling through life together, completely committed to each other and their two daughters. Coach Taylor tells his team things like "Character is what you do when no one's watching," and 'Bright eyes, full heart, can't lose." It may sound schmaltzy, but in context of the gritty setting, music, etc, it's anything but. AND, they don't avoid religion in this show, either. The team prays together before each game... many of the characters attend church... it's as vital and sustaining a part of their lives as those Friday night games...

I love this show!

Artists do tend overwhelmingly to be leftys, though--and will always be.

Really! Kipling, Yeats, Pound, Bach, Sibelius, et al. don't count?

Margaret, Completely second "Friday Night Lights" as a wonderful moral series. My wife hounded me to watch it ( I loathe most TV) and now I am hooked.

I agree with the commenters that say "there is no conservative art" but I think Rod is thinking about art with conservative values such as decency, beauty, respect for the past, respect of religions etc..
In the San Francisco bay area where I live, there is a Catholic Theatre group named Quo Vadis that is performing plays that show holy people doing holy things (mostly saints) - they do this to educate and to entertain and give people thought to what Catholics should be striving for. Their website is www.quovadistheatre.org - I missed their latest play on Mother Theresa but have been to four of their older plays and was glad that this kind of theater existed - theater that doesn't degrade Christian values or support perversity.

Margaret, I second your opinion of Friday Night Lights, based on the three or four episodes I've seen. I made the decision, somewhat regretfully, not to keep watching because I have so many other demands on my time that I couldn't justify it.

But--I wouldn't have called it "conservative." Just good. All the things you say about it are true--its treatment of the characters with dignity, etc. Another way to state it is that it portrays them truthfully. And the problem with palpably left-wing art that makes people like this into caricatures of villainy and idiocy is not so much that it's left-wing as that it's not truthful.

I don't mean to be saying, by the way, Rod, that political views shouldn't find their way into a novel or drama. They're part of life, and part of the author. I just think the drive to make the work express them is not a strong ingredient in good art, but is in bad art.

I'm not sure what the category of art is here, but it seems that most "art" (if we confine it to popular TV and movies), that tries to be political stinks, especially from conservatives. My theory is that liberals don't really set out to make political art, it's just that they make so much of it and everyone around them agrees with them, that what comes out is political. Conservatives too often set out to make a political statement and it comes across as forced.

As for intentionally conservative movies, I can only think of Red Dawn and We Were Soldiers Once. I remember an 80's sci-fi remake, Invaders from Mars, that portrayed the military very positively. Usually they underestimate their enemy and get killed after their bombs fail, to be saved later by a civilian. Jonah Goldberg called A Simple Plan conservative, and the director Sam Raimi also directs the Spiderman movies, which tend to lean towards the conservative side as far as comic book movies go.

For TV shows, no one has yet mentioned South Park. Perhaps not so much conservative as anti-liberal, but I think any show that attacks political correctness is in some sense conservative. Everybody Loves Raymond had to be one of the most conservative sitcoms in the last 20 years. Family Ties unintentionally so because the liberal caricature of conservatives became so popular.

I'm glad M_David mentioned In the Bedroom. It's like an intellectual Chuck Norris/Dirty Harry.

M_David said, "How about rather telling the hidden part of your story, the "root" of the problem, which is of course is the elderly relative, who has obviously neglected to invest in family and ended up with relatives holding "widly different" values?"

:)

That's where the box full of carefully hoarded cheap bobby pins came in...

...I didn't want to be too obvious, but of course you're exactly on target. The whole thing is a reflection of my experience attending estate sales, where relatives who can barely be bothered to sort through Granny's stuff show up just long enough to grab anything 'good' before letting the estate sale people affix bizarre price tags to the accumulated flotsam of a life that seems to have been more about stuff than about people--and the people know that, and resent it. (Now, of course, the actual individuals whose homes I've seen in this condition were probably wonderful people with plenty of love for family and friends etc.--you can't really judge by the pathetic appearances. But if you want to cure yourself of materialistic impulses, attend a few dozen estate sales, not to buy anything, but just to look at how much useless stuff there really is in a person's life.)

I appreciate your agreement with the list, though it's not by any means meant to be exhaustive; in fact, Rod's original notions, particularly transcendence, are vitally important too.

I would agree with Maclin, Fr. Peter, Major Wooten et al. as well; there really isn't, or shouldn't be "conservative" or "liberal" art. But there are conservative and liberal artists, and to the extent that their perspective forms their understanding of the world their works may quite honestly (apart from propaganda) reflect their political leanings.

Flannery O'Connor dealt with this question as it pertained to Catholic art and Catholic artists. Just as some think all conservative art will end up being Business Poetry, so did/do some think all Catholic art will be some kind of 'smells and bells' fiction that distorts reality through a fog of pious incense. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth: the Catholic artist doesn't, can't, and shouldn't "overlook" his Catholicism when writing, because it is a part of who he is and how he sees the world; but using his Catholicism as a kind of trump card to create a lot of Deus ex Cathedra fiction is fundamentally dishonest; similarly, the conservative will often see the world vastly differently than the liberal, and to the extent that this difference of vision exists it may affect the work quite honestly, apart from considerations of propaganda.

For example, going back to my pretend plot, suppose that the elderly relative was a woman who had been married twice and had, in between marriages, lived for several years with a married man with children of his own, and perhaps had had a child with him? A liberal writer is quite possibly going to tend to view the issue of her marriages/other relationship primarily as expressions of her individuality, perhaps a brave spirit of breaking conventions and seeking fulfillment on her own terms; a conservative is going to look at the wreckage left behind by this behavior, in terms of the two children of her first marriage who still foster a deep hatred for their half-brother from the second relationship; in addition, none of them want anything at all to do with the woman's present husband, who is twenty years younger than his wife and thus only six years older than her oldest child, and who is pathetically seeking acceptance by his wife's family by inviting them to participate in the cleaning out and sale of the house. The conservative writer doesn't, and shouldn't, seek to create a work of dishonest propaganda, but it's true that from a conservative's standpoint the incredible and devastating human toll left behind by the "sex without consequences" mantra of historically recent liberalism is an often overlooked part of the present human story, and there would be nothing at all contrary to such a writer's honest and natural vision to focus in on that aspect.

This is a fascinating thread; so much to think about, here!

It seems to me that what the vast majority of us, maybe ALL of us at any given moment could use is a brush-up on rational discourse. I like Mr Dreher in part because he does a much better job of it than most. NOTHING is to be gained by setting up straw monsters to knock down. Yes, "both sides" see the stakes as the highest possible--obedience to God--but some humility and good old fashioned rational discourse would help all of us, so we really could talk about what we care about.
I sense a difference between "liberal" and "conservative" existing in differenct arenas of our lives. We may be one way in one arena, and another way in another. That may be worth parsing too. I am liturgically "conservative" as an Orthodox Christian, and I do not think the sermon should inturupt liturgy. I am not at all inclined to hate/"love" the homosexuals I am told to in the sermon. Are anti-rape efforts "liberal" or "conservative?" It can go either way.
All this stuff fills me with such terrible despair. It makes going to church--any church--nearly impossible. I want to worship God, not one congregation's pecadillos set upon the altar. This is even in Orthodox churches of my experience. God is still God, no matter what we get up to, so I stake all on that.

The main problem for any socially conservative storyteller in a Liberal individualistic society: when Desire comes into conflict with Tradition, it's a hell of a lot easier to make Desire into the good guy. If you're telling a story pitting the town-that-forbids-dancing against the boy-who-just-wants-to-dance, it's tough to get your audience on the side of the town.

I recently had a graphic novel published called "Fox Bunny Funny". It's a sort of fable in which subversive desires clashes with traditional norms. Like Shanley with "Doubt", I tried to spin my story in such a way as to leave the issue in limbo, to let my readership draw their own conclusions. I wanted to get people to rethink what it means to live in a society that worships self-actualization, to question the assumption that liberating desire from tradition will automatically lead us to a better world. The response has been an even split--half the readers pick up on the story's challenge to liberal orthodoxy, while the other half, assuming this to be a settled question, reads the story as a simple triumph of liberating desire over oppression.

A lot of the lefty-ness in popular culture is just set dressing: because big business is greedy, the cops are corrupt, etc., the hero has to perform a bunch of derring-do, gunplay, etc. to save the day. (There is also the sociological version of that screenplay, which is that because some people are really uptight the hero has to help everyone cool out.)

As a lefty, I can imagine that phenomenon can be irritating to conservatives, but I personally don't find it particularly gratifying. I suspect that ersatz leftyness is generally either (i) ignored or (ii) preaching to the converted. As many commenters have pointed out above, real art grapples with genuine conflict, not with strawmen.

"That's where the box full of carefully hoarded cheap bobby pins came in...

...I didn't want to be too obvious, but of course you're exactly on target. The whole thing is a reflection of my experience attending estate sales, where relatives who can barely be bothered to sort through Granny's stuff show up just long enough to grab anything 'good' before letting the estate sale people affix bizarre price tags to the accumulated flotsam of a life that seems to have been more about stuff than about people--and the people know that, and resent it. (Now, of course, the actual individuals whose homes I've seen in this condition were probably wonderful people with plenty of love for family and friends etc.--you can't really judge by the pathetic appearances. But if you want to cure yourself of materialistic impulses, attend a few dozen estate sales, not to buy anything, but just to look at how much useless stuff there really is in a person's life.)"

Gee.

That's certainly a novel perspective, at least to me.

I've attended a number of estate sales as well (as well as having had to contract a couple for my parents which I didn't attend), and I have to say my human experience within them was quite different.

Such events and the material things that constitute them always lead me to wonder what the missing people who owned them, used them, loved them, maybe hated them but loved what they represented (say, a white elephant gifted by a special loved one), or just wondered later why they ever bought them in the first place were really like when they were alive, why the guy organized his tools in his garage that way rather than another, whether that out of place, beat-up old utensil in the kitchen was actually a treasured hand-me-down especially beloved of the missing Mrs. Brad that had finally reached the end of the line.

I can see, though, how differing sensibilities to the same phenomena might result in differently constructed cultural representations.

has anyone ever considered that the views of the right just aren't as entertaining (in the theater/screen sense of the word)? Who wants to go and see a show about taxes being too high and taking away civil liberties? Who wants to see a movie about the government trying to take away guns and force people to have abortions (or whatever)? People live that every day. They go to the theater for a mini vacation of maybe two hours, and want to see something that is not their every day existence. The right-wingers just haven't come up to the bar on that count. Not that I'm saying the left-wingers have done a spectacular job of late, but you get the point. Honestly, though. As someone who doesn't follow the Sadistic Babysitter in the sky or his son, I don't particularly feel any need to go out and watch movies about that. Call it lack of faith, call it a degree in religious studies, call it what you will. I just don't see how that would be interesting enough to watch.

In speculative fiction (sci-fi, if you prefer), a number of the "greats" are conservative, most notably Robert Heinlein, who is almost a category in himself.

I've been absorbed reading this lengthy comment list because right from the start I've found people mentioning works of art I enjoy and respect as being "Conservative." I consider myself pretty darn liberal, but the L and C words are so loaded today I just don't know what I am. To pick two, I love Cormac McCarthy and Tolkien. The idea that J Stewart's character in "Its a Wonderful Life" is a conservative had me nearly sputtering with rage! Mr. Potter is clearly the conservative! (as noted by Larry Parker above)

Anyway, I could go on about how this thread, and the blog itself, just goes to show how much Ls adn Cs have in common. But really I wanted to respond to this howler by M_David, who consistently gets under my skin with the grossest and most simplistic stereotypes of liberals:

they don't become engineers or cops and so have to do something

I work in an entire building full of liberal engineers and scientists! The only "conservative" I know of is a libertarian who clinging to his right to bear arms. They all work their tails off. I'm married to a woman who works at a major high-tech company with many liberal engineers. I suspect M_David is more guilty than most of cobling together those characteristics you don't like and labeling the whole bunch "liberal." I suspect I've done the same with "conservative," a mistake for which this blog is a partial antidote.

A couple things:

I am all for people giving Tolkien's work its proper acclaim. It's worth considering that Tolkien's LOTR trilogy was wildly popular in those wild and crazy '60s. Something in those novels spoke to people then, too.

As far as a conservative play/novel that offers a valid critique of the left, I'm sure someone could come up with a good agitprop play on how for all of our sensitivity to cultural difference and well-meaning attempts to protect minorities, we are perhaps less color-blind and more willing to entertain certain notions about how groups of people think that are, in their own way, as discriminatory and harmful as the "everybody thinks like me and must be normal according to my definition of normal" mindset that we were trying to get away from. We seem so much more focused on what divides us than what unites us.

There are a couple of things. For example, conservatives almost as a whole, entirely refuse to do satire. And thus any 'neutral' satire ends up being considered as liberal.

For an actual hilarious book that parodies the left, read 'The VMR Theory'. It was clearly produced during the Clinton administration, and the starting premise of book is that human beings were forced into space by a 'Uniform Ancient Burial Act', which forbids anyone from building on any historic grave site...and, considering the earth basically is one huge grave site, they had to find somewhere else. And it just gets sillier from there, making fun of multiculturalism and animal rights and stuff like in a completely farcical manner.

However, there's plenty of 'conservative' stuff on TV, but you won't find it if you're looking for stuff like Seventh Heaven. (Which, incidentally, sucked as anything except a soap opera.)

All fiction requires conflict, the easiest sort of conflict is change, and that is usually mistaken for 'liberal'. Only political change can really asserted to be 'liberal'. A plague that turns people into zombies is not liberal or conservative, it's just annoying and requires some sort of response on the part of our heroes.

I can think of two shows, however, that the 'change' is a chance at redemption: My Name is Earl and the new 'Samantha Who?' that I don't know much about. (And Saving Grace, with a more explicit religious theme, along with more explicit everything else. I'm not entirely sure of their target audience, but enjoying it so far.)

And distrust and abuse by the government is also a standard prop, because the government is too powerful. If it can solve the problem, the story is over. (And despite this often being called 'liberal', wouldn't thinking the government can solve problems be a progressive stance, and that it often can't and sometimes makes it worse be a conservative one?)

Oh, and all superhero shows and movies? Almost every single one of them is about someone who has responsibilities but still wants to live a 'normal life'. If that's not a conservative premise, I'm afraid I have no idea what people here are looking for.

And, of course, Buffy, in addition to being a superhero show, was a modern day morality play, but you either know what I'm talking about or you don't. I used to think it was being ignored as such solely because its actual mythology wasn't Christian, but all the Tolkien love from the right in recent years has completely confused me.

BTW, one example of a crunchy lib TV show, IMHO, was "The Twilight Zone."

Rod Serling was still feeling the effects of McCarthyism/the blacklist years later in 1959. So he was quite intentional about using science fiction for a filter (a gauze, one might say, as in perhaps his most famous episode, noted below) to speak about social issues -- though Serling would have said he was a progressive, not a liberal. (Too bad he wasn't progressive about the cigarettes that killed him far too yong.) Yes, some of the episodes were corny as a result, but that's rarely a word you can use to describe the lefty-oriented stuff out of Hollywood today.

And the best of the best ... "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet," "Eye of the Beholder," "It's A Good Life" ... still stand the test of time today as half-hour meditations on mental illness, the nature of beauty, and children's dangerous narcissism. Actually, that might make TZ a "crunchy con" show, too.

I've been too busy to comment further on this very interesting discussion--and my compliments to nearly everyone, by the way, for being civil and intelligent--but am chiming in to agree with Larry Parker above. The Twilight Zone was great, overall. Yeah, sometimes Serling's preaching got the better of him, but the best of it does indeed stand the test of time.

Everyone:

Look back at my comment on Mr. Potter. I was CONTRASTING the Burkean/Crunchy Con view (which would clearly vilify him) with the Bush-Cheney/social Darwinist view (which would lionize him).

Sorry, "self-justification" should read "self-justifying" in my last post - bad editing on my part, I'm afraid.

Mr. McGregor,

Have you noticed that **Orwell** is on your list or conservative artists? Orwell, who was shot in the neck while fighting as a volunteer for the POUM in the Spanish civil war?

We don't want an ideologically conservative art to respond to the ideological efforts of the left. Politics plus art always results in propagandizing as opposed to enlightenment.

So, then, the opposite of ideologically left-wing art would be art that is beautiful - which means it is whole, harmonious and radiant.

Some true ideas that beautiful art tends to represent (that are missing in most of the ideologically driven stuff that has dominated the arts since the Sexual Revolution) include:

- Human life is sacred and the summit of creation.
- Suffering is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.
- There is no joy without commitment.
- Everything seen points to an unseen reality.
- Man has a spiritual dimension and therefore material goods alone will not bring him a meaningful life.
- A sneer is not a laugh.
- Not everything old idea is good. But some are very, very good.
- And special to the Boomers: In your case, love will very much mean having to say you're sorry.

cantemir,

Re: Orwell -- While Orwell is clearly on the left politically, he is just as clearly on the right culturally, despite the lack of Christianity that Major Wotton notes. Orwell evinced a populism all throughtout his career that was very much at odds with the practice (if not always with the theory) of left-wing orthoxy in his place and time -- Britain in the 1930's. Even before Spain, Orwell had already put some distance between himself and the orthodox left in the final essay in *The Road to Wigan Pier*, in which he offers the most cogent analysis I've read of why the working-class in Britain never really embraced the left -- an analysis that still has a lot to teach today, not only with regard to Britain but also the U.S.A. And the upshot of Orwell's time in Spain was that he denounced the Soviet Untion at a time when such a thing wasn't done in the circles in which he had heretofore run. Finally, above and beyond Orwell's place in his contemporary context, left-academic literary critics just don't have any use for him -- not only for the reasons above, but also because he had a (nasty) habit of dismissing leftist writers as "pansies."

Major Wotton,

RE: Greene -- A case similar to Orwell's. However far left Greene is in his political views and however many things he may have to recommend him to the literary-critical left (his anti-Americanism for one), Greene's Christianity breaks the deal -- any Christian is at best a fellow-traveller with the right, by this particular set of standards -- admittedly not the only one or even the principal one by which these things are judged, but relevant still to the discussion.

What turned me into a film fanatic who would eventually go on to NYU film school in the early 80's was seeing movies like A Man For All Seasons, Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago -- those were the films that were talked about, that won awards. Then you started to see Best Film of the Year going to a Silence of the Lambs, and I kinda quit going to the movies after that. In film school, it was all about dissent, change, revolution, shock. Those were the only artistic goals -- overturn the status quo. The seventies and eighties were not good years for the cinema, and I found myself checking out all the old rep theatres in Manhattan to get my fix of Ford and Lubitsch. I think things are getting better -- last year, I went to three movies -- The Queen, The Lives of Others and Amazing Grace. Last week, I saw Dan in Real Life -- and actually loved it. A main character who actually struggles to do the right thing; an extended household that loves and supports one another. Part of the reason I think there are so few stories out there that reflect traditional values is that it's much harder to make virtue seem compelling -- it's a lot easier just to blow stuff up. Another reason leftist ideology prevails is simply that it reflects the worldview of the large majority of artists. But did anyone see Woody Allen's Match Point? I was blown away-- he managed to bring Dostoevsky to the screen, and nobody noticed. Also, anyone remember The Island with Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor? A more pro-life movie you're not likely to see out of mainstream h'wood.

A lot of folks on this thread have legitimately questioned the use of the terms "conservative" and "right wing" to label certain artists.

Yeah, that whole concept has me confused from the start. Mainly because people don't seems to have any logical position on what the themes would be.

For example, every show that portrays the military or intelligence community in a bad light is called 'liberal' and the inverse is called 'conservative', despite that not really making any sense. Everyone but the heroes logically has to fail at their task so the heroes have something to do. If the heroes are not in the government, the government will fail, if they are in the government, the rest of the government will fail.

A common theme that is arguably 'conservative', whatever that is, but doesn't ever seem to be counted as such, is 'Loving your family, even when they're crazy'. Usually because this craziness involves something that is 'unwholesome', like partying or being gay or something. It's missing the forest for the trees. Another related theme: People need other people. Very often used.

I think that the right has noticed a few universally accepted 'liberal' themes, and is completely ignoring the universally accepted 'conservative' ones. In their mind, a fictional work is only 'conservative' if it completely dismisses, or ideally attacks, any supposed liberal themes, including ones that are commonly accepted by almost everyone.

In reality, this entire post is almost entirely nonsense, because 90% of the themes and premises of fiction are what 90% of the people think are true, and are thus not really 'liberal' or 'conservative'. Fiction is written in the 'universe' that people live in, or at least the universe they think they live in, because otherwise people can't relate to the characters.

The problem here is that the universe that most people think they live in does not match up to the 'conservative world view'. (Maybe it's time to quote Colbert about reality having a well-known liberal bias, although note I said the universe they think they live in.)

And I will preemptively reply to the 'Hollywood is not the real world' response: TV and movie writers do not come from Hollywood, they just live there. And Hollywood will make anything that people will buy, if there was a market, there would results. (And there have been, like Touched by an Angel.)

And that still doesn't explain the dearth of 'conservative' fiction in other media.

M_David:

I'll give you The Bridges of Madison County being "liberal."

But if it was "the ultimate liberal film," Meryl Streep would have ridden off with Clint Eastwood into the sunset. Didn't happen.

Sorry to come in late, but are we going with the conservative or the neoconservative position in regards to artistic endeavors? Are we also including Libertarianism as classical conservatism? I hope the former, in which case, I would have to say Beetlejuice and here are the reasons:

1.) Establishment of the "conservative" protagonist couple: The married couple, Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) live the quintessential conservative lifestyle. They are a newly married couple, the wife is a traditional housewife, and the husband owns his own business. Tragedy strikes as their vehicle careens off of a bridge. Upon returning to their home, they realize they are no longer a part of the living.

2.) Establishment of stereotypical "liberal" useless governmental entity: The afterlife is not all harps and singing; much to their dismay, the afterlife is not much more than a overly useless beurocratic office whose sole purpose, as a governmental entity, is to tell individual souls what to do while at the same time managing to repeat its uselessness throughout the movie.

3.) Introduction of "liberal" antagonist family to threaten "conservative" way of life: After waiting for their advisor, Juno, they return home again, only to realize that it has been taken over by some yuppie artistic family from New York; Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and his flaky wife Delia (Catherine O'Hara) and their Goth daughter Lydia (Wynona Rider). This family, obviously hating the traditional house, plans to completely destroy their way of life.

4.) "Conservative" couple attempts to reach out to newly found "community" of like minded (in this case, like spirited) individuals: in order to preserve their traditional way of life, they rely on the help of another ghost, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), who turns out to be not what they had in mind.

5.) Out of place daughter feels empty with her liberal artistic lifestyle and wants to die: It is a typical feeling amongst conservatives that liberals, since they have no established sense of tradition, are rootless and therefore depsressed. Lydia is the perfect example of what happens to children of liberal artistic yuppies - they become Goths and want to kill themselves.

6.) Conclusion: the triumph of the "conservative" traditionals, the conversion ot the "liberals" to a more conservative lifestyle, and the realization of the importance of family: Lydia, after attempting to escape from becoming the bride of Beetlejuice, discovers how much she really loves her family. The Deets' discover the danger of modern art after being attacked by it and also leave the house as it was originally intended. All live happily ever after.

So to conclude, this movie touches on many aspects dear to conservatives:

the establishment of a conservative family,
the importance of individual freedom,
the uselessness of governmental entities to assist its citizens,
the desire to reach out to one's community,
the danger of the rootless liberal lifestye,
the importance of family, and
the dangers of modern art.

P.S., for those who feel at all offended, maligned, or otherwise bad for reading this, I must second M_David's suggestion and refer you to here.

I'm probably going to be persecuted for this......... I really liked the t.v. series The Book of Daniel. Now, before I get lynched, hear me out. I bought it and watched it because I don't like censorship and I really like the lead character actor. I felt it was taken off the air too quickly by those who were too quick to judge. It ended up being about a man who was devoted to God and also humanly fallible at the same time as are we all. It expressed the need for us to speak to Jesus every day about our trials and brought up real issues that are facing families today.( Drugs, sex, infidelity,disease, homosexuality,crime, family trials etc.) These are the things that make up every day life. How we react to them is what makes us right or left. When Daniel dealt with his gay son being beaten nearly to death I was unbelievably touched with his portrayal of a man of God dealing with anger because of his fierce love for his son. Jesus begs him not to succumb to his anger and when he does, holds him afterwords and gives him the comfort and forgiveness that Daniel will be unable to give himself.
I think the series would have taught God's view of our human imperfections. His everpresent mercy if we only seek him in even the smallest ways and ask for help with our unbelief. Daniel speaks to Jesus every day in this series, something I can't say I do. It taught me God is there for me even when I am not glorifying His image in my behavior.

Okay, so let me have it. Ha ha.

What a sad, sad thread. Over a hundred comments, that can hardly do better than rattle off the usual suspects. And such a tainted list.

I mean, Red Dawn, whose lead actor would, 3 years later, play a character who sympathetically drives a girl to have a dangerous, illegal abortion?

So, Yeats, cantemir & McGregor? Rather make common cause with the occultists than the liberals?

Coincidentally, I've got my copy of Ancient Evenings on my desk, and guess what, Mailer opens with a quote of this nice summary of the Golden Dawn system by W.B.Y.:

I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are [sure ya don't, William], in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe...that the borders of our minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy...and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

That'll rally the faithful. You should lead with that quote at your next Bible study group. Don't forget the pentacle.

And poor Tolkien, beloved by hippies. "Smeagol died for your sins."

Come on people! No Chariots of Fire? No The Mission? If you're going to toss off a semi-random list of "conservative" art and artists, with the goal of figuring out what values you'd like to flog, you should get out more, and actually partake of, and ideally understand, some art.

And I'm always surprised that Blake isn't mentioned more when this subject comes up. I mean, he did rail against the dreaded and feared Enlightenment, and was deeply religious (although, admittedly, his actual doctrine might be a tad other than orthodox). There's even a decent hymn (Jerusalem) based on an extract of his work. Double-good bonus, he was pro-American! Is it his approval of women's rights that puts him out the running? Or is it the less than reverential tone of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and well, everything else he wrote?

Art has always been used for propaganda. Thank you stephanie, for showing us, I suspect unintentionally, why this project will utterly fail, before it even gets started.

We need a play [film, novel] about the danger science in the hands of modern-day Prometheans poses to human life and dignity. What, you mean like Frankenstein, or, The Modern [Freaking] Prometheus? Errr, OK Mr. Dreher, done. Kinda nice to have a problem solved almost 200 years ago.

But if you are, for example, explicitly hoping for an artistic affirmation of "the existence of a transcendent order", one in which each has a predetermined role best characterized in the Bronze Age, or better yet, before the beginning of TIME, I imagine that you'll have few takers, at least amongst those with talent. Actually, I'm kind of surprised you've got any takers, period.

Still, good luck and all. In these times, we can all use a good laugh.

Oh, one story 200 years ago doesn't really count. And I'm sure absolutely no fiction has touched on the issue since them.

DTC's point is well put. I hereby withdraw my nomination of Frankenstein and suggest...

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

(Thought I was going to say, Young Frankenstein, didn't ya?)

as an artist, who is conservative, this issue has been in the forefront of my mind lately. someone earlier mentioned conservatives "bemaoning the lack of" conservative art, making light of this feeling that many conservatives share. i can only speak for myself, but what i feel is missing in the art world, is the popular, underground kind of art.

i am a improv comedy and sketch performer who also makes short films and writes comedy songs. believe me, i work with only lefties, unless they are conservatives that are "in the closet," which happens a lot to conservative artists. what i am seeing is the ability for liberals to come together and inject art into large and small spaces in society. they use "guerilla" tactics and that is what i think is missing for conservatives.

i also believe that, as was mentioned before, that artists are typically not happy with the status quo. however, what i find funny is the fact that the status quo within the artistic community (especially those that want to use their art for making political statements, in order to change minds and hearts...) is liberal, plain and simple. therefore, i feel the truly rebellious artist, today, would want to fly in the face of the general arts community (from comic books, magazines, t.v., music, hollywood films, independent media, etc.) and actually question human motivations and actions beyond badmouthing current political leaders or conservative ideals. frankly, i'm bored. i'm bored and tired of the art coming from a liberal idealogy. that is an extra incentive for artists to push back against the liberal, status quo that is art today.

lastly, the reason why conservative art is becoming crucial and vitally necessary is because the lack of it allows liberal artists to define conservative beliefs. when, day after day, play after play, story after story, satire after satire, displays conservatives in such a poor light, often with outright lies, the slow seep of innaccuracies makes its way into popular thought and culture. and right now there is an ominous silence and void coming from conservative artists.

if we do not fight back by sharing our passions and beliefs through entertaining then no one will really know the truth about how we view the world and how we would like to see it change. simply put, when liberal artists say, "this is what conservatives believe and this is what they are like..." and we respond with nothing, of course people will believe the liberal art. therefore we have a responsiblity to share the truth so that people are actually informed and can critically analyze the world around them, instead of being fed someone else's version of who we are.

i don't consider this whining, i consider this an actual issue facing artists. obviously it is not an issue to you if you do not feel underrepresented in art. i should also admit that i am mostly referring to art that is used politically in order to influence the populace.

personally, i am sick of it. and i am not going to sit around and shake my head. rather, i am going to start my own underground artistic movement that will release engaging and entertaining pieces of art that move beyond having george bush as a subject. the left will not have a monopoly on this anymore. if anyone reading this is an artist and conservative, check out www.con-artist.org, there are more of us out there.

thanks.

Don't despair. There are conservatives in the art community. We're not as hard to find as you might think, but there aren't many doing conservative commentary, particularly on politics. I happen to be a political artist who is conservative. The majority of my work is painting in oils or acrylic, but I'verecently branched out into mixed media. I do fine art, not cartoons.
In an effort to be straightforward, I feel it is necessary to clarify somewhat. I am politically conservative in the sense that I am a Federalist. I want the government to do its job and leave people alone if they are not harming others.
That being said, I have definitely found it to be the case that the art community finds me distasteful. I either get labelled ultra- conservative, insulted, told I think something else and don't realize it, or they look at me like I pooed in front of them. The fine arts are probably the least forgiving on this account. I knew this setting out and am not discouraged by it. In fact, I started painting about politics because it is my second passion, tied equally with my need for creative expression. I am determined to make a career as an artist.
I've been hearing conservatives complain about the state of art for years, but I don't know how to approach anyone on the subject. I'd love to have some feedback or advice on how to make a name for myself as a conservative artist. I have a webpage, but I know it's not kosher to post it. I would, however appreciate any commentary because I know that I'mfighting an uphill battle with this. You hear all the time about how open-minded the art community is, but that only applies to the rest of the world being open-minded about the status quo. There is no room for anyone with a differant point of view.

Conservative art brings up in my mind this image of a bird which flies in ever decreasing circles until it flies up its own rear end and disappears. Now you know where to find "conservative art".

Is there any way for me to find "Frances"s website? (Frances is one of your above commenters.) I am also a conservative artist & would be so relieved to correspond with others. Many thanks.

I was asking myself the same question just this week. I consider myslef a liberal, but I do want to see some effort from the other side to move me the way this week's reading of "The Grapes of Wrath" or my viewing of the film "Ganhdi". It's why I googled the subject and happened accross this essay.

Now that you mentioned the subject matter of fidelity and the sanctity of marriage, my memory was sprung and there was a film put out this past Christmas on the very subject. It was a piece of garbage self produced by the born again Christian actor Kirk Cameron. The film was called "Fireproof".

Though it was unsucessful in moving me all the way to accepting all conservative and Chritian values, it did have a handful of pretty good lessons about unconditional loving and the preservation of marital vows.

It's a good place to start and a good place for us (left and right) to find a comon ground, still I'm waiting for something to come along and help me get my mind around the sincerity of the right's values. So keep trying and keep me posted when you find something good.

Plus, I'm surprised that none of you mentioned Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ." Unlike the other passion plays of the past 40 years, that one tried to tell the story a little closer to the Gospel's version. It was also immediately denounced by liberal critics for this.

(Also, just thought I would mention that I'm personally a bit of an anomaly: although I'm a traditional artist who loves pre-20th century art and regular (Catholic) church-goer, I'm center-left politically. This makes me open to views from both sides.)