The imaginative greatness that is the film "Wall-E" brought to mind these comments by Claes Ryn, on where the Right went wrong. Excerpt:
Modern American conservatism did not take to heart the insights of its most perceptive minds. Those who came to set the tone in the movement as a whole, William F. Buckley Jr. prominent among them, were political intellectuals. It seemed to them that dealing with the moral-spiritual and cultural foundations of civilization was not the most exciting and pressing need. The political intellectuals drew attention and respect away from efforts whose relevance to politics was not immediately obvious. That advanced philosophy and artistic imagination might over time do more than politics to change society did not even occur to most of them. Other than politics, what most interested them was economics. Some paid lip service to philosophy and to what Russell Kirk, following Edmund Burke and Irving Babbitt, called "the moral imagination," but the humanities seemed worthy of little more than a polite nod.The problem, simply put, was lack of sophistication--an inability to understand what most deeply shapes the outlook and conduct of human beings. Persons move according to their innermost beliefs, hopes, and fears. These are affected much less by politicians than by philosophers, novelists, religious visionaries, moviemakers, playwrights, composers, painters, and the like, though truly great works of this kind reach most minds and imaginations only in diminished, popular form.
Yet the conservative movement did not direct its main efforts toward a revitalization of the mind, imagination, and moral-spiritual life. There it relied on shortcuts. In the area of ethics, for example, it assumed that churches would handle the job. But the churches, too, had been deeply influenced by the general moral, intellectual, and aesthetic trends of society. The god worshiped by many was a figment of a polluted, sentimental imagination. The so-called evangelicals did little to break out of their accustomed intellectual poverty. Roman Catholics formed a core within post-World War II conservatism. Their church had more than superficially resisted major destructive trends in Western society. But as conservative intellectuals they, too, cut corners. For the most part avoiding an advanced engagement with philosophy and the arts, they were satisfied with upholding "orthodoxy," which they did with Protestant-like earnestness.
The kind of intellectual, aesthetic, and moral-spiritual renewal that might have transformed the universities, the arts, the media, publishing, entertainment, and the churches never quite came off. Without a major reorientation of American thought and sensibility, conservative politics was bound to fail.
We need fewer conservative politicians, lawyers and businessmen, and more conservative writers and artists. Read Larison on this point.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
"It was wonderful, and yes, Annette is enchanting. Loved that place, love Russell's library. Give the sword my best -- and your gracious hostess."
Ditto moi. I spent a long weekend up there in March of 2006, and absolutely loved it. Rosettie, please pass on my regards to Mrs. Kirk if you think of it. The last name is Grano.
"[WFB] was very attuned, generally, to the need of conservatism to alter the culture. What a bizarre claim."
I think you've missed what Ryn is saying -- he's not arguing that modern conservatives of the Buckley/NR type had NO interest in cultural matters, only that they tended to place them on the back burner because politics and economics were perceived as the areas of urgent need. I know this first hand, because in my younger days I was of that particular mindset, as were most other conservatives I knew. Politics was what it was about -- the rest was seem as valuable but not immediately important. And while I don't think that Buckley himself was of this thinking, many folks who were a part of that strain of the Right were (are).
Enough with the WallE, already. It's a good flick but it's doesn't convey anything not already given by the movie Idiocracy. I thought that movie did a better job of pointing out where stupidity and corporate greed and junk food will lead us.
Wow, I missed this whole weekend-long WALL*E conversation! I'm glad, too, because I posted an article on my website last week (which is now in print), in which I took the conservative critics of the film to task, arguing that the movie is actually deeply conservative... and I actually thought I was saying something original 'til I dropped by Crunchy Con this afternoon! What's even MORE astounding... I picked up a copy of "World" (the Christian magazine) at the Y this morning, and read an interview with Andrew Stanton, the movie's director. Apparently, he's a very serious Christian (refreshing for Hollywood), and – get this – is shocked that everyone's reading an environmental theme into the movie. He says, ""People made this connection that I never saw coming with the environmental movement, and that's not what I was trying to do. I was just using the circumstances of people abandoning the Earth because it's filled with garbage as a way to tell my story."
What WAS Stanton trying to do? In his words, "Well, when I started outlining humanity in the story, I asked myself: What if everything you needed to survive – healthcare, food – was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time?... I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason to grow up anymore...." He also talks about the dangers of modernity, technology, and disconnectedness...
In my piece, I argued that the film was conservative, perhaps in spite of its creator's intentions. I now know it was absolutely intentional. Glad I didn't read any of this last week, or I'd have had to find a whole new column topic!
For what turns out to be my totally unoriginal take on things, go to:
http://www.lcweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=647&Itemid=94
MargaretE: I read your review & I don't think it was "unoriginal" at all. You were one of the few reviewers who observed that the Axiom people didn't raise their own children, and that there was as much critique of the "nanny state" as "environmental disaster."
Richard: - True re: non-Western art. But American and European young people being trained as artists are being trained in American/ Euro traditions, unless they deliberately break away from that.
Re: theories of art and individual expression: People's reasons for doing art are as valid as they wish to make them, and idiosyncratic, individual expression is one way to do it. I too am very tired of the trope of the "artist as Bohemian rebel." One of the most rebellious things a painter (for example) can do today is paint in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites or Bouguereau (if he or she can find anyone to teach them.)
I don't really have a "theory of art" either, except my observation that in this time and place, art is a commodity, dependent upon the marketplace and upon certain *limited* forms of expressions. (Please don't think that I believe *only* conservatives limit the subject and treatment of art - lberals in some ways are just as bad, if a work isn't "politically correct.")
I've always thought the job of the artist is to tell the truth no matter how hard or ugly it is, as Stanton mentions at the end of one of his Wall-E interviews with Christian media. Plenty of post-WWI art in my opinion *is* valid and the artists were telling the truth about what was happening to the human spirit at the time. Heck, even the pointless self-referentialism that came to dominate installation art in the 1990's was accurate in a fashion.
All of these ugly truths about our fraying culture simply aren't what conservative commentators have wanted to hear over the last several decades. Politics and economics are easier spheres to get your head around. However, this mode of political and economic top-down action to combat the fraying of the social fabric has seemingly exhausted itself. Simultaneously, I think the leftist counterculture is basically out of ideas as well, the fraudulence of many of its tenets exposed by long-term studies. The rising generation is statistically showing steady, modest gains in areas like sexuality, drug use, etc. I think there is a real artistic opportunity to integrate the best components of of the 1960's (e.g. racial and gender equality), face the decrepit state of society today (like all true art), and present conservative (community-based, spirituality-based) solutions as far as the social fabric in this country. More and more Christian artists, in this outsider's view, are starting to put forward this kind of truth. Sufjan Stevens would be another good example.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.