A date with Ross Douthat and the New York Times, the relationship between art and politics, why left wing art sucks, and why the right shouldn't make the same mistakes
I know Star Wars gets brought up a lot in this context, but there's a reason for that. It's both an important cultural touchstone and a great example of this dichotomy. The OT and prequels were rooted in ancient myth and symbolism, fiction that points at something undeniably true. They were good. The Sequels and subsequent TV releases were box checking exercises rooted in nothing real. They were very, very bad.
I did enjoy Rogue One, and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian are probably the best Star Wars stuff Disney has put out. Their overall batting average is pretty terrible though.
I enjoyed Season 1 while I watched it, but I never felt compelled to go back to it. Haven’t gotten into Season 2 yet, although having the word “rape” in Star Wars feels weird to me, even if the show is more adult in tone and content.
The attempted sexual assault isn’t gratuitous; it advances the idea of the Empire as something to be feared. Agreed, though. It’s not cute or campy. The scene you are talking about isn’t even the most disturbing scene in the second season.
This may turn out to be an unpopular view, but I think two of the most popular and successful works of fantasy fiction of the last few decades are “right wing,” or at least not left-wing. I refer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Iron Man to Avengers: Endgame and Harry Potter.
With Marvel, start with Tony Stark. He begins as a fast-talking, arrogant, womanizing playboy who routinely beds beautiful women for a night. In the visual vernacular of American film, he lives in a modernist supervillain lair. The series of films then explores concepts of courage in the face of great danger, determination in the face of hardship, loyalty to friends and family, forgiveness, and, ultimately, sacrifice. Stark ends his journey living in a cabin by a lake, monogamously married to Pepper Potts with a child. And ultimately he dies to save half the human race.
Harry Potter is similar. It’s about courage, loyalty, and truth telling. Remember, the bad guys take over the apparatus of the state and use that to enforce their version of the truth on the community.
Now, to be sure, neither of these are politically didactic, the way Atlas Shrugged is. But both are fundamentally conservative at base.
We are doing the Harry Potter books with our kids. I didn't read them growing up. The movies are nice but the books are a lot better and add a lot more depth.
Before even getting to Art...in the service of 'truth', I'm hoping someone can tell me what exactly is meant by Right-Wing here, and less precisely - by the term ‘the Right’? Radical Conservatism? Integralism? Monarchism? Perrenialism? Fascism? Ethnonationalism? What are the core ideological facets of this amorphous, and expansive, right-wing ideology that are best served by artists striving towards truth without aiming to be political from the outset…but which somehow will inevitably (and miraculously) reflect an indeterminate right-wing ideological perspective? I agree that the best art is non-political, but this is because it’s universal…truth, most will agree, is a universal philosophical category. I struggle to see how reflecting ‘truth’ is inherently ‘right-wing’, a political term which originates in the turmoil of 1789… Whereas truth has a somewhat more expansive history, to say the least. Was there no truth and no art before 1789? Is the idea of truth posited here synonymous with 'facts.'? As one of the commenters below, perhaps a little ironically but also somewhat sincerely, claims: 'Reality has a right-wing bias.' But if 'The Right' strives towards truth as a reflection of an empirical reality how will it then be possible to incorporate the non-empirical - but no less profound - assertion of truth and reality that underpins almost every single metaphysical conception of the world, in religious 'faith' and 'belief'? In America, at least, this constitutes a significant proportion of the demographic amenable to 'the right'.
Most generously, it seems a little naive and presumptuous…at worst, since this chap is being interviewed in the NY Times…I suspect it's a little more cynical, and this particular brand of non-committal, amorphous ‘Right-Wingism’ is ripe for recuperation since it poses no real threat or challenge, and can easily be integrated into the institutions of the current status quo….the dominance of which is, in the final analysis, based on economics and class.
I suspect it is also meant to be vague and non-committal to deflect from the fact that the vaunted cultural revolution of the ‘Right’ is as equally motivated by Ressentiment, and personal grievances writ large, as the Liberal left have been. Both are merely two counter-vailing, and in the end complimentary, forms of Political Romanticism.
Right-wing meaning an embracement of the world as is, with its natural hierarchies, unfortunate brutality, elegant genius.
And Left-wing meaning a projection of what could be, and perhaps what ought to be, an imposition of an ideological system of values onto the natural world and its chaos and inelegance.
Aristotle vs. Plato
Nietzsche vs. Kierkegaard
etc.
Many political movements map across elements of each side, primarily for their own political utility rather than any deeply-felt morality.
Most religions, including Christianity, align heavily with the left-wing framing, particularly in their political expressions.That said, the Incarnation synthesizes both elements in the person of Jesus, God and Man, connecting in one way the natural and spiritual realms, a unification that will occur fully in the Resurrection of the Body at the end of time.
There have been whole artistic movements that attached themselves to right wing political projects. Futurism in Italy jumps out for its close association with the Fascists. It took elements of cubism but tried to capture the essence of motion, and as a result leaned heavily into themes of dynamism, vitality, and technological progress. What’s funny to me is that these themes weren’t necessarily right-coded at the time. They were leaning into radical modernism as a form of rebellion against the static nature of traditional forms of high art and the cultural sensibilities that shaped it.
Ironically, then, left wing art was not left wing in the 70s and 80s. Updike, who was implicitly on the right, Coppola, Chuck Close, Roth, Mailer, all of them told the truth, none of them tried to redeem human beings through bullshit politics. Now we have Tarantino and Mike White but other than houllebecque, no writers.
While leaving space for art to be unconstricted by political categories, there’s still some utility in considering there to be such things as “rightwing” and “leftwing” art (both good and bad) as they have to do with providing commentary on the modern project, with “right” being the tendency to preserve an older order and “left” to revolve a new (presumably more just) one.
With this in mind, rightwing art is art that tends to look backward in a positive way. At its best it’s prophetically reactionary and tuned into perennial wisdom; at its worst it’s dishonestly nostalgic or simplistically moralistic.
Similarly, leftwing art tends to look forward optimistically. At its best it’s hopeful and joyfully humanistic (think Star Trek); at its worst it’s naively utopian or so ideological as to be anti-human.
To transcend these paradigms with a synthesis of the best aspects of each, however, is the ideal, but this requires a deeply Christian anthropology that both integrates and carries forward all that is past and looks forwards to a future eschaton of the union of heaven and earth.
We don't need to create 'right-wing art', but a literary space and publishing outlet for all those who don't want to be held to the strictures of 'left-wing art'.
Did the clipped portions contain your response to Douthat's contention that Trump can only be a providential chastisement? And what else was there that you would've included?
Honesty is a great criterion for good art. So be honest with yourself: plenty of left wing or liberal art is honest. The Wire is honest.
Would love to hear more about how David Lynch is right wing.
while I agree that Art isn’t inherently political, if I had to put Lynch on one side, it would be on the right. because he famously refuses to explain his movies, I can see why the left would want to claim him.
probably his most misunderstood film is Blue Velvet.
every retarded critic thinks it’s an indictment of the traditional morality of 1950’s America, that Lynch was ripping off the scab to reveal the hypocritical underbelly…but nothing could be further from the truth. it’s clear to me from reading his auto-biography that he has a great fondness for the citizens of Lumberton and Twin Peaks because they represent the idyllic world that Lynch grew up in. all of his films take place “Between Two Worlds”. his characters always navigate Heaven and Hell, light and dark…just like the real world. he pierces the veil to reveal the horrifying and enchanted reality we all inhabit.
I have picked verisimilitude as my creative manifesto. Which means that my writing will inevitably trigger negative emotions. In fact, if it fails to do so - then it’s not “verisimilar” enough.
You can’t pussyfoot around if “Blood Meridian” by McCarthy and “The White Guard” by Bulgakov are the books that inspire you.
I’ll slap a blanket trigger warning on everything I publish just so the booktalk folks know right away that it’s not for them.
Ross Douthat is not “on the right” and the people he refers to about being “on the right” are not on the right. They’re all groveling globalists and Statists. They are ultimately collectivists. Their ideology makes it impossible to be “on the right.”
If Girls is considered right wing (because it _tells_ the truth), perhaps Nathan For You or The Rehearsal could be seen as shows demonstrating the importance of the real? He pushes artificially constructed reality to absurd limits, in the process revealing layers and layers of contrived bullshit that (while absurd), are only _slightly_ more absurd than what polite progressivism demands we pretend is real and normal in contemporary culture.
As you watch Fielder the question is always “what is real here?”, which prompts you to ask “why do I care?”, and (perhaps!) ultimately to answer “Oh yeah. It’s because what’s real (the truth) actually fucking matters”.
“Why does it feel like the left wants me to live in a Nathan Fielder project?”
Great interview. Reality has a right-wing bias. Also explains why Ross and the NYT crowd clutch their pearls so hard over memes ;)
I know Star Wars gets brought up a lot in this context, but there's a reason for that. It's both an important cultural touchstone and a great example of this dichotomy. The OT and prequels were rooted in ancient myth and symbolism, fiction that points at something undeniably true. They were good. The Sequels and subsequent TV releases were box checking exercises rooted in nothing real. They were very, very bad.
You know Star Wars is a bit like the Wizard of Oz:
Cowardly lion - Chewbaca
Tin Man - C3P0
Toto - R2D2
Dorothy - Luke
Wicked Witch of the West - Darth Vader
Wizard of Oz - Lando Calrissian
Emerald City - Cloud City
Scarecrow - Hans Solo?
Glenda - Obi Wan Kenobi
Witch's castle - Death Star
Even more intriguing -- did Frank Baum think of Homer:
Poseidon - tornado
Circe, Calypso - wicked witches
Phaeacians/island of Scheria - Emerald city
Odysseus - Dorothy
Lotus eaters - Poppy fields
Scylla? Charybdis? Polyphemus? - Scary forest
Athena - Glenda
Giants - Munchkins
But doing Homer/Star Wars doesn't work as well.
Andor is actually quite good, as is Rogue One.
I did enjoy Rogue One, and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian are probably the best Star Wars stuff Disney has put out. Their overall batting average is pretty terrible though.
I think Andor is the best Star Wars since Empire Strikes Back.
I enjoyed Season 1 while I watched it, but I never felt compelled to go back to it. Haven’t gotten into Season 2 yet, although having the word “rape” in Star Wars feels weird to me, even if the show is more adult in tone and content.
The attempted sexual assault isn’t gratuitous; it advances the idea of the Empire as something to be feared. Agreed, though. It’s not cute or campy. The scene you are talking about isn’t even the most disturbing scene in the second season.
But it’s well worth watching.
This may turn out to be an unpopular view, but I think two of the most popular and successful works of fantasy fiction of the last few decades are “right wing,” or at least not left-wing. I refer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Iron Man to Avengers: Endgame and Harry Potter.
With Marvel, start with Tony Stark. He begins as a fast-talking, arrogant, womanizing playboy who routinely beds beautiful women for a night. In the visual vernacular of American film, he lives in a modernist supervillain lair. The series of films then explores concepts of courage in the face of great danger, determination in the face of hardship, loyalty to friends and family, forgiveness, and, ultimately, sacrifice. Stark ends his journey living in a cabin by a lake, monogamously married to Pepper Potts with a child. And ultimately he dies to save half the human race.
Harry Potter is similar. It’s about courage, loyalty, and truth telling. Remember, the bad guys take over the apparatus of the state and use that to enforce their version of the truth on the community.
Now, to be sure, neither of these are politically didactic, the way Atlas Shrugged is. But both are fundamentally conservative at base.
We are doing the Harry Potter books with our kids. I didn't read them growing up. The movies are nice but the books are a lot better and add a lot more depth.
Before even getting to Art...in the service of 'truth', I'm hoping someone can tell me what exactly is meant by Right-Wing here, and less precisely - by the term ‘the Right’? Radical Conservatism? Integralism? Monarchism? Perrenialism? Fascism? Ethnonationalism? What are the core ideological facets of this amorphous, and expansive, right-wing ideology that are best served by artists striving towards truth without aiming to be political from the outset…but which somehow will inevitably (and miraculously) reflect an indeterminate right-wing ideological perspective? I agree that the best art is non-political, but this is because it’s universal…truth, most will agree, is a universal philosophical category. I struggle to see how reflecting ‘truth’ is inherently ‘right-wing’, a political term which originates in the turmoil of 1789… Whereas truth has a somewhat more expansive history, to say the least. Was there no truth and no art before 1789? Is the idea of truth posited here synonymous with 'facts.'? As one of the commenters below, perhaps a little ironically but also somewhat sincerely, claims: 'Reality has a right-wing bias.' But if 'The Right' strives towards truth as a reflection of an empirical reality how will it then be possible to incorporate the non-empirical - but no less profound - assertion of truth and reality that underpins almost every single metaphysical conception of the world, in religious 'faith' and 'belief'? In America, at least, this constitutes a significant proportion of the demographic amenable to 'the right'.
Most generously, it seems a little naive and presumptuous…at worst, since this chap is being interviewed in the NY Times…I suspect it's a little more cynical, and this particular brand of non-committal, amorphous ‘Right-Wingism’ is ripe for recuperation since it poses no real threat or challenge, and can easily be integrated into the institutions of the current status quo….the dominance of which is, in the final analysis, based on economics and class.
I suspect it is also meant to be vague and non-committal to deflect from the fact that the vaunted cultural revolution of the ‘Right’ is as equally motivated by Ressentiment, and personal grievances writ large, as the Liberal left have been. Both are merely two counter-vailing, and in the end complimentary, forms of Political Romanticism.
Right-wing meaning an embracement of the world as is, with its natural hierarchies, unfortunate brutality, elegant genius.
And Left-wing meaning a projection of what could be, and perhaps what ought to be, an imposition of an ideological system of values onto the natural world and its chaos and inelegance.
Aristotle vs. Plato
Nietzsche vs. Kierkegaard
etc.
Many political movements map across elements of each side, primarily for their own political utility rather than any deeply-felt morality.
Most religions, including Christianity, align heavily with the left-wing framing, particularly in their political expressions.That said, the Incarnation synthesizes both elements in the person of Jesus, God and Man, connecting in one way the natural and spiritual realms, a unification that will occur fully in the Resurrection of the Body at the end of time.
There have been whole artistic movements that attached themselves to right wing political projects. Futurism in Italy jumps out for its close association with the Fascists. It took elements of cubism but tried to capture the essence of motion, and as a result leaned heavily into themes of dynamism, vitality, and technological progress. What’s funny to me is that these themes weren’t necessarily right-coded at the time. They were leaning into radical modernism as a form of rebellion against the static nature of traditional forms of high art and the cultural sensibilities that shaped it.
Ironically, then, left wing art was not left wing in the 70s and 80s. Updike, who was implicitly on the right, Coppola, Chuck Close, Roth, Mailer, all of them told the truth, none of them tried to redeem human beings through bullshit politics. Now we have Tarantino and Mike White but other than houllebecque, no writers.
Well, then Houellebecq is for sure right then?
While leaving space for art to be unconstricted by political categories, there’s still some utility in considering there to be such things as “rightwing” and “leftwing” art (both good and bad) as they have to do with providing commentary on the modern project, with “right” being the tendency to preserve an older order and “left” to revolve a new (presumably more just) one.
With this in mind, rightwing art is art that tends to look backward in a positive way. At its best it’s prophetically reactionary and tuned into perennial wisdom; at its worst it’s dishonestly nostalgic or simplistically moralistic.
Similarly, leftwing art tends to look forward optimistically. At its best it’s hopeful and joyfully humanistic (think Star Trek); at its worst it’s naively utopian or so ideological as to be anti-human.
To transcend these paradigms with a synthesis of the best aspects of each, however, is the ideal, but this requires a deeply Christian anthropology that both integrates and carries forward all that is past and looks forwards to a future eschaton of the union of heaven and earth.
We don't need to create 'right-wing art', but a literary space and publishing outlet for all those who don't want to be held to the strictures of 'left-wing art'.
Did the clipped portions contain your response to Douthat's contention that Trump can only be a providential chastisement? And what else was there that you would've included?
Honesty is a great criterion for good art. So be honest with yourself: plenty of left wing or liberal art is honest. The Wire is honest.
Would love to hear more about how David Lynch is right wing.
Lynch is my favorite filmmaker.
while I agree that Art isn’t inherently political, if I had to put Lynch on one side, it would be on the right. because he famously refuses to explain his movies, I can see why the left would want to claim him.
probably his most misunderstood film is Blue Velvet.
every retarded critic thinks it’s an indictment of the traditional morality of 1950’s America, that Lynch was ripping off the scab to reveal the hypocritical underbelly…but nothing could be further from the truth. it’s clear to me from reading his auto-biography that he has a great fondness for the citizens of Lumberton and Twin Peaks because they represent the idyllic world that Lynch grew up in. all of his films take place “Between Two Worlds”. his characters always navigate Heaven and Hell, light and dark…just like the real world. he pierces the veil to reveal the horrifying and enchanted reality we all inhabit.
I could go on, but you get it…
Art cannot be right wing or left wing; you are confusing illustration, messaging, memeing, propaganda for art, as people often do…
I have picked verisimilitude as my creative manifesto. Which means that my writing will inevitably trigger negative emotions. In fact, if it fails to do so - then it’s not “verisimilar” enough.
You can’t pussyfoot around if “Blood Meridian” by McCarthy and “The White Guard” by Bulgakov are the books that inspire you.
I’ll slap a blanket trigger warning on everything I publish just so the booktalk folks know right away that it’s not for them.
Ross Douthat is not “on the right” and the people he refers to about being “on the right” are not on the right. They’re all groveling globalists and Statists. They are ultimately collectivists. Their ideology makes it impossible to be “on the right.”
That image of the smoking man.
Any thoughts on Nathan Fielder?
If Girls is considered right wing (because it _tells_ the truth), perhaps Nathan For You or The Rehearsal could be seen as shows demonstrating the importance of the real? He pushes artificially constructed reality to absurd limits, in the process revealing layers and layers of contrived bullshit that (while absurd), are only _slightly_ more absurd than what polite progressivism demands we pretend is real and normal in contemporary culture.
As you watch Fielder the question is always “what is real here?”, which prompts you to ask “why do I care?”, and (perhaps!) ultimately to answer “Oh yeah. It’s because what’s real (the truth) actually fucking matters”.
“Why does it feel like the left wants me to live in a Nathan Fielder project?”