Posted on 02/07/2006 12:31:17 AM PST by paudio
Conservatives, by definition but not always by practice, are curators of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In the popular arts, however, we have become champions of the tame, the trite, and the temporal. (See “safe for the whole family” radio stations, movie reviews that count body parts and swear words, and paintings of nostalgic sugarplum cottages.) Wrong-headed in our approach, seduced by fashionable (and profitable) trends, debilitated by our passion for the cheap and comfortable, our “vision” for popular art and entertainment – if one can call protests and boycotts a vision – is doing more harm than good in the culture.
The remedy is easier than one might think. It begins by identifying and admitting our errors. Here are ten to start us off, no doubt there are dozens more:
Mistake #1: We try to improve art and entertainment from the top-down and the outside-in. For example, when well-meaning people, flush with cash but bankrupt on talent, attempt to “show Hollywood” by creating films that go around proven creative methods, the result is always the same: direct to video, a waste of time and money. Enduring change, meanwhile, comes from the bottom-up (working your way up from the mailroom) and the inside-out (working within the creative industries).
Mistake #2: We don't quite understand common grace – the idea that the good, the true, and the beautiful can be found in the most “unlikely” of places (Broadway) and people (liberal artists). Without a strong belief in common grace, we will either get angry at the culture or withdraw from it entirely.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Is CRASH nominated?
Probably because "nice" is the antithesis of drama. Clean and beautiful, sure. But drama isn't about nice.
(1) Brokeback Mountain, (2) Capote, (3) Crash, (4) Good Night and Good Luck, and (5)Munich.
Yes, it's up for Best Picture. Everyone I know who's seen it thinks it's junk, and they are all liberals.
Chronicles of Narnia...?
We cannot have a nice drama?
'Crash' and 'Field of Dreams' are tied in the category:'Movies no one understood the point of'
My problem with this writer is that he seems to be advocating that conservatives need to do their own version of "edgy" arts and entertainment.
"Evil will always triumph over good...because good is dumb."
Dark Helmet, Space Balls.
I'm sorry, but most "conservative art" is too tame. Maybe not dumb, but tame. The market works. People like explosions and shit. For every Passion of the Christ's there will be 10 Pulp Fictions.
Drama demands conflict and suspense. But Conservative are just as creative as any Liberal loudmouth who wants shock value to pass as entertainment.... Conservatives, especially judging from some of the posts I've read on this board, are very creative. In fact, all great artists have been artists of the right... can't think of one from the left except maybe Brecht.
A nice drama isn't drama. It's...filmed bland.
Art isn't conservative. One can be politically conservative and yet want to live a life that isn't conservative, and that includes adventurous art. And there isn't much art that I would consider conservative in any sense.
The Passion certainly isn't "tame" though, and would probably have more in common with Pulp Fiction than one of those books/movies about the apocalypse, Carried Away or whatever they're called.
The choice isn't between Tarantino megaviolence or Disney, though.
In his list under "Mistake #5".
"...conservatives prefer art that shows the world as it should be, not as it is."
This is how liberals view the world. Is he saying conservs. see the world "as it is", but prefer their art "as the world should be"? This statement is too general to be taken seriously.
As a conservative I live in reality and see the world "as it is". Just because I don't enjoy looking at the human debasement that goes on in the world doesn't mean I would rather see the world "as it should be."
Do you want to see movies different from those being made by the Hollywood liberals?
Will you help finance them?
I'm making an action Western right now. Almost all of my conservative friends think I am silly to even try.
Conservatives are typically seeking ONLY the safest investments and financing movies is a very high-risk proposition.
Leftists will control the culture until conservatives find important intrinsic value in putting their money where their mouths are.
Well put. I can't talk to many of the conservatives I know about the art, movies and books I am into because they don't approve of the morality of the characters, for example. Well, *I* don't, either, but I read about things I haven't experienced and ideas I'm unfamiliar with. Many conservatives--like many liberals--merely want to read things that merely promote ideas they already agree with. I'm not interested in that, I want to see and read new things, and will reject the bad and take what I find useful.
But just because something "challenging" or "daring" does not make it good art. The sad fact is that just about everything that is considered art today (literature, cinema, painting, scupture, music, etc.) is crap. It is possible to do art both ways...challenging and non-challenging. The problem is that todays "artists" have no talent to do it either way.
not everything produced by an "artist" is art ... that would be the big difference with liberals
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