Are artists and Left responsible for Beck? Not flame bait.

[snagglepuss]

I know them is fightin words but I'd like your feedback. The thought just occurred to me while reading an OP about KKK wear for kids. It's hard to process this despicable crap on top of the todays despicable crap in DC. And these two events reminded me of something I read the other day in the Guardian, which was so nauseating I feel I should apologize just for mentioning it.

The Guardian reported that a controversy erupted at the the Edinburgh Film Festival when a 'serious' Serbian film was pulled from the festival due to problems with the censors. The scene that has caused the most controversy is a newborn infant being raped to death in reportedly graphic detail. The director is angry that censors took issue with his movie and defends the scene by claiming that the raped infant represents the new Serbia. Basically he is claiming artistic license.

Artistic license is also claimed by Lady GaGa, gang-sta videos and lyrics, each sharing the same impetus to shock. After all shocking behavior and a fuck you attitude is essential to build a fan base. And shock in the art world is nothing new. Since the late 19th century artists and writers have sought to shock the bourgeoisie from their ordered complacent lives and in response conservatives have dutifully railed against continued assaults against convention. For years the bourgeoisie saw that maintaining order was in their interest but that seems now to have changed. Beck and his like-minded RW dregs are the new shock artists who want to create chaos and over-turn established order.

It's not that the present order of things isn't benefiting them but a new order would benefit them and their friends so much more. And to accomplish this it seems they have decided, given the popularity celebrities like Lady GaGa, to shock and appall their audience, to get in the face of others with their visceral hate and make no bones about their desire to offend. There is no way around it, over the last 30 to 40 years people have learned to shrug off offensive behavior.

So my question is whether the left is in some way responsible for letting lose the Furies?

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. No.

I don't think that the left is responsible for the modern compulsion to one-up each other. Be it wealth, fame or outrageousness - that's not what liberalism is about.

I agree that we're desensitized by the ratcheting up of the shock-o-meter, and that really antisocial and frankly idiotic behavior is normalized.

[hedgehog]

2. I place the blame more on Ronald Reagan. He made the world safe for

genteel racism. I think the term "political correctness" was born during his presidency. IIRC, he opened his campaign in the home town of the KKK, purely by coincidence. He also thought that making jokes about bombing the USSR was funny.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. +100

and you get an A in your history. Most people don't remember that far.

[WCGreen]

14. It wasn't the home town of the KKK....

It was the city where the kids from the north who came down to help register black voters were murdered...

Much more significant than just being the home town of the KKK...

[griffi94]

4. beck has followers

because he's on teevee.
a lot of people are in desperate economic positions...lots more are afraid of winding up in those same positions.
beck uses an age old trick of telling people that it's not their fault things are bad. they're good americans who played by the rules love jesus and only have missionary style sex after marriage.
they are the backbone, the heart and soul of america (it's never difficult to get people to believe they're better than they are or that they're victims, or that they deserve more of the pie)

it's easy to blame...insert name of group to be blamed here. for the nazis it was the jews, in the old south it was damn yankees, in the new south it's uppity african americans and godless liberals, in rawanda it was the tutsis.

it is right now just exactly like it's always been.

beck and his rally are shiny distractions to keep half the population fired up and the other half outraged.
think of it as a political WWF the villian wrestler is going to cheat and cost the good guy wrestler the title.
it's just theatre to keep us divided so the elites can continue to rob us blind.

[JCMach1]

5. Yeah, he hates us for our freedom...???

:wtf:

Somehow art has led to Glenn Beck?

I don't think so.

[snagglepuss]

9. As I mentioned artists since the late 19th century have sought to offend

the Establishment, and this desire continued through the 60's and up until this day. Art is still used to offend, for instance, several years ago a painting of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung, but where it is more visible is in the music industry. Look at the n word. At one time no one said it, then black musicans started using it and if anyone including other blacks took offense the response is fuck you. If women take offense by how women are protrayed in videos again it is fuck you. Everything is attitude. And that 'in your face', 'fuck you', 'I'll do what I want so screw you' attitude pulls in big bucks because a huge segement of the population admires it. Beck and those creeps who started the KKK clothing for kids would have to be brain deaed not to see that offensiveness lends street cred and confers cool.

[JCMach1]

17. Conservatism was always there... Reactionary Conservatism has always responded to ANY major changes

promoted by society... not just art.

Artistic movements within popular culture have been part and parcel of Revolution... don't forget that.

http://www.amazon.com/Revel-Riot-Rebellion-Politics-1603-1660/dp/0192851934

[Beartracks]

10. Interesting observation:

"Conservatives hate us for our freedoms."

What an irony.

------------------------

[OHdem10]

6. Pray tell, what has the Left done---Been very quiet. Not welcome

on Television. This is not your 60s left.

Code Pink could not cause that much ruckus. Besides most
Code Pink Members have left the Democratic Party and belong
to the Green Party.

[snagglepuss]

7. When I say Left , I am going to its roots in the late 19th century and to the

artists who made it their mission to shock the bourgeoisie with their conventional morality. The radical ideas about the value of shocking people continued through the century with playwrights like Artaud who started Theater of Cruelty. Patti Smith incorporated Artaud's thinking into her work and as did rock musicians like Morrison. In many respects the 60s were just the flowering of ideas that had been planted years earlier. But the common thread is that shock value was used be hip artists to attack established values. It is that I see changing. I see Beck and Limbaugh as the RW version of Lenny Bruce. It seems that the prerequisite to being perceived as cool is to be unabashedly offensive.

[EFerrari]

13. Lenny Bruce was trying to shock people into recognizing their own hypocrisy

Beck and Limbaugh are trying to enlist hypocrites. They couldn't be more different.

Light sockets can shock you, too. Are light sockets responsible for Beck?

[Beartracks]

11. There's still a Green Party?

Odd. I never hear about them on MSM.

:eyes:

------------------------

[VioletLake]

8. You're conflating the Left and artists.

They are separate things that sometimes overlap.

[XemaSab]

12. Between FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and the other non-cable networks

which network is typically responsible for the most violent, sexist, and generally rude programming?

They themselves create the problems here.

[WCGreen]

15. They push the envelop in the Post, on FX and on Fox and then

jammer on about the decline of the culture on Fox News...

It's brilliant, if you ask me, in an arch villian kind of way...

[LoZoccolo]

16. POSTING IN EPIC THREAD! n/t

[dimbear]

18. If by art you mean the art of distilling alcohol, you got it. n/m

[Luminous Animal]

19. You are right. There has never been fear mongering racists before leftists licentiousness.

That would be a resounding NO, by the way to the OP.

[Silent3]

20. The left may in some way be responsible for letting lose the Furries, however.

[marmar]

21. Lady GaGa is a teabagger?

This thread has me flummoxed.

[Edweird]

22. You're thinking of Stephen Colbert. That is performance art from the left.

Beck is just a d!ck.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. The left is responsible for increasing human liberty and participation in government

("participation in government" is headline shorthand for participation in what society is, what the world is... having ideas and acting to ememplify them or get others to share them. The exercise of liberty in almost any sphere is something like a vote. If people are free then no one is fully disconnected from the culture. One can be very thinly connected--at odds with the culture--but what we do is still a factor in the nature of the whole.)

It follows that more people will say what's on their mind and seek to have political influence.

And some of them will be really lousy people.

If liberty is a fury (as it may be) then I am proud to say truthfully that the left is largely responsible for it.