I wonder how much of the wealth flaunting doesn’t actually push people leftward where they see a normative presentation of life that doesn’t overlap with their circumstances and they start to think something should be done about it. Versus if they depict working class life and people think their lot is all that can be attained because that’s all they’d see on TV, etc.
I wonder how much of the wealth flaunting doesn’t actually push people leftward where they see a normative presentation of life that doesn’t overlap with their circumstances and they start to think something should be done about it.
If it actually worked that way the US would have already had a revolution. People don’t work like that, it is much more likely that depictions of that kind push them to see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”. Whereas if you depict working class people and their struggles accurately that is much more likely to lead to an increase in class consciousness.
Is there any evidence of this actually happening? Because all of the places that have socialist realist art have socialist governments prior to that being the case.
The socialist realism art policies of the USSR are not the only examples of art foregrounding the experiences and values of workers, and you can find such art in many countries that never even got close to socialist, from the USA (e.g. Grapes of Wrath) to Japan (e.g. Kani Kosen), along with of course there being such art movements in societies that would later have socialist revolutions (e.g. The Lower Depths, written by Gorky in 1902, 15 years before the revolution)
But the point that I would emphasize more is that opulent fantasies in media generally don’t radicalize people (though perhaps stories of real opulent people profiting from their poverty do), it just produces something on the spectrum from escapist fantasy to a carrot-on-a-stick motivation to live “like that.” The first is a hyper-literalization of the Freire quote about “the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor,” i.e. not an aspiration but literally just a private fantasy, and the second is what he actually meant.
To be fair. US doesn’t allow for dissemination of art that has radical values. Unless we are to consider color revolutions, adventurism and pro-militarism to be radical.
Edit: Yeah there are a lot of satirical critiques aimed at the flaws of the system, but that’s not really radical art. That just promotes ironically participating in the system. “Well shit sucks, but at least I’m aware of it, what can you do? haha”
I wonder how much of the wealth flaunting doesn’t actually push people leftward where they see a normative presentation of life that doesn’t overlap with their circumstances and they start to think something should be done about it. Versus if they depict working class life and people think their lot is all that can be attained because that’s all they’d see on TV, etc.
If it actually worked that way the US would have already had a revolution. People don’t work like that, it is much more likely that depictions of that kind push them to see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”. Whereas if you depict working class people and their struggles accurately that is much more likely to lead to an increase in class consciousness.
Is there any evidence of this actually happening? Because all of the places that have socialist realist art have socialist governments prior to that being the case.
The socialist realism art policies of the USSR are not the only examples of art foregrounding the experiences and values of workers, and you can find such art in many countries that never even got close to socialist, from the USA (e.g. Grapes of Wrath) to Japan (e.g. Kani Kosen), along with of course there being such art movements in societies that would later have socialist revolutions (e.g. The Lower Depths, written by Gorky in 1902, 15 years before the revolution)
But the point that I would emphasize more is that opulent fantasies in media generally don’t radicalize people (though perhaps stories of real opulent people profiting from their poverty do), it just produces something on the spectrum from escapist fantasy to a carrot-on-a-stick motivation to live “like that.” The first is a hyper-literalization of the Freire quote about “the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor,” i.e. not an aspiration but literally just a private fantasy, and the second is what he actually meant.
Socialist realism is directly descended from pre-revolution art movements like Peredvizhniki.
To be fair. US doesn’t allow for dissemination of art that has radical values. Unless we are to consider color revolutions, adventurism and pro-militarism to be radical.
Edit: Yeah there are a lot of satirical critiques aimed at the flaws of the system, but that’s not really radical art. That just promotes ironically participating in the system. “Well shit sucks, but at least I’m aware of it, what can you do? haha”